COMMENTARY

By Howard Smith

A drive down memory lane…

If my memory serves me right, I had Mrs. Watson for Third Grade, Mrs. Manning for Fourth Grade, Mrs. Cox for Fifth Grade, Mr. Kirk for Sixth Grade, Mr. Hewlett for Seventh Grade and Mr. McGee for Eighth Grade. Quite a daunting line up that would remain etched in stone as I moved on in life! Of course, my MVP, who I had the honor of visiting five years ago on my first visit back to Pomeroy in 45 years, was with Mrs. Cox.

A lot of firsts were packed into those school days. My first paddling for getting into a spitwad fight with my friend Mike Keatts. My first girlfriend was Connie Bartels, although I had a crush on Marcie Flerchinger, too, and of course, Sandy Beckwith, or was it Bev? They were only six years older.

Dream on!

My high school idols were Norm Davis, the Van Ausdles, and Jim Heibert, who ran a 10.2, 100-yard dash in ’66. Come on! I wore his football number 27 for four years. And Wynne McCabe, the Feiders, Sam Waldron, Dan Briggs, Gary Bye, Jim Burke, and, of course, the keeper of the house, John Gates.

We lived on Main Street for three years across from the drive in and bowling alley, next to the Heiberts, a few houses from the Waldrons, and a block or so from the Williams family. The last four years, we lived on Columbia Street across Pataha Creek from the football field and swimming pool, the park and the golf course.

We were in tall cotton: within walking or bicycling distance to anywhere in town, including Cardwell’s Department Store and Bartels RX drug store, the hotel and the Methodist Church. I remember sitting through those sermons every Sunday morning instead of watching the Celtics and Lakers in black and white. We were there!

We kept busy in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, hiking, camping, fishing and hunting on the Tucannon. There was the boxing club with the Burkes and swim club with the Briggs in the summer.

I also remember the Little League rival game between the Grange and Jets, where I walked my little brother, Terry, in the last inning for the winning run and watching Sam Feider do back flips after the game. My catcher on that Grange Club was Ed Fruh and I remember giving him my baseball card collection as a gift before I left because we had such a good time trading cards and he loved baseball!

My first job, other than my paper route, was picking strawberries for Ken Price. Little did I know that Kim and Cindy actually measured the crates and checked for stems – oops! The following summer I opted out of the strawberry fields forever for a try working on Dan and Lew Williams’s farm. Dusty and dirty, early get ups and long hours. But not quite that close supervision working with John and Scott. (Must have been distracted picking those berries).

The future seemed set. Moving on to High School with some big shoes to fill but the chance to share the halls and classes and dances and courts and fields with friends and also those friends from that other school across town up on the hill.

Yep, that other school with more pretty girls and dominant athletes, including my best friend, Scott, who I know is with us in spirit, and who Mr. Gates concluded five years ago, just may have been the best all-around athlete Pomeroy has ever seen!

Arguably the two best teams in Pomeroy’s storied sports history were the Class of ’71’s undefeated State Football Champions and the Class of ’72’s basketball team that was knocked off by Cashmere in the State Championship final, finishing the season 24-2 after finishing third in ’71 with a 23-4 record, losing in the semis to eventual champion Ocsta.

The chance to play with Mike Gwinn, John Evanson, Rick Geiger, Brad Gingerich, Jeff Sheffield, Mike Keatts, Dave Waldron, Sam Feider and Scott Williams on the football field, and Sam Feider, Andy Herres, Scott Williams, Nick Waldher, Bob Cox and Paul (Ernie) Kimble on the court had become not only a dream but an obsession.

The friendships with Bob Brown, Mark Baldwin, Chris Cardwell, Steve Beale, Randy Freeby, Jim Minkler, Gary Cole, Eddie Baker, Don Manning, Julie Price, Kayleen Gingerich, Marcie Flerchinger, Marilee Burns, Paul Weimer, Roger Dye, Connie Crawford, Tom Holman, Carla Pawlik, LeeAnn Partlow, Janet Sheffield, and John, Scott, Paul and Lisa Williams will always be fondly remembered.

The next generation to call Pomeroy home and carry on family values and traditions is a welcome sight as documented in Gary Bye’s books, “From the First Whistle to the Final Gun.” There’s nothing better than reading about ancestry except watching your best friends’ kids, or better yet, cousins, grow up together in the same high school 20 years later. It’s a must read.

Well, life sometimes throws you a curve ball and you have to adjust your swing. The ’60s, as it turns out, had also thrown the country a curve ball or two. The Beatles had replaced Elvis, the Russians had the first space satellite in the Sputnik to reach outer space. Their nuclear threat caused us to practice evacuations in school. We made bunkers in our basements during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember standing in line in the hall to go to lunch in Mrs. Manning’s class when the principle announced that President Kennedy had been shot and we had to go home.

In ’68, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, the Vietnam War escalated and Civil Rights took on a whole new meaning. In ’69 Armstrong walked on the moon. Times were changing and it was time to learn how to hit a curve ball.

So in August, 1968, my Dad was promoted to the Forest Ranger of the Rogue River National Forest in Prospect, Ore., a beautiful logging town south of Crater Lake with approximately 1,000 people, to the position he had served in Pomeroy for the Umatilla National Forest for the last seven years. Our love affair with the beautiful wheat fields of the Palouse and Pomeroy were over as we all piled into that ’64 Rambler and waved goodbye to the Price sisters and headed south.

The love affair with the people, friends and families and their relationships and legacies, however, were never forgotten. Home is where the heart is and for me it’s down memory lane.