The Class of 1915
The Class of 1915
Camp Hill High School, circa 1915
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Elliott
From: Little Gidding, No. 4 of Four Quartets
A Journey in Time
One Friday afternoon in October of 1970 I took a notion to head home to Camp Hill. I gathered a few clothes from the floor of my Lafayette College dorm room, stuffed them into a duffle bag, then descended the two hundred or so stone stairs down the slope that leads from the “College on the HIll” to the town center of Easton, Pennsylvania. Positioning myself at the westward bound on-ramp of Route 22, I stuck out my thumb and a few hours later a beneficent driver deposited me on the bypass in front of Siebert Park. From there I made my way by foot one block south to our house on the corner of 26th and Lincoln. My mother was not overjoyed to see me and she made it quite clear that after this weekend the next time she would welcome my countenance wouldn’t be before Thanksgiving. The umbilicus was severed. I loved my mother but I had just as little interest in seeing her - what drew me home was a football game between the Camp Hill Lions and some team that has escaped my memory, scheduled for the following day at the park. The next afternoon I stood conversing with a couple of my recently-graduated classmates on the narrow paved roadway above the home bleachers of the football field. The air was crisp and the sun brilliant as we gabbed away, paying little mind to the contest transpiring on the gridiron below.
The memory of this visit came to mind recently when I pondered the upcoming 55th reunion of the Camp Hill High School Class of 1970. We are scheduled to convene at the picnic area in the back of the park in just a few weeks. What I didn’t do, and I wish I had, on that day fifty-five years ago, was to wander down the path that leads away to the north of the stadium into the wooded hills overlooking the Conodoguinet Creek. If I had, you see, I might have met up with a gathering of rather older Camp Hill alums who had graduated fifty-five years before and were in the midst of celebrating that anniversary. It would have been a tidy, little group. Camp Hill High School’s class of 1915, I’ve since come to learn, consisted of just five members. They were Gertrude Musser and her one-year older sister, Cassandra, Edith May Traub, Luther Bigler, and Gordon Fry.
The marvelous thing about the human imagination is that I can take that walk now. It’s not difficult - I close my eyes, lean my head back … and stroll along that path at the back of the park, five hundred miles and fifty-five years removed from where and when I sit on the porch of my Vermont cabin. My body is lithe and spry, joints limber, skin supple, hair full. My mind’s eye contemplates this fantasy through a blend of perspectives reflecting both a seventy-three year old man in 2025 and an eighteen year-old boy in 1970. With an effortless stride I make my way up the gentle incline. Ahead and just to the right, beyond the trees in a lovely glade, I espy three adults of a certain age seated in the grass around a gingham picnic cloth, preparing to dine alfresco on this autumn afternoon. One of the women is retrieving picnic items through the open, hinged lid of a braided wicker basket. They spot my approach, and with smiles and waves, they beckon me to join. I couldn’t be more pleased.
The Class of ‘15
As I take a seat, they introduce themselves as Gertrude, “Call me Trudy,” Edith May, “Call me Edie,” and Luther, and inform me that they are the three remaining members of Camp Hill High’s Class of 1915. Inwardly, my eighteen year-old self protests at addressing such venerables as anything but Mr., Mrs., or Ms., but my 2025 self allows it. In the coming half century such niceties will have mostly gone by the by. Introductions aside, they return to the subject of their conversation. Trudy, returning her focus to the basket, exclaims that on her visit to the grocery that morning she discovered a sandwich baggie that keeps contents super fresh. She demos the “Zip-Lock” top by sliding it open, and hands me the bag, which contains an egg salad sandwich. Edie proudly produces a find of her own - a can of potato chips. Every chip is of identical size and shape and packaged such that each is nestled one on top of the other in a cardboard can. She reads the label - “Pringles New-Fangled Potato Chips.” Both, I remember with an inward smile, are brand new items on store shelves in 1970. Trudy repeatedly reaches into the basket, each time producing another item for our consumption. The last to emerge are several Little Debbie Snack Cakes, each in its own cellophane wrapper. She tosses these onto the cloth and declares, “There! Let’s eat!” But the food is of minor interest. Once I grasp that they are gathered to celebrate their 55th high school reunion I am filled with fascination and curiosity. I want to know all about the town of their childhood … What was Camp Hill all about in the early days of the twentieth century?
Trudy, learning that I graduated this past spring, begins to relate the events of their commencement. Edie, with a big smile, quickly interjects in a mocking, haughty voice that “Gertrude was valedictorian.” Trudy protests that the only reward for that honor was one she didn’t relish, the onus of delivering an address at commencement. A Professor L. E. McGinnis, she tells me, gave the keynote speech, one that harkened back to a visit by former President Ulysses Grant to area farms. When the president inquired of the owner of a prosperous operation his key to success, the man replied, “To succeed, a farmer must bother.” And that, I presumed, was the lesson the professor wanted to instill within the new graduates. “Ya gotta kinda give a shit,” I told my 18 year-old fantasized self who was, in 1970, very much in need of such advice. Then followed, according to Trudy, recitations, musical performances, more recitations, delivery of diplomas, and finally a benediction by some minister. Edie and Luther groaned and shook their heads often as Trudy described the day. I’m convinced that the 1915 ceremony was even more tedious than the ordeal we had recently endured.
