8/22/01
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PHS Bulldogs On-Line
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Aug 22, 2001
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6 Bulldog alumni notes today:
Stacy Wise (62)
Judy Blackstock Sistek (62)
Paul Case (67)
Cliff Brown (67)
Le'Ann McAllister Cherry (67)
Patti Scharf Noakes (67)
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From: Stacy Wise (62)
Jeff Jumper is not dead! Jeff is registered at Classmates.com. I don't have the full membership so I can't get at his email address or contact him.
Stacy Wise (62)
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From: Judy Blackstock Sistek (62)
I always enjoy hearing from Pasco Alumni! I can hardly wait until our reunion next year!!! See everybody then.
Judy Blackstock Sistek (62)
Las Vegas, NV
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From: Paul Case (67)
A&W? That's where a bunch of us lived on Friday and Saturday nights! I haven't been to one in years. I haven't seen a car-hop since Janel Hensley (67) worked at the A&W in Pasco. Do any still serve the quart of root beer in the megaphone-shaped container? Almost went to one in Spokane, but they don't even have the burger family - Papa Burger, Mama Burger, Teen Burger, etc. It just doesn't seem right somehow. Heck, Zip's still has the Papa Joe!
To Alan Taylor:
I remember Laren Fusman from the Columbians. Didn't you bring him to our 30-year reunion down at the Bulldog Inn? We've got another reunion coming up next year and I hope one night will be there again.
Speaking of the Columbians, what place did we take at nationals in Las Vegas (1960 or 61?)? I'm thinking it was either 4th or 7th, but my memory isn't what it used to be. I do know that we exceeded many expectations with our performance there. I can still picture Jeff Jumper and, uh, who(?) doing the twist during the concert portion of the competition. I seem to recall that the judges had never seen that sort of thing in competition.
One more thing, marching band today seems a like a different world compared to what I remember of drum & bugle corps. Is that just my memory acting up (again), or is the difference really like night and day?
Sacajawea Park and elephant ears - you had to remember that?! And yes, Josh asked and I told him all about it. How old were we? 8 or 9? I don't know how much that little escapade cost my parents, but maybe that's why I never got an allowance!
We did have a good neighborhood to grow up in - Lyndale, Meridian, Dakota, etc. They're all numbers now. There was no CBC, no 410 apartments, the highway was two-lane and you had to stop at Court or Sylvester to cross it. Remember the West Side Market and Crescent Drug Store? Remember Court Street as a two-lane road? Pasco has grown a bit!
To Cliff Brown:
I assume you must be using some of the tactics you practiced with Jim Gladden and Jay Van Sant in the Columbian drug wars! Mortars, visual warfare (blinding lights), night maneuvers on the water?! After some of your “confessions” I thought maybe you were staying there to avoid extradition, but then I realized that the statute of limitations has probably elapsed.
I do remember one thing with you in high school - Thespians initiation, standing in front of an auditorium full of parents - and you and me getting the giggles! Sure was embarrassing at the time, but quite funny now. I think a picture in a Sinewesah captures it in a small way.
To Ron DuPuis:
My sister Linda (61) is living in the San Jose area. She was in Pasco last weekend for her 40-year reunion. My brother Dave (63) still lives in Pasco with Pat (Bell, 63), his wife of 34 years.
To Sandra Reuther:
I was not insulted at all by the class reunion for 50+ women story. I thought it was great! I especially enjoyed trying to visualize the donning of the bra! And the girdle - just think if she had managed to get it on and then spent the night drinking beer!
Paul Case (67)
A little rain (finally) in Pasco, WA
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From: Cliff Brown (67)
Sure I remember KALE. Also KEPR, KORD, and last but not least K***. . . . .
Jay Van Sant and Jim Gladden were the mad scientist types. Jay especially. He had a good buddy, Harvey Hart, who was several years older and knew where to get the best deals in the local Army Surplus stores. He actually made a mortar that he would sometimes set off from the same hill with the water reservoir. Word was he could actually hit Kennewick, though I never saw it happen. He had a pickup truck in the bed of which he had mounted an old aircraft landing light. He used it to try to blind police who came up behind him or drivers who pissed him off when they wouldn't dim their lights. Anyway, many couples used that same hill for parking and making out. Sometimes the police would show up and walk around shining. Their flashlights into backseats and suggest that the couples move on. I'm sure they enjoyed that job. Well, we went up there once with Harvey and turned the pickup around so the light would shine on the cars. When we turned it on, it was basically daylight for about a quarter of a mile. It was the funniest thing to us to see the couples jumping up out of the seats in various stages of dress, all shielding their eyes to try and make us out, which was totally hopeless. It was one powerful light.
When Jay and I got cars, Harvey showed us how to bring an intake hose into the interior of the car, off the vacuum take off for the windshield wipers. The vacuum fed into the exhaust manifold of the car and you could suck straight fuel oil onto the hot exhaust manifold without fouling the engine. We got a large can of fuel oil and drove back and forth in front of the high school and laid down the perfect smoke screen. It was better than any mosquito sprayer could ever hope for. Pure black smoke gassed out the entire neighborhood for about 5 minutes.
