A Red
Raider Nation Original
By Al Owens
It's funny how a bag of G.C. Murphy's popcorn and 5 back-to-back State Theater movies were all I needed to get me through the rugged week ahead, when I was 11 years old. What else could I possible need, save a puppy that would never grow up?
To me, nothing was better than 1959. It was that year that I started thinking that grown-ups everywhere had created the entire world (which at 11 meant just about everything this side of North and South Unions, and The Summit and The Jewish Community Center) just for me.
Saturday mornings were no exception. A Lafayette Junior High School gymnasium, barely heated enough to keep blocks of ice from completely melting, awaited eager young basketball players in rituals that must have seemed rather humorous to the adoring parents who witnessed these weekly spectacles.
And as we young men repeatedly ran the length of the gymnasium floor in wonderful disarray, paying no heed the icy visible air we were expelling in that frigid gym, a pecking order emerged. East End won everything!
It is my understanding that a certain William "Trip" Radcliffe has been overheard proclaiming the 5th grade basketball of East End Elementary School, in which he was a starter, was the greatest athletic team to ever play in the city of Uniontown, in the town's entire history. Not the greatest grade school team, not the greatest 5th grade team, the greatest team on any level, at any time, or during any century. And because this is about how I thought the world was created just for me, I will cede that single point to Mr. Radcliffe.
You see, I played on 5th grade Park School Elementary team that year. I recall we were eliminated from the play-offs during the pre-season. That way, I have surmised, I could sit and watch the greatest team that ever strode onto a Uniontown court or field, without the fear of missing a single, perfectly timed, ballet-inspired 5 foot jump shot. Mr. Radcliffe is now an attorney. I will not dispute his claim. If he'll allow me to say simply, everything else about 1959 was made just for me.
Halloween in those days lasted a fortnight. (At least it seemed to) You would start just past dark and knock on doors from Coolspring Street to Fairchance. And by then your cheap plastic had the distinct odor of a freshly unchanged diaper.
Your only fears then were, getting one of those well-intentioned homemade cookies in your bag, (One broken cookie could wreck a bag full of apples and M&M's) and bands of marauding 12 year olds, who would stop at nothing to prove their Halloween piracy techniques.
But with only a tiny bit of stealth, by the end of Halloween, every Halloweener in my block could have opened their own five-and-dime store. Ah the joys of being 11!
Nothing could make an 11 year old wash his armpits faster than the one sentence we all lived to hear. "They're having a sidewalk sale next week."
Uniontown, Pennsylvania had sidewalk sales that made life worth living. Thousands, no millions of people (when you're 11 nobody expects you to count heads correctly) lined every available square inch of sidewalk, fighting for the very same fruit-of-the-looms.
This isn't such a great memory after all. Until you consider there's something strange about every Uniontown shop owner knowing your mother's first name. How they did it, I don't know. But that first name familiarity always entitled me to a little special treatment. Free hotdogs and balloons were what added to my belief that the world was created just for me. Until one day I got one of those helium balloons and tried to walk around with it all day.
Richard "Steve" Curry was one of the big kids in the neighborhood. Come to think of it, when you're 11 EVERYBODY is one of the big kids in the neighborhood--except 11 year olds. But Steve was real big. And when he asked to hold my newly acquired, Official Uniontown Pennsylvania Sidewalk Sale Helium Balloons Given Only To Kids Whose Mother's Names We Know By Heart, I should have said no. I didn't.
And "Steve" wanted to prove the world wasn't created just for 11 year olds. So just as I handed him the string attached to my balloon, he let it slip into the air. That thing is still going up. 40 years later I'm still looking for it. Because that balloon, and most things in 1959, were created JUST for me.
e.a.
owens
webmaster Red Raider Nation