The Old Town
I was eager for more. I longed to be taken back to that time and I begged them to relate their memories, a request they enthusiastically fulfilled. The 1915 alums were born at the close of the 19th century into a horse and buggy town of roughly 400 residents, a population that more than doubled over the ensuing decade. When they were toddlers, a street car service from Harrisburg was newly established along unpaved Market Street. It transported folks to and from Market Square in Harrisburg continuing through Camp Hill to Shiremanstown, Mechanicsburg, and, eventually, Carlisle. The service ceased operations in the late 1930s as automobiles replaced not only horse and buggy travel, but its street car successor as well.
Edie related that although she was too young, her parents remembered, with equal parts wonder and ridicule, the first such machine in town. It was an open bodied, gasoline powered contraption built by a local mechanic named Melvin Herman. One morning In 1901 Melvin piloted his creation in a slow putter along relatively level, dirt and gravel Market Street through the center of town. So far so good. But, when he turned north on 21st and the road’s grade inclined, his momentum waned. Ever more slowly the automobile approached the Walnut Street intersection until gravity finally won out. The machine sputtered to a stop and the disappointed onlookers went about their day.
Few north/south streets intersected with Market Street, upon which most of the town’s homes and its few businesses were situated. Bowman Avenue, today’s 26th Street, was the most intensively built upon of those side streets, yet it extended only as far north as Lincoln Street, which was named “Berkely” until 1948. Very few townspeople resided south of Chestnut Street, parallel to Market and one block south. Increasing automobile travel necessitated better roads. In 1909, Market Street, Long Street (now 17th), and Belvoir Street (now 34th) were paved with limestone blocks, screenings, and tar. Luther related with great relish the day when wagon loads of macadam chunks, gleaned from the recently repaved turnpike, were brought to town to replace the dirt of the side streets. Children and parents alike looked on in awe as a hulking steam shovel, maneuvered with casual skill by its operator, worked the materials. Vaporous steam billowed from the boiler and black smoke spewed from a short stack at the rear. The giant, toothed bucket on the end of a hinged boom clawed the ground to gather up a prodigious load with a single scoop. The boom lifted, and the chassis rotated, driver and all, to hover the gravid bucket above the target point. Then its bottom trap door swung down and that great load flowed out. The children had never seen such a spectacle and even now, half a century later, as adults they related the experience in tones of wonder.
My curiosity was still unsated. “What did you see,” I asked, “when you walked out your door and looked around?” Most of the town’s land, they said, was farm fields, scrubby meadows, and random wooded copses. These undeveloped tracts were enthusiastically promoted as prospective house sites by ambitious businessmen of the day, with unabashed, and often quite unwarranted, hyperbole. Expansion thrived in the twenties, crashed with the market collapse of 1929, gradually recovered, and then boomed after the second great war.
Camp Hill in their day was not pastoral bliss. Beyond entrepreneurial efforts, town planning in the 19 aughts and early teens was mostly happenstance. Edie scornfully recalled, and the others agreed in expressions of disgust, the manure piles and garbage dumps that arose wherever convenient-at-the-moment along back alleys of the town. Low-lying, swampy tracts hatched mosquitoes by the millions during warm months. Water piped from the Susquehanna River for consumption was sometimes contaminated . Luther described, with more than a shudder, the spring of 1907 when he, just eleven years-old, contracted typhoid fever. Trudy and Edie made sympathetic noises. “We thought you were gonna die,” the latter said in a low tone. “He was sick for weeks,” she continued, leaning toward me, lightly touching my knee for emphasis. “My mom said it would be a miracle if he lived.” Luther concluded his account, “There were five other cases at the same time. Plus, whooping cough was ripping through town.”
Gertrude picked up the mood, declaring with admiration that energetic, industrious women of the town formed the Camp Hill Civic Club in 1913 with aims of improving community sanitation, education, and aesthetics. Within a decade, through their efforts, manure piles were removed, swamps were filled in, and garbage collection was systematically implemented. Amongst other notable achievements, they established a library and beautified Willow Park.
A House Afire
“And speaking of Willow Park,” Luther declared, his body going erect, “remember the time they built a little house just to burn it down?!” The occasion, he explained, was the demonstration of the town’s first fire-fighting device, a handsome, horse-drawn, steel cart containing flame-dousing chemicals. On a still June evening in 1906 on a grassy patch in the park, a wood-framed structure, slapped together for the event, was set ablaze and extinguished in less than five minutes. The spectacle impressed, especially the young men, and immediately afterward when a request was made, volunteers for the first fire brigade enthusiastically stepped forward. By 1909 the rectangular, two-story fire hall that still stands today, was erected on the south side of Market and 22nd Street intersection. Ironically, in those early days the fire calls were answered mostly by women and boys, the men of the town were occupied and out of touch at their jobs. When a daytime call came in, Bertha Cook, Camp Hill’s part-time fire chief, directed the response. Her first action was to procure the horse team of Edwin Walters, the town’s milkman, who lived close by on Market Street, to pull the wagon.
