My First Friends

Martha & Jim Anwell

Me and Toby Chase, Halloween, 1952

Jerry Webb, Toby Chase & Dana Hathaway, Halloween, 1952

Millie Chase, my Mother and me, Mother's March of Dimes Campaign on WHYN, 1952



I spent most of my fourth year of life in the Polio Ward of the Holyoke Hospital, as related in an earlier writing. I spent the first part of my fifth year in the Physical Therapy Department of the Holyoke Hospital. So I really began my “social life” towards the end of my fifth year. That’s when I met my first friends, Toby Chase and Dana Hathaway.

Both boys were a year older than I was. More importantly, they were wiser in the ways of the world than I was. Since my “formative years” were spent battling back from disease, I was at a definite disadvantage when it came to life’s little competitions and such. Whenever the three of us got together, I was always the one on the bottom of the totem pole.

Let me give you an example. One day just before I entered kindergarten at the Highland Elementary School, the three of us were playing in Toby’s back yard when his mother, Millie Chase, had to leave for a moment. Millie Chase was a famous radio personality on our local WHYN radio station here in Holyoke, Mass. “Now you boys play nice and don’t get into any trouble; I’ll only be gone a little while.” She was no sooner out of sight when Toby bounded into the house and came out with his father’s BB air rifle. Toby had been unable to locate any real BB’s, though, so for some time we just had fun pumping it up and shooting it. But that got boring, so Toby went back into the house in search of the allusive BB’s. Again, he failed to find any. He came out instead with a hand full of Rice Krispies which he normally ate for breakfast. (remember “Snap, Crackle & Pop”?) Toby put the Rice Krispies into the rifle’s BB chamber and pumped it up. They then put one of Mr. Chase’s hats on my head and took turns trying to shoot it off my head.

Do you see what I mean by “low man on the totem pole.” Naturally, I would have preferred to shoot the hat off Toby’s head. Fat chance. But being a trooper, I just stood there with this hat on my head, waiting for the worst. Fortunately for me, the Rice Krispies were too soft to do any damage. In fact, they were too soft to shoot out of the gun at all. Since Toby and Dana couldn’t shoot the hat off my head at point blank range, we all gave up on the idea, and Toby quickly put the rifle back in his father’s closet. It was always like that when the three of us played together. I was always on the bottom. But we all had a lot of fun together anyway.

Toby’s mother, I now realize, must have held the view that to be “regular” meant to go to the bathroom at exactly the same time every day. This was very different than at my house, where we all went to the bathroom when nature told us to. We boys would be playing in the back yard, and Toby’s mother would come out and say “Toby, you have to go to the bathroom now.” And Toby would dutifully get up and go to the bathroom. I remember that this amazed me. How does she know? I would wonder. It really did puzzle me back then.

When I was six, Toby’s father, Mr. Chase (I believe his first name was Homer) took Toby and me to an auction. I had never been to an auction before, so the whole idea was very exciting. My mother gave me a dollar and suggested that, as my father’s birthday was coming up, I buy a present for him. Mr. Chase had us sit right in the front row. As the auctioneer put up the first item, he asked “Who will start the bidding at a dollar?” Mr. Chase nodded at me, and I quickly raised my hand. Well, of course, the bidding went on way past a dollar, and someone else bought the item. The second item was put up, and again I started the biding with a dollar. And again the bidding went flying past a dollar.

The auctioneer quickly found this humorous and started the bidding of everything by pointing to me as he asked for an opening bid of a dollar. I bid a dollar on every single item that came up for sale. And in every case, the bidding went right past a dollar. Hour after hour, my dollar sat restlessly in my pocket. It got late. The best items had all been sold. People started to leave. Mr. Chase wanted to leave. But I still had my dollar and no present for my dad. Finally, after most people had long gone, the auctioneer quickly put up an item, pointed directly at me and asked if I bid a dollar? “Yes”, I said. “I bid a dollar”. “SOLD!!!” shouted the auctioneer.

I was so excited. I handed in my dollar and proudly took away my purchase. Mr. Chase was happy too, because we finally could go home. My mother was happy and helped me wrap it. On my father’s birthday, I proudly gave it to him. And my father was happy and excited to receive it. Yes, he was. In fact, he kept that present for years and years. And no wonder. It was fifty feet of underground electric fence wire. Every father’s dream present! Of course, we didn’t have an electric fence on Montgomery Avenue in Holyoke at the time, so my present stayed in its box in the cellar. You see, we didn’t have horses back then. But my father was happy with his gift nevertheless. When we moved to South Hadley, he insisted on bringing the electric fence wire with us. By then, I was in college. We never had an electric fence in South Hadley, either. Well, that was understandable; we still didn’t have any horses.

