Example Stories
Living in Hershey:
Example #1:
Stump’s Garage (my father’s business) was the only place in Palmdale to have an auto repaired. He also sharpened lawnmowers and did general repair work on most any mechanical gadget. It was a favorite hang out place for many area men as well as the neighborhood kids my age. Dad bought the business in 1936 and continued to run it until 1990. During World War II he was the Civil Defense Director and Air Raid Warden for Palmdale and had an air whistle on the roof of the garage to alert neighbors of possible raids. Located at 1359 E. Chocolate Avenue. It is now Longchamps Auto Detailing business.
Example #2:
Street hockey was a favorite sport. Many of us worked as ushers at the Sports Arena and thus the interest in hockey. In addition, Hank Lauzon, a Hershey Bears player, lived in Palmdale and would supply us with broken sticks which we would tape up and use.
Education in Hershey:
Example #1:
The only thing was that we had no snow days, we had no bus. We went to school, we walked from where we lived to the school and we walked home, whether it was raining or shining or snowing or sleeting, what have you. We got to school the best way we could. As a matter of fact, the kids living out in the country, they would come into school with their boots and everything and they'd come in the classroom and the teacher would have them sit alongside the radiators next to the windows. They'd take their boots off and dry their socks, and they'd sit with their feet up against the radiators.
Example #2:
I miss the old pool and the park, for one thing. I remember, as a Hershey High School band leader, we would assemble in front of what is now the middle school, in the parking lot, and we would march down towards the factory and up Chocolate Avenue, turn between the department store and the bank, and move into that area on just this side of the bridge. At that point I would dismiss the band. I'd say, "Let's see who's going to be last." The park, of course, was wide open in those times, in those days. So helter skelter, everybody took their own route to go directly through the park, and then we would assemble outside the gates of the stadium and march onto the field. Those were great days.
Growing up at Hershey Industrial School/Milton Hershey School:
I remember the farm home, or the unit, as we called it, was also relatively new, and it was so shiny and clean and all the linoleum floors were so shiny. And the students, and we had about twenty-five, I guess, that were there, I remember when we went in to see it, they were walking around on the floors on cut-off pants legs which they used as shiners, and they kept the floors so shiny. I was later to find out, after we were enrolled permanently, that that was one of the many chores that the students at the unit performed, the shining of the floors. The house was exceptionally clean.
Hershey Park
The swimming pool was right next to the Ballroom, and if you went down there later on when you got interested in young ladies and you didn't have the money or weren't old enough to go to the ball room, you'd go in swimming in the afternoon, four, five o'clock, and then you could sit along in the sand--they had a great beach--and listen to Glenn Miller, Harry James, Jimmy Dorsey, etc. All the great bands in the world came to Hershey's Ballroom.