When they told me this story I couldn’t help but interject a few memories of my own related to that same firehouse. When I was a boy, in the 1950s, the firemen' s festival was a late summer highlight. South 22nd was closed off and the various booths, each holding its own allure, popped up. There were cotton candy and hot dogs, bright lights, boisterous crowds, and the chance to win magnificent prizes. I never failed to come home with a goldfish in a small, round aquarium that I had won by successfully tossing a ping-pong ball from beyond the wooden barrier. The poor creatures, now pitied in my dotage, rarely lasted even a week.
The firehouse, which also served as the police station of my youth, held another treasure. In its basement, little known to many but known to me, was a Coke machine that yielded an ice cold bottle of that grand elixir for only a nickel! That was a half-price deal in those days and not to be scoffed at. But the greatest boon of all was the live drama the firehouse provided. If I was about town on my bicycle, as I often was, usually in a gang of kids, and the fire alarm sounded, it was for us but the work of a moment to get to 22nd and Market. We flew, “like the down of a thistle,” and upon our arrival, scurried through the door at the back of the garage. A chalk board displayed the hand-written address from which the distress call originated. In another moment we were pedaling feverishly to the scene, often arriving before the first fire truck. To our profound disappointment, many calls were just piddling little stove fires that required little more than a box of Morton’s to solve. Little boys want flames lapping out of upper story windows.
It wasn’t until the class of 1915 alums became teenagers that electric and telephone wires were strung through the town. Gertrude informed me that her father, John S. Musser, founded the Dauphin Electrical Supply Company. This was cutting edge technology and her family was at the vanguard. As a young woman out of high school she worked as a bookkeeper for her father. She had attended Irving College in Mechanicsburg, the first institution for female higher education in the state, and only the 15th in the entire nation.
Edie asked me of my own interests and how I spent my time. I waxed for a moment of my fascination with biology, ecology, and the wonders of the outdoors. She immediately expressed her appreciation and then went on to tell me, in a dreamy reverie, of her summertime sojourns to the Yellow Breeches Creek. Robert and Virginia Reeser, who owned an ice cream and cigar shop on Market Street, not far from her dad’s butcher shop, rented a cabin each summer at Williams Grove on the Yellow Breeches. They took Edie along to babysit their toddler son.
My favorite swimming spot on that waterway, I told her, was behind the dam at Spangler’s Mill. Mom packed us a lunch and we’d set out on a summer morning on our bicycles. We stashed sodas in the water to keep cold, then spent the day exploring and cavorting. Williams Grove in my boyhood, I told Edie, was a seedy amusement park where I could never summon the nerve to board the Cyclone roller coaster.
Go West Young Man
Luther had remained quiet for several minutes until Trudy suddenly confronted him in an accusatory tone, “We haven’t properly addressed your exploits young man!” Trudy and Edie both laughed at his sheepish demeanor and wry smile. “Go on, tell him about the Wild West!” they demanded. Luther, leaning back on one elbow, turned his gaze on me, took me in for a moment, then stated in a low, passionate tone, “I loved Zane Grey’s books.” He sat up erect and with a pause and soft smile he began to relate his story with intermittent contributions from both women. It amounted to this:
On the second Friday of June, 1911, Luther, then fifteen years old, declared to his mother that he was heading to Steelton with his buddy, Lester Holler, to take in a Wild West show. His mother was not surprised because Luther was a voracious reader of anything that had to do with cowboys and adventures in the West. He had told both parents, many times, that someday he wanted to go out west “to see if cowboys and girls ride their bucking broncos and see if the West is as books describe it.”
When he didn’t return home that evening, his parents began to worry. Luther’s father, Ira, went to the Hollers to see if they knew anything, and there he found Lester. The boy told Mr. Bigler that Luther had shown up around 11 that morning and asked him to make a phone call, since the Biglers didn’t have a phone. Luther told Lester that his aunt was visiting from St. Louis and she was leaving today. She asked Luther to find out when the next train left Union Station. Lester made the call and informed Luther that the next train was scheduled for 12:20, whereupon Luther departed.
Hearing this, Ira contacted the Harrisburg police. They discovered that Luther had, indeed, bought a ticket and boarded the 12:20 for St. Louis. They telegraphed all the stops along the line but nobody had news of the boy. Days passed and Luther’s disappearance made all the papers. Mrs. Bigler was apoplectic and the doctor was called in to give her a sedative. The following Tuesday, four sleepless nights into the ordeal and with nothing better to do, Ira went to Union Station on what seemed a forlorn hope that he might find his son. There was Luther, sitting on a bench on the platform. With tears of joy Ira embraced the boy then took him to the police station to report him found, and there Luther told his tale. He made his way to Oklahoma, he told his father and the police, where he secured a position on a ranch. “I was only there a few hours when the cowpunchers tried to initiate me by shooting at my feet to make me dance!”
This was all just too fantastic! I sat silently mesmerized as Luther continued his story. The women, wearing knowing smiles, had heard it all before.
“Well, this frightened me and I began to think of home at once,” he continued. “I made my escape from the ranch and caught the first train back.” He arrived in Harrisburg around noon, shortly before his father found him on the bench.
I peered at Luther, my mouth agape. The police, the papers said, were as incredulous as I. One of them exclaimed, with an open-mouth grin, that those engineers drove the fastest trains in the world.