Another time Harvey got us a canister that was used as a distress signal by ships at sea. You pop the top off and thick red smoke bellows out, which is theoretically visible for miles around a boat in distress. Well we took that canister and popped it off in the tunnels under the high school, and pulled the fire alarm. Made absolutely great neighborhood theater watching the firemen trying to find the source of the red smoke oozing out of every crack in the school's tunnel system, while the entire high school hung out in the streets after evacuating the building.
All three of us, Jim, Jay and I, were also interested in ham radio and for a while we all had licenses. I still have one, though years went by after my first novice license expired. We set up a clandestine radio station, broadcasting in AM on the regular broadcast band. We changed frequencies often, thinking the FCC would be getting after us with their direction finding antennae. It was fun playing our own brand of songs and telling crude jokes over the air. We never did know who was listening or whether we had fans, but it was fun imagining. All the radio stations in town started with a K. KORD, KEPR, etc. So we called ours K***, which we hoped folks would figure out was backwards for something more interesting.
Jay and I were both in band, and also in the local drum and bugle corps. To this day I can get goose bumps listening to a good drum and bugle corps. Our group was called the Columbians. I had played trombone in band, so I was assigned baritone bugle most of the time since it uses the same size mouthpiece. Jay was a trumpet player, and a good one, so he got a regular soprano bugle. We would practice for hours and hours in the summer, in a stadium which was not visible one block away. The whole thing was in a large open pit, which used to be a gravel pit. We'd march and play for hours in the summer sun until we were dog tired. The drummers even finished the summer with streaks across their chest where the sun didn't tan them, because they were covered with the straps holding the drums.
Drum Corps was exposure to older guys, some quite experienced in the ways of women and drink. We were basically in awe of all of them. Many were asses, but we lessers managed to survive amongst them. We were all really in it to win the competitions. And we did win some. I can't remember which, but they were fantastic spectacles of marching and soul-stirring music, complete with rifle tossing, flag waving, and awesome drum rhythms.
Another good part was the trips we got to take to places like Orefino, Idaho, Portland, Seattle, etc. Orefino was a cool trip, since it was to perform for the annual loggers day festivities. We got to watch all sorts of contests of logging skills, like "burling", which involves two guys with cleated logger boots standing on a floating log in the water and making it spin til one or the other falls off. It was in the mountains in the panhandle of Idaho, and later I would try to write a short story about when they closed the last legal whorehouse which operated there until late into this century.
The Drum Corps went on long bus trips, during which we spent our time playing cards and mooning motorists who pulled up beside us, occasionally throwing someone's underwear out the window at passing cars, hoping like hell it would splat and stick to their windshields. I had to develop enough back and shoulder muscles to keep a heavy baritone, and sometimes bass, bugle up to my mouth for the length of, say, a 5 mile parade. We blew loud and it took a lot of air. I can still bottom out the meter on most breath tests. At night, we generally stayed in some gym, and rolled out sleeping bags on the floor. We didn't sleep much. We would talk and talk, and try to pull pranks on other guys who had fallen asleep. One favorite was to find someone asleep and put his hand in warm water to see if he would wet his sleeping bag. Another was to fill his hand up with shaving cream or toothpaste and then tickle his nose with a feather, hoping he would wipe it all over. Then there was standard BenGay in the skivvies trick, hoping some poor slob would put his undies on without noticing.
Once, some of us were annoyed by the constant clanking back and forth of a manhole cover which was located just outside the gym. We snuck out and removed the cover so it would not be clanking back and forth when cars went over it. Next thing we heard was a commotion caused when a Volkswagen went over the hole slowly and ripped off the entire wheel and tire which had fallen into the open hole.
During one of our high school band concerts, Jay and I were fooling around in a practice room before the concert. Jay left, and when I tried to follow, he slammed the door on me. Trouble was, I had placed my left hand in such a way that the tips of my middle and ring finger were in the hinge side of the door. He slammed them both without knowing it. I had my hand stuck there, with the tips of both fingers squished, and was looking out the glass window of the practice room screaming at him to open the door. He couldn't hear me well since it was a soundproof room.
When he finally figured out from the look on my face that I was in serious pain, he opened up the door only to be confronted with two bloody stubs of finger tips. Boy was he sorry. I didn't play in the concert that night,
Cliff Brown (67)
Bogota, Colombia
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From: Le'Ann McAllister Cherry (67)
To Ginger Wedin:
Ray Eads is my cousin. He lives in Woodinville, Washington now and writes a weekly article in the Senior Pamphlet of the Tri City Herald. Tuesdays................I lived in a house on Marie Street across from Karyn and Paula Turya (spelled wrong)? We did live awfully close to the school!!!!!!!!!!!
Le'Ann McAllister Cherry (67)
Kennewick, WA
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From: Patti Scharf Noakes (67)
To Paul Case:
Thanks for getting this site together. It has been a BIG hit with everyone!
To Bob Coffey:
Joe says "Hi" back. Give him a call when you're in town. Good to hear from you! Still need your e-mail address. The one that came through on the Bulldog site didn't work for me.
To Le'Ann Cherry:
I'd love to chair the Reunion Committee! Sounds like fun, after reading all the great posts from this site. We also got a lot of positive responses from the survey at the Classmates.com site. BIG party next summer!!
Patti Scharf Noakes (67)
Kennewick, WA
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