DOWNEY HIGH MEMORIES

• THIS PAGE SHALL BE DEVOTED TO "QUICKIE" MEMORIES OF OUR TOWN AND OUR SCHOOL IN 1949-52, AS GLEANED FROM THE MEMORIES OF OUR CLASSMATES.

ALL RIGHT, HERE GOES:  DO YOU REMEMBER:

• Darlene Paulson and Cecil McCown, clicking those castanets and dancing for our enjoyment in school assemblies?

• Art Weiss, playing the part of a tough guy from Back East in his trenchcoat and pork-pie hat?

• Mel Fertig (Class of '51), introducing Joanne Strang in a Talent Show with the memorable line that she was "fresh off a triumphant engagement at Taco Hut"?

• Joan LeBraun, in our senior year, cruising around with her girlfriends in a NEW Ford convertible?

• The dreaded "Hall Monitors"?
• The tragic auto-accident death of Reed Horsley?

• Ronnie Wendt, changing the oil in his car for the first time, carefully funneling five quarts of oil into the dipstick hole?

• Joe Adranga, our "local supplier" of booze pilfered from his dad's liquor store?

• Remember when there were far more Orange Trees than People in our town?

• Billy Overmyer (as we knew him in those days) and Bob Fruehe, always "at the ready" with their cameras?

• Larry Nelson and Al Buehlman, always looking for recruits for their flying club?

Friday night softball games at the Old River School field?
• Bart Horn, in his debut as an amateur boxer at the South Gate Arena?

• The football-coaching triumvirate of William H. Smitheran, Jack Montgomery, and "Cactus Jack" O'Brien?

• The highly successful Swimming Severa Brothers?

• David Rodriguez, beating most opponents by a full lap or more in the mile run?

• Student Body President Jim Ball, on his way to becoming a world class track star at UCLA?

• Girls sitting in class, knitting argyle sox for their favorite guys?

• Inept rookie teacher J.L. Banks, allowing his class to be overrun by school bullies?

• Decorating the high school gym for school dances?

• Remember how, when we were sophomores, kids two years ahead of us (seniors) seemed so worldly and sophisticated while those two years behind (8th-graders) were mere children?

• The morning ritual (for most of us) of the hopeless task of covering up Pimples?

• Remember when there were only two black families in Downey, and they were nice people, and their kids were Achievers?

• Being allowed to watch the World Series in the Auditorium, on a "giant" 21-inch TV screen?

• Being required to watch the farcical, cheaply made anti-drug film, Reefer Madness?

• Grooving to the sounds of Dick Hansen's Dixieland Band?

• Riding to school in lousy buses, while the rich kids rode in with their parents, or drove their own cars?

• The long drive through the beanfields and dairies of what is now Artesia, Hawaiian Gardens, Cypress, Cerritos, Rossmoor, Leisure World, and Westminster‹to get to the largely unpopulated Orange County beaches?

• Going to surreptitious Beach Parties on trashy, unsupervised "Tin Can Beach," between Seal Beach and Huntington Beach, preferably at "Pecker's Point," the hilly area just north of Huntington?

• Don Swick, wearing the same pair of "new" Levis every day of the school year, without once laundering them?

• Cruising all the "hot spots" on Friday nights--Downey Avenue, Richie's Drive-In, Cook's Drive-In, The Clock, and Pacific Avenue in Huntington Park...?

Hey:  If you remember even some of those things, baby, you were there!

William O'Neill, now retired, is a former amateur boxing champion, sportswriter, and President (in 1984) of the World Boxing Hall of Fame