Shooting the chutes, jumping off swing bridge, article (Tonawanda News, 1978-08-01).jpg
Dublin Core
Title
Shooting the chutes, jumping off swing bridge, article (Tonawanda News, 1978-08-01).jpg
Description
Summer and winter were fun
Editor’s note: The following is another in a series of articles by Tonawandans recounting their memories of the Twin Cities years ago. Here David Smith, a frequent contributor to the “Try to Remember” column, provides some memories of high school days in Tonawanda during the 1930s.
By DAVID S. SMITH
IN A PREVIOUS ARTICLE, I told about Mr. Higgins throwing erasures and chalk at his pupils. Another incident comes to mind about him.
One day our class was unusually noisy. He threatened us with some sort of punishment if anyone made a noise for the next five minutes or so. Well, Don Miller was trying to keep from laughing, but after a minute or so he could contain himself no longer and he let out with a loud, “Ho, ho, ho.”
Mr. Higgins came down the aisle and grabbed Don by the shoulders and pulled him from his seat. In those days, Don was a little guy, weighing no more than 90 pounds. He went limp, and when Mr. Higgins shook him, he looked for all the world like a rag doll as his head rolled and his arms and legs dangled.
Mr. Higgins married Marion Senechal, who I always thought was the second best-looking teacher in the school. The first? Frances Heffernan. Wonder whatever became of her?
DID MRS. DANAHER ever grab any of you by the ear lobe and march you to where she wanted you? When she took a hold, you went. If you don’t think it hurts, just try it. Squeeze your ear lobe.
I can remember a couple of times that principal Carl Merritt got mad. He never used dirty words, but he would expel the word “sugar” with such force that it apparently relieved him.
While in high school, I can remember the day Walter Koch, our bandmaster, was blowing his trumpet and was standing on the stage by the back door when someone came through the door and opened it rather swiftly. The door caught the bell of Mr. Koch’s trumpet and drove it into his mouth. It broke off his front teeth. What a shame it was because he was a marvelous trumpet player.
This incident reminds me of the day we were playing tag during swimming period.
ONE OF THE RULES was that you couldn’t run around the corners of the pool. You had to jump in and then out. Well, I jumped in, went to the bottom, pushed up and shot out of the water. I misjudged my position and missed the edge of the pool with my hands and came down on the edge of the pool with my mouth apparently open.
Right then I found out that the material that was the end of the pool and as I took a stroke over it, I stopped swimming.
[The sentence is grammatically incomplete as printed or as preserved in the clipping.]
The Niagara Falls man went by and won the race. I looked up and there was Chris Tussing glaring down at me. Talk about wanting to curl up and die!
In the summer time, my favorite activity was swimming at the North Tonawanda water works with Don Miller and Lyle Luther. One of our favorite places was in the Little River diving off the swing bridge and “shooting the chutes” under the bridge. They are approximately three-foot openings under the bridge, and the current is so fast, it literally sucks you into the openings. This was great fun.
If and when we had a boat, we would go out to the water intakes in the middle of the river and swim from them. The water out there is swift and clear. In order to get a higher dive than one could off the concrete foundation, we would climb up to the top of the little house and dive. You had to give a good hard push-off when you dove because it was necessary to clear the concrete foundation that was about four or five feet out from the little house.
ALSO, IT WAS NECESSARY to be cautious of the grate which was set in the river bed at the rear of the structure. If water was being pumped into the intake, there was a suction there.
--
One day we were swimming out there when a motor boat approached and the men asked if we knew of a doctor nearby. We pointed out Dr. Schweitzer’s house on Niagara Street. One of the men showed his hand. They had caught a musky, and while taking the hook out of the fish’s mouth, it has apparently lunged and got the man’s hand in its mouth. A musky has teeth like needles and the hand was really mangled.
When I was in school, my special football heroes were Dick Baker and Bob Rose. I can remember the day we played Lackawanna, there, in a raging blizzard. The fellows couldn’t run or pass. Dick Baker’s punting kept Lackawanna from our goal and they had a pretty good punter who kept our team away from their goal. The game was a scoreless tie.
That was in 1933. The temperature was 10 degrees and snowing and blowing so hard you couldn’t see the other side of the field. Our horns were frozen up so we couldn’t play. What a miserable day that was.
