1951-52 Northside School, Mrs. McKenna's third-grade class

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By DARIA MARUSEVICH '61

Lots of familiar eight or nine year old faces. This was Mrs. McKenna's class at Northside. This was the first class in Northside for me and a whole group of kids in the picture. Before that we were in Wisdom Lane (quonset hut) for 1st grade and Abbey Lane for 2nd grade. Also it was the first school we were able to walk to; oh the independence!

This is the best I can do with names. This was a time when the girls were still playing paper dolls and the boys were exploring in the "Old Motor Parkway" and playing football in the street. I can remember it was the first time I heard of "pizza pie", Flash Gordon was on TV, and we had until the street lights went on to play outside - then it was inside or else. I remember these were wonderful times.

I didn't like the teacher, she just didn't like me at all and in the end it turned into quite the issue and she was dismissed, enough said.

In the class picture:

Going from front to back along the left side by the wall:
1st row: x, Mollie Feit
2nd row: Gloria x, Dawn Robie
3rd row: x, x
4th row: x, Beth Kramer
5th row: x, Bob Bonacci

Right side of picture going from front to back:
1st row: x, Daria Marusevich
2nd row: Corinne Norgren, Daryl Dittko
3rd row: x, x
4th row: x, Jimmy Judson
5th row: Valerie Mascara, x
6th row: x, x

Along back wall standing left to right:
x, x Cherry, Corky Cybriwsky, Jay Miner, Doug x
_________________________

Caption assistance provided by Wally Linder '61. Obviously, more help is needed to fill in the blanks.

Warren Zaretsky, class of 1960, on location in Moscow

My globetrotting high school classmate, Warren Zaretsky, attended the very recently concluded Rob Nilsson Retrospective at the Moscow International Film Festival. I have absolutely no idea who Nilsson is but I enjoy travel pictures and Warren keeps me up to date on his numerous adventures. He has emailed me photos from all over the planet, including China, Spain, Canada and Costa Rica.

The Moscow photos include Warren in front of a statue of novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, behind which is the Lenin Library. A man with a sophisticated pallet, it would be difficult to imagine him eating at a Dunkin' Donuts unless someone else was buying. I happen to enjoy seeing signs adorning familiar food franchises in languages other than English. Remind me to show you my photo of a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop I shot in Vietnam.

Among Warren's pictures is one of a building with lettering that looks like your optometrist's eye chart. Since I am almost as worldly as wandering Warren, I was able to translate it into "Lenin". My guess was that the building is Lenin's tomb. Actually my guess was correct, confirmed via a Google search.

You never know where globetrotting Warren will be visiting next. Stay tuned.

Photos of Levittowner Mickey Rutner during his baseball career, one with the fabled Connie Mack

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By FRANK BARNING

Starting at the age of about 10, I wanted to be a baseball player when I grew up. By the time I was a junior at Division Avenue High School in 1959, the painful realization hit me that I needed a new goal. My varsity baseball "career" for the Blue Dragons consisted of two trips to the plate.

Through the years, my respect for good baseball players grew. Of course, those I hold in highest esteem made it to Major League Baseball, which is known in the business as "The Show". The term was popularized in my favorite baseball movie, "Bull Durham".

There was a man in early Levittown who had been to "The Show", albeit briefly. He had three sons, one of whom was in my class at Division, Toby Rutner. The other sons were Paul and Richard. Their dad was the late Mickey Rutner and if you check this blog's index (on the right hand side of this page), there are four links to stories about Mickey. Check them out.

Paul Rutner, a graduate of Levittown Memorial High School, has provided us with three photos taken during his dad's career. Except for 12 games with the Philadelphia Athletics at age 28 in 1947, Mickey toiled exclusively in the minor leagues. Our blog stories in the archives will fill you in on Mickey's career, family and his coaching of Levittown boys.

The 1947 photo posted above of him in an Athletics uniform is with fabled manager and team owner Connie Mack, who is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Mack won and lost more games than any other manager. The others shots were taken while he played in the minor leagues for San Antonio (shown sliding) and with Birmingham (standing next to the man with a bat).

My friend Arnie Galeota, class of 1961, wrote a tribute to Mickey which closed with the line, "Mickey Rutner was a man to respect just by the way he treated everyone, the way he carried himself and boy could he play baseball!"

For early Levittown kids, the main focus of summer was often a beach or a pool

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* In living color is Linda Bishop, class of 1963, in 1966 when she was 20.

* Toni Crescenzo Gelfer, class of 1968, at about age five on 203 Kingfisher. She is center front with cousins in front yard pool.

* Levittown hot tub in 1953. Kids not identified.

* Leslie Sands Bell (left) and Andrea Ferrari Vail, both class of 1968, at Jones Beach in 1959.

