Paul+Richards+Interview+Transcript

=Paul Richards (Class of 1976) Interview Transcript=

Christina: Do you remember how many mandatory classes there were or what any of them were?

Paul: Yeah, there was civics as a freshman, math class, there was history... mandatory?

Christina: Were there really mandatory?

Paul: No..I don’t remember having any, except for civics. Civics was mandatory. Freshman english was mandatory. Let me think. No, I can’t remember.

Christina: How many classes did you take at once?

Paul: Oh mercy, that’d be...

Christina: I know now we take seven.

Paul: Freshman thru senior? Or just..

Christina: Just one year if you remember, which if you don’t that’s okay.

Paul: I would say no more than six at the most I think.

Christina: Do you remember how long they were?

Paul: About 55 minutes, and we were allowed locker time. And you know back then the buildings were separated.

Christina: How long was your school day?

Paul: Oh that’s a good one. I’d say it was eight to three.

Christina: What were some of your favorite classes and why, or some that still stand out to you?

Paul: Algebra..freshman algebra because the teacher was phenomenal. Her name was Mrs. Sparks. Ecology Mr. Tweston. Is he still there?

Christina: I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.

Paul: Sophomore biology Mrs. Morgan, and I’d say sophomore geometry with Mr. Weimeyer. Those were about the only ones.

Christina: Did you take any job preparation classes or not really and just stuck to the basic?

Paul: No I didn’t. No shop classes at all.

Christina: Do you remember any of your major projects that you had to do? Like I know in physics I just had a build a rocket that we launched. Did you do anything like that that you remember?

Paul: Yeah, we did a class that was multi-media. We had to make a movie, and we were able to go to this girl’s father house or office and we got a dentist chair. And we did that. Other than that no.

Christina: I know that you did track and cross country which I’m going to talk about later, but did you do any other activities that you remember?

Paul: No i did not.

Christina: Do you remember some of the other clubs and activities and how well they did?

Paul: The float committees. We did see them in the parades.

Christina: What did your class think of HyNews?

Paul: Well, i can’t honestly answer for them. I read it nonstop. What did it come out...every two weeks?

Christina: I’m not sure because I know now we do it once a month, but it could have been different back then..I’m not sure.

Paul: I’m almost positive it was every two weeks...

Christina: Especially because I know journalism classes used to do it ,so if that was the case they maybe popped it out more often. yeah...but I just didn’t know what the attitude was toward the paper.

Paul: We waited for it. At the time the principal would ...I don’t know if he was interviewed...but he would post a state of the school and he would put a newsletter in the HyNews. But yeah, we waited for it, and it was 15 cents you had to pay for it.

Christina: Oh, you had to pay for it?

Paul: Oh yeah. But yeah, we waited for it. We wanted to see how the football team, the basketball team, the baseball team did if you happened to miss the event. We waited for it. We really did.

Christina: That’s different from now. How many years could you go off campus?

Paul: Every year. All four years.

Christina: How long did you get? Like an hour or so?

Paul: Oh mercy. I want to say it was forty minutes, but it was a long time ago. But i want to say it was forty minutes.

Christina: Where did you normally go?

Paul: You know where the old campus is don’t you? If you head east to seventeenth street there was a Burger Chef there. We went to Burger Chef. We used to walk up there. There were two mom ‘n pop type stores. Well, I’m a candy freak, and I would eat...ya know...candy. But most the time we would go right across from the campus was a Dog and Suds...I know...you don’t remember that. But it’s a glass company now...and we would go there while we walked to Burger Chef. That’s where we would go.

Christina: What do you remember about hobo day while you were there?

Paul: Fun. It was fun. And you could..I don’t remember the word you’d use for it... but you could leave early after the assembly before the parade started. Later on i had to go to work, but we would leave.

Christina: So then did you go to the hobo day parade?

Paul: No, well the assembly was mandatory. You had to show up.

Christina: Oh, so you didn’t have to go to the hobo day parade.

Paul: No. See, the assembly was usually hobo day was, if i remember right, when they crowned miss maroon. That was mandatory. And then they dismissed the students and the parade would start if i remember right..yeah i’m pretty sure that’s how it worked.

Christina: So then, were the floats at the assembly? Do you remember any of the floats?

Paul: No. They were parked behind the school. Back then it was the A and E building. They were parked behind the school. They weren’t at the assembly.

