Remmick-Hubert Special Page - Lodi Union High School, Class of 1960-Newsletter

Vol. 5:  20  June: Page Two

(1) Tell us about the games you and your friends played as a children in Lodi. Hopscotch? Marbles?  Tether Ball?  Monopoly? _____? Anyone remember the songs sung when jumping rope? 

(2) Anyone have a story that happen to them  or a friend while playing a sport for LUHS?

(3) Where were you when Pres. Kennedy was killed?

I have enjoyed reading this stuff from our old classmates. I was at LUHS only the last two years because I moved to Lodi from Connecticut at the end of my Sophomore year. I don't have elementary school in common with you all, but I did grow up in Stockton and have roots in the area, where I remain. I cut my teeth on the wit in the old Flame column that was written by Clyde Ehrhardt and Bill Kennedy (I think), called Panophobia, or Pantophobia (fear of everything). I always thought that was the wittiest bunch. I was heavily into journalism in my senior year, maybe my junior year, too. Memories fade!

I have always wanted to know what happened to Martha Gabriel. On the night of the all-night party after graduation, Three Wallflowers Plus One, a very unlikely lash-up, left the party early to get some sleep, as we were up at the crack of dawn to take a week's camping trip to Yosemite. We were all casual friends, none of us close, but we had cooked up all the details. Martha Gabriel had the tent (I think), Karen Sterling had a car ('59 Ford?), I brought the food, and Carol Hughes brought what--a Bible? And off we went, on a shoestring. We had an interesting week, not all of it getting along so well. I wonder if any of the other three are out there anywhere and can see this. Do they have any memories of the week, too?

When Kennedy was shot I was working at Delta Savings and Loan on Pacific Avenue in Stockton, as a teller, having quit college (S.F. State). I felt totally vulnerable and hopeless, like a ship without a rudder or something. It's the most touching death (to me) in my life outside my family, I think. I studied that Warren Commission report and have been curious ever since about the real story. I don't think we've heard it yet. I have become a real skeptic about government cover-ups.

When we were in elementary school, it seems like things were in for a while and then were out, and activities went in waves, or fads. Like, we would play jacks like crazy people, then it was yo-yos when I was in 4th, then jumprope, then tetherball was all the rage, etc. I played a heck of a lot of Chinese Checkers--it was an addiction. Imagine!

1) Ditch was a favorite on first street with Myself, Pat Alexander, Georgia Maul, Alice Kramer, Ruth Anne Schulte.

3) I was at Laon Air Base, Laon, France at the time. The entire base went on alert for two weeks, and since we lived off base it was a chore to get to work each day.

....In answer to one of your questions re. something that happened during P.E. class I have a story. In our Soph. year Doris Johnson and I were good friends............talked about all those things 15 yr. old girls talk about, spent lunch time together. walked home from school together. We were in the same P.E. class and we were playing softball. Doris was "up" and I was standing off to the side cheering her on. From that moment until several hours later I didn't remember a thing because Doris, my GOOD FRIEND, hit a foul ball right into the side of my head! I woke up in Mason Hospital, people all around my bed, and that's where I stayed for two weeks!! The P.E. teachers even came to visit me. Incidently, my Mom worked one block away from the school and she heard the ambulance sirens going to and leaving the school, never guessing it was her daughter. When I was able to return to school the two science teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, wouldn't let me make up the work I had missed. SO UNFAIR! Had I known then what I know now 1would had fought my case all the way to the school board because science was my major and their decision affected my grades.

Also, to update Cliff Mettler's info.........he recently retired after 30 years in education as a teacher and administrator due to a diagnoses of Parkinson's Disease. We spent 15 of those years in Alaska. He is now on the LUSD School Board. We have been married 38years, have three children and one adorable grandson.

I was a 3rd Class Petty Officer in the Navy and going to a RADAR School at Treasure Island, San Francisco. My Ship (USS Piedmont AD-17) was in San Diego, and we had just gotten back from a 6 month western pacific cruise in Kobe & Yokosuka Japan, Hong Kong & Subic Bay in the Philippines.

I could not believe what I was hearing on the radio.

My Instructor (An Electronics Technician (ET) Chief Petty Officer) cried when he told the class about JFK.

I remember the conversations with my classmates and the great sense of loss that we all felt.

I will always remember his 17 words that still challenge me...

"Ask not what your country can do for you,

but what you can do for your country."

