Charleston Had It All (((( The Series ))) |
Charleston Had It All #30 North Main Street Danforth Y.M.C.A. Continues Louise Lee Callahan just loved swimming at the Y and went often as a young girl. She learned to swim at O’Rourke’s pond out by Big Lake, but “graduated to the Y”. The pond was a popular swimming hole. About 1932 or so, teenagers Bill and Dutch Wyatt, Ed and Willis Downs, and Ed DeField sneaked into the Y. M. C. A. swimming pool through the basement window at night and brazenly switched on the gym lights. They dived, swam, and floated around having the pool all to themselves, that is, until Night Marshall Pedunk Fowlkes ran them out “and don’t come back!” he scolded. They stayed out for about three days, but the urge got the best of them and through the basement window they climbed. This time the young fellows were a bit smarter than before and left the lights off. However, one night, when one of them stood ready to spring and dive from the diving board into the dark pool, luckily another flipped on the lights. Wooo, the pool was empty! Friends of similar age, who enjoyed a dip in the pool, were Charlie Dark, Jelly DeField, Marshall and Frank Reeves, and others surely. 1933-’35 George Story, Sidney Friedman, David Lair, Breck Crowe, Collier Courtway, Ed Marshall, Jr., Warren Hearnes, Jack Carson, Lester Whitehead, Marion and brother Jack Waggener, who was a little younger, all swam in the Y pool several times. These lads were age ten to twelve. Likely others played and swam in the pool, as well. One remembers the gym with high windows, and being hot, stuffy, and the pool dirty. It had seen its better days. Time moved on and the Y.M.C.A. changed. Ca 1936 William Boone moved his family into the residential part of the building in order to take care of it; hence it would not be vacant. William’s brother, Attorney Jim Boone, had suggested the move to his law firm partner, Otis W. Joslyn. William Boone’s son Gene was ten or eleven years old at the time, and he thought they had “moved into paradise”. Dale, the middle son, still lived at home. Robert, the eldest, had gone. The William Boones lived on the first floor of the home. It was a spacious house with numerous rooms that once held gracious living. In this era the parlor had a coal stove, and in the kitchen stood a cook stove where Bess Boone busied about preparing healthful meals for her family. Bess loved to cook and can foods. To be saving on firewood, Dale and a friend scrounged up old railroad ties from where the train tracks to Belmont were taken up sometime after the 1937 flood. Gene sawed the ties into kindling. Mostly though, coal was used to burn in the stoves. A coal chute went into the basement for coal delivery. However, in summer the Boones used a two-burner coal oil cook stove, in order to avoid the heat of burning coal for cooking. Providing for his family of five, Mr. Sissom rented two upstairs rooms with kitchen and bath facilities in the old home. Mr. and Mrs. Sissom raised two daughters and a son Elbert right there. Sissom cooked at Ashby’s Lunch Room just up the street. Mr. and Mrs. Borders, a younger couple, rented one room and small kitchen also upstairs. Money was scarce in those days and many people lived close together, and frugally. The Y.M.C.A. swimming pool was heated by a coal furnace in the basement during summer months. Children swam there only then, and for a charge of ten cents. In the gymnasium a few boys still dribbled a basketball tossing it one to another— running and jumping to make baskets, and kids would go on stage to playfully put on plays like kids would do. However, nothing was happening like in the Y’s former days. * Of ten brothers, Katherine Boone said William was her favorite, many times. She and William spent a lot of time together. He was her hero, because he always looked after her. One evening, while the two were still going strong and standing in the lobby of the Russell Hotel some guy walked up and made a remark to Kate.* William didn’t think it was a proper thing to say to a lady, so he “hauled off and laid him out.” Through the years, Kate admitted, “William could have been a singer and a boxer.” William Boone was a Justice of The Peace. He often married couples in the Y. Many times those from Kentucky, wanting to wed, crossed the river to marry in Missouri, since there was no waiting period here in those days. If Dale and Gene happened to be about, they were used as witness. Sometimes weddings were held in the home parlor at a charge of fifty cents. *info- from Gene Boone who lived there. |