Christina: What do you remember about the hall decorating? Which wasn’t that a part of hobo day? Do you remember that? I know I saw it in your yearbook and some other ones.

Paul: No, I don’t remember that. I really don’t. I looked at my yearbook a number of times especially as my friends start passin’ away, and I see that but I can honestly say I don’t remember that.

Christina: Even though you didn’t go and see the floats was it a big deal? Did you head people talk about it or talk about who won?

Paul: It’s a whirlwind answer. I’d say yes and no. My best buddy at school was big into that..getting involved in school projects. The friends i acquired at west were not. I would say no, I did not really care about it that much.

Christina: Do you remember the exchange students at your school? I know your senior year that there were a couple, one was from scotland and one was from denmark. I didn’t know if you remembered any of them.

Paul: The girl in my english, she was from Denmark i think. The girl I do remember I think she was in my ecology class, but otherwise than that I don’t remember.

Christina: Other than that did you remember much about them? Or just that they were there?

Paul: The accent. You know when your in the cafeteria or the hall and you hear that not-Belleville accent. You’d hear that. I think that one you said from denmark..

Christina: Yeah, because I think that name was Lene Horneman.

Paul: Yeah.

Christina: Do you remember what you and your friends did as a pastime? Any specific hangout spots or activities?

Paul: McDonald’s, school sports... football and basketball. It was non stop.

Christina: So going to sports was a big deal?

Paul: Oh yeah. It was football. Football was like religion. And then basketball, I was a senior, and the kids I grew up with started playing. It was a fun time.

Christina: While you were there who would you say was our big sport competition?

Paul: Belleville East.

Christina: What about East St. Louis?

Paul: Yeah.

Christina: Especially early I know...

Paul: But it wasn’t correct to hate East St. Louis, if you know what I’m trying to say. With Althoff, and Belleville West we all grew up in the same neighborhoods while Belleville East was out there out on the east side. But East St. louis, we did not hate them, but you had to be careful of what you said...I think you know what I’m saying...around them because it was not, I’m going to use the term politically correct, saying that. But no East St. Louis we did not hate them. Althoff we wanted to beat. But east we hated. Becuase it was Belleville East and Belleville West. Yeah East we hated...well in my book. In my book.

Christina: Yeah, it’s still that way. Do you remember how the sports teams performed?

Paul: West was almost always dominate. The year before we graduated was the first year that Althoff had ever beaten Belleville West in football.

Christina: Ever?

Paul: Ever. And they beat...I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him, but they beat Rusty Lisch. But in basketball it was kinda level I’d say. We didn’t have, well i should correct that. The year before I graduated we probably had the best team in the state, and nobody could beat us. Well ya know it was live and die with basketball. Your mom might argue that point. She graduated after me. The first year that west was beat by Althoff was 1975.

Christina: Was that a big heartbreak for West?

Paul: Oh shoot...you ain’t talkin’. I mean it was devastating. It was bad. And with football, my brother’s year he graduated in 1969 i think, he was the first team to beat East St. Louis in football to get the bell back. It went six years at our school, and we beat East St. Louis in football. Football was fun, but basketball was life.

Christina: So the victory bell, what exactly was that?

Paul: It came off an engine, a rail road engine, and it was on a trailer, and when you won it you went over and got it. For the longest time East St. Louis. It was southern bell, but you ran over and got it. My brother Pat, he was the sports editor for HyNews in 1970, and he went over and got it and a man from East St. Louis, a black man, kicked him in the tailbone, and to this day it still hurts him. And that was forty years ago. It was actually absolutely a riot when we beat them. They had to call the cops and everything else. See, after that the bell wasn’t brought to the game. Whichever the school won the administrations would go and get the bell. Did you see the bell in my yearbook?

Christina: I don’t know if I saw it in yours or not but I saw it in another one. We had kinda talked about it, and my teacher said it’s still around but we didn’t know where.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t know where it would be.

Christina: Yeah, I know he said that we still have it, but we don’t know where it would be.

Paul: Do you still play East St. Louis?

Christina: Yeah, we still play them.

Paul: Is it home and away, or is it always in Bellevile?

Christina: Nope, it’s home and away.

Paul: Hobo day was always Thanksgiving. It was a parade, and then you would go and see Belleville West and East St. Louic play before you had your turkey. My year..let me think...’75 was the last year they had actual Turkey Day game. Playoffs we lost. Ask your teacher, they might know this, I think it was ‘75 they quit the Turkey Day because you had to have the playoffs before the snow flies.

