In 1927 when I became 12 years old I was very interested in joining the Boy Scouts Club. Unfortunately the nearest club group was in Republic, Pennsylvania which was 3 1/2 miles by road and two miles by railroad track. I walked each Tuesday evening to Republic to attend the Boy Scouts Club for about three months. Reverend Manley was the Scout Master and was just delightful to me and made a big thing about the fact that I walked both ways each Tuesday night in order to be a Scout. Eventually I got tired of the walking there and back, and decided to form a similar club of our own in Brier Hill. It was then that I formed a club for young boys of my age, which we called "Frontier Boys". Our meetings were held in our cellar at home. The club broke up when I moved in 1932. Our aim was to try to help various people in any way that young boys could be of help to older people and to poorer people. Ultimately we had twelve boys in the Frontier Boys Club.
One time a bakery truck turned over about a half-mile away from our home. I was on a bicycle peddling my papers at the time and ran over to the truck to find that the driver was unhurt but somewhat shaken. He asked me to go to a phone to call a certain number which I did. When I came back he told me to fill the front basket of my bicycle and the paper box that I had on the back wheel of the bicycle with cakes of all kinds. I did, but I waited until the wrecker came and when he was well settled I went on home and gave all the cakes to mother and the family, and those which we could not eat we used for the Frontier Boys meetings in our basement for a long time.
It was also in Brier Hill where they had a beautiful reservoir and where I learned to swim, crab, fish, skate, and play hockey, baseball and football. Being a newsboy I got to know every person of the coal mining town of Brier Hill. There were only 200 houses in Brier Hill and I delivered newspapers to at least 90% of the homes. I peddled the newspapers to the people of Brier Hill. The newspapers included the Brownsville Telegraph, The Uniontown Morning Herald, The Pittsburgh Press, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and the Grit. These were all beautiful people and they were so considerate of me in rain, sleet or snowy weather, to make sure that I was well clothed. Many people such as Mrs. Dulik, or Mrs. Mikan would insist early on Sunday morning (before Sunday school and church) that I have egg and bacon and toast with her children. These were all kind hearted people, and I have had the pleasure of remaining in contact with many of them even to this date.
In May of 1929 I graduated from Brier Hill Grade School (Grade 8) and that fall I entered Redstone High School in Republic, Pennsylvania which was about 4 miles from home. There was a school bus to drive us to school each morning and to bring us home each evening. Since I had played a little bit of football during the 7th and 8th grades at Brier Hill I went out for the football team at Redstone in September of 1929. Clyde Smith was our Coach. He had graduated from Geneva College in Pennsylvania and was an Assistant Coach to Bo Macmillan at Geneva for several years. He was an outstanding individual, a sort of a boy scout type of a coach. We were not allowed to smoke, swear or misbehave on the field, or at any time that we were associated with his team. David Ficks, a classmate since the 3rd grade, and I went out for football the same day and both chose to be ends. We both made the 3rd team at the beginning of the year but both of us were playing 2nd team by the beginning of the 3rd football game.
First Girl Friend
I enjoyed high school very much and had many nice classmates whose friendship I have to this day. It was in the freshman year that I met a young lady who I felt very enamored with. Her name was Mary Bair. I thought that it was the romance of the century. In fact I became poetical about it and wrote a poem for her as follows:
Mary had a little lamb,
she also had a little bear
I saw Mary's lamb
but never saw her bare.
She enjoyed the poem and showed it to many people. This great romance of the century actually lasted as long as I was in Redstone High School which was to the end of the football season in 1932. However, 50 years later at the 50th Reunion of the High School Class, Mary Bair did not remember my name, nor our great world famous romance in high school. When I reminded her that I wrote the poem she then remembered the poem, but still could not remember me. That was in 1983 but in all the reunions since then Mary did remember my name and we are again close friends. This was the first serious romance I had ever encountered. I suspect that in the subsequent romances the individual girls do not remember my name any more than I remember their names.
