By Ruth Noggle

By 1955, my family had lived in Prescott for seven years and my oldest brother, Carl was 15-years-old and in the nineth grade in Prescott Junior High. Roy was 12 and in his last year at Miller Valley Elementary School and I was nine and in third grade at Miller Valley.

The 1950s was a decade marked by certain societal rules. In junior high, girls studied homemaking and the boys worked downstairs in woodshop. My brother Carl constructed a bookcase in woodshop that we used in our Whetstine Avenue house to the left of the fireplace. My pet turtle’s oval plastic water container sat on one corner of the bookcase giving ‘Blinky’ a couple hours of sunshine in the morning. By 1957, the 20-volume Grolier Encyclopedia made a big splash displayed in all its glory in Carl’s bookcase.

Woodshop in junior high was a noisy room. Carl remembers the six-foot long belt sander used for finishing wood projects. The sander ran continuously and the motor kept the belt running fast enough to be a blur. The horizontal belt was held with 6-8 inch diameter pulleys at each end of the table. A project was placed under the belt and boys pushed the belt down, creating friction with a pressure pad. Carl said he could feel small sparks through his shoe soles and in his hands when he was working with the sander.

One afternoon, I decided to go downstairs to see the woodshop I’d heard so much about. We girls weren’t supposed to go down where the boys were working. I stood briefly in the hallway when Mr. Wood, the teacher, asked what I was doing. I quickly answered, "Going out!" I had heard about his wooden three-foot-long paddle. If one of the boys did something wrong, Mr. Wood asked him to bend over his desk and receive one huge whack. I didn’t want any part of that! Jim Stark cut a half inch off one of his fingers with a band saw in shop. It could be a dangerous place.

Dad (Joe Noggle) expanded the size of our house at 849 Whetstine Avenue by adding a large room on the east side of the basement area. Carl and Roy moved down there for more "privacy." Dad installed a metal-hooded fireplace for warmth and also laid a beautiful flagstone floor. I moved into their old room upstairs for a couple years. Carl had an old crank Victor victrola phonograph and played his 45 and 78 rpm records without bothering us upstairs. He had a few records of the popular singers back then.

Carl had a large-framed black and white bicycle he didn’t ride very often. When he was gone to school activities or out with his friends, I wanted to learn how to ride. The bar on a boy’s bicycle was too high for me to climb over, so I figured out how to make it into a scooter. I stood on the left pedal with my right foot, grabbed the handlebars and pushed it down Whetstine Avenue with my left foot. This way, I learned how to balance and also how to care for a bike because it wasn’t mine. Whetstine was gravel, so I was careful not to crash.

Roy went out to our mailbox on Willow Creek Road and found a rattlesnake coiled up inside. He used a stick to get it into a cloth bag and took it up to the rock pile and let it go (behind what is now WalMart at Ponderosa Mall). He found out later that someone had intended the snake for someone else and got the wrong mailbox! Roy was interested in drawing and he often sat downstairs watching Dad make blueprints for his various building and remodeling jobs. He learned the names of the rulers, lines, angles, table and other terms. He knew Dad wasn’t actually an architect and decided he’d like to be one someday. Good grades were needed for that goal, so he began to study harder in school.

My brothers, besides working hard in school, had their own after school and weekend activities. They had several neighborhood friends as well as those in school: John, Henry and Paul (Jubal Wilson) Baumgartner, Keith Bochat, Anthony Kraps, Richard Franks, A. C. Goodwin, Sam Green, Keith Hensen, Sam Hill, Jim Hills, John and Sarah Hooker, Art Parson, Herman Schmidt, Larry Vanlaningham, Earl Warner, David Yetman and Doug Zimmerman. John Hooker obtained a long-bodied car, hollowed it out, put a bed in it and a pot-bellied stove with the stove pipe sticking out the top. He set out for Alaska, but only got as far as Flagstaff!

Richard Franks and other trombonists in the school band thought it was fun to poke the band members in front of them with their trombone slides. Richard Franks and David Yetman and three other boys loved to jam the band music. Wayne Zimmerman played saxophone. This ‘Dixieland’ jamming exasperated Mr. Henderson, the teacher. Carl took piano lessons for a while from Mrs. Holcomb on Alarcon Street near the Congregational Church. I took lessons from the same teacher but didn’t make it quite as far as Carl. She was very strict and didn’t make learning any fun. To this day, I can read music but can’t play very well.

My brothers, Carl and Roy, were always busy with some project or activity as teenagers in the mid-1950s.

Carl helