A Look Back:Sense of community

It was Wednesday, April 2, 1919. Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce’s library and education committee were meeting in the afternoon at the local grammar school to plan the second annual Community Education Fair. After a long discussion they finally settled on a date for the fair: May 23.

The fair would include exhibits of domestic and manual arts, agricultural projects and livestock in the school while boys and girls would play sports outdoors on the campus on Orange Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets.

Fair-goers would also enjoy picnic lunches and free coffee at Circle Park (now known as Farquhar Park).

The fair committee gathered together again May 1 when it decided to add a parade of youngsters from the school.

But there was more work to be done, especially for some of our students. Huntington Beach High’s Pig Club had to figure out how to delouse their porkers. The boys found two methods that worked.

They dissolved common soap in boiling water and slowly added kerosene to form a jelly-like mass that could be slathered on the pigs with an old broom.

Another trick that worked involved mixing up gasoline and crankcase oil and wiping it on the pigs with a brush.

Oh, what those pigs must have looked and smelled like.

I wonder what the boys’ mothers thought when the boys walked into the homes covered with this stuff?

There was great excitement as the big day arrived when the fair opened at 9 a.m.

The fair’s first event was a girls’ indoor baseball game between Huntington Beach and Ocean View schools. Then the boys played a championship basketball game, followed by broad and high jumps and a free-for-all race.

The athletic events took up most of the morning and by noon the people who brought basket lunches headed over to Circle Park for an old fashioned picnic on the grass.

Chamber members poured cups of free coffee and served ice cream and punch for a fee.

After lunch fairgoers watched the children’s Floral Parade.

Parents and friends delighted in seeing their youngsters march down Acacia to Seventh Street and on to Pacific Coast Highway to Main Street and up Main to Circle Park.

Meanwhile, other fairgoers could check out the students’ exhibits in several classrooms.

But the highlight of this year’s education fair was the children’s program in the grammar school auditorium.

This elaborate program began as Gale Bash recited “The Cock’s Call on May Morn,” followed by the eighth-grade girls doing a skit called “The Milk Maids.”

Some of the girls taking part in this frolic included Muriel Bentley, Mildred Griffin, Malinda Spoonhauer, Vera Bushard, Lena Cole, Mildred Manning, Edna Phillips and Ruth Walker.

Then came time for the crowning of the year’s May Queen.

Second-graders — including Goldie Davis, Alta Hearn, Margaret Lavering and Elizabeth Wardwell — led a procession heralding the month of May.

May Kikuchi was chosen as the queen’s maid, and Betty Onson and Nora Davey were selected as the bearers of the queen’s crown.

Louise Copeland was voted fairy queen, but the big prize of queen went to Muriel Bentley.

She strode up on stage, with her sixth- and seventh-grade attendants in tow.

Then the third-grade girls — including Maxine Farrar, Irene and Doris Walker, Hilda Marks, Clarice Higgins, Nema Teague, Helen Maher and Bonnie Williams — got in the spotlight with their “Flower Dance.”

Several students followed that with a May pole dance.

That evening other students dramatized how to plant and care for a garden for the Agricultural Pageant in the school’s auditorium.

Taking part in this patriotic pageant were Joe Copeland, Ralph McCoy, Annie Gisler, Schuyler Pann, Ernest Dalany, Juanita Avila, Bernice Newland, Kathryn Onson and Margaret DeLapp.

They were among many more who participated in the fair. It’s a shame there aren’t more combined city-school events like this today to instill a sense of community for our youths.