“And is your story true?” I asked, peering straight at Luther. But he just smiled back. I felt Edie’s light touch, again, on my knee. She leaned in to tell me in a soft tone, “He’s never said,”
With Flying Colors
The magical pause, tinged with mystery, that followed Luther’s tale was broken when we all spontaneously laughed out loud. Pringles were offered around, as well as some Little Debbie Snack Cakes. I accepted one of the latter and absent-mindedly stuffed it in my shirt pocket to save for later. Trudy, running the show, piped up again, “Now we have to tell him about when Luther led the attack on Loy Hemp to place our colors on the school roof!” I was eager to hear and all three related the story.
Trudy, Edie, and Luther attended high school in a four-classroom building at 24th and Chestnut (pictured just beneath the title). It was newly built in 1907 and stood until demolished in 1953 when the first rendition of the new school was erected just across the street. Rivalry between Camp Hill High School classes in the nineteen tens spirited, and at the beginning of every school year each class met and decided on their class colors. These were proudly displayed at various events throughout the year and occasional skirmishes broke out when one class attempted to displace another’s colors and replace them with their own. As it happens, the Camp Hill senior class of 1914 had but one, lone member, and that was Loy Hemp. He was described as a modest boy but possessed of considerable moxie. That year’s junior class consisted of two male members, Luther Bigler and Gordon Fry, both mentioned at the outset of this composition, and the former now seated in my fantasized midst. Their decided numerical advantage led the mischievous Juniors to challenge any display of Loy Hemp’s colors at every turn. The rivalry came to a head in May of 1914, just days before commencement.
Tension built as graduation approached, for everyone knew that Loy Hemp, seeking to avenge several transgressions by the Junior duo during the school year, would attempt to make a grand gesture. The outmatched boy was successful in acquiring the aid of only one confederate, a sophomore named John Borden, but he couldn’t have asked for better. “I always admire the underdog,” John explained to those who asked him later of his motivation. With anticipation brewing as commencement approached, Loy and John made their move. At midnight, on Monday, May 11, they broke into the school and hauled a 15-foot, steel and garnet decorated pennant toward the roof, locking doors behind them. In a ploy to further deter any pursuers, they carried a supply of pencils and crammed one into the keyhole of each door they passed through. They weren’t being overly cautious because Luther and Gordon, keeping watch, were hot on their tails. To help them defeat Loy, the two juniors had enlisted the aid of several boys in the classes behind them who must be mentioned for posterity: Witherel Bell, Clarence Stephenson, Donald Miller, Frederick Beecher, Albert Langletz, Howard Sechrist, and Mark Frownfelter, freshmen; Paul Good and Lester Sutton, sophomores.
Loy and John reached the loft of the school through a trapdoor and found there a pile of leftover bricks from the building’s construction seven years prior. They made use of these, moving them rapidly to stack on top of the closed trapdoor. This thwarted their rivals who had finally solved each pencil-jammed, locked door in pursuit, but they could not shift the brick-laden trapdoor. Luther and his contingent had to return to the street and gaze up in frustration as Loy and John, at 2am, hoisted the Senior Colors to the top of the flagpole where the pennant unfurled and flapped ostentatiously in the breeze.
The victors cheered from the rooftop as Luther and his army could do nothing beyond hurling insults. Loy and John then took a well-earned rest out of sight while Luther and Gordon’s army kept vigil below. Occasionally they returned to the ramparts to taunt their adversaries. The ground-forces not only jeered back, but, more substantially, hurled salvos of rocks, from an amassed supply, at their tormenters, forcing the two boys to take cover behind chimneys. The siege continued about a half hour until the boys on the street, weary and defeated, dispersed and went home. Loy and John watched the retreat from their redoubt on high until satisfied the coast was clear. Then, they too went home to their beds.
But the tacit truce was only temporary. By 5:30am, with just a few hours sleep, Loy and John, in a pre-arranged plan, returned to the school and reestablished their rooftop lair. The steel and garnet Senior Class colors continued to proudly wave. Their arrival wasn’t a moment too soon, for minutes later Luther and Gordon and their army from the night before materialized below, still intent on replacing Loy’s pennant with their own. With no better plan, the Junior boys attempted to enlist the aid of the high school principal, one Professor A. E. Miller, to compel the boys to come down. When he refused to take a stand they declared a “strike” and none of those involved attended afternoon sessions that day.
By this time, they told me, the entire town had become involved, and I would suppose so! I had listened in absolute silence and utter astonishment but I could contain myself no longer. I sputtered out, “There is no way this could happen in my time!” I imagined myself in Loy Hemp’s position, standing on the roof of Camp Hill High School in 1970 in a demonstration of prideful arrogance, looking down at the multitude below. Camp Hill’s finest would surely be on the scene and I envisioned in my gaze, the visage of Officer Hoag, hands on hips in Barney Fife posture, and next to him, Reed Ernst, school principal, wearing his most stern expression, both peering up at me. There is no doubt as to which one I feared most.
