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Summer Friends Betty and I had friends in our grades at school during the school year. Many of them lived in the country and came to school on buses. In the summer, we had summer friends who were from our neighborhood. When we were teenagers, we walked to school with them. Most were younger or older than we were and that included would-be boyfriends. Janice O’Conner was not in my grade at school but lived a couple of blocks down the street from us. Her brother Ronald was in my class. Her Grandparents, Bernice and Ballard O’Conner, lived across the alley behind us. They were the “wallpaperers” in Williamsport. They had wallpapered our living room and probably every other room in our house for that matter. I don’t know when I started going to the Christian Church. Our little gaggle of summer friends went sporadically to the church which was exactly nine homes north of our house. Some of our summer friends included my sister Betty, Rosie Shonkweiler, Janice O’Conner, George Jones, Myrna Higman, Roxie Tatman and Alan Harper, just to name a few. When we went to church, we had an area about a third of the way from the front on the left side where we all sat. We were well behaved but on Easter Sunday a terrible thing happened. Janice O’Conner came walking down to sit with us. One of the boys had his legs crossed and his foot was sticking out. Janice came walking down the aisle to be seated. She had on a filmy, blue, nylon dress and tripped over his foot. She looked like a butterfly flying through the air but her arms flailed like she was swimming. We all burst out laughing. The bad news is that we couldn’t stop laughing. We laughed and snickered through the entire service. The minister’s wife remarked later that we had ruined the Easter service. That was never our intension but even today, the vision of Janice flying through the air makes me laugh. Our summer friends turned out to be some of our best friends and are still our friends today. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck
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The Terrible Teens When I was a teenager, I lost things….in the house….couldn’t find my comb, couldn’t find my lipstick, couldn’t find my billfold and my hair never looked right. And on top of that, my mother insisted on fixing breakfast before we went to school. She put cod liver oil in our orange juice. It floated on the top of the juice and was thoroughly disgusting. For the most part, I didn’t eat the fried egg sandwich she fixed or drink the juice. All in all, I think I was pretty hard to live with. If you recall, I wrote that my sister Jean got all of the new things. When she was a teenager, she got a pair of clamp-on skates. I’m surprised that my mother let her get them but it is possible that Bob and Kat advocated for her. Since Williamsport had brick sidewalks, the sidewalk from our back door to the outhouse became the launching pad and skating area. Jean didn’t want to share her skates, so when she was out of the house Betty and I used them. She kept the key to tighten the clamps on a ribbon around her neck, so it was hard to do with our fingers instead. They were always a real point of contention. Betty skated on one skate and I skated on the other. Even so, I learned to do it. I was not a good skater but I could skate. Dressed in my pedal pushers, I ended up going with my friends to the skating rink at Goldcliff Park in Circleville. I am amazed that Mama let me go. She even let me go on a refurbished school bus to skate at another skating rink in the area (possibly in Chilicothe). She was probably reluctant to let me go but she did. Like most teenagers, I did a lot of grousing and complaining about my mother not letting me go places where my friends went. In retrospect, I think she let me go to a lot of places but kept me from going places where I shouldn’t have gone anyway. She was a good mother! Note: This blog should have been posted earlier but the photos are from recently found negatives. They were developed by the only place in Columbus that develops from negatives, McAlister Photoworks on Sawmill Road. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck Cousins My mother’s sister Esther had four daughters. Shelby “Jean” and Pollie Frances Skaggs, Virginia Lou (named after my mother and me) and Betty Sue (named after my sister Betty). Shelby Jean and Pollie were near Betty’s and my ages. They visited on Sundays and we sat on the porch and daydreamed about the places we would go when we grew up. Shelby Jean was a beautiful, blue eyed blonde and I was a little jealous of her. My mother tried to make me feel better and told me that Shelby Jean was just graceful. That didn’t help. Shelby Jean was a year older than I was and taught me how to make fudge. I learned so well that I made it and entered it in the Pumpkin Show and won first prize when I was 14. When I was in high school and scheduled to take driver’s ed my Senior year; they couldn’t get a car, so I never learned how to drive. My sister Betty came along two years later and learned to drive. When I look back on things, I am amazed that I have been so many places….places that I never would have dreamed of for someone who never drove a car. For someone who daydreamed of those places on the front porch with my cousins when it was literally not possible. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck  Bottom Row L-R: Marvin Rhoades, Jack Picklesimer, Clyde Speakman, Charles Brown, Virgil Anderson and Coach William Alspach. Second Row L-R: Donald Morris, Earl Christopher, James Cochenour, Sam (?) Speakman, David Brown, Ronald O’Conner. Cheerleaders L-R: Glenda Coleman, (?), Rosemary Rihl, Janet Wright.
The New Gym and Sports that I Was Involved In I don’t really remember when the new school gym opened but I believe it was in 1953. Since I was not good at softball, the good news for me was that I was good at basketball. I was tall with long arms, so I was always the center and a guard. In those days, girls could only play half of the basketball court. I was always a guard on the opponents’ side. I passed the ball to Alice Rigsby who was the best forward on the other half of the court. We made a good team. I often played basketball at lunchtime in the new gym with the guys during lunch hour. It is probable that Alice did too. It was a lot rougher than playing with girls. Jack Picklesimer stepped on my big toe and it was purple for weeks. My parents teased me about my purple toe forever because it was purple forever. Alice Rigsby also taught me to play ping pong. The table was in the basement of the school. We were good competitors. Volleyball and badminton were also favorites. Every year we competed in a volleyball tournament at the county wide Play Day event. I went out for track and beat Billy Horch in a race but for some reason Mr. Lanman (the Superintendent, gym teacher and coach) always wanted me to do the long jump. The only thing I ever got out of that was rheumatism in my right knee, a stretched LCL and a torn meniscus in my old age. I played basketball, volleyball, badminton and corn hole regularly with my grandchildren Ray, Isaac and Sharon until I was nearly seventy. When I was at my daughter Melissa’s for my birthday a few weeks ago, grandson Isaac asked me (seriously) if I wanted to play basketball with him in their driveway. At the ripe old age of 82, I had to decline. Such is life! I want a do-over. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck |
Marilyn Francis FergusonGrowing up in Williamsport, Ohio is a blog by Marilyn Francis Ferguson which describes small town life in the 1940s and 1950s. Blog Categories
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