Hi,

Before I attended Lodi High as a freshman, I went to a one room schoolhouse in Calaveras Co. from 1st through 7th grade and rode my horse two miles to school each day from our family ranch. (I went to Clements for 8th grade). We played Ante Ante Over (probably the same as Annie Annie Over) where we would choose two teams to play on either side of our schoolhouse. One team would throw the ball over the top of the school and if someone on the receiving team caught the ball before it hit the ground, then the receiving team would run around to the other side and try to tag the throwing team. The Ante Ante Over would be called out just before the ball was thrown over. No one said anything if they caught the ball so the other team would be caught by surprise when tagged. If a team was tagged, then that team became the receiving team.

Another game we all loved was Kick the Can. We had an old tin can we placed upside down. One person was "it" and stood over the can with eyes closed counting to twenty. Everyone would go and hide somewhere around the school grounds. The person who was "it" would have to find and tag a person before someone sneaked out of hiding and ran and kicked over the can or the "it" person had to be "it" again. The tagged person, if the can was intact, became "it" instead, conversely.

Dredging back into my memory, I think that we sang a song for jumping rope that went something like this, "One penny , two pennies, three pennies, a dollar. If you catch me I will holler 'RED HOTS'" at which time the jump rope turners began turning as fast as they could trying to trip up the jumper. I may be a little off on the saying but I'm sure it was pretty standard for the late forties and early fifties so some of our classmates may correct it.

We played tetherball and climbed an old outhouse under a big oak tree and grabbed a rope hanging from the tree and swung off the roof of the outhouse to the ground. The outhouses were boarded up because we had an addition added to the school with flush toilets about 1940. My mother and grandparents used the outhouses when they went to school there at Wallace. The building was built in 1890.

We never played softball but did play soccer - unusual for those times I believe for an elementary school.

2. I never played athletics for LUHS.

3. I was in a math class for aspiring elementary teachers on the campus at University of Nevada - Reno, when the word went out that Kennedy had been shot. We all just got up and ran out of class and congregated at the Student Union trying to see the one small TV set. There were hundreds of kids pushing and shoving. Finally someone in authority came out and told us classes were cancelled and to all go home. I had a seventy-five mile commute with my radio tuned to the developing news. School didn't resume until after the funeral.

This was fun to think back about the games. Thanks for asking ....

When President Kennedy was shot I was serving in the Navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in the Pacific Ocean. Being at sea so much  and pretty much out of contact with what was going on in the States it came as a real shock. Losing a comander in chief that everyone loved broke the  sprit of the crew and things were never the same as long as I was aboard.

I remember that we were all allowed to leave our stations and go back to our  living quarters where there was a radio. There were sixty sailors in our division  and you could have heard a pin drop as we listened to the reports coming over  the radio.

Write her if you know the answer: buscoms@msn.com

Ok here goes. . . .

In 1959-60 before a dance, we would go to dinner with out dates. The restaurant was on highway 99, just south of Lodi--before Stockton. At one time it was called Alberts. It had other names after that too! However, It was the only "fancy" eating place on highway 99. The reason I want to know so badly is that while at dinner there with another couple, my PARENTS came in. You know how embarrassing that can be for a 17-18 year-old. I think it had a motel attached to it--never for our use, of course. . . . smile.

Games we played as a child- As a child I enjoyed playing marbles and was very good at it. Played "ringseys" mostly where one drew a circle and each player put marbles inside the ring and each player took turns. Marbles that you knocked out with your special "shooter" were yours to keep. If you were really good you would play "stickseys" where if your shooter knocked a marble out of the ring and the your "shooter" stayed inside the ring you could keep trying to knock marbles out of the ring to keep. One might stay in the ring with their shooter living the ring a get many marbles knocked out of the ring before their "shooter" left the ring. And then it would be the next player's turn.

We also played "chasies" where one player would should his marble about 5 or 10 feet and then the next player would try and hit the previous player's marble and he could then keep the other player's marble. If the second player missed the first player's marble then the first player would take his shot at the second player or choose to shoot ahead and out of the other player's range if they got too close together.

"Holseys" or "Holsies" it where you would take your mom's good silver ware spoon and dig little holes about 3 feet apart in a large area and maybe have 6 or eight holes with one bigger hole in the middle filled with all player's contribution of a pre-determined amount of marbles from each. Each player would shoot around with their shooter trying to land in all the holes with the center one being last. As long as one kept landing in a hole around the circle they could keep shooting. The first player to reach the center hole got all the marbles in this hole.

I played these and other marble games in the 5th thru 7th or 8th grades. I still have the marbles that I ended up with still after all these years. A lot of the really good shooters I got from my uncles who was about 9 years older than me. My dad's brother. At one time he had a milk can from a dairy filled to the top with marbles.

I played while attending Dillard and Lee grammar schools in the Wilton, California area near Elk Grove.