Loy remained on the roof while his sophomore ally, John Borden, who was by now famished, managed to make his way down and get home to procure some victuals. Enlisting the aid of an accomplice, John threw a rope to the roof at the back of the school and Loy hoisted up a basket of goodies to replenish himself. Borden soon rejoined him. The standoff continued all day and into the night, punctuated by back and forth jeering and rocks hurled skyward. A few missiles struck the pennant but did no damage. Principal Miller, finding no students in class, locked up the school and headed home, simply allowing the situation to play out as it would. Luther’s ground-forces managed to procure a set of keys and once again mounted a stairway assault, and once again were stymied by the brick-laden trapdoor. Some attempted to shimmie up the rain spouts but met with no success. Luther’s army held their station until 3:30 am the following morning; then they finally went home. Loy declared victory at 5am, took down his flag, and the two boys descended. They unblocked the keyholes but found when reaching ground level that they were now locked in. By some hook or crook they managed to escape the school and headed home for some well earned slumber.
Luther concluded his story, in sincere admiration, with this, “Loy Hemp, Camp Hill’s only member of the Senior class of 1914, with the help of faithful sophomore, John Borden, held off all of us for over 30 hours. I was pretty grouchy then, but now, all these years later, I gotta hand it to him…” Loy appeared at school a few hours later that morning to receive the accolades of his fellow students, including reluctant kudos from Gertrude and Edie. Lost to history is the content of the baccalaureate sermon delivered to the lone member of 2014’s graduating class of Camp Hill High School. Loy Hemp served as both valedictorian and salutatorian, responsible for delivering a speech of his own.
Farewell
The afternoon wore on, one of the best of my life. I listened for hours to the reveries of the Class of 1915. As the sun set behind us in the west and the air grew too chilly for the older alums, the time came for me to take my leave. We all stood and exchanged hugs. With a tear in my eye I bid farewell forever to my new friends, then turned toward the path that leads to the stadium and strolled along until ….
I sat up in my Adirondack chair on the porch of my Vermont cabin and blinked my eyes a few times, acclimating to the slanted rays of a September late afternoon. Then I popped up and headed indoors to fetch my laptop to transcribe the above while it was all still fresh in my mind. In the midst of my task I realized that I had something in my shirt pocket. Still gazing at the screen I absent-mindedly reached in and pulled out an item that crinkled in my fingers. Its unfamiliarity finally captured my full attention and I peered down to find myself in possession of an as yet unopened Little Debbie Snack Cake.
Afterword
Gertrude, Edith May, and Luther graduated in a pivotal year to embark upon a world that was confronting profound change. I might be accused of melodramatic prose, for the same could be said for any particular year in the last century, but I won’t apologize for overstatement. In November of 1915 Albert Einstein revealed to the world the equivalence of matter and energy through his simple equation that everyone knows, but few understand. He opened the door to the quantum nature of space and time, a reality utterly counterintuitive to our everyday perception. Within three decades humanity would use Einstein’s revelations to create the means to destroy ourselves, each and every one of us, rather easily.
Just two years out of high school the Class of ‘15 ran headlong into World War l. In November, 1918, they enjoyed the widespread celebrations on Armistice Day that marked the end of that conflict. I didn’t get to ask the trio if they were put out when the 18th Amendment abolished their right to consume alcohol in 1920, nor did I learn if the women embraced the flapper culture after the 19th granted them the right to vote that same year. I would love to know what it was like to be a young adult during the Roaring ‘20s, but less eager to have experienced the financial crash of ‘29 and the sorrows and hardship that followed.
The fascination of my visit lingered and I wanted to know more about the Class of ‘15 alums. A bit of internet sleuthing unearthed the following:
Luther registered for the military draft in June of 1917 after the U.S. declared war on Germany in April. He made some effort not to get involved, listing “heart trouble and piles” as reasons he might be exempt. However, by December he enlisted in the Navy’s air service as an accountant. He went off to Ohio for training then on to Ellington Field in Texas where he served admirably, rising to the rank of Sergeant. After his discharge, Luther returned to Camp Hill and in 1919 married Pauline Davisson whose father owned a hardware store in town. Their marriage was not a happy one and they were divorced within a few years. Their son, Robert, attended Camp Hill High School, graduating in 1938 as a member of the National Honor Society. He served overseas during World War II. Luther married Lillian Maus in 1928 and that proved to be a more satisfactory match. Their daughter, Joanne Maus Bigler, graduated from Camp Hill High in 1948. Luther developed skill as an auto mechanic and opened a garage at 2009 Market Street. Eight months after our meeting he died in Holy Spirit Hospital following an attack of emphysema.
In 1918 Edith married Charles Zinner, the son of German immigrants and a real estate investor from Detroit. He was more than twice her age. Charles shared Edith’s love of the outdoors. His considerable land investments survived the Crash of ‘29. By 1930 they owned a home on the Clinton River at the mouth of Lake St. Claire, Michigan. Charles worked as a fishing guide. He died unexpectedly on an outing to Tennessee in 1938. Their son, Charles III, operated a boat livery and became something of a legend in the region. Edith lived to 101, dying in 1998.
Gertrude was an avid traveler, once sailing to California through the Panama Canal. During a stop at port in Havana, Cuba, she went ashore, then got lost while attempting to return to the boat. She related the tale, humorously, at a meeting of the Quota Club, a civic organization in which she was active. As she told me during our visit, she was employed for years at her father’s company, Dauphin Electric. There she met Lloyd Ulrich, credit manager at the firm. He and his first wife divorced in the mid-1930s. Lloyd and Trudy married in 1937 in Jacksonville, Florida where they lived until 1950 when Lloyd died unexpectedly. Gertrude moved to Virginia where she passed away in 1983.
