Remember the good old days
It was September 1937 when my pals and I entered first grade at St. Michael Catholic Elementary School on Monroe Street.
Still struggling with the English language, we soon found ourselves serving as altar boys at Latin Mass alongside legendary Father Marinaro and learning from the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
During the summer, the South Side playground at Zeigler Avenue was our home away from home. Playground supervisors were assigned throughout the city. Over the years, Dick Collodi, Virgil “Vic” Galante, Roger Patrizio, John Zgibor and Joe Robinson supervised our softball field, tennis, basketball and volleyball courts, horse shoes, and swings and seesaws.
In 1942, as the war intensified, children attended Saturday matinees at the Majestic Theater for a Gene Autrey cowboy movie or a Boston Blackie detective thriller. Plus a serial drama, Bugs Bunny cartoon, News of the Day with Lowell Thomas and Notre Dame football highlights — all for a dime.
Our legs carried us almost everywhere — to school, city softball and county league baseball games, Butler Cubs Sunday football at Pullman Park, Main Street and swimming holes at Duck Town — although the trolley carried us from Zeigler Avenue to Alameda Park.
During winter months, we played basketball at the playground but not before shoveling snow from the court’s surface. When the snow fell, the city blocked off traffic on Short Street for sledding.
Today a few of us still recall those precious summers, during the good old days of The Greatest Generation.
Geno Mariotti, Butler
