Shields Family Questions for Geoff
What was our locker number at the HVCC swimming pool?
Who was the portly kid in your class at PC who once did a weekend sleep-over at someone’s house and beamed the next Monday: “And we had steak for dinner!”
What was Mom’s middle name before she married Dad?
What was the length of the 2nd hole at HVCC from the whites?
Who drove the 14th creek?
What did Peter Ervin ask Ralphie to do bring him when he returned from Vietnam?
Until the 70s, the phone system used two-letter abbreviates as part of the prefixes, e.g., TU for Turner. What did the following stand for? IV, OL. OR, VE, VI, WI?
What was the name of Dad’s secretary?
What were Dad’s two office phone lines?
What’s the town just south of Hartsville?
What’s the former (long defunct) stop on the Reading Railroad between Fern Rock and Wayne Junction?
Before Mom quite smoking cigarettes, ca. 1965, what was her brand?
What was the name of the train conductor whom we gave an initial-embroidered handkerchief as a Christmas present?
What’s the name of the place on the Delaware River due east of City Hall in Philadelphia?
What’s the address of PC?
In what year was that building constructed?
What was the first year of HVCC?
Who was president that year?
What is the name of the fabulous Christmas dip that Kim makes from (guessing) chutney, cream cheese, and some sort of hot sauce?
Which friend of ours went from stoner/bass fisherman to geology Phd to spokesperson for NASA?
What was the middle initial of Joe Perrot?
Who was the business manager at PC?
What bomber group was Dad in?
I asked Dad if he felt any exhilaration parachuting out of his B-17. What do you think he told me?
Besides Sam Schmidlac, what other fake names did it have for males?
For females?
Which friend of our parents made an eagle on the 11th hole, canning a shot from the bunker left of the fairway?
Which one of Dad’s high school friends ran the Texaco station on Old York Road, just north of his office?
The Snack Shop (just south?)
Who was an officer (soon to become chief) of the Abington Police Department?
Where was the Abington incinerator?
At which park did Dad fall of a log, and thought that he had broken his leg?
Where did Dad and his men go when they were captured after having been shot down?
At which altitude his Dad fly?
How many of his four engines had failed when he knew he couldn’t get back into France?
Dad was offered an incentive to stay in the military when the war was over. What was it?
Why, according to Mom, did Baba consider sending to college far into the south?
Baba had siblings. What were their names?
How did Beep get his name?
How many acres constituted the farm in Hartsville (before some of them were taken by eminent domain)?
Why did we have to stop swimming in the pond?
When we first to LBI for summer vacation, which town did we choose?
On LBI, which town lies between Barnegat and Harvey Cedar?
Where had we gone before LBI?
Which bridge did we cross to get there (which terrified me because I thought we have to drive over the superstructure)?
Approximately, what was the toll on the PA Turnpike to get from Willow Grove to Ohio?
Which one of us was the first to kiss Ann McConnell?
What were the three roller-coaster rides at Willow Grove Park?
Who lived near us on Horace Avenue?
Who lived just south of us on Cloverly Lane, famous for their barn?
Who lived just south of them?
The kids’ names?
What did we try to catch in the stream in back of that mansion?
When they moved, who bought the place?
What were the names of the Ickler kids, whose house fronted on Susquehanna?
What restaurant did we all like on the west side of York Road in Abington?
Until the Abington Pharmacy came along in the late 60s, what was the only drug store in town?
What was the main difference between Jenkintown and Rydal station?
Which 8th grade U.S. history teacher at PC, earlier in his life, was in the U.S. Park Service, and arguably at the bottom of the barrel at our old school?
Which 5th grade teacher tossed Alexis Sommaripa out the door of his classroom?
Can you name any of the stuff we sold at the Lower School bazaar?
What was the kindergartners’ Color Day event?
Long before the June Fete was held where it is today, where was it sited in the early 20th Century?
Dad grew up there, of course. What was the name of the baseball game he used to play with his friends in the late 1920s?
When you went through that front door and walked to your left, what musical instrument as in that room?
Have you ever seen a larger dining room? A scarier basement? A more bizarre bedroom than Uncle Art’s, with the low ceilings? A toilet that was flushed by pulling a chain?
Whom did Dodo marry after her husband died? Hint: he made Dad’s real estate signs.
What did I find when Dad let me climb up into the attic above Dodo’s garage at age perhaps 10?
What did Dad tell me when I looked down from the attic to where he was standing below and showed him one?
