Liberty-Perry (aka Wapahani) Alumni Association

 

That is where Margaret and Alvin Edwards lived and raised 5 children Jayne, Vance, Greg, Steve, Stuart, and where she had her beauty shop for years!.. I am sure you know the rest of the story as you are in touch with Jayne. If you need more info I could probably give it to you.
Janet (Edwards) Holt

 

I know the house was where Jayne Ann Edwards lived. Her mother had her beauty shop there, also. I think Jayne Ann is the girl in the second
photo with Jack and Gene. The girl on the right in the first picture
looks so familiar, but I can't place her name, maybe it will come to me
later.
Beverly (Snodgrass) Davis

 

I received word from Denise Scott that her Mother, Barbara (Austin) Scott, had passed away September 9th.  Barbara graduated in the class of 1946 and was the widow of Bob Scott that graduated in the class of 1945.  Barbara was related to the Murphy’s and Hazelbaker’s through the Bullock family that lived southeast of Selma.

 

Also, Mary E. “Jean” Edwards, Mother of Janet (Edwards) Holt passed away October 13th.  I have earlier talked of the Edwards family operating the grocery and dry goods store at the northeast corner of downtown Selma in the early fifties.  Jean also worked in the Selma post office for a number of years.

 

My wife and I had the pleasure of seeing Janet and meeting her husband LeRoy, and having some brief conversations about Selma in our younger days.  Janet and I have had several e-mail conversations over the past year about how wonderful it was growing up around Selma.  LeRoy was telling me although he did not attend Selma, he reads every newsletter, and since he went hunting many times in the Selma area he has an appreciation for the many stories.  He told me about always stopping at the Artesian well along State Road 32 for the great tasting water, and of mowing the lawn at the Muncie airport which also afforded him the opportunity for a free plane ride to fly over the Selma area.

 

Ruth Elwell was in town for Ball State Homecoming and members of our class gathered for lunch at Vince’s on October 17th.  Harold Dorton asked if anyone remembered the endurance flight that took place at the Muncie airport.  I certainly remember the occasion and I imagine many of you do also.  In fact, on the north wall of the restaurant is a large photograph of the plane with the rope extended to the pick-up truck below either to pull up food or fuel for the airplane.  Those two men in the plane brought a lot of excitement and a lot of spectators to the Muncie airport.  There were even picture post cards made of the two men and their plane.

 

I also enjoyed talking to Vance Edwards, who I don’t believe I have seen in nearly fifty years.  Vance graduated in the class of 1954, and in a conversation he recently had with Dave Vandergriff he had been asked if there were any plans being made to celebrate their fifty-year reunion next year.  I told Vance I would try to find out if there are any plans in the works and let him know, so if any of you from that class know of any plans please let me know and I will get word to Vance.  Also, if anyone has a copy of the 1954 yearbook they no longer need let me know as I have someone that would love to have one.

 

I thought you might enjoy another of the stories from the audio tape John Snodgrass sent me this past summer.

 

You had written about milkweed pods in one of your previous newsletters, and I can remember that.  We would take those big old grain gunny sacks and fill them up and take them to Muncie to someplace on East Jackson Street that I think had something to do with the Government.  One other thing I remember about the war is we lived out on the farm and had hogs and chickens so we didn’t have to worry about the meat stamps.  But there were five of we kids and you would go through a pair of shoes in less than a year.  So there was a young man at the shoe store, I was probably 11 at the time and he was probably 19, and he had asthma or some type of breathing problem so Uncle Sam wouldn't take him.  So we would go in to the shoe store and give him our meat stamps, we didn’t have enough shoe stamps.  He knew older folks in town that would only need a pair of shoes every three or four years so he would tell them he would swap the meat stamps for their shoe stamps.  That is how we would get our shoes during the war as you know they had stamps for everything, shoe stamps, meat stamps, sugar stamps, gas stamps, tire stamps and others.

 

As for the old skating rink, I remember that!  I worked there one fall and up towards the winter me and my buddy, partner in crime so to speak, (his name was Jimmy Phillips) had to get there early to stoke that big old furnace.  Then we would start putting on people’s skates and stuff like that, and then we had to clean up of an evening before we could go home.  And one time, I never will forget, someone had a basketball.  You know in Indiana everyone had a basketball.  Those hoops were still in that rink from when it was the gymnasium and after we cleaned up we decided we were going to play basketball on our skates.  Well when you skate you had to bounce the ball about three feet ahead of you because if you didn’t you would skate past it.  We were dribbling the basketball around there and Gene Cross said now be careful and we said okay, all right, fine.  So we were dribbling the ball down the floor, three foot ahead of you and catch up to it, three foot ahead of you and catch up to it, and we got to where we thought we were doing real good.  So I decided to I was going to make a lay-up shot at the basket on the North end where those big doors were that they opened up in the summer.  So I did, I jumped up and made the lay-up shot, but when I came down one skate went North and one skate went South.  Talk about pain, pain, pain, and I thought I’m never going to do that again!  Never again!  I thought I could jump up and come back down but I learned right then that was the wrong thing to do, the WRONG thing!

 

Jack Harless at that time was also one of the floor skaters, he and Gene Cross.  Jack left there one night just after we closed and he started up over the railroad track there by the rink and it was cold because he had his windows up.  And he got killed there at that railroad track just after he left the rink.  His Mother and Dad later on lived by my Aunt Pearl and Uncle Dallas just North of Farmland and I told them I had been skating with Jack the night he was killed.  That was a bad thing that night, bad bad thing!

 

It’s Halloween, and as I was thinking back to the fall of 1952, and I believe the only time I participated in Halloween pranks in Selma.  I know there was a group of boys and I can only recall one of the names, that being Ron McAfee, and I only recall his name because he was the ring leader.  Those of you that knew Ron would understand me only being able to recall his name.  We moved through the alleys soaping windows and turning over some out houses which at that time were very plentiful in Selma!  When we completed our task we gathered on the street in downtown Selma which at that time was still somewhat busy during the late evening hours.  Waiting there to greet us was Vance Epperson who was the town marshal at that time.  Many of you will remember Vance as a very good official for both baseball and basketball.  But Vance too had been somewhat mischievous in his youth.  Vance had us gather around him and then said, “Boys, I know you have been turning over out houses tonight.  You turned over Doc Allen’s and he won’t be able to set it up and all I want you to do is go back and set his for him.”  As some of us have discussed before, Doc Allen was the veterinarian that lived by the railroad tracks to the East of Peanut Park.  Doc was heavy set, especially in the stomach area, and had trouble getting down to work with the farm animals, many times only giving instructions with the farmer doing the physical work.

 

I received the following e-mail from Stan last week;

 

Art:
RaNell and I are glad you invited us to the get-together with Ruth and other '53 alumni. We were glad we made the effort. Now that we can plan for the events we want to attend rather than plan around a work schedule, please always include us...and as I said before you all are always welcome to come to our part of  Indiana and we will show you around.
Last weekend we decided to walk the Canal in downtown Indy. We only walked half of it so we are planning to walk the new other half one of these days, We like to go an Indians Baseball game now and then especially on July 4th, and there can be more. Put this in your news letter so all will know we would like to show off this part of Indiana.

 

Stan and RaNell