As a kid we played monopoly a lot with each other and our parents.

We played hide and seek on our ranch at nites also.

Question 2 Sports things that happened to us-Was not in sports at Lodi. Was in track while attending my first 3 years of high school at Elk Grove High. I remember winning a race that was probably a 440 and the neat thing was I did not have to do anything else as the others did that didn't win. Such as extra laps, sit ups,etc. while I lounged and gazed on. My junior year.

Where was I when president Kennedy was killed? I had just graduated from Stockton College and was married and at my job when I heard about it on the radio. I was working a new job in Dos Palos, California near Fresno.

In response to the latest questions I can contribute a little and the answer to the first question is a little off beat, but all of us had a great time until our game was broken up permanently. In response to question one, the rowdy boys in Mrs. Walls 6th grade class at Woods School developed a game called "Pile On". It was played by just about all the boys in the class with the exception of maybe a few smart ones who just watched. The object was to run with a large ball until just about caught and you handed it off to a fellow "Pile On" player. Inevitably when one was caught by the pack chasing him, you piled on the poor soul until someone could steal the ball and resume running with the pack in hot pursuit. We played this over a good period of time until one day the yard-patrol male teachers caught us. I still remember to this day, many years later, piling on somebody and all of a sudden I was airborne. When I landed I saw my other friends also flying through the air as two male teachers waded in the pile and literally started throwing everybody off the poor guy on the bottom. Apparently they thought we were fighting rather than having a good time. So after a trip to the Principals office and an explanation, we were let off the hook but the game was banned permanently in the school yard.

Question 2: My recollection of sports at Lodi High was a short lived attempt by me to become a football player. In my Sophomore year a few of my friends and I decided to try out for football and during the first week of practice I ended up with a broken shoulder. I recall during tackling practice I was not executing tackling procedures properly, so Coach Robinson had me stand and told me he would tackle me and I was to experience the "joy" of a proper tackle. Unfortunately we fell on my left shoulder which snapped instantly and I ended up in a cast for the next 8 weeks. Believe me this ended any football aspirations.

Question 3: Dewey Willis and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria at Sacramento State College that awful day in November. We noticed several groups of students around a few radios and as we finished lunch we could tell something was wrong. We walked over to one of the groups and they told us that the President had been shot and a short time later we found out the full story. It was sort of a cool overcast day in Sacramento and that event made it even worse.

From Judy A. Remmick-Hubert:

I think this poem gives an accuarate description of our very young years . It was written by Heinrich Heine in "Homecoming" [p. 92 of  The Complete Poems of Heinrich Hein, A Modern English Version by Hall Draper:   section 38 in part...].

My child, we both were children,

Two children, little and gay;

We'd crawl into the hen house

And hide ourselves under the hay.

We crowed like cocks whenever

Somebody passed on the road--

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" They really

Thought that a cock had crowed.

We papered up the boxes

That round the yard were laid,

And there we lived together

In the splendid house we made.

The old cat of our neighbor's

Would come to visit there;

We received her with bows and curtsies

And compliments to spare.

"How are you?" we'd ask very kindly

As usual, time and again.

We've utter the same polite murmurs

To many old cat since then.

We'd sit like oldsters exchanging

Nuggets of wisdom and truth,

Complaining how better the world was

In the good old days of our youth....

Youth is said to be wasted on the young, however, I don't think I'd have the enrgy to be be so young, again.  And,  most certainly we couldn't have the kind of childhood we had in the here and, now, the  21st century.

My cousin Don  Lepp and I used broom sticks for horses.  Don didn't like the straw part of the broom still attached and his father took a saw and cut off the straw but I didn't mind and thought my horse's straw was a beaitiful  horse's head and neck with a flowing mane..... I liked Gene Autry so my broom was called Champion and Don liked Roy Rogers, so his stick was called Trigger.  We'd run around shouting and shooting at each other, "Bang, bang, you're dead!" Of course the other would always claim, "Missed me. Bang! Bang! You're Dead."  Someone must have gotten tired of us agrueing over who was dead and bought us dart guns.  Then it was shouted, "Got ya first."  "No, you didn't, I got you first!" the other would claim.  For a time we had bow and arrows that had the rubber suction cups on the end, so one of us was the Indian and the other the cowboy."  Back when we'd use a coke bottle cap for the Saturday matinee at the old Lodi Theater.  Back when I thought the little Rasels were our age and didn't realize the movie clips we saw were old and run in small towns like Lodi was.  It was the movies that gave us our new heros and new enemies names to play out at home between cousins and friends.  When Don was given a BB gun,  we became hunters..