The Class of 1970
My foray into the deep past leads me to muse, not for the first time, on the less deep past, when my generation came of age. I am but one member of the Camp Hill High Class of 1970, but my experience provides the data most close to hand and, of course, with which I am most familiar. I have therefore instructed Mr. Peabody to have Sherman fire up the way-back machine for the 1950s and 60s and begged his indulgence as I bounce around a bit between decades.
A new shopping center in Camp Hill, an old book store in Harrisburg
By the 1950s there was little room within the town proper for more buildings, but intractable expansion carried on at the periphery. In 1958, construction began on a large field at the intersection of the Cumberland Pike and Trindle Road. From the vantage of my grandmother’s porch across the street I watched, enthralled, as trucks, machinery, and workmen in numbers beyond anything in my six-year-old experience, began construction on what would become the Camp Hill Shopping Center. Beyond the magnificence of the scene, this project turned into a profitable boon for me. My two-year-older neighbor and object of my idolatry, Dickie Myers, ever the entrepreneur, hatched a plan. On Saturday mornings we pedaled our bikes to the site of construction, which was abandoned on weekends. There we filled paper bags with discarded pop bottles. Many workmen provided many bottles strewn hither and thither. We then toted our booty, awkwardly, down the Pike, not a very great distance, to the Food Fair grocery where we redeemed each bottle for two cents. With each trip our treasure grew.
By the end of several such forays I held within my hands more wealth than ever fell under my complete supervision. My share, mind you, fell well short of 50%. Dickie, logically it seemed to me, retained some funds pertaining to creative rights and supervisory responsibilities. Dickie and I hatched other ventures, such as lemonade stands, which went up occasionally each summer in front of his house or mine. One patron whom we could always count on was Senator George Wade who lived just a couple doors up the street. If he saw us open for business he inevitably stopped, indulged, and left a hefty tip. I stashed my earnings in an empty cigar box provided by my father and watched it grow over time.
We did not fritter away our little all - Dickie had plans for that as well. The two of us, now ten and eight-years old, set forth one morning from Dickie’s house on 27th Street and traipsed three blocks south to Market. There, under the purvey of his worldly know-how, we caught a bus to Harrisburg. We took in a movie at the State or Senate Theater, I don’t recall which, then lunched at The Spot. The signature dish of this establishment was the famous, 5-cent, “Spot-Dog” served on a steamed bun and slathered in “Spot Sauce,” which was, I discovered over the years, a gastrointestinal challenge. The real objective of our venture came after lunch. With Dickie navigating, we made our way to the Penn Book Shop, where I found wonders beyond my most ambitious reckoning. There were cans labeled “Peanuts” containing trick snakes, water glasses that spewed liquid upon the naive drinker, a buzzer that surprised the victim of a casually offered handshake, whoopie cushions, perfect knock-offs of a pile of dog excrement, and many other novelties that utterly delighted my fancy of the profane. I chose to purchase a roughly circular, flat, rubberized, yellow, lumpy-surfaced item that completely and absolutely, when placed on the floor, screamed … vomit! After trial runs in our house that impressed my brothers and sister, I took my treasure to school. During a recess period I strategically deployed it on the floor at the back of Mrs. Gartrell’s third-grade classroom. When I brought it to her attention she looked perplexedly at me, then at the subject of my pointing finger, then back at me and gave a small gasp. Great so far, just what I’d hoped for! The next step, which I’d carefully thought out, went not nearly so well. I grabbed the object from the floor, wheeled around to Mrs. Gartrell, and, wearing a great, open-mouthed grin, triumphantly held it aloft! …. and she failed to laugh. It was now my turn to be perplexed. Couldn’t she see the intrinsic, uproarious humor in my little escapade? As it turned out, she didn’t. Repercussions ensued.
Market Street
Market Street in my pre-teen years was the center of civilization as I knew it. Polk’s Soda Shop, Fickle’s Drug Store, and Reams’ Candy Store were focal points. The Saturday Matinee at the Hill Theater was a frequent diversion. Twenty-five cents gained admission and another quarter purchased popcorn. The numbered ticket stub was carefully stashed in a pocket because, before the feature began, the owner came to the front of the theater to raffle off a collection of pathetic prizes. More than once over the years he called out a number that matched my ticket and I found it a challenge to find anything amongst the options that I felt was worth hauling home.
Hershey Bars, Ju-Ju Bees, Dots, and other confections could be obtained at the theater or next door in the attached Rea & Derrick’s Drug Store. Here one could also consume a cherry Coke while seated at the counter in the back of the store. Perched upon a swiveling stool I’d idly run a hand, palm-side up, underneath the counter to appreciate the oddly alluring tactile sensation of petrified wads of chewing gum, affixed by thoughtful previous patrons.
