GERALDINE II: As promised, more today from Geraldine (Kennedy)
DeMarkey of Anaheim, Calif., a Bradford native with some sharp
recollections of the old hometown.

A relatively new subscriber, she’s been reading Round the Square
and wanted to share some memories:

“Recently someone wrote about ice deliveries from a Cherry
Street ice plant. Yes, sometime in the early 1930s, a man named Mr.
Davis moved near our home on Congress Street and started an ice
plant on Cherry Street. I knew his daughters, and my brother,
Bernard Kennedy, worked there for a time.

“In the early 1930s before Coach Pflug, I attended Bradford
Senior High School (as it was then known). Before the big games,
especially with Olean on Thanksgiving Day, we would have a rally in
the high school auditorium with, sometimes, merchants from the
downtown Boosters Club (I think), putting on skits and Dick O’Day’s
orchestra to accompany us singing college-team songs and our own
rally music.

“I also remember ‘snake dances’ down Main Street on Friday
nights. Games were held Saturday afternoon, followed by a bonfire
at the high school and a pep rally.

“The senior class had an Easter vacation trip to Washington,
D.C., so we spent our three years in senior high raising money
toward the trip. In the senior year, the senior class held a bazaar
and dance. For several years, these bazaars were held at the
armory. In my senior year, it was held at the high school with
booths in the hallways and the dance in the gym with, of course,
Dick O’Day’s orchestra.

“Then that glorious old armory when I was maybe 6 or 7 years
old. My aunt and her husband lived in an apartment on Bushnell
Street, and I remember being there and seeing them take out the
automobiles after an automobile show at the armory. Of course,
there were dances and roller skating at the armory. I believe that
Art Dort held many of those dances and maybe the roller skating
down at the Seneca (Bradford Junction) building down there.

“One last thought – Alphonse Tibbetts, who owned the dairy out
on Interstate Parkway, was a nephew of my grandfather, Harlow Pike.
He also delivered milk to my grandparents on South Avenue in his
horse-drawn wagon, and I remember both Alphonso and his son Ralph
delivering there.”