Father's Friends, Dance Cards ~ More Memories from the Early Years

There's been a Family Photos and History push going on for a while now. Getting negatives and slides converted to digital files. Organizing and labeling photos. A book. A blog. Updating histories.  Dad/Lamar has a written history already, but he's been fleshing it out and adding a bit more. Here's a new addition, written by Lamar in March 2020.

Our elementary school (Madison Elementary) had school dances, and they would have dance cards with 10 places on them. Before the dance, the boys would visit the girls and fill out their dance card. I would try to get my girlfriend, Lola, signed up for the first dance. I still have some of those dance cards, with all the dance slots filled out with names of 10 different girls. I remember getting threats by one of the other boys to stay away from Lola, but I ignored the threats. I remember going to some pretty wild birthday parties, playing spin the bottle and other inappropriate kissing games, turn off the lights, wander around in the dark, find a girl, kiss her.   It’s good we moved away when I was 12.  I might have been improperly influenced by some of the friends I had. 

A list of some of my friends during the time I lived at 246 East 21^st South ~ Elementary Years (through age 12) Also see the post about Lamar's School Day memories. The list below includes friends from school (Madison Elementary) or from the neighborhood, or from the local ward.

• Austin, Billie Mae (Dance Cards)
• Brown, Diane (Dance Cards)
• Callahan, Eddie (Lived near Lola McLaren)
• Dalton, Fred (Lived on 3^rd East, East Side, We met later at a ward function)
• Fereday, Gary (Scouting, he later lived in our Stake, 8^th Ward, 10 children, plumber, died 2012 )
• Hammer, Rose Ann (Dance Cards)
• Harris, Arlene (Dance Cards)
• Hedbergh, Carolyn (Dance Cards)
• Johnson, Lorraine (Dance Cards)
• Kase, Myrna (Dance Cards)
• McLaran, Lola (Dance Cards, My First Girl Friend, Lived on Burton Avenue, just East of State)
• Middleton, Norman (Lived on 3^rd East, East Side, My main bicycle buddy, Catholic)
• Olsen, Janice (Dance Cards)
• Parry, Boyd (Lived just two houses west of our house)
• Porchadis, Marlene (Dance Cards)
• Rich, Dee Ann (Dance Cards)
• Royce, Gary (Lived on 3^rd East, West Side, bicycle buddy, marble player)
• Serial, Ardith (Dance Cards)
• Simpson, Dorothy (Dance Cards)
• Stam, Margie (Dance Cards)
• Tassey, Mariam (Dance Cards)
• Wells, Ruth (Dance Cards)

Can you guess who is who? Can you find Lamar?

Some of my best friends during my elementary school days were Boyd Parry, Fred Dalton, Gary Royce and Norman Middleton.  Gary and Norman were my bicycle buddies.  I had saddlebags on my bike, and we would ride out south to the end of 3^rd East, and to the end of 5^thEast.  We would gather soda pop and beer bottles and put them into our saddlebags.  Then we would stop at grocery stores to redeem our bottles, getting 2 or 3 cents per bottle.  We also collected popsicle bags from streets and garbage cans around the grocery stores.  We would package them up and send them in for gifts.  I always got along with all my friends, but Gary and Norman always had fights.  They lived across from each other on 3^rd East.  All my friends were LDS except Norman.  He was catholic, and attended the St. Ann’s school on 21^stSouth.  He hated it.  He had lots of conflicts with the Nuns. 

I might make MARBLES its own blog post ... so if you see it again, that's why ;) 

One of the favorite activities for the boys at our school was marbles.  I would take about 15 marbles to school every day, and every day come home with 50-70.  I would win them playing marbles.  We would get a stick and draw rings in the dirt, and each player would ante up a set number of marbles and put them into the center of the ring.  Then we would shoot them out, from the perimeter of the ring.  I was a pretty good shot, having learned the art of marbles from my father, who had a number of medals.  Gary Royce was my main marbles competition.

If your taw (your shooting marble) hit a marble that was in the ring, and knocked it out, and your taw stayed in the ring, you would continue shooting from that position until you missed knocking out a marble.  You might be able to clear all the marbles in the ring on this turn.  The taw was usually a marble a little larger and heavier than the marbles you were shooting at.  They were often called aggies, a certain type of taw.  We would also play pots.  We would dig five shallow holes in the dirt, four at the four corners of a square, about six feet on each side.  The last hole was in the middle of the square.  The players would each ante up a set number of marbles to put into the center hole.  Then we would take turns and start at one corner, and shoot to get our marbles in each successive hole, and finally into the center hole.  The first to get their taw into the center hole won all the marbles that were in it.  We would lag our marbles to a line about 8-10 feet away, and the one lagging closest to the line would be first to start the game.

In rings, if your taw didn’t knock any marbles out of the ring, and stayed in the ring, it would stay there for the next shot.  However, if one of the next players to shoot knocked your taw out of the ring, he would keep your taw, and you would be out of the game.  The same rule went for pots.  If you made a shot towards a hole, and missed the hole, your taw would stay there.  If any other player hit your taw with their taw, you would lose your taw and be out of that game.  So if you eliminated all of the other players, you would automatically get all the marbles.    

Another boy’s activity in the wintertime would be massive snowball fights, usually between the 5^th grade and 6^th grade boys, with each team having snow forts about 30-40 yards apart.