When I read the announcement on the reunion site that Bill Thatcher had died, it hit me kind of hard for there was another piece of my childhood gone.  I was looking forward to seeing Billy at the 50^th CHS class reunion and it was a reminder that at our age we can’t always put things off.  When I told my wife of my disappointment, she naturally asked who Billy was.  This is pretty much what I told her….

Although I lived my whole life in Claremont, I think Billy Thatcher came into town in the mid-1950s and I met him at Sycamore Elementary School.  We became instant friends (what wasn't to like about Billy?) and spent a lot of time together.  Billy was popular and I certainly wasn’t his only friend, often there was a group of us including Dale Price, Gary Gilbert and Wes Hurd to name a few. Billy was always a handsome kid, looking in those days (especially in junior high) like Ricky Nelson of “Ozzie and Harriet” fame, while I (alas) looked more like Jerry Mathers of the “Leave It To Beaver” TV show!  We only lived a few blocks away from each other so he was often over at my house camping out in the back yard (or in my tree house) or I was over at his place. 

These photos are the wallet-sized class photos that we exchanged, remember?

                                     Billy and me during the “Kite Adventure.”    

                         Billy as he matured into a junior high “Ricky Nelson.”

I’ve had a lot of adventures in my life, but I’ve always remembered this one.  It all started on a very windy day, perfect kite flying weather.  We were 10-11 and were at Billy's house...it must have been around 1956.  Since we were males, we were naturally in competition with each other to see who could get their kite the highest.  As I said it was a quite windy day and we were amazed at how quickly our kites ascended.  Soon we each had to attach another spool of string and our kites were so high that we could barely see them!  It was absolutely the highest either of us had ever flown kites and shortly we were out of string.  As it was beginning to get dark and it was dinner time, we had the choice to either start the laborious chore of reeling them in, or (as Bill suggested) I could sleep over and we could leave them up all night!  Choice?  There was no choice, of course I'd spend the night.  We tied the strings off at the front of his house and checked on them constantly until we were told by his folks to come in and "go to sleep!"

When we went to bed that night we had every expectation that the kites would be flying high the next morning and were up early to check on them.  "Oh, man!" we groaned as we saw the strings limp on the ground.  They laid parallel to each other and at a diagonal from Bill's house, across the street and over the houses on the opposite side.  We looked at each other and said in unison, "we gotta follow the strings and find our kites!"  Thus began the adventure!  Of course we challenged each other to "truly" follow the strings.  That meant if they went over a house, we would have to go over the house...I think this was a case of the dreaded "double-dog dare!"  We started rolling up the string (after all, it cost .10 cents a spool!) but quickly decided it took too long to do it.  Since the strings ran at a diagonal from Billy's house toward downtown Claremont, it wasn't a quick journey across two homes per block, a street, and then another two homes if it had run perpendicularly...we had to do three to four houses per block at an angle.  True to our word, if there was access to the roof (a wall or trellis) we would go over the house and/or garage usually resulting in the homeowner running outside to see what the commotion was and making dire threats!  We crossed many yards, scaled many walls/fences and one time dropped into a yard with a very ugly and bad tempered bulldog!  Although a little chubby, I was still a fast runner but Billy was faster and was over the next wall as I approached it with the snarling bulldog in hot pursuit.   Obviously involved with my own problem, I didn't hear the "crash" of Billy's landing and having barely escaped the dog was soon lying beside him on some over-turned (and badly bent) trash cans (they were metal in those days and hurt!).  A shout of "Hey, you kids...get out of my yard" hurried us along and over the next wall.

Part of our route lay through "Pilgrim Place" which was a little community of retired Christian “China” missionaries.  To us kids the average age of the people there seemed to be about 100, but they did drive those cool little three-wheeled Auto-ettes (“Claremont Cadillacs”) around town.    Although we kids were admonished to stay out of the community to let the old missionaries live in peace, we had to go where the strings went.  Apparently neither the strings, nor Billy and I, were as respectful to their gardens as we should have been which evoked several very non-Christian shouts toward us and threats of police involvement!  Finally, after what seemed like miles (actually blocks) we found our kites (intertwined) on top of a garage on 6th Street.  Taking all the yelled threats to heart, we cut the strings, took our kites and found a big old pepper tree to climb up and hide in until the heat blew over!  Our clothes were ripped and dirty and we were bruised and bloody, but then what else was new?  We sat up there for quite a while and went over every step of the journey.  We laughed and laughed and decided that we definitely had to do it again!  It was great fun!

Billy and I had a lot of great times together (and with our other friends) growing up in the 1950s/early 1960s in our wonderful little protected town of Claremont...we had a fairly carefree life when compared to those of many others I’ve met over the years.  Bill did mature faster than I did and by the time we were in high school he was into another group of friends which I guess you could call the "social/dating clique" (not to mention him being gone his junior year…father’s job).  How could he not be, Bill was cool and good looking and the girls were always chasing him.  I fought growing-up and was in the "arrested-adolescence clique" in high school as you all know.   Bill and I just kind of drifted apart but were always friends until we graduated in 1963.  Then we all made new lives and friends, rarely thinking about the "old days" until now as we have grown old ourselves and our 50^th Claremont High School reunion is drawing near.  Lately I’ve been thinking more about Claremont and all the great kids I knew, and I am regretful that I waited too long to get in touch with Bill along with the others in our class who can never join us again.  I hope that Billy had the great life he deserved.

