Chapters from "TIME TRIALS"
• 11 •
A New Season
​
The summer of 1956 would be another growing experience. Work at the ‘50s drive-in resumed in late May, recreation around the southern lakes picked up where it left off, and summer baseball with the Grays was in full swing.
Again, my baseball availability represented two-thirds of the games, but I batted a team leading .423. This included two home runs and an abundance of teammates driven in. The lakes can be enchanting and entertaining in the summer, so I took advantage of having a driver’s license and becoming slightly more charming.
​
At my request, Coach Suchy lent me a pair of football shoes with which to help stay in shape over the summer. Roger devoted his spare time to drum playing, collecting baseball cards, and working at Sentry Foods. When we returned late summer for football practices, he had lengthened his lead over me in the wind sprints—and everyone else—by several yards. When the coach grilled me about my training, or lack thereof, my reply was simply the truth: “While I did wind sprints to maintain speed after a full day’s work, Roger sat around getting faster.” Judging by the coaches’ belly laughs, the message was clear—he was a natural and I wasn’t.
​
These were joyful times—and rather carefree—if not also affluent, driven by a blissful innocence, ignorance and naivety. The Great Depression was for history books with World War II rationing and scarcity vague memories. Opulence took us by storm, as the nation emerged from the war with factories humming, stores stocked with merchandise, and jobs plentiful.
​
With a driver's license in hand and my senior year of high school approaching, I was eager to own an automobile. That was until restaurateur, Mr. Wales, explained to me the economics of vehicle ownership. Darrell owned a two-door silver Oldsmobile coupe with white-wall tires that caught my eye. He already had two young children with a third on the way and was in the market for a roomier station wagon, the SUV (sport utility vehicle) equivalent of the era. I understand the station wagon, also called estate car, is making a comeback and cutting into the SUV market.
​
Owning a car, Wales explained, involved more than paying for gas and timely oil changes—not to mention buying the stylish mobile that would consume my summer earnings. He went on to say that ownership involved registration, license, insurance, tune-ups, tire maintenance, and deprecation. I was good enough at math to realize that a car could leave me penniless with nothing for a fashionable wardrobe and dating. I was driven (no pun intended) by self-imposed peer pressure and modeling.
1957 Cherolet Bel Air
Moderation was for grandparents, frugality for tightwads, and conserving for politics. We thought little of driving gas-guzzling cars run on cheap fuel, didn’t care about recycling with garbage dumps out of sight, and discarded beverage bottles out car windows on to the roadside. Environmentalism had yet to enter our language, consciousness, and Earth Day (1970) still more than a decade in the future.
Earth Day was the brainchild of Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, who had been governor a decade earlier. I recall being pleasantly astounded how quickly the nation came to embrace environmentalism. This was much like when America woke up and accepted gay and lesbian rights in the 2010s.
​
Most of us had a diminished understanding of the public good. What we did have was a robust self-interest nurtured by a highly individualistic society with a penchant for material goods. One only had to witness the transformation of teenagers’ wardrobes to understand that we were poised to be hyper consumers given shrewd hidden persuaders and clever marketing.
​
What did happen that summer of 1956 (June 29 to be precise) is that one the nation’s most public-responsible legislation was passed—the Federal Aid Highway Act better known as the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act. This was the last major infrastructure project in the United States, and it changed how Americans traveled by car and traversed the national landscape. It also facilitated transporting cargo nationwide and was a significant boost to the U.S. economy.
Yet, it accelerated dependence on fossil fuels (petroleum) to drive powerful and inefficient automobiles. In time this created deeper environmental issues and foreign policy entanglements, as the U.S demand for oil created misadventures in the Middle East, particularly with Iran.
​
We teenagers, and adults for the most part, were little aware of the impact of this public project that would take several decades to complete and span nearly 50,000 miles. Along with the G.I. Bill enacted 12 years earlier, it was the last comprehensive public funding undertaken. Not that this nation has not been in serious need of more foundation work given our troubled bridges, waterways, sewerage systems, and electric grids along with a dearth of public transportation and high-speed rail. Such is beginning to change with the trillion-dollar infrastructure legislation passed by Congress in 2021.
​
We have fallen significantly behind other industrial countries and emerging economies. The primary reason for this is an economic system that favors private consumption and scorns national planning. Driven by massive amounts of advertising, persuasion, and marketing, we devote 70 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to personal consumption. Most Americans don’t see the connection between such opulence and our declining ability to compete globally.
Football began in earnest during the week of the county fair conducted on Walworth County grounds adjacent to the Harris Athletic Field. Our hopes were high for the new season, but we under-performed. The opening non-conference game against Milton High ended in a tie. During the first half, I fumbled near the goal line then suffered a chest injury on what promised to be a 40-yard dash to the end zone off tackle. It was compliments of linebacker Jerry Chase, who collared me by the shoulder pads and flung me to the turf. In maintaining possession, the ball pressed against my chest as I hit the ground. This set me back a few weeks. Jerry and I would be teammates in college the next four years.
​
Three games later against Wilmot High, dependable Bill Riese broke his collarbone, and a once speedy backfield was hobbled. Roger, given his usual elusiveness, scored nine touchdowns and won Southern Lakes all-conference second-team honors. As a team, ours was a 3-4-1 (win-loss-tie) record.
​
We under-performed that fall, and I accept some responsibility. Yet, while we admired Coach Suchy for his spunk, he was lacking as a football coach. His tackling technique defied reason and likely contributed to Bill’s non-contact injury. He also had us scrimmage in the endzone before gametime, to simulate contact, and run for extra points in an era before the two-point conversion. I thought this a missed opportunity, as I had a strong kicking leg.
