FUSSING ABOUT TODAY'S TEENAGERS. MAYBE 1950s GANG'S FUTURE CAN GIVE YOU HOPE

 

Teenagers today!

Much like 1950s teenagers!

 

When adults today complain about teenagers going to Hell in a handbasket because of the way they behave I have flashbacks to the 1950s when I part of the faceitiously named The Gang That Terrorized Marion County.

We were stupid, not mean and certainly not destructive.

Oh, we would have 2 of us in a car that drove into a Marion County drive-in theater after letting 4 or 5 others out of the vehicle to climb over the fence and get in free, have Drummond’s Restaurant fill the gallon jug we brought to them with draft beer so that we could go skinny-dipping in the West Fork River, steal watermelons to eat while we cavorted and once got thrown out of a Clarkburg theater when the late Ronnie “Cooley” Delovich couldn’t resist saying “Be nice, no fight” as the manager was admonishing us to pipe down so the adults could enjoy the movie.

We were the Daffy Dozen: Cooley, Anthony “Plumber” DeMary, Jr., Lawrence “Sonny” Godby, Jr., Robert “Satch” Kasper, Joe Manzo, and Jim “Judge” Starcher, all deceased, plus still alive Anthony Eates and Donald “Jake” Halpenny, who live in Fairmont, Duane Harbert, Frank “Bruno” Franze who lives in Slidell, Louisiana, Steven “Bucky” Satterfield, who lives in St. Albans, West Virginia, and me, John Olesky, who lives in Tallmadge, Ohio, which shares a border with Akron.

Bruno of Everson and Jake of Jackson Street in Monongah drove the getaway cars. Their fathers’ cars, actually.

Frank would drive one of his dad’s vehicles from their Everson home and pick up Gang members along the way. My house on Church Street in Monongah was the last stop. I could barely fit into the back of the truck bed because there were so many bodies already in it.

Or Don would cajole his father into letting him use the Henry J, which made a lot of noise the night it sideswiped a bridge on our way to Clarksburg so that Steven “Bucky” Satterfield could make it to the train in time to join the Navy after a night of drinking and partying. No injuries. The Henry J. got the worst of it. It was Kaiser’s experiment with small cars.

And then there was the night that Duane Harbert (I didn’t know his first name was Donald for another 60 years) drove the car owned by his father, Thoburn Elementary principal Frank Harbert. Police tracked dad down from the license plate after we were caught swimming at 3 a.m. in the Fairmont Field Club pool. Rich folks didn’t like the Monongah High kids playing without authorization in their pool.

If no one had access to an automobile, we would gather nightly at the bus stop between the Tropea Grocery and Carlot’s Grill to hitchhike to Fairmont for fun.

Despite these shenanigans we did OK as adults. Sonny Godby had two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Marine fighter pilot, I had a 42-year newspaper career in 4 states on 7 newspapers, Satch Kasper was a negotiator for Ford Motor Company with the United Auto Workers Union across the table, Jake Halpenny played clarinet in the United Mine Workers and Vingle bands for decades, Bucky Satterfield became a West Virginia Highway Patrolman and Joe Manzo survived his stint as a medic in the Korean War.

So, adults, maybe today’s teenagers driving you bonkers may be upstanding citizens of tomorrow the way the Daffy Dozen of us in the 1950s turned out to be.