My most vivid memory of my seventh year was Halloween. By then, Jerry Webb had joined our little band of friends. That year, for Halloween, Jerry Webb dressed as a dangerous hobo. We were all afraid of hobos because our parents told us that hobos walked the train tracks down by the river and were fond of kidnapping little boys like us. (That way, we were all too frightened to go near the RR tracks and the nearby Connecticut River.) Dana Hathaway got to go as a vicious pirate, complete with a sword, a black eye patch and a knife between his teeth. Toby Chase was dressed as a brave big game hunter, with a pith helmet and everything. He even got to carry his father’s BB gun. My mother dressed me as a woman! A woman? A gypsy woman at that. Talk about Low Man on the Totem Pole! What was my mother thinking about? I already was pudgy from her efforts to fatten me up from polio, and I already was handicapped with a bad arm. Now, I had to be gender confused?

Anyway, off into the night I went with my luckier friends to fill my bag with candy. Our first stop was the Anwell’s. Jim and Martha Anwell lived right across the street and were grand friends of my parents. Martha greeted us at her door, candy bowl in hand. But Mrs. Anwell was suddenly concerned that Toby seemed to be toting a “real” gun. “Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Anwell”, said Toby, who pumped the gun a few times. “It isn’t loaded. Watch.” He then pointed the gun into Mrs. Anwell’s house and pulled the trigger. Remember the Rice Krispies? Well, Rice Krispies get hard after sitting out for a few years. Hard as, … well, as hard as BB’s. BLAM, and one of Mrs. Anwell’s hallway lamps jumped off a table onto the floor with a loud crash.

Martha Anwell marched all of us back across the street to my house where she shouted things at my surprised mother. In the end, Toby was made to leave the BB gun at my house, and we continued on into the night trick or treating. “My, what do we have here; ah, I see a dangerous hobo, and a blood thirsty pirate, and a reasonably brave, albeit gun-less big game hunter, and ah, ah, well, aren’t you adorable?” Adorable! Let me tell you, no seven year old boy wants to be adorable. At least, I didn’t. The trick or treat candy made up for it, I suppose.

Years later, there was a real shooting in our neighborhood, and that saga likewise ended on Halloween. Just down on North Pleasant Street was the Henry Noel residence. One night, when the Noels were in bed, they heard a noise down stairs. Mr. Noel got up, took his unloaded shotgun from his closet, and went down the stairs to frighten the burglar. Unfortunately, that’s just what he did; he frightened the burglar, who promptly shot Mr Noel quite dead on the stairs. The whole neighborhood was alarmed. Burglars in the night! In their own home while they were in bed! Who was safe?

Actually, there were nasty whisperings that Mr. Noel had caught his wife in bed with another man, whereby a fight broke out, and Henry got the worst of it. One way or another, Mrs. Noel was somehow excised from the neighborhood. Everyone simply avoided her. For example, she was not invited to the neighborhood 4th of July party, and nobody sang Christmas carols at her door on Christmas Eve. I was her paper boy at the time. One day, she stopped me as I “collected” from her, and she told me that she was having a grand Halloween party. She asked me to tell the entire neighborhood that everyone was invited. This I managed to do. And after our trick or treating, the entire neighborhood wound up at Mrs. Noel’s house. All the parents came as well, no doubt curious about what the fuss was about. What a party!!! Mrs. Noel had an entire living room full of treats for the kids; cakes, ice cream, sodas, cookies, candies. It was heaven. And she had beer, cocktails and such for the parents. Everyone had a terrific time, and from then on, Mrs. Noel was “back in” the neighborhood.

When I was eight, Mr. Chase died suddenly. I remember being absolutely confused about it. An eight year old has a very tenuous grasp on the concept of mortality. After the funeral, Millie Chase quickly moved away. I imagine, now, that she must have moved back to be with her own people after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband. I never saw Toby Chase again. I eventually lost contact with Jerry Webb and Dana Hathaway when I went away to college. I did bump into Jerry one evening at a concert at Mt. Holyoke College about fifteen years ago or so, but we didn’t get much of a chance to talk. I don’t think we could think of much to say to one another, really. So many years.

A short while ago, somebody told me that Dana Hathaway had died suddenly of something or other when he was only in his 50’s. I remember it gave me a very creepy feeling when I learned of Dana’s death. You see, I still have a rather tenuous grasp on the concept of mortality.

