Edenville Owls

I read the newspaper every day. I didn’t pay too much attention to the news. In the summer I went straight to the sports page and read the box scores... Tommy Holmes had a great year for the Braves in 1945. Hit .352 and led the league in home runs with twenty-eight. The Braves finished in fourth place that year. The Red Sox with everyone still in the service finished seventh in the American League and an outfielder named Johnny Lazor was their leading hitter at .310. But the next year, with Williams and the others back, they won the pennant and Ted hit .342... We had a pro football team those years. The Boston Yanks had Boley Dancewicz and Paul Governelli at quarterback. Babe Dimancheff was the main runner. Rocco Canale played guard and there was a kick returner named Sonny Karnofsky. The team was owned by Ted Collins, who everybody knew was Kate Smith’s manager. The Boston Yanks played in Fenway Park sometimes, and were never very good... I felt that studying the sports page was more or less a responsibility; the funnies were pure entertainment. There was Alley Oop and his girlfriend Oola, with their pet dinosaur Dinny... There was L’il Abner, and Blondie, and Ella Cinders and Terry & The Pirates, and Red Ryder... Comic books were a longer form, more complex. I especially liked Batman and Robin, and Captain America and Bucky, and of course the print ads for Chesterfield cigarettes and Seagram’s whiskey and the delicious meals you could make with canned ham and peaches... Another step up the intellectual ladder was LIFE Magazine, which came out once a week. It had wonderful pictures of everything that Americans cared about, and some great text and photo features on things like “Married Vets Return to College,” and “LIFE Goes to a Sorority Party.” There were always a few pictures of nice-looking girls changing clothes... There were whole series of writing and pictures on things like the renaissance... And “Life Goes to the Movies,” which was a sort of capsule presentation of current movies with still photos from the movies, a magazine version of the Lux Hollywood Theater. LIFE always made me proud to be American.