Betty Cope was a former producer at WEWS TV 5, who eventually became the first station manager at WVIZ TV 25 when we met for the first time. Betty allowed this then-teenager (me) to hang out at the station, giving me pretty much free reign. To her, and a director, Paul Giogliamo, I'm fully appreciative. I had a chance to see educational television history be made.

The house was big as 1920's lower middle-class built in Cleveland houses go. The master bedroom was large, the mid-sized bedroom was okay on space...the small bedroom was limited. Dining room was okay, living room somewhat small, kitchen was country-sized and the walk-in pantry was okay size-wise. Bathroom? Larger than it really needed to be. Basement? Full with fairly dry walls. A one car garage with a stair to its floored loft. Fairly-sized front and back yards. So what's my problem? Well lets work backwards. First, the backyard was badly trashed with old chunks of cement. The garage leaned badly...we didn't dare park the car in it. The basement was damp and had a really bad sewage backup that could easily make you gag at times, and I feel one would easily detect radon gases along with hidden mold. The furnace was a really old and inefficient gas converted coal furnace. The basement walls smelled very musty with the unfaced bricks wearing away. Old steel plumbing mixed with some copper that badly needed replacement with a floor that was always damp. On the main floor, bathroom tub was not properly installed, looked like a hillbilly special with one end open on the tub. Floor was weak in the bathroom, definitely no sub-flooring. Walk-in pantry had make-shift shelving and really bad wall surface that screamed "PRIMER ME, PAINT ME!" The flooring was somewhat warped in there. The dining room was an ugly green paint with a soot covering - ditto the living room. In the kitchen, the faucet fixture and plumbing under the sink were ready to crap-out and eventually did! Upstairs the two larger bedrooms were badly wallpapered and the smallest bedroom that acted as a nursery had walls that were badly textured and looked like they had been barfed on. The stairs went up from the dining room at a curve with very little tread and substandard room between the walls. The walk-in closets were very small and looked like they had been thrown in with no thought. And with the attic, you needed a tall ladder to access it. The architect had to be badly stoned on Jack Daniels when he designed the plans. The builder must of had a mental breakdown during its construction. And my dad was just plain stupid when he forced my mother into buying that house. Reason for moving? The house was near Pearl Road and the bus stop. Even that sounded stupid considering it was a long walk between where the house stood and Pearl intersected. My dad was having an even rougher time getting car-pooled from there to the hospital! In the end, my mom still had to keep us up past midnight to drive to University Circle to get my dad home from the Wade Park VA Hospital - the whole thing was horrid. True, Dan and I were no longer forced to sleep in the attic, but we easily still froze - now at least my parents would know as well what it feels like to freeze their asses off in winter and broil in the summer...ha, ha!

My parents quickly decided they needed to redecorate - most likely my mom finally got the backbone to arm-wrestle my dad into doing it. Understand, my father had absolutely no mechanical skills. And thankfully he didn't even try. They hired a neighbor from Brooklyn who was a carpenter and he installed real knotty wood paneling in the living room and knotty wood paneling half way up the wall in the dining room, with textured wallpaper on top. It looked good. The original stairway was turned into a closet and a much straighter wide and better built stairway was put in along the wall opposite the door in the living room. Wall-to-wall carpeting went in on both floors. However, my parents really did badly in paneling the mid-sized bedroom. My Uncle Herb and Uncle Lester put the sheets up and did the best they could - but it still turned out pretty crappy. It was not their fault, but the room needed gutting and installation of new wall board. In the end, my parents tried turning a sow's ear into a silk purse and badly executed it. Try as they might, my parents couldn't grasp that the house was a horrible decision to buy...and they and my brothers and me had to live with it for nearly a decade!

At the time, there was no busing in Cleveland, so we had to walk long distances to get to Memphis Elementary, Charles Anderson Mooney Junior High School and eventually two years at Rhodes High School before my parents moved again. No matter where we went to school, it was a long haul on foot. All the way around, my dad made a horrid decision when he insisted in buying the house on Woburn Avenue!