​
The Elks salvaged the final game against the Lake Geneva Resorters at home on a beautiful late fall evening. The game was played near midfield for the most part with each team making brief surgical sorties to the end zone. In the second half, I fielded a punt at midfield. Employing our patented crisscross pattern, I handed the ball to Roger who sprinted down the west sideline for the deciding touchdown in a 14 to 13 victory.
​
Two years later Lake Geneva High consolidated with Genoa City to form Badger High School that opened in the fall 1958.
​
The SLC's premier and undefeated team that fall was the Whitewater Whippets with five players on the all-conference first team. In an era when most players went two-ways—offense and defense—the first team had just 11 position honorees. In a recent study, Whitewater was labeled the poorest city in Wisconsin based on low pay and job opportunities, despite it being the home of a thriving college in the state university system. Its paucity showed in the team’s one set of uniforms—red to match the school colors.
​
This was a decade when teams began wearing two sets of uniforms—white or silver for home games and the school colors for away contests. But not the Whippets. When Wilmot visited one season wearing its traditional away crimson uniforms, Whitewater changed into soiled, now off-white, practice jerseys. This also was an era of semi-pro football, and southeast Wisconsin had its Delavan Red Devils. When the team updated its threads, the old red jerseys were donated to Whitewater High School.
​
I was ready for the basketball season that lay ahead. The varsity underclassmen from the previous year—Morrow, Platts, Roger and me, along with Jim Mason, junior transfer from Woodstock, Illinois, made up the starting five. Despite none of us being over 6’0”, we were a scrappy group who played tenacious defense and ran the fast break with abandon. What “tall” guys initially were on the team—seniors Carl Nelson, Dale Mitchell, and junior Jim Curley—quit after sitting on the bench for three games. Coach Suchy then demoted sophomores—Ron Pearsall and Bob Wolf—in exchange for two from the B-team—Don Koepnick and Bill Lock.
RVS - Jump Shooter
This left us with eight varsity players, including reserve Bill Riese. Pearsall and Wolf were physically mature and on the varsity football team, but the coach knew his basketball. Koepnick and Lock became our first guys off the bench and one-two scorers in the Southern Lakes Conference two years later. Both went on to play in the Wisconsin State College Conference—Don at UW-River Falls, where he was conference scoring champion, and Bill at UW-Stevens Point. Koepnick became a successful high school coach and was inducted both into his college Hall of Fame and Wisconsin Coaches Hall of Fame.
​
“Senioritis” had set in to some extent; nevertheless, it was an idyllic year and era. This was 1957 after all, the peak of good times with classic 1950s music, sock-hop dances in the Kinne gymnasium, sleek tail fin cars, the classic ’57 Chevy, drive-in restaurants, and “green and grassy” sports.
​
Milwaukee baseball peaked that year as the Braves triumphed over the Yankees in the World Series with its trio of legends—Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn, and a young Henry Aaron. “Hammerin Hank” led the National League in home runs and runs batted in while snagging the Most Valuable Player award.
​
The Braves had arrived in Milwaukee four years earlier from Boston and were the toast of the town and state. Such was a time when players worked off-season jobs in Milwaukee and lived next door to neighbors in the city and West Allis.
​
I was sensitive to but dimly aware of the emerging civil rights movement. Three years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had handed down its landmark unanimous decision in Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka (1954) declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional. This nullified the “separate but equal” doctrine announced over a half-century earlier in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ruling.
​
Tension across the South was high as communities with segregated schools resisted integration. Later that year on September 4, 1957, the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students, tried to enroll in Central High School but were turned away by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus and the state militia. The federal government stepped up and, under the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhauer, the nine students were enrolled. These kids and their families endured the ridicule and slurs of white students and adults.
​
Racism extended to other regions as Black families left the South for better livelihoods in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago. Later, job seekers and families made their way to Milwaukee, but also to Beloit, where industrial jobs were available. In 1929 with help of a real estate agent in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, members of the Southside African-American community purchased 83 acres of land five miles east of Lake Geneva just off of Highway 50. The development named Lake Ivanhoe brought Black families to vacation and live in the small community.
Branch Rickey signs Jackie Robinson - 1947
Lake Ivanhoe Campground
Racism existed in Walworth County, and Elkhorn, Wisconsin was hardly an exception. Growing up, it was generally understood that Elkhorn was a “sundown town” meaning no Blacks could stay in town after sunset. Nowhere was such a law found in city ordinances, but nonetheless, Blacks were not welcome. Delavan High, six miles to the west and our major sports opponent, had a black cheerleader, Loretta Phillips, who was turned away from the Kinne Gym when the Comets visited Elkhorn in 1956.
​
Elkhorn also had a Black shoeshine man, Jack Dale, at the barber shop, who lived in Delavan. This may or may not have been a coincidence.
​
It was not uncommon for social studies class discussions to become heated when the topic turned to civil rights and school integration. I was confronted one day by a classmate calling me a “nigger lover.” The attitude of some students reflected the sentiment among many adults, who tended to be discreet in their racism, unlike what existed in the American South.
​
Even though Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson had integrated baseball ten years earlier, all was far from peaceful across the game and even within the Braves. Slugger Henry Aaron, along with Black teammates Bill Bruton, Wes Covington, George Crowe, and Jim Pendleton, felt the sting of a few players in the clubhouse and on the field. Yet, I had the impression that the influence of African-American and Latino players was diminishing the racism in my community.