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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– Some time ago, I wrote a column about a boy named Max Biederman. He was a first grade classmate of mine in 1938. He sat right across the aisle from me, and we became friends. Max was kind…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– In the summer of 1944, I got a job working at Oakdale Cemetery. I was one of several boys who did the mowing and upkeep of the place. They needed quite a few boys, because we had no…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– Sometime during the mid 1970s, I bought a canoe. Don’t ask me why I did that, as I don’t have a clue. Nevertheless, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn’t know the first thing…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– The Ohio Women’s Reformatory has been a part of Marysville for a long time. When I was a kid growing up during the thirties and forties, it looked more like a small college campus, than a penal institution.…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– One of the nice things about living on West Fifth Street during the 1930s was the parades. Whenever there was a parade in town, the route often took it right past our house. We could sit on our…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– With the exception of Christmas, my favorite holiday as a kid in the 1930s was the Fourth of July. What I remember most was the fireworks. I’m not talking about organized nighttime displays. I’m talking about the firecrackers…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– In 1942, Marysville High School got a new football coach named John Ehlen. I heard some of the older boys, who were on his team, talk about him. They really liked that guy. I could see why after…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– In the late 1920s and early 1930s, there was a man named Tom Randall, who worked at the O. M. Scott and Brother Hardware Store on South Main Street. He worked there for years. Tom was a hard…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– It was sometime in the summer of 1929 when my sister, Maryann, was about six years old. She had a friend named Martha Elliott, who lived a few houses west of ours, in the big white house at…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– Some time during the 1920s, my grandmother, Hettie Tracy, got a visit from a young man named Claire Jarvis. He was the projectionist at the Strand Theatre at 118 East Fifth Street, where he showed silent movies. He…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– I had several paper routes when I was a kid during the 1940s. On one of them, I delivered the “Columbus Dispatch.” I picked up my papers every day at Bill Marsh’s house on Third Street. He lived…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– During the 1930s, my grandmother, Hettie Tracy, always kept a few chickens in our back yard. She didn’t raise them for their eggs. She raised them for “emergencies.” You see, it was pretty common for us to have…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– The decade of the sixties was a crazy time. The “cold war” was heating up, and Nikita Khrushchev was threatening to “bury us.” Then there was the Cuban missile crisis, and a “hot war” seemed possible. Things got…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– When you were a kid, did you ever want something so much you could almost taste it? That’s the way I was when I was about nine or ten years old. I had inherited my older sister’s bicycle.…
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. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– I never knew my grandfather Tracy. He passed away before I was born, but I saw traces of him wherever I looked around our house on West Fifth Street. He was a concrete contractor, and his work could…