While living at the Inn on Pine Street, I attended one of the local elementary schools, the Pine Street Elementary school to be precise. I can remember that I was allowed to walk the several blocks to school and either started with family help crossing the street in front of the Inn or walking down the side of the street the inn was on and crossing at the traffic light which was attended by a police officer. I can remember that it was the big time, as we were allowed to leave the classroom if the out sign was green and go downstairs to the bathroom by ourselves. Wooden floors and dark hallway, always quiet and peaceful in those hallways.

At some point, my grandfather either sold the bar, or my dad decided the family was getting too large to continue living in the rooms we had at the Inn, so we moved out to the country to a place that had several names, the one we chose to call it was Still Creek, pronounced Steel Creek. This meant I attended a small two room schoolhouse (with actual outhouses and a pump for water in the coat room, and a coal stove in the corner) and to which I had to walk to each day until the finally started a school bus service. This was considered so neat, that we all caught the bus on the outward leg so we could ride it to the end and then all the way back to the school. Grades 1 - 4 were in one room and 5 -6 were in the second room. It was here that my flair for teaching and keeping kids entertained was noticed and taken advantage of by the teacher. For example, when she was teaching one grade, I would be picked to help the kids two grades below me or to take them out into the cloakroom and act out stories to entertain them. I can also remember the big to-do when a bad word was found in the girl's outhouse. They took samples of all our handwriting to try and capture the culprit. (couldn't be me and was not me, I was still an angel). The superintendent and a police officer came to school to lecture us. It was also while attending this school (naturally after having walked through blizzards, and snowstorms on a regular basis) that I found out, if your mom gave you a ride to school, do not open the door lock while she is making a turn; this puts you into the embarrassing position of hanging out of the car until she stops the car. (remember, this was before seatbelts).

At some point we were all transferred to a school about 5 miles away and had to be bussed to this modern school; where you could have up to 30 kids in your room, all in the same grade as you. It kind of felt like the whole education thing had lost some warmth. And then we were transferred back to our little school were I was appointed as the official crossing guard, with my official belt and the authority to halt traffic so the little ones could safely cross the street. Ahhh, the responsibility and honor.

      

In the first picture, I am celebrating Christmas at home with my sister Suzie. The Indian picture came from the Tamaqua sesquisentenial celebration.

Middle school and memories

When I hit seventh grade, we moved back to the big town of Tamaqua, into an apartment bldg. in the center of town, and I do mean center. It was were 5 roads came together and was amazingly called the 5 points. So back into the town educational system I was thrust, with my new briefcase (a gift from my classmates at the old country school) and a necessity to earn my spot in the big city school system. 7th and 8th grade were quite uneventful and the school was only about 3 blocks from our apartment house. This bldg had earlier been the High School, and was along the Schuylkill River and the bldg had a bell tower, which we all assumed had a machine gun in it in case we tried to cut classes and run away from the school. When I hit 9th grade, I decided I was going to try out for the high school football team. This lasted one day as I think I was so small and skinny I just knew these guys would kill me if they hit me and I basically was only about waist to chest high on most of them. Getting gear to fit me would have been a problem. I also didn't want my accomplishments to be dependent on 10 other guys. I adopted this belief while playing summer baseball in the pony and little leagues. I was a pitcher on a poor team , but usually a first class team would pick me up to be a sometimes pitcher and a full time second baseman, so I wouldn't pitch against them. For some reason I was good against the first place team, but only fair to middlin against other teams. So I switched my aspirations to high school track, and actually made the starting team while still in ninth grade. This is also how I met my best and lifelong friends of Pete Pappas (Ponniyotus Pappadouplos) and Lowell Werley. On the first day, I was a 'miler" but I realized on that day that the sprinters were not running mile after mile around the track, so I became a sprinter. Since we had plenty of older sprinters, I looked for something I could compete in and maybe get a starting position. I noticed only one guy running the hurdles. So I became a premier hurdler and actually got to run in meets. By my 10th grade year, I had established myself as the top hurdler for the school and was on my way to setting records for the event at the school. I ended up running as a starter in the 100 yard high hurdles, the 120 yard low hurdles, the 220 yard relay and I got to broad jump once in a while. Needless to say, with so many events in my quiver, I lettered by the end of the first meet each year by taking sufficient first and second places to earn it. I actually held the hurdle records for many, many years, even after I had left the school and finished college. I continued this streak even through the three track seasons while I was in college, and set the records for the college also. I did qualify for state finals in track each year, but could never break into the ribbon status at that level of competition however I did continue the tradition of qualifying for my letter by the end of the first meet each year.

In the off season, I played second board for the chess team and we did manage to come in second in the state one year. While in high school, I was also chosen for a minor part in our class play. Years later, while watching a movie on TV I actually saw the movie that our play was based on, although I preferred to think they copied us becasue of our sterling performances.

In my senior year, the graduating class was expected to build their own stage and to provide entertainment for the parents sitting in the football stands. So, besides swinging a few tools, I was assigned to help sing the Volga boatman song. ( I am sure this was handy and hid my voice in a chorus made up of a multitude of students. Obviously they were sure I would be drowned out by all the others. One thing that occurred, which later became interesting to me, was that I decided to ask a girl in or nearly in the top ten students to walk with me in graduation (that would place me up a lot closer to the front than the middle where I belonged ). What makes this interesting is that she and I went to the same college and finished in three years and got to walk together there also. (Unfortunately, she died quite young from leukemia, so we never got to see each other at any of the reunions). I still send money to the remembrance box at each reunion, which goes to buy books for the town library in remembrance of our classmates who have departed this vale of tears before the rest of us. So far about 1/3 of my class of 182 students have preceded me.

      

NEXT

Page 1

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Joanne's Biography