* Franne Newman, class of 1960, in 1957

Mello-Rolls history and a Welcome Back Kotter memory; up your nose with a rubber hose

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By FRANK BARNING

Our previous blog post included a 60-year old photo of Marilyn Monsrud Frese eating a Mello-Roll at Jones Beach. Now we offer some Mello-Roll history. A Google search yielded interesting information:

The Mello-Roll cone was of the "waffle" variety and not of the "sugar-cone" variety which was crunchy. The stem of the cone had a flat bottom instead of a point. On the top it had a rectangular opening about 2.5 inches by about 1.25 inches in which nested the Mello-Roll. The ice cream was a cylinder a bit larger than a flashlight battery and it had a paper wrapper with a tab that ran along it lengthwise. There was an art to placing the roll in the cone, and then pulling the paper off as the roll rotated. It only came in vanilla, it appears, but some people remember chocolate.

They were popular in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. Many people remember them served at Jones Beach in the 1940s and 1950s. They were sometimes spelled “Mell-O-Rolls,” perhaps like “Jell-O".

The television show "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975-1979) was based on comedian Gabriel Kaplan’s life, as expressed in his 1970s off-color comedy album "Holes and Mello-Rolls". Kaplan, born in 1945, played the role of Gabe Kotter. One joke line on the TV show — “Up your nose with a rubber hose!” — was originally "Up your hole with a Mello Roll!", according to Kaplan. That's a chilling image.

I remember a taunt used by some Levittown boys at least a dozen years before "Welcome Back, Kotter". It was "Up your hole with a Tootsie Roll." The reply was, "Up your hole with a fish hook. It doesn't rhyme but it hurts." We were so clever.

There was also this sweet exchange;

Up your hole with a Tootsie Roll,
Twice as far with a Hershey Bar,
All the way with a Milky Way.

Kaplan is now a professional poker player who spends a great deal of time in Las Vegas, home of your blogger for the past six years. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Kaplan has earned over $1.7 million in poker tournaments since he started playing seriously in 1979. In 2010 he made $145,000."

If I happen to cross his path here in Sin City, I will greet the Brooklyn-born Kaplan with "Up your hole with a Mello-Roll". Perhaps he will smile, or give me the famous Brooklyn middle-finger salute.

Memories of the Jones Beach pool and Mello-Rolls. It seems like yesterday, but it was long ago.

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By FRANK BARNING

Many early Levittowners have fond memories, some 50 or more years later, of fun times spent at nearby Jones Beach. The picture of four-year old Marilyn Monsrud Frese triggers remembrances for the 1963 Division Avenue High School graduate.

"The photo of me in the Jones Beach chair (note the sea horse JB logo), eating one of those ice cream cones they used to sell with the ice cream roll wrapped in paper, was after a little mishap I had in the Jones Beach pool," she said. "I knew how to swim thanks to the Levittown pools, so my parents decided to enter me in a swimming race at the Jones Beach pool."

Marilyn got into the water, as the race began, and discovered that she could reach the bottom with her little feet. "So I decided I would walk my way across the pool. Being I wasn't a fast swimmer, I figured that would be a better way to get to the other side quicker. What I didn't know was that the pool got deeper in the middle."

So away Marilyn walked with all the parents cheering their kids on. "As my head went under, I remember thinking, okay I'll come up again soon. So I kept right on walking and walking and walking until my dad jumped in and pulled me out. I guess the lifeguards didn't notice I was missing. Then mom and dad bought me that ice cream because I was crying that they didn't let me finish the race."

That picture was snapped about 60 years ago. "Funny how I can remember stuff like that, but can't remember half of my graduating class," she said. Bob Seger summed it up when he wrote and sang, "It seems like yesterday, but it was long ago".

MORE ABOUT MELLO-ROLLS

Our next blog post will provide some Mello-Roll history and its tie-in to the hit 1970s TV sitcom, "Welcome Back, Kotter" which starred Gabe Kaplan.

Vintage photos of Division Avenue High School siblings

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Siblings shown here are:

* Howard Whidden (class of 1962) in 1952 with his sister Dottie (class of '67). Notice the state of the art TV for its time, but certainly not a 50-inch high-def flat-screen, not to mention color.

* Cliff Fromm's Bar Mitzvah reception. Cliff is class of 1960 and sister Michelle, age 10, graduated in 1963.

* Carol (class of 1964) and Linc Binninger (class of 1963) cooling off in 1949 or 1950. Yes, Linc does look like Mayberry's Opie Taylor. Carol agrees.

* Marilyn Monsrud (1963) and on the right is her sister Susan (1965) in approximately 1950. They lived at 45 Boat Lane where this was taken on a snowy day.

* Kathy Stahlman (1963) is on the left in this 1953 photo. With her is sister Chris, one year younger at age six and a half. Chris would shortly receive her First Holy Communion at St. Bernard's.