Normal classes started-up again for me at Memphis Elementary School, a quarter mile from home. There I met some life-long friends like Scott Ashe, Terry Trill, Robert Saggio, Margaret Candow and Tom Focee. There was also a Tom and his long time girlfriend as well. I will always remember this as a great friends period in my life. Memphis Elementary School was your typical really old three story brick structure, surrounded by asphalt and stones on all four sides. Never really went out or came into the front, always a side or back door. The buildings' interior is very similar to William Rainey Harper Elementary School where MGM's Christmas Story was shot.

We had a great teacher who was intelligent, fair minded and her presentations were always interesting. Over the summer break she and her husband became involved as missionaries for their church to a South American country which was involved in a great degree of political strife. Missionary work is highly dangerous due to political instabilities where volunteers are sent. Just before school let out, she had given us an address which would reach her in South America over the summer allowing all of us to act as pen pals with her and her husband. They made it to South America to their destination, however they were murdered by mercenaries. It was a blow to all of us when we learned their fate.

The following fall we got a new teacher whom we got along with. She'd assign us different duties in maintenance of the classroom. One of the favorites during warmer weather was clapping of the chalk erasers from the blackboards. You'd get to go outside where you'd pound the two erasers together as chalk dust took to the air. Something tells me, it's no longer being done due to health and safety issues.

Scott Ashe and I were friends in the same classroom that fall. And we had a crush on Vicky Byrd. We both vied to walk her home one October day. Friendship or not, when it came to girls, it was every boy for himself. Scott wanted to walk her home every bit as much as I did! And he made it plain to me in a note that he was the one to do it! Poor Scott was caught talking in class and ended up in after school detention. As Vicki and I walked out the door together, all Scott could managed in my direction was an evil eye. It was the right type of late-October day for walking home a girl. Dark expressive clouds laden with a potential snow overhead, colorful leaves blown by a gentle breeze on trees and ground added an air of mystery. And me, well I was enjoying the fact that we were walking home together, and hoped to do it every school day. However, it was not to be. Vicky lived in a red brick apartment building on West 47th Street between Brooklyn and Woburn Avenues. She was living with an aunt. Shortly after the walk she moved with her aunt out of the neighborhood - it was a sad moment for me and Scott. As to the competition between me and Scott, well, it was a friendly one, he shrugged his shoulders and we went on with our friendship.

Robert Saggio was and still is another great friend of mine. Memphis Elementary was just down the street where Bob lived on Henritze with his brother Johnny and sister Rosemary. Bob and I would often go over to his house for lunch. We'd sometimes catch kidde host Captain Penny on WEWS TV 5 to watch the Three Stooges shorts or look at three or four Playboy's stuck in his dad's dresser while his dad and mom were at work. His dad even had the original Marilyn Monroe calendar hanging on a bedroom wall. Thankfully we never got caught. Meanwhile, one weekend when the parents were gone, Bob and his sister decided to give me the beauty shop treatment. Mrs. Saggio was a beautician and had a complete set-up in her basement for her and Rosemary to use. They got tired of seeing me with dandruff and decided to give me a treatment. My dad never bought shampoo for us, he looked any way he could to save a penny. I had oily hair, and was forced to use bar soap to clean my scalp. Naturally I was always brushing dandruff out of my hair. In any case, on that weekend day, they talked me into joining them in the basement beauty shop where they sat me in the chair and washed and dried my hair - ended up going home with a spectacular and dandruff-free head of hair. Rosemary was into the Beatles from the very beginning, so was Bob. Robert called me on the phone telling me his sister just bought their first American released album called "Meet The Beatles" and invited me over to listen to it. I got there and listened along with Bob, Rosemary and Johnny - I was instantly hooked! Whenever Rosemary got a new Beatles album, I'd go over there to hear it first. Little did I know that one evening I would be the first to break the news to the radio audience in Greater Cleveland of John Lennon's murder on the streets of New York.

