By Staff
I'm looking at some old Dowagiac pictures.
I saw one of the old wooden bleachers at the old Alumni Field.
Down in front was a long, wooden bench where the football player substitutes sat ready to go on the field.
In front of this bench was the old cinder running track for the dashes and hurdles.
Right at the outside edge of the football field was a six-inch cement curb to separate the cinder track from the grass field.
I bet a lot of old Dowagiac football players can recall some really hard bumps when they were tackled near the edge of the grass and hit that six-inch cement curb.
Back in 1939, when I was only 9 years old, my next-door-neighbor was John Taylor, who was the manager of the football team. I was a very fortunate little 9-year-old because I got to go to the games free.
It was because John let me carry the big bag of footballs from the downstairs locker room at Central down to Alumni Field with the team.
Over the years I've often wondered where John ended up.
His father Tom was a pretty well-known pool and billiards player and, if I remember, he was a printer.
We kids used to make a slingshot out of a Y-shaped crotch of a tree limb.
We cut two strong rubber bands from an old inner tube.
We tied each of the rubber bands to each arm of the Y crotch and secured the other ends of the bands to a leather pouch we cut from an old leather shoe.
The ammo for our slingshot was finding the right size pebble or small stone.
I can recall trying to shoot sparrows with them. I'm sure some of these stones resulted in a few broken window panes, but, of course, not from me.
I recently read an article on Circus Peanuts.
No one seems to know how they got their name, but they are shaped like in-the-shell peanuts that vendors used to sell at the early traveling circuses.
Circus peanuts go back to the 1880s. They were one of the original penny candies.
Spangler Candy Co. started making them in 1930 and Cardinal Charlie started eating them not too many years later.
As you know, they are sort of orange in color and look like a peanut in the shell.
But they have a banana taste and are kind of chewy.
I just bought some recently out at Hale's Hardware.
I still have two of those metal army drab ammunition boxes that lock down tight and they are waterproof. They were given to me years ago by my old neighbor Paul Brissaud, who worked at Rudy Manufacturing, where they were made.
Remember how they used to say that couples who were regularly dating that they were "keeping company?"
Boy, how I hated as a little boy having to take an afternoon nap. Now I'm 76 years old and I now find an occasional nap in the afternoon is highly appreciated.