Back When Column
Trisha Hale had a surprise at Stark High School her senior year, 1972. Boys lifted and carried her small, foreign car into the covered breezeway between two buildings. That remains as one of the famous school pranks through the years in Orange County. Liz Wheeler Lester (her mother was the high school English teacher) found a picture preserving the moment in an old yearbook.
Trisha married Keith Weir, Stark Class of 1970. She passed away in June. Everyone, including me, always said she was the sweetest person ever. Her back with the trademark Hale girls’ long blonde hair can be seen in the photograph. I can imagine her saying “Y’aaaaaalllll,” to the boys. Bet she was laughing.
Karen Jo Wright Vance put out the word to get Liz to find the old picture. Liz replied to Karen that she was on the annual staff. And she has “lots of no-longer-necessary yearbook info lodged into my brain, unfortunately.”
Through the years, I also heard of a similar car moving about 1960. The small foreign car may have belonged to Charles Sexton. The American cars were too big decades ago to pick up, even for strong high school boys. I have also heard a tale that perhaps some Little Cypress boys put a Volkswagen on a roof at Bridge City.
The pranks of school kids live in memories of anyone involved, or watching. I grew up listening to my father and aunts talk about the cow in the auditorium at Orange High School in the 1930s. The three-story building was later the Carr Building and had a large auditorium on the second floor.
Miss Helen Carr, the longtime principal of the high school, started school every morning with an assembly in the auditorium. A group of boys swiped (nicer word than stole) a cow one night and got into the school. They walked it up the stairs and into the auditorium. This happened sometime around 1937, give or take a year.
About 25 years ago when I was working for a newspaper, I received a telephone call confession. The man said he had been one of the boys. Not only did they put the cow in the auditorium, they fed her Epsom salts so she would poop a lot. I can’t imagine the reaction from the teachers, though from the stories I’ve heard about Miss Carr, it was just another day.
My relatives always laughed at what happened next. Apparently cows have no problems going up stairs. They don’t want to walk down stairs. It took a lot of pushing and pulling. Or maybe a group of boys carried the cow out. It may weigh less than a Fiat, but a bet a cow would put up a fight.
Fireworks in school were a common prank through the years. A firecracker in a school tile bathroom made a loud noise. But one group of boys at Stark High in the mid-1950s did more than firecrackers. They put a cherry bomb (or maybe more than one) in a locker. When it went off, it blew out a few lockers.
I think no one was injured, luckily. These days, something like that would cause the school to be closed and the FBI and ATF would be called in to investigate.
My boss, Gary Stelly, graduated from Orangefield High in the 1980s. The high schools still had homecoming bonfires. One of his classmates, a guy, of course, got into the principal’s office and stole his chair. The chair ended up on top of the bonfire. However, the theft was discovered before the fire was lit. The chair was saved, but apparently not the student. Busted.
If you remember any pranks from your school years in Orange County, or Deweyville, let me know at backwhen1600@gmail.com. I also take confessions.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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