The Strawbridge family lived directly across the street from our house and next door to the Anwalls. Richard and Dorothy Strawbridge had two boys, David and Dick. Both were a few years older than I was, so we never really played together. I did get to “inherit” the Strawbridge brother’s discarded toys, as Mr. and Mrs. Strawbridge would give me these things for Christmas presents as their boys moved on to other interests. These were always great toys, really, and I always looked forward to the Strawbridge Christmas presents.

I remember one Strawbridge gift in particular, a chemistry set. It was a beauty. It had lots of little jars of chemicals and a book for doing experiments. My uncle Ralph was a professional chemist, and he looked over the experiment book and decided to contribute a little himself. He gave me some more chemicals in jars and a handwritten book of new experiments to try. Perhaps the most exciting of Ralph’s experiments involved putting sulfur crystals into a weak acid, which resulted in the production of hydrogen sulfide gas. Our cellar stank for days. You know, I suspect that my mother never really liked Uncle Ralph.

This experience did teach me a valuable chemistry lesson, though, which I was able to put to good use later when I was in prep school. One day during my sophomore year, when nobody was looking, I put a Coca-Cola cap full of lemon juice under the bed of the student next door. I then hung a string with a crystal of sulfur (that I snuck out of the chemistry lab) under his mattress springs so that the sulfur dangled just above the lemon juice. Nothing happened, of course, until the lad got into bed after “lights out”, and the mattress springs sagged a bit under his weight. My roommate and I could hardly contain ourselves as we heard them arguing next door. “You’re disgusting! What did you have for dinner, a dead rat?” “What do you mean me; it’s not me – it’s you!!!” And so on. It was terrific, though ultimately the entire dorm had to be evacuated and aired out before we could return to bed. I learned later on that hydrogen sulfide gas is actually a fairly lethal poison, but young boys don’t consider those little details. Of course, that didn’t seem to bother my Uncle Ralph much either, and he was a grown man at the time. A chemist, no less.

Another Strawbridge Christmas present was David’s and Dick’s magic kit. It had many wonderful tricks. I used to practice for hours making pennies disappear and dimes appear in their place and so on. One day, as I returned from school, my mother was entertaining her bridge club. “Show us a few tricks, Bobby”, my mother said. I went upstairs and brought down my magic kit. I performed a few tricks successfully, and then I attempted my famous “tape measure” trick. The tape measure trick consisted of a very “special” tape measure. It looked normal enough, but it had several hidden snaps along its length, and it had special Bobbie Pins at each end. Where Bobbie Pins normally spring out and are locked into place, these Bobbie Pins sprang in and fit into a simple grove. Theoretically, they pulled right out when you yanked on them.

I called for a volunteer, and one of my mother’s bridge friends stepped forward. I appeared to wrap the tape measure around her (but I simply hooked the snaps behind her instead of actually wrapping the tape around her). I then “pinned” the tape to the front of her blouse with the special Bobbie Pins. A few “Abra-Kadabras”, a quick wave of my magic wand, and I suddenly yanked the tape from my mother’s friend. But the trick failed, somehow. The snaps worked perfectly, but the pins didn’t slide off as they were supposed to, and I summarily ripped the entire front of the poor lady’s blouse right clean off, which just for a moment revealed her “unrevealables” before she ran screaming for the bathroom. Quite the memorable moment, that! Well, some things you just never forget. In any event, it ended my magic show. In fact, as I recall, it ended the bridge party. To tell the whole truth, it ended my career as a magician altogether. My mother certainly never asked me to perform again.

There was an elderly woman named Edith Murlless who lived next door to the Strawbridges. She was a wonderful old lady, and my mother frequently encouraged me to visit her. Mrs. Murlless had an extraordinary collection of antique glass paper weights that she kept in a large glass case. She was always prepared with cookies or a piece of cake or something, which, of course, I appreciated; just another cog in the everlasting struggle against thinness. I never gave it much thought as a kid, but I later learned that her husband, Dr. Charles Murlless had passed away in 1951. He had been a local dentist in Holyoke for years. I never met Dr. Murlless. Mrs. Murlless must have been very lonely, as they had been married for many, many years. That was no doubt why my mother was always sending me over there to chat. But actually, I really liked Mrs. Murlless, and I never minded going to see her. She always had a cheerful smile and was always happy to see me. And, of course, there was always the cookie or piece of cake. She apparently had no children or grandchildren of her own. None that I can remember, anyway. Mrs. Murlless was always alone and always happy to receive company, even if it was an eight year old kid. I can’t recall anyone else in the entire neighborhood having anything to do with Mrs. Murlless. Certainly the good Dr.’s patients never gave her a second thought. But that’s dentistry for you, I suppose.

Next to Mrs. Murlless was the Twing’s house. Kirby Twing and his family were all interesting folks and great friends, but that is the stuff for another story……..