Tom Forcee was the playboy of Memphis Elementary. His mom was an exotic dancer at the Roxy Burlesque Theater in downtown Cleveland. He lived on Brooklyn Avenue - our backyards bordered each other. Tom was ultra handsome to the girls, and he and I became great friends. I was into electronics as Tom knew and one time he and I dragged an old tv chassis into his basement to build a time machine. We made a mess pulling apart components from the chassis, and managed to partially build the device. However, we lacked solder and an iron to complete the job, causing us to abandon the project. Tom had a younger sister and eventually a new-born brother. Tom's father didn't live with him. The Man From UNCLE was a popular NBC show at the time, and it also released a collection of paperback books based on the show. Tom was an avid collector of the books, and occasionally would let me borrow copies after he read them. However, Tom was a bit of a storyteller saying his dad was a producer on the show. One day he told Robert, Terry Trill and I his father would be giving us each a Rolls Royce. The plan was to drop them from helicopters. Reality check here... Tom's father was not associated with the MGM-produced (we didn't realize it at the time) show, second, we were all too young to drive and third, its doubtful the FAA would look too kindly on helicopters dropping Rolls Royces in the backyard of a residential neighborhood. However, we enjoyed the participation of the ride! Tom was the more sexually-advanced of all of us. First, his mom was an exotic dancer, second, he had an older woman living in the unit above whom he claimed to have sex with...that part I do believe. However, Tom was looking for someone his own age to date - he had a crush on Margaret Candow who lived on Woburn very close to Pearl Road. He knew Margaret and I were friends, and asked me to introduce him to her. Here I was friends with the Playboy Of Old Brooklyn (the equivalent of the FONZ) and he was bashful about introducing himself to a girl. No problem, I felt honored to do it. So we went to her house and Margaret came out to meet us, I made the official introduction to each, and a few moments later excused myself and walked away - letting them spend some time together. I didn't know what happened with the relationship and didn't ask.

Mike Timko was a fairly easy to get along with individual. He was rugged-looking for his age - he eventually grew up to be a roofer. Mike lived about a block north of Memphis Elementary School in an area where houses were really packed together. Mike was great at bartering - with Timko, one usually ended up at the bottom of the trade. One time, my little black Playboy 6 transistor pocket radio went on the blink and Mike said his older brother could fix it for me. So, I gave him the radio - never got it back. I went to his house and Mike took me to his basement where they had an old Atwater-Kent antique radio which included the horn. For those wondering why a radio would have a horn, they were the predecessor to speakers. It was a squat box with three dials on the front - very popular in the 1920's. However as the 1930's came in, the first speakers were beginning to appear, by the end of the decade, horns all but disappeared. In any case, lost track of Mike after Memphis Elementary, briefly bumping into him at a Walmart store in Strongsville, Ohio with his wife and kids. I should have asked him if he still had my transistor radio?-)

One time Tom Forcee and I went to ring doorbells as a prank! We'd hit several houses in sequence on Brooklyn Avenue and ran for it. Tom and I finally got to one house and rang the bell, no sooner had we got off the porch when its owner let the dog out, chasing us down the street. Another time Tom and I were riding our bicycles down Pearl Road and got thirsty, we each had change on us and went up to a dingy old gas station to get two bottles from the vending machine. There was nobody in the office at that moment, so while Tom watched the bikes, I went in putting the money in the machine and got two bottles of Coca Cola. No sooner had I turned around when I saw the owners' pit bull in the garage portion growling at me. I carefully backed-out, talking gently to the dog, saying we didn't mean to disturb him, got to my bike telling Tom quietly to get on his bike, not to question me, I'd explain in a few minutes. Tom did as I said. As we rode away quickly, the dog chased us for about a block before turning around. Tom and I shared a nervous laugh, vowing we'd never go there again.

My parents knew about Tom's mother's occupation and didn't approve of my relationship with Tom. They would forbid me to be friends with him. However, that didn't stop either of us. If we wanted to talk, we'd simply meet behind the garage - we were not doing anything wrong and there was no corrupting of our morals through our friendship. Their worries were simply unwarranted! Aside from that, as an adult, Tom eventually became a church pastor!

