Author: Bill Boyd

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– It was sometime in early November of 2020, when I realized that I had neglected to get my annual flu shot. I usually got it in September, so a few days later, a friend took me to one of those “drive-thru” clinics that were set up to give flu shots during the Covid thing. I figured they would be mobbed with people, and…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– In 1938, my mother saw an announcement in the Marysville Tribune that a cooking school was coming to town. It would be held in the high school auditorium on West 6th Street. I think it was sponsored by the gas company. My mother was excited about the whole thing. She liked to cook and could learn to make some new dishes. A special…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When I was in high school during the late 1940s, I saw a lot of fads in mens and boys clothing. Take shoes, for example. At one time or another, there were penny loafers, saddle shoes and white bucks. I think all three of those reached “fad status” at one time or another. Pants were another story. The legs of most men’s and…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When I was a kid, my dad was a wrestling fan. Every summer he and a couple of his friends would make a trip to a place in Columbus called Haft’s Acre. It was an outdoor arena for professional boxing and wrestling. The venue was located at the corner of Park Street and Goodale Boulevard, across the street from Goodale Park. As the…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– I did reasonably well in most of my high school classes. I wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, but I wasn’t the dimmest either. Some of the math courses, maybe trigonometry and geometry, were the most challenging. Our math teacher, Nell Kleopfer, was always talking about something called “pi.” She said that it was a number I could use to solve all…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– It started as a typical summer day in 1945. I was 13 years old, and I was sitting in the swing on our front porch petting a neighborhood dog named “Whiskers.” He actually belonged to the Wall family down the street, but he spent quite a bit of time at our house. Then suddenly two cars came driving down Fifth Street with their…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– In 1940 when I was eight years old, my dad had three friends who got together with him about once a month to play cards. They played “penny ante” poker. In November it was my dad’s turn to host the game at our house on South Court Street. My dad scheduled the game for a Tuesday night in early November. It was election…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When I was a little kid, about five years old, I had a real sweet tooth. I was especially fond of some kind of cream filled chocolate cupcakes my mother got from the Omar Bakery truck that stopped at our house every week. It was a red and white truck that I would recognize anywhere, and when I saw it coming down the…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– It was some time in the spring of 1939 when I was in the first grade that our teacher, Miss Westlake, marched our whole class from the West School building to the high school to see a band concert. I had never before seen a concert, so I was really looking forward to it. The auditorium was packed with students. When the curtain…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When Dwight Eisenhower was elected President in 1952, he and his wife, Mamie, began taking vacations in Colorado, where the president went trout fishing. The presidential airplane, Columbine, flew them to Denver’s Lowery Air Force Base, where I was stationed at the time. On each visit I stood on the tarmac and watched the formal proceedings. In the summer of 1954, however, they…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When I was a kid, during the 1930s and 1940s, we had a wonderful vegetable garden behind our barn on West Fifth Street. Over the years, I think we grew just about every vegetable I can think of with one exception – asparagus. My mother said it was a perennial and it took up too much space in the garden. Then one day…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– It was Saturday afternoon, Nov. 30, 1968, and a Marysville man, Lawrence Dolan, was at work at the Conrad Monument Works, at the corner of Main and Fourth Street. He was working in a room at the back of the store, where they kept the company’s records. As he worked, he heard what sounded like the shattering of glass. Thinking it might be…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– As the 1948 MHS football season approached, Coach Paul Wenzel said he wanted me to be the team’s quarterback. I had never taken a single snap as quarterback. The previous year, I played end. But when your coach wants you to do something, you don’t ask questions. You just do it. As the first game approached, I think Coach Wenzel thought that, because…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When I was in high school, during the late 1940s, I took two years of Spanish. My teacher was a lady named Marguerite Williams, and she was one of my favorite teachers. In one of her classes during my senior year, we translated some stories about bullfighting in Spain. I wanted to learn more about bullfighting, so she recommended a book written in…

Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When you are a little kid, maybe six or seven years old, you see adults doing a lot of things that just don’t make sense. You might ask them why they are doing some of those things, but usually you just accept their strange behavior. Maybe you will understand when you get older. Let me give you an example. When I was a…