My friends fell into several groups. There were those who lived along First Avenue and who were my age, give or take a year. We formed a more-or-less inseparable group – John Gruebel (who was always my best friend), Tom McManamy, John (Red) Gray (also known as carrot-top), Mike Dell, Mark Shoup, and a few others. Then there were those who lived along First Avenue and were older or younger than I. We played games together – Joe Gruebel (John’s older brother), Joe Burd (who was killed in a car accident in high school) and his brother Harmon (who was killed in Vietnam). Finally, there were the kids from school, who lived in other neighborhoods, notably Jack Blair (Dr. Blair’s son), Tom Barnhart, Lynn Lowry, and Garrett Barron.
John Gruebel and I were best friends as far back as I can remember. John’s birthday was May 1, making him just three weeks older than I. They lived across the street from Pap and Grandma, where I spent most of my time. We started school together, we were partners in school projects, and we were partners in myriad schemes and adventures. The other kids in the neighborhood were buddies, but John and I were more like brothers. Somewhere in this world are numerous pictures of John and me on various first days of school years, including the classic one from first grade, with the two of us in short pants. We sure were cute!
John’s father owned the Valley Dairy Company, which manufactured ice cream and related products, and had a number of restaurants in the area. They were a lot better off, financially, than we were, but to John and me, that was just a fact, deserving no particular attention. The result was that John usually provided the bankroll, but we provided equal amounts of enthusiasm and mischief.
Sleepovers (though nobody used that word) meant sleeping out on someone’s porch on a summer’s night. I don’t recall ever staying overnight with anyone other than that. We always liked to sleep out at John’s because his house had a separate room that he and his brother used as a sort of playroom. It had its own TV set and we’d watch old John Wayne westerns and W. C. Fields comedies until the wee hours. Then, too, John had lots of neat gadgets, including a 16-mm movie projector and lots of movies. His brother had a wire recorder, which was like a tape recorder, except that it used magnetic wire rather than tape, and a microphone that could broadcast short distances and be picked up by an ordinary radio.
Later, when we were about 13, John and I got into airplanes. Somewhere, he acquired a medium-sized gas engine for a model airplane. After much discussion, we bought an airplane kit. It was made of balsa ribs covered with tissue paper and took us most of the winter to build. We worked in John’s cellar, cutting and gluing balsa-wood pieces by the dozen. We were using double edge razor blades, so our rate of consumption of band-aids was pretty high. We’d glue on the paper, dampen it, and dry it in front of the coal furnace. As I recall, the finished product was a bit over two feet long, with about a three-foot wing span. It sure was pretty. By the time we finished, spring had come, so we did flight and balance tests in John’s yard when the winds permitted. It was a free-flight model, designed to fly untethered. Its rudder was set to keep it in a gentle left turn, thereby keeping it from wandering too far. After its fuel was exhausted, it was supposed to glide gently to earth. When we were satisfied with its flight characteristics, we hiked up to the football field on the hilltop at the edge of the woods. It was the biggest open area we knew. We cranked up the engine and got it running smoothly. Since John had contributed the workshop, the engine, and most of the money, he had the honor of launching it for the first time. As I recall, it disappeared into the woods and was gone.
After that disaster, we abandoned airplanes and soon took up rockets. A little thought convinced us that we could make rockets out of soda straws. As usual, John was the money man, and we went off to the Sportsman’s Shop on the other side of the bridge to buy some gunpowder. Things were a bit lax in those days, and two 14-year-old boys could buy a can of black powder, no questions asked. Back in John’s basement, we took some paper soda straws, plugged one end with soap, and filled them with gunpowder, storing them upside down in a water glass. But how could we launch them? A bit of thought led us to a piece of iron water pipe, about two feet long, sitting at a slight angle from the vertical and resting on a brick. Slip the straw in the bottom end of the “launch tube,” let a bit of gunpowder slip out at the bottom, and light it with a kitchen match. The result was reasonably satisfactory, although the flight was pretty erratic and unpredictable, since there were no fins to stabilize it. But only one landed on a neighbor’s roof and it did no noticeable damage. Somewhere, I had acquired a piece of magnesium, which I ground to powder, using a file and a grinding wheel chucked in an electric drill. We mixed it with saltpeter (potassium nitrate) and used that as both rocket fuel and flash powder. I often wonder how we survived.
From rockets, it was but a short step to bombs. Most of the kids in our neighborhood had a passing acquaintance with fourth-of-July fireworks, both commercial and hand-made. One favorite each July Fourth was to gather used .22-caliber casings and fill them with cap-gun caps, with excess paper removed. We’d crimp the open end and fold it over with pliers. Then we’d line them up on a curb, with the round end hanging over, and hit them with a hammer. One after another, the round end would shoot across the street and hit the opposite curb with a little tinkling sound. Anyway, John had a number of hollow beer-tap handles, whose origins I don’t recall. It occurred to us that we could fill such a thing with gunpowder, provide a suitable fuse, and, probably, create a respectable bomb. So we tried it and it worked perfectly. We blew several craters in an earthen bank that separated John’s back yard from the vacant lot behind. We made crude wooden buildings and demolished them. We experimented with underwater explosions in a nearby creek. In short, we were a couple of 14-year-old mad scientists, terrorizing the neighbors until they finally told our parents what we were up to. That ended our pyrotechnic career.
One of my more interesting friendships was with Garrett Barron. Garrett lived across the bridge and, even though we went to the same church, I didn’t get to know him until seventh grade, when we both went to the same school. He and I were physical and psychological opposites. He was big, the classic jock. I was skinny, too small to be a jock. He was all-county in football. I played two undistinguished seasons of junior-varsity basketball, then became the statistician. He went to Miami University on a football scholarship. I went to Carnegie Tech on an academic scholarship. He joined the army, served in Special Forces in Vietnam, and retired as a colonel. I went to grad school, fell in love with computers and Nancy, not in that order, earned a Ph.D., worked on a satellite program, and spent nearly 30 years in industry. He was an extrovert, one of the most popular guys in our class. I was very much the introvert, painfully shy, the "smart kid". Yet we were good friends, harmonizing on the basketball bus with a few others on “In the Evening by the Moonlight” or “Come Go With Me” We kept in touch for a long time, including one memorable New Year’s Eve when he and his wife joined Nancy and me for a long conversation and a bit too much Scotch. I haven’t seen him in years.
As I said, the others were generally participants in our incessant kids’ games. In high school, Tom and Mike and I were a bit closer because our girl friends were, but more about that elsewhere in this story.