Ruby Yanelli was a real pain-in-the-ass. She was schizophrenic and a 'semi-closet' drinker. I have to think even her husband Gene on many days wondered why he married her in the first place? My mom really didn't have a lot of friends in the neighborhood, so she accepted the occasional oddball. Ruby was as odd as it got! Ruby lived with Gene in a stone duplex a few doors down. She didn't seem to go out much, and she and her husband would watch a lot of travelogues on their projector. Nothing wrong with that, pretty educational pursuit? Gene was into shortwave listening and had a really great multiband shortwave receiver. Most likely the only way he could tune-out Ruby. Later-on I found out Gene had another hobby I'm sure Ruby would not be too fond of had she known? Gene was an okay guy, generally easy to get along with. He had a real thing for Olson Electronics tabloid-style catalogs. Then at least from my vantage point, he really didn't have that much going for him. Where Ruby was a 'stay-at-home (trust me, no one would want her in their employ for long)' housewife, Gene worked as a short order cook at a sit-down restaurant in Parma known as Beardens.

Ruby was envious when she saw other women with children and she and Gene had none. So, one day she talked Gene into having a foster child - female of course. Keep in mind, Ruby was well into her fifties, but because of her alcoholism and mentality, she looked like she was in her late sixties - imagine if you would, 'an over the hill' Betty Boop doll come to life in a deranged way? So, they got a young lady of five who looked like she'd been through hell and didn't survive it too well. Trust me, while with Ruby, her problems and prospects wouldn't get much better. First, Ruby kept the child housebound - like in not allowed outside. Second, she taught the young girl to shit and piss on the floor inside of stalls in public restrooms rather then get germs from a toilet seat. And of course, the little girl got to watch Ruby hitting the bottle and other odd behavior. Eventually, social workers removed the little girl from the Yanelli household.   

At the time, Mark was about about five or six years-old and Ghoulardi on WJW TV 8 was a horror movie host. Aside from adding silly sound effects to the films, there were funny or unusual clips. One featured an old man who looked like the human equivalent of Popeye The Sailor Man showing his only tooth, while the sound portion was a group singing "Ba Ba Hoo Mau Mau" from an obscure 45 single sided record. For some reason, this really terrified Mark - and Dan and I made the most of it! We'd walk up to him at times and suddenly blurt out "Ba Ba Hoo Mau Mau, Ba Ba Hoo Mau Mau" and poor Mark would practically shoot to the ceiling and try to find a place to hide. For Mark at least, this may be the worst time of Mark's life concerning Dan and I.

I was at the age when I sought out old multiband radios and tv sets. To be honest, I was hoping to find an old color tv set dragged on a tree lawn I could spirit home on my trusty Radio Flyer wagon - no such luck! Found black and white tv sets - but they were usually missing tubes - the tube chart and model number on the chassis long worn-out, or the neck of the crt picture tube broken off to prevent an accidental implosion while waiting for the garbage truck. However, I had some luck here and there with old radios. Some featured genuine hardwood and save for a bad tube, were in pretty good shape. Perhaps prized most of all were old Zenith multiband console radios made back in the 1930's and 1940's!

At graduation from Memphis Elementary, each of the graduating students received a small ceramic bell. We all looked forward to reaching junior high school. And it meant a lot of goodbyes all the way around. Our world was changing from being lumped into one classroom to now being in different classrooms for different classes. Robert Saggio, Tom Forcee, Scott Ashe, Margaret Candow were a;; headed in different directions. We didn't realize it at that moment, but we'd soon be seeing a lot less of each other. Gone were the days of having lunch at Bob's parents house watching the Three Stooges on the Captain Penny show, as well reading copies of his dad's three or four Playboys from his drawers. It was pretty much kids stuff! No more getting together with Tom Forcee and ringing doorbells among other things - in Tom's case, he was moving to Lakewood with his mother, her boyfriend and Tom's sister. Each of us knew that a lot of extended friends would be gone from our lives.