Electromagnetic Waves
Parents born into the world when the Class of ‘15 was just coming of age, before television, admonished us to “turn off the idiot-box” and turn our attention, instead, toward an improving book. But the TV attracted us like a magnet. It offered only three channels and signed off at midnight. Following the National Anthem and “A Word From Your Bible,” the screen gave over to a “test pattern”, the image of an Indian within concentric circles superimposed on a grid. The boob-tube slept until 6am. Our lives were infused with radio waves gathered in by our small, portable, transistor sets. They delivered the likes of Ron Drake, Radio 58, and Buzz A. Long on WFEC (Wiffic-Terrific!). The former yielded in the afternoon to “adult contemporary” music that was poison to our ears. The latter gave us the good stuff - Elvis, Temptations, Beatles … fill in your own.
A Propensity to Consume
It wasn’t until the later part of the 60’s that franchised fast food eateries began to gain traction. Far more charming were the local, family-owned enterprises that they displaced. Hickey’s Drive-In, where dinner was delivered on a metal tray affixed to the open driver’s window of one’s automobile, featured “Burger Boats” and “Chicken Boats.” The latter included french fries, coleslaw, and a Parker House roll served up car-side in a boat-shaped, plastic basket. A bit further along the Carlisle Pike, Slug’s Roost offered “Food You’ll Crow About.” The all-you-can-eat smorgasbord was a favorite of my siblings and me. My father couldn't abide the place, so my mother indulged us only when my he was on a business trip. Metal trays in steam stations held mounds of chicken drum sticks and great piles of macaroni and cheese. Many other selections were available among several counters of trayed options. A real “chef” in signature hat sliced roast beef from a prodigious hank that was illuminated in red light to impart, I’m guessing, a perfectly cooked roast. We finished our meal with a self-served tower of Jello squares laden with Reddi-wip and dollops of spooned on pudding ... and a piece of cake. You could eat all you wanted!
The first fast-food chain store, to my memory, was McDonald's out by Cedar Cliff High School. Gino’s built a small shop in the mid-60s, across from the Food Fair on the bypass. Then a Burger King popped up on the Carlisle Pike, and the flood gates opened. Franchised fast-food, department stores, and shopping malls flourished. Farmland and woodlands surrounding Camp Hill were converted into concrete edifices, parking lots, and “opium dens” for conspicuous consumerism that gradually took hold of our lives.
School Days
Nobody, in our day, pulled off a shenanigan like that of Loy Hemp on the roof of the high school in 1914. On the other hand, at least in the daytime, the doors to the school building were never locked. Our security was taken for granted, and logically so. Any notion that someone might enter and cause us harm was beyond rational consideration. We were warned in grade school about the dangers of abandoned refrigerators and strangers offering candy, but nobody imagined maniacal shooters.
We awaited the high school opening bell, morning and afternoon, in a milling crowd on the streets and sidewalks adjacent to the building. Most notably, we gathered in and around Caveny’s store. John Caveny operated a meat market/general store across 24th Street from the high school with shelves of snacks, refrigerated sodas, and a freezer containing ice cream treats. I stood just outside, clutching books under my right arm, my left hand grasping a gym bag draped over my shoulder. I spoke casually with classmates or contemplated unfinished homework. If I peered down in self-regard, I saw penny loafers, neatly creased pants, and button-down shirt. Army tans and navy grays were “strong and acceptable.” Those were idle times, waiting for the bell to ring, teenage angst roiling within. I never anticipated that I would someday look back on such moments, utterly banal to my teenage self, and consider them, upon reflection, magical.
On many Saturday nights we attended dances in the gymnasium. A large, sparkling orb dangling from the ceiling cast a necromantic glitter over the dimly-lit scene. Primly-dressed, perfumed girls congregated on one side of the floor, boys, in jacket and tie and doused in Jade East, on the other, everyone exuding pheromonal beacons, harbouring secret desires. The event was chaperoned by one or two faculty, no doubt feeling a sense of purgatory. At 9:30 we headed home within the boundary of a parentally-imposed curfew, traversing dark streets on foot, without guardians and without fear.
Camp Hill Park was a summertime gathering place during our high school years. Social frictions and philosophical chasms, including the “Generation Gap,” were widened by the growing Vietnam War. There existed, to some extent, a dichotomy of cliques. At the site of our upcoming reunion in the back of the park, the “hippies” among my schoolmates passed idle summer evenings gathered round their graffiti-laden VW van. I had friends in that contingent, but my closer cronies hung out in the grassy strip across from the tennis courts at the front of the park. While Simon & Garfunkel caressed our ears with Bridge Over Troubled Water and Karen Carpenter declared that she wanted to be close to me (yes, me!), my way-cooler cohorts in the park’s hinterland blasted the Guess Who, ranting about the iniquity of American Women, and Edwin Starr bellowed no less indignantly regarding the evils of War.
Touchstones
National and international events imposed themselves on our maturation and certainly contributed to our outlooks. My third grade class filed into the “All Purpose Room” of Schaeffer Elementary along with members of first through sixth, to gawk at some distance at a small television placed on the stage. Astronaut Alan Shepherd, declared to Mission Control at Cape Canaveral, “Let’s light this candle.” Minutes later, aboard his Freedom 7 spacecraft, he became the first American to enter outer space. Before the decade was out, within JFK’s timeline, Neil Armstrong stepped off The Eagle lunar module and onto the surface of the moon. One cartoonist, many years later, depicted in a single cel work, a scene of Armstrong and partner, Buzz Aldrin, whilst exploring the Moon, discovering the body of Alice Cramden. Not many would understand the joke today.