Donald Lepp Sometimes Arlin Adams joined our games

Don returned to Wyoming, and, now, lives in Colorado raising animals for the rodeo. He use to compete with his son Arlin in the calf roping....  This is a photograph of his granddaughter Katie Lepp who just rode a sheep and took thrid place.  Behind her is a famous rodeo clown Leon Coffee.  Earlier,  her brother won a trip to Disney World.  As you can see Don and his family are real cowboys and cowgirls.  Update:  This little girl has become quite a rider and has won all kinds of trophies.

There was a cherry orchard that was cut down and piled on the corner that became our fort. We tunneled around and under all those dead trees until our parents realized what we were doing.   They claimed it was a death trap just waiting to happen. I'm sure our parents were right , however, it had given us weeks and weeks of enjoyment. Games played in the house were usually card games and marbles.  Since Don had been champion of Wyoming State in his age group, he taught me how to shoot and I gave him some competition in time.  I remember parents telling Don's and my parents we couldn't play "keepies" at school anymore. Don had a drawer full of marbles and sometimes he let me dig around in it and let me have one if I found one I liked.  I think my favorite agate shooter was found in the marble bin at Woolworth's downtown Lodi.  Back when a penny and a nickle bought all kinds of  precious items.  I remember saving my nickels to buy metal animals that were made in England for my train set. My train set was from Penny's and easy to use. Didn't have the fancy wheels that turned with the track and were a pain to set back on the track .  Don had the fancy trains set with the moving extras such was the cattle that vibrated and moved into the cattle car, or the guard rails that came down to stop the cars...   My older son has my trains which is worth who knows what because it has a complete plastic city with a church, fire station, store, log house and a ranch house with horses and cowboys that came with the set, and, plastic Indians of different colors that came in large plastic bags from Woolworth's..... A train station was produce the sound of a train whistle. Don's train engine had it's whistle and tablets that produced smoke....  

On our grandfather Hein's farm, Don and I found the best young saplings [trees] to make bows and arrows like we had seen the movie Indians make.  That's when our weapons no longer fell into children toys. We used raw hide for our bows....  Grandmother's goose feathers made the feather shafts and a sharp knife made the points deadly... Once, again, our parents stepped into the picture and made sure we understood the danger...  

Since our uncle Dannie was only six years older than us, he had a twenty-two rifle, which he taught us to shoot.... BB guns and toy bow and arrows lost our interest.  

A couple of weeks ago when I was waiting for my six year old grandson at his school, I was watching an older class playing  a game on the school rounds which their teacher had told them they had to play.  Not one child really seem to care about the game. The teacher looked just as bored.  A couple of days ago I heard teachers here in CA or talking about eliminating recess because it takes time away from the important subjects. My first thought was: "The only reason I went to school was to play at recess." Without recess to get rid of all that energy built up inside a child's body, teachers will have trouble with most of the boys and energetic girls as I was.  That'll mean teachers will demand more drugs to claim their students and more boys will drop out.  The old saying. "A healthy body helps make a healthy mind".  This is just as true in our time as it is , now. This morning on some talk show there was a man explaining how his students like to play dodge ball and this middle aged woman  flew into angry words about  how she hated dodge ball and no child should have to go through the anguish she had felt.  I remember loving to play dodge ball. The boys always threw it too hard and the girls would scream as they tried to get out of the ball's path.  . Another game was kick ball. I remember once that I kicked the ball and the sole of my shoe separated from the leather of my shoe and I walked around for the next tow days with a floppy shoe..  That shoe became a dragon that threaten to swallow the feet of others.....  I think my teacher wasn't thrilled at my  sneak attacks as I walked to the pencil sharpener or to get another paper.... Jump rope wasn't just for girls but they were the ones who had single jump ropes and sang all kinds of songs.   I remember when the teachers weren't happy when their chalk disappeared and was used to draw hop-scotch borders on the tar topped school grounds at Lincoln.  I used to buy rabbit feet because the chain on it was the right size and right weight to land in the squares from one to ten.....

Playing hide and seek on a warm summer night went on for hours and hours until one by one had to go home, or, we all collapsed, and Mom would appear with cold lemonade or soda pop or ice water... Mom always had cookies for us.   If it was a family picnic there would be the homemade ice cream that was so marvelously delicious. We'd finish drinking and eating then lay back  in the grass and look up at the stars. We could see more stars back in the 40s and 50s  twinkling up in that dark sky above Lodi.  We talked about anything and everything that came into our heads. None of us knew what the next day would bring. Most of us  were happy and contented on those nights.  

Continued