SUMMERTIME IN BRADFORD: Toni Frontino, who works in the activity department at The Bradford Manor, said she was reading an RTS column to residents about growing up locally and wanted to share their memories.

She writes, “Most of them said there were no TVs, so they were always outside playing games.”

The manor residents found many ways to enjoy their time.

“Here are some they came up with,” Frontino states. “jacks, pick-up sticks, penny pitch, hopscotch, jump rope, badminton, hide-and-seek.”

Toni spent her own childhood in Bradford, too.

She relates, “I, for one, grew up in the 5th Ward. We were at the park at the end of Rochester Street from sun up to sun down. We only came home for meals. We played basketball and baseball and one game called ‘Home Run Derby’.”

Toni recalled one game of Home Run Derby in particular.

“One of the hits went into one the coal cars of a passing train. That, by far, was the longest H.R. ever hit out of 5th Ward Park.”

ADVICE FOR GRADS: This week, area schools have unleashed another round of new graduates into the “real world.”

For all of our readers who have developed into a full-fledged adults, you have all been through that period when your talent and smarts don’t quite prepare you for the tasks at hand. There is no substitute for experience.

So we’re asking our readers, is there anything you wish you had known when you left school for good? If someone had given you that advice on your last day of school would you have listened?

Do you have any wise words to share with the students leaving high school or college and entering a new, more adult phase of their lives?

What lessons have you learned “the hard way?”

We’ll end it today with some words Winston Churchill gave graduates during a commencement speech at Harrow School in 1944.

“Time” magazine reports that Churchill advised, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”