Christina: But that was a really long tradition because my grandpa remembers that.

Paul: Oh yeah. We moved out here in 1962. We had none going to Belleville West, but mom and dad would pack us up in our snowsuits, and we’d go up to west and watch the game.

Christina: So it was a big community thing?

Paul: Oh yeah it was. It’s were it was. It was life then.

Christina: What was it like when it changed?

Paul: It was. Well..what could I compare it to. It was like loosing a dog or something. It was like something was ripped out of you, we loved it so much. And with our family of boys we’d walk up to Main Street, get on the bus, and when we’d get home mom’d have the turkey, grandma and grandpa would be there. We understood why they did it, but we didn’t like it.

Christina: Why did they do it?

Paul: Money.

Christina: You ran cross country, did you just it just your freshman and sophomore years?

Paul: Freshman and sophomore yeah, and then my junior year until i got thrown off the team.

Christina: Do you remember how well the team performed and how far did you normally go?

Paul: The furthest I ever went was Alton I think. we went to East, Althoff didn’t have a team, East St. Louis has freshman who were freshmen in high school in belleville back then each student was still considered in junior high school so junior high schools in East St. Louis or in Bellville, so we had Clark Junior High, Rock Junior High, we ran against East St. Louis Senior High. But the furthest I ever when was Alton.

Christina: Do you remember how well your team did?

Paul: Not very good.

Christina: How developed was the program?

Paul: That’s a good question. I would say not very. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of craige, he went to the Olympics for long distance running, and I ran against him. Well, I saw his back. He was always way in front of me. He was from lebanon. I would say not very, we weren’t very good.

Christina: Was track guys and girls, or was it just guys?

Paul: That’s a good question. I want to say it was just male. There was no female. If I’m not mistaken girls basketball just came around. But yeah, it was just male.

Christina: Were there a lot of sports that were really just male?

Paul: No there wasn’t. No there wasn’t any. except...are you talking school sponsored sports or inter-mural?

Christina: School sponsored.

Paul: No I would say...girls’ tennis. Maybe, maybe basketball.

Christina: Yeah, because I know Althoff did when my mom was there.

Paul: Other than that no.

Christina: I saw in your senior yearbook that girls were added to the cross country team. Do you remember that or remember hearing anything about it? Or if it was a big deal?

Paul: No, I don’t remember that. See my dad lost his job, and I got permission to leave at 11:15 11:30 in the morning to go to work to help feed us all. So I’d say after October of ‘76 I don’t really know what went on at West. I do miss that. I wish I didn’t have to, but we had to work. I had a little brother and sister and they needed...ya know...we needed money. So, that’s the way it works.

Christina: How was it doing track and cross country without girls?

Paul: Well wait a minute. are you asking a fourteen year old boy if he was thinking about girls? well, heck yes. I didn’t know anything different.

Christina: Yeah, well that’s what I mean. Was it really anything that you thought of, or was it just the way it was?

Paul: That’s a good question. I don’t really have a good answer for you, but let me think. As a fourteen year old male, of course i was thinking about girls, but running cross country it didn’t trouble me. It never really crossed my mind.

Christina: I’m not sure, but did the Vietnam draft ever affect school?

Paul: It scared the hell out of us. It scared the hell our of all of us, it really did. We were all...we had a couple teachers who told us that if you got drafted you leave and that was their agenda, not always ours.. it scared us to death. My grandmother lived in Niagra Falls, New York, and she said if anybody gets drafted she’d pay us to life in Canada because she didn’t want us to go over there. It was not only...it was every day that we were scared to death. Once you graduate high school and you're not enrolled in college which I was not smart enough do to... we were scared. Really, really scared. You watch T.V. and you see body bags and coffins. It was terrible. It was terrible.

Christina: Did you know anyone who got drafted?

Paul: My brother. My brother did. A kid a couple doors down, he got drafted. He came home. Pat got drafted, my older brother Pat got drafted. He went to basic training, and he lasted seven days and they sent everybody home. To this day, my brother pat’s 58, and he has no idea what they did that. They just sent everybody home.

Christina: That’s probably a good thing..

Paul: Yeah, but it was scary. It was a scary time.

Christina: Did it ever really affect people in school, or was it more out of high school when it affect you?