Two other touchstones of my childhood involved the aforementioned President John Kennedy. On Monday evening, October 22, 1962, I arrived home from a dance class session to find my parents huddled around the radio. [I was sentenced to the extraordinary hell of Walter Benham’s Junior League dance class by my mother. I’ll digress no further other than to say she would not be dissuaded from her decree]. The president was informing the nation that he had placed a quarantine on Cuba by surrounding that island with naval vessels. These were to prevent the passage of any Russian ships conveying weapons to their toady ally. Thus began the Cuban Missile Crisis. For about two weeks I shuddered in fear that, at any moment, a nuclear warhead might end my way-too-young life. The aforementioned Dickie Myers informed me that our proximity to the Mechanicsburg Naval Depot made us a prime target. My father assured me that no such catastrophe was in the offing, but I did come across, upon his desk, a pamphlet describing how to install an underground fallout shelter.
One year later, nearly to the day, I was ensconced in a reclining chair in Dr. Ken Worley’s orthodontic office, awaiting his ministrations, when the announcement blared over the radio that the president had been shot in Dallas. Everything stopped in that office and the rest of the world as well. For an hour or more we both sat, he on a stool next to me, nearly motionless, listening to the news reports of the unfolding events. Finally, Dr. Worley sent me on my way, having done no dentistry. Many my age, and myself included, define this as the watershed event of our youth. It was a moment of paradigm-shift for the country and the world, and perhaps a fitting place to end this retrospective.
Apologia
In just a couple weeks I will return to the old town and meet up with my fellow graduates from fifty-five years ago. A few of them, far more industrious than I, have gone to great pains to set the whole thing up. We will gather on a Saturday afternoon in the very glade where I met up with the Class of ‘15 alums, and in that bucolic setting we’ll exchange reminiscences of the days of yore.
I am struck by the notion that as new grads we were conversant with, and so had a foot in the world of, alumni who came of age before automobile travel was common, streets were paved, television existed, electricity was ubiquitous, and indoor plumbing a given. When I was very young, and at times under my grandmother’s care, she had a favorite pastime. “Let’s go sit on the porch and watch the machines,” she often suggested, referring, of course, to the cars that passed by her house. She still considered them a novelty.
When I attempt to process this anachronism the thought immediately comes to mind, “What dinosaurs we must seem to the graduates of 2025!” How would they view what they might consider the deprivations of our youth? As I contemplate a list, the items seem minor in contrast to a comparison between the lives of ‘15 vs ‘70 grads. I doubt if 2025 grads blanch at the prospect of life when computers didn’t exist, the TV only got three stations, and we never knew if someone tried to reach us by telephone while we were out. 1915 grads were at much higher risk of infectious disease than we were in our youth, but we may have been lucky to hit a lull. Covid might be a harbinger of far worse epidemics to come. Yes, we were children during the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation seemed a real possibility, but is the danger any less now or is it just not talked about?
The post-war baby boom and attendant growth in the economy brought profound changes in the U.S. and worldwide, but its effects on Camp Hill, to my mind, are mixed at best. I reflect with great sorrow on the obliteration of the meadows and woodlands of my youth and the encroachment of infrastructure upon our waterways, the Conodoguinit and the Yellow Breeches, which were foundations of my childhood. By the time the 2025 graduates were born, in the early days of the new millennium, these changes to the physical landscape were well in place. My generation presided over the final stage in the creation of what Richard Louv calls “nature-deficit disorder” in his book, Last Child In The Woods. While much of our lives took place out of doors, in the company of our mates, succeeding generations spend more and more time alone, tethered to a screen. Is it any wonder that isolation, loneliness, anxiety, and ADHD increasingly plague our children and our society? Nature doesn’t exist on a screen and a virtual social life is a poor substitute for in-person interaction.
Perhaps while my classmates are gathered, a graduate from the Class of 2025 will happen along the path and join our celebration. I hope so. I have no profound wisdom to impart, only some insights regarding our fellow alums from 1915 and a few memories of my own. With these, new graduate, do what you will. But I hope, in a little over a half century, you might have the opportunity to pass something along to the Class of 2080.
Time it was and what a time it was, it was ….
A time of innocence, a time of confidences.
Long ago, it must be … I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.
Paul Simon
Author’s Note
The above account is absolutely true, mostly. I am indebted to the late Robert G. Crist for his marvelous book, Camp Hill: A History, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, 1984. Information regarding the lives of the Class of ‘15 alums, beyond what was imparted to me by them, was gleaned from various documents (census records, birth, death, and marriage registers, draft registrations, and many others) accessed through the online sites, Ancestry and FamilySearch, as well as myriad newspapers accessed through Newspapers.com. The 1915 photograph of Camp Hill High School, above, was copied from the Gardner Library of the Cumberland County Historical Society website. My own recollections are related just as they appear in my mind’s vault. Aware of inherent fallibility, I caution my reader by way of a quote of Mark Twain, “I have arrived at that age where the only things I remember are things that never happened at all.” MRH
Mikey ;), Very very well done!! Thank you!! Linda DeLone Hughes CHHS 1961
ReplyDeleteBrought tears to my eyes.
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