Rowdy Friends and Eighteen in a Rambler

I attended McKinley grade school for kindergarten in 1942. I am told I cried the first day there and Iris came and got me. After we moved, I attended Roosevelt grade school, Coolidge Junior High, and Moline High School. The high school was still over on 16th Street when I graduated in 1955. I have attended many classes, workshops, and seminars over the years. I have attended the school of “hard knocks” for many years, like most of you who will read this. School memories have kind of faded, but I do remember some of my teachers and of course the “two-mile walk” to school each day even when it was twenty degrees below. Cutting through King’s Apple Orchard and Ferry’s Woods was a short cut we all took. One day, we were playing with matches in Ferry’s Woods and got a good fire going that got out of hand. Iris had to take me over to Ferry’s house to apologize. I will never forget that! I was in a few plays in junior high school, but no major parts. I also enjoyed working on scenery and props for plays. I took art classes whenever I could and had one picture I sketched of a log cabin published in the Illinois Junior Historian magazine. That is about my only claim to fame! Does anybody have a copy? In junior high and senior high, I ran around with the same group of guys. They were a little rowdy, especially at football and basketball games. But we never did get into big trouble. We were told we were an embarrassment to the school at times with the way we dressed and acted. One time in high school, we went to an out-of-town football game, and one of the guys borrowed his Dad’s hand-held siren and red flashing light. We used it all the way to the game passing every car in sight. Another time, in high school, there was some beer drinking going on in cars late at night. One of the group had a Nash Rambler station wagon. Someone suggested we see how many people we could get into that Rambler. When the cops arrived, they hauled fifteen kids off to jail and the article in the paper said, “15 Kids Arrested in Rambler for Drinking.” However, there were eighteen kids in that car. Three of us ran when the cops arrived, so I didn’t go to jail that night. I haven’t talked much about academics but I really did get pretty good grades all through school.