As a youngster in elementary school I had the interesting experience of going to 7 different schools in 5 different states. One of the places we landed was Grand Forks, North Dakota right on the Red River of the North. We arrived there from Cheyenne, Wyoming. I had just finished the 3rd grade and it was June, 1964 and summer vacation was beginning with a little bit of uncertainty. Each time we moved we wondered if we would have any friends. We always did, but we always wondered too.
In Grand Forks my parents rented a home on Park Drive, a few blocks west of Belmont. Our school would be Viking Elementary. There were a lot of kids in the neighborhood and in the summer we played baseball, like just about everybody else in America. A few lots east of our house was a vacant lot. It was there we gathered almost every morning to play ball--whiffle ball--plastic ball, plastic bat because the lot was too small for real baseballs with wood bats. One of the players was a girl if you can believe it. Her name was Kathy Hawkins. She could run, throw and hit like a boy. Now before you ladies get too up in arms, believe me this was unusual in 1964. There was not one other girl who could compare with her. She was fast. She could throw long and hard and she could hit. We loved her. She was a pal. In the picture she is front and center and was the captain of our Pee Wee league team. We won the championship in the city for our age group in the summer of 1965. That is me, 2nd from the left. They spelled my name Ollman, but that is close enough to Oman to count. 2nd row, first on the left is my younger brother Mike. He was good too. All these kids will be 60 years old or close to it within this year, except our coach, he would be in his 70's now.
It wasn't just in baseball though that Kathy stood out. She would run in track meets at the University of North Dakota track and would win, literally (Thank you Joe Biden for that word) every race practically that she ran in. She was phenomenal. Even more she was nice. We all wanted to kiss her once but nobody dared, at least in 4th and 5th grade we didn't. Our experience was not unlike the movie The Sandlot. When we tired of baseball, we went to the pool, or rode our bikes down by the Red River along the golf course and at night it was Hide and Seek and other games. We would drop into our beds and wake up the next morning and do it all over again. Summers would last forever it seemed and then suddenly it was over.
This all happened about 50 years ago now. I have wondered what happened to Kathy, and my teammate in the picture, John Wavra's sister Roberta. She was the prettiest girl in the school, an older woman by one year. She once asked me at lunch if she could have my brussel sprouts and of course I said yes. It was my first manly act for a girl. I am not afraid to admit that I had an incredible crush on her, at least for a 5th grader. Time has gone by. Much has happened there in half a century but the memories I have of Grand Forks are still vivid and as fresh in my mind as if it all happened just yesterday. In some ways, it did.