Summer was a time to reflect the change going on in each of our lives. Old friends passing into faint memory, many names already forgotten. For each of us was the coming adventure of junior high school. But for the next three months it was the good old summertime we each looked forward to. For me, it was the Cleveland Public Library at Henritze and Pearl Road, Jefftronics Surplus Electronics also on Pearl, as well hanging out at WVIZ TV 25 where I had a chance to rub elbows with WIXY 1260's Joe Finan, an Italian television director named Ralph Gigliono, station manager Betty Cope, sportscaster and James Ford Rhodes High School Assistant Principle, Mike Massa as well future WEWS TV 5 cameramen, Harry Dorsey and Dave Branchick, who would later be known as traffic 'copter reporter Dave Baron. At WVIZ 25 I would also bump into meeting national celebrities coming into town on book tours as well.

Charles Anderson Mooney Junior High School on Tate in Old Brooklyn was quite a change from elementary school. First, one now had lockers to put their stuff. And rather stay in one classroom for pretty much the whole day, classes were cut up into forty minutes per subject and you'd generally have different teachers for each of those subjects. Where Mooney was better than most junior highs in Cleveland is that it was a progressive school. There was the electronic technician courses, a really nice planetarium, and a small tv studio that broadcast math, science and social studies among other subjects. The broadcast could be seen in the school of course - it could also be seen in homes surrounding the school. Most of the stuff was pretty boring - it used the school's teachers as talent, and students on the production side. Students were also taught how to run the planetarium. Overall, it offered some interesting things to do. There was even a nice sized movie theater where students could watch theatrical productions during the second half of their lunch break, if they could 'pony-up' the quarter to catch the fifteen minute run. They showed the movies like old-fashioned serials, where the same feature film ran was run over a five day period. I was mostly involved with the tv studio and planetarium, but sometimes I'd help run the arc projectors in the movie theater.

The teachers at Mooney Junior High School were pretty good, of course there were some who were not. Then again, those opinions of which teachers were good or bad were pretty much subjective. The principle, Mr. Belcher and the the assistant principle, Mr. Laird were very basic administrators and except for a few students were not overly liked. I will say between the two, the principle was the more human one. The lunchroom was nice, at that time they actually did have short order cooks - although the stuff was pretty mediocre institutionalized stuff where they would simply open cans and heat it up. No real imaginative cuisine, but hey it didn't poison anyone. Study hall usually took place in the cafeteria or the theater when both were not operative. The school itself was built about three or four years before I attended it, so it was still pretty much new. The gym was pretty good, they used dividers to separate the girls from the boys. Outside was the usual blacktop playground and parking lot, with a grassy field for junior varsity football practice, and included a small path for track. On rainy days, the track team would practice running in the halls on two floors after regular classes had ended for the day.

Speaking of track, I found myself as one of the track team managers one year. Nope, I couldn't run worth shit - hey, at least I admit it!-) However, a managers duties included helping in getting together whatever track teams used, and would act as a coordinator as the young athletes ran around the outside track for practice, or in the halls on foul weather days. Some of the guys could be real clowns. If the practice was inside and they were not in the eyes of the coach, they'd shoot moons at the cleaning ladies. Of course, some cleaning ladies didn't fully appreciate the show, and they'd approach me to complain and tell the coach what was going on. Uh, lets stop here and think about this for a moment? Me go to coach and rat out on the track stars? Uh, I don't think so. I'd end up with Ben Gay in my shorts and the title stooge, along with being knocked into the lockers from time-to-time...no thanks, have no desire to end up as a junior high school social pariah. I'd tell the guys when they ran past the next time to knock it off, the cleaning ladies were on the warpath, and they'd be seeing the coach for detention - I'd done my duty and no-one got hurt in the process...including me!-)

Junior high school is also the first place I ran into junkies - well only one actually. It's doubtful the guy lived for long after he left junior high. He'd sniff model airplane glue - didn't look too bright. He'd have a plastic lunch bag, squirt a tube of clear highly toxic glue into the bag, hold the open end of the bag tightly against his nose and mouth and breath in the toxic fumes in really hard and pretending he was really cool about it, actually he looked dumber than shit. To our knowledge, he was doing other drugs as well. By the end of the 9th grade, his brain was fried and his future was over.