Editor’s note: The following is another in a series of articles by Tonawandans recounting their memories of the Twin Cities years ago. Here David Smith, a frequent contributor to the “Try to Remember” column, provides some memories of high school days in Tonawanda during the 1930s.
By DAVID S. SMITH
IN A PREVIOUS ARTICLE, I told about Mr. Higgins throwing erasures and chalk at his pupils. Another incident comes to mind about him.
One day our class was unusually noisy. He threatened us with some sort of punishment if anyone made a noise for the next five minutes or so. Well, Don Miller was trying to keep from laughing, but after a minute or so he could contain himself no longer and he let out with a loud, “Ho, ho, ho.”
Mr. Higgins came down the aisle and grabbed Don by the shoulders and pulled him from his seat. In those days, Don was a little guy, weighing no more than 90 pounds. He went limp, and when Mr. Higgins shook him, he looked for all the world like a rag doll as his head rolled and his arms and legs dangled.
Mr. Higgins married Marion Senechal, who I always thought was the second best-looking teacher in the school. The first? Frances Heffernan. Wonder whatever became of her?
DID MRS. DANAHER ever grab any of you by the ear lobe and march you to where she wanted you? When she took a hold, you went. If you don’t think it hurts, just try it. Squeeze your ear lobe.
I can remember a couple of times that principal Carl Merritt got mad. He never used dirty words, but he would expel the word “sugar” with such force that it apparently relieved him.
While in high school, I can remember the day Walter Koch, our bandmaster, was blowing his trumpet and was standing on the stage by the back door when someone came through the door and opened it rather swiftly. The door caught the bell of Mr. Koch’s trumpet and drove it into his mouth. It broke off his front teeth. What a shame it was because he was a marvelous trumpet player.
This incident reminds me of the day we were playing tag during swimming period.
ONE OF THE RULES was that you couldn’t run around the corners of the pool. You had to jump in and then out. Well, I jumped in, went to the bottom, pushed up and shot out of the water. I misjudged my position and missed the edge of the pool with my hands and came down on the edge of the pool with my mouth apparently open.
Right then I found out that the material that was the end of the pool and as I took a stroke over it, I stopped swimming.
[The sentence is grammatically incomplete as printed or as preserved in the clipping.]
The Niagara Falls man went by and won the race. I looked up and there was Chris Tussing glaring down at me. Talk about wanting to curl up and die!
In the summer time, my favorite activity was swimming at the North Tonawanda water works with Don Miller and Lyle Luther. One of our favorite places was in the Little River diving off the swing bridge and “shooting the chutes” under the bridge. They are approximately three-foot openings under the bridge, and the current is so fast, it literally sucks you into the openings. This was great fun.
If and when we had a boat, we would go out to the water intakes in the middle of the river and swim from them. The water out there is swift and clear. In order to get a higher dive than one could off the concrete foundation, we would climb up to the top of the little house and dive. You had to give a good hard push-off when you dove because it was necessary to clear the concrete foundation that was about four or five feet out from the little house.
ALSO, IT WAS NECESSARY to be cautious of the grate which was set in the river bed at the rear of the structure. If water was being pumped into the intake, there was a suction there.
--
One day we were swimming out there when a motor boat approached and the men asked if we knew of a doctor nearby. We pointed out Dr. Schweitzer’s house on Niagara Street. One of the men showed his hand. They had caught a musky, and while taking the hook out of the fish’s mouth, it has apparently lunged and got the man’s hand in its mouth. A musky has teeth like needles and the hand was really mangled.
When I was in school, my special football heroes were Dick Baker and Bob Rose. I can remember the day we played Lackawanna, there, in a raging blizzard. The fellows couldn’t run or pass. Dick Baker’s punting kept Lackawanna from our goal and they had a pretty good punter who kept our team away from their goal. The game was a scoreless tie.
That was in 1933. The temperature was 10 degrees and snowing and blowing so hard you couldn’t see the other side of the field. Our horns were frozen up so we couldn’t play. What a miserable day that was.
Date
1978-08-01
Collection
Citation
“Shooting the chutes, jumping off swing bridge, article (Tonawanda News, 1978-08-01).jpg,” North Tonawanda History, accessed August 10, 2026, https://nthistory.com/items/show/1499.