Paul: I can’t say it ever really affected me, and I can’t speak for my school mates. I know it affected my mom and dad. I know they were scared to death. I was worried once I got to be a junior and senior, but up to then I can’t say that affect me until then. Until then. It was scary time. Communist going bad. War. Saigon’s getting bombed. It was a scary time.

Christina: Is there anything else you would like to elaborate or any stories that you want to pass on to everybody?

Paul: I wish they hadn’t moved the school because the campus on West Main Street is a beautiful campus. It really is. You guys don’t know what you missed... the uneven stairs, walking down the hallways when one sides here and the others down here, the lockers you had to kick to open. The new schools nice. It really is. But we... I started west in ’72, my brother was going to the University of Illinois. And he said the same thing because the University of Illinois is all spread out and West wasn’t as spread out but there wasn’t one building that was connected to the next and the next. So you felt like you were a big shot college student, and it was neat. Althoff didn’t have that. Belleville East to a certain extent didn’t have that. But ours was a better school. The uneven, the hallways, the stairs. It was... I wouldn’t have missed it for the world because I was thinking about my junior year, my dad lost his job June of the junior and senior year, I was thinking about quitting school. It would have been the worse mistake I ever made. That senior year I had..well we won’t get into that, but I had a lot of fun. The football games, the basketball games, the baseball games...we had a lot of fun. You can ask your mother about the “West 76” on the side of Althoff. He was sitting on my shoulders when he spray painted that. I didn’t do it...I’m not going to tell the guy’s name...but he’s a phenomenal golfer, but yeah, Les was on my shoulders. We got caught. It was a cop that my dad had known and my boss had known. So he just..get rid of the cans and ya know, go away. It was one room down from the front door of the building, and it was “West 76”.

Christina: Yeah, you can still kind of see that.

Paul: He was sitting on my shoulders as it happened. I saw him, well a friend of mine died from school and I saw him at a funeral but yeah... in hind site, it was wrong. It was defacing private property. But when your 17, 18 it was fun. It was fun. Sweetheart, it was fun. But people would come down... you know where the old stadium is?

Christina: Yeah.

Paul: Okay. There’d be Althoff sprayed in blue and gold on the back of the stadium so it was...mine was more malicious because it was to a structure of a higher larking but it wasn’t meant to be malicious. Well it was the wrong color. because me and Les were both color bind, so we got brown paint. But it was a fun time. It was a fun time. Don’t waste it. It was a fun time. In the NBA now, I don’t know if you saw this, but they’re allowing high school juniors now to skip their senior year in high school to play professional basketball. And those kids, yeah they're that good, but they’ll b that good in four years. They’re messing up their life. They’re growing up, and all of a sudden they get this money, and what happens with money? They get in trouble. Drugs, cars, guns, whatever, they get in trouble. That’s my soap box, but West on Main Street was a blast. It was a blast. We had a pepsi distributer next door to us. We had a subway next to us. Ever heard of the subway?

Christina: No, I don’t think so.

Paul: You know where old West is? You walk up the main building and take a left. Going down West Main Street to the west, there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken, then there was a subway, you walked down the stairs under West Main Streetm and you came up the other side. Now it’s all... well you know how Belleville’s getting to be, well it’s all filled in. Concreted up. There’s a ..right by the tracks on 29th that was a hobby shop. Half a mile of that was Kentucky Friend Chicken. And that was the only one in town none on east end, that was it. We had a lot of inter-mural teams at west. I played three years of soccer, inter-mural teams, and we got channel 4 robin smith, who’s on ch 4 early morning traffic, she was an anchorwoman back than. we got them to show up for our soccer games. Betsy Bruce...ever heard of her?

Christina: No..

Paul: Your mom would know her, ask her. We got them to show up for our soccer games. They were T.V. personalities back then. And they were pretty hot too..but we had the Betsy Bruces, the Robin Smiths, the..well the other ones you don’t even want to hear about. I was on a team..listen to this one...called the Golden Hemorrhoids. Real nice, wasn’t it.? Well Jerry Turner, the Treasurer of Belleville, he made us change our name to the Golden Stars so we had to tape over the Hemorrhoid part, and put Stars over it. You guys just lost something by not going to that West. It was phenomenal. It really was. But your mom, she won’t because she went to Althoff, but I won’t hold it against her. But it was fun. I wish I had a movie camera. It was that much fun. It really was.