The Go-Kart, or “Wheels of Death”!  

Then there is the story about the Go-Kart.  Gary Gilbert encouraged me to write this and added some facts.  Actually everyone who drove “The Wheels of Death” had pretty much the same experience related here.  This took place around the 7^th Grade making it about 1957-8.  I’d like to say the whole thing was my idea, but it wasn’t.  It was my pal Billy Thatcher's idea and his design, and I was just one of several “helpers” who scrounged parts and aided in the construction when we could.  I remember Dale Price, Gary Gilbert and Wes Hurd were among that group (sorry if I’ve left anyone out)…and we were pretty good mechanics and carpenters if I do say so.  It was a basic wooden 2x4” construction and the wheels were from a “Radio Flyer” wagon.  It had traditional “soapbox derby” type rope steering on the pivoting front axle (pull the right rope to go right and the left to go left).  An old up-right lawn-mower engine mounted behind the driver powered the rear wheels by a bicycle-type chain.   As I recall, there was no gear box, no clutch and no throttle!   Riding the kart was a two-boy operation, a starter and a driver.  For once the pull-rope starter got the engine going; the kart took off like a rocket!  There was no on/off switch, only a string draped over your shoulder attached to the spark-plug wire that was yanked when you wanted to stop.  The brake was a pivoting lever with a wood block on the end that pressed against the wheel when you yanked it with your “third” hand.  As I said, once you were going, you were going fast...no slowing down for intersections, cars, little old ladies crossing the street and no stopping at stop signs!  If you did pull the wire to emergency stop, that was it…you couldn’t restart it by yourself but had to push it back to Billy’s house.

Since Billy (and most of us) lived in the area west of Indian Hill Blvd to Mountain Ave., and south of 12^th Street to Harrison, that was our road racing zone.  The streets were wide and flat and even we realized that crossing busy Indian Hill Blvd. at high speed would be suicide!  Not only was the kart fast but it was loud and put out a fair amount of smoke…I can only imagine what people and animals thought as they looked down Claremont’s quiet streets at this hellish apparition flying toward them!  I still remember whizzing down the streets and through intersections as cars slammed on their brakes!  One time an irate motorist even chased me with his horn honking!  Of course my thought was, “Holy cow, what’s this guy going to do to me?”  But I had no intention of stopping to find out and headed toward my trusty “escape route.”  Oh, yes, I’d been chased by a car before (a police car with red lights flashing!) on the previous 4^th of July night while I was riding my bicycle with some other semi-delinquents (probably the same group of Thatcher, Price, Gilbert, Hurd…) lighting and dropping firecrackers as we peddled through the neighborhood.  The escape route was a little known pedestrian sidewalk from 8^th Street into Pilgrim Place wide enough for bicycles but certainly not a car.  Well, we had ditched the police there before and now I was hoping that it was wide enough for the kart (and that there were no old “pilgrims” using it!) as I rocketed toward it.  I made the high-speed turn and fortunately found the passage empty, leaving the honking car on 8^th Street while I zoomed through Pilgrim Place startling at least one “auto-ette” driver  and several ladies tending their well-kept rose gardens who looked up in horror as I flew by.  I exited at 6^th Street and Berkeley, made a quick right into John Firman’s driveway and “hid out” there for a while (just like we did on the 4^th). 

I’m sure the other guys had similar harrowing stories. It was great fun while it lasted, but Billy’s father wisely forbade street use and probably saved at least a few lives!  The following is Gary Gilbert’s remembrance of Billy’s Go-Kart:

“Yes, I remember similar experiences with Bill's Go-Kart. It seems like you were always the ‘go to guy’ whenever he had a problem with it so I just assumed you had your own kart, but I guess it was just the one. His Dad told us we had to walk the kart to either Sycamore School playground or one of the college parking lots after seeing us on the street. Can you imagine Bill walking his Go-Kart that far without starting it??  I recall riding on the back while Bill did the driving. I also remember picking up the back and running a few steps and dropping it (jump start) if it got flooded. I still have a scar on the top of my foot from when it peeled off a couple of layers of skin using this method while barefoot!  I also recall driving out of the back of Dale's garage and down the alley, probably after his father’s restriction- hmmmm.  It was great fun.”

Wes Hurd had this to say:

“My recollections of childhood, growing-up times with Bill Thatcher does include the go-kart he built. I remember the garage and the wonder of his engineering feat. The image of that mechanical marvel still sits in my memory. Bill and I spent many hours "playing" as we grew up in Claremont.  Bill was a special friend growing up. I can only wish that we had another opportunity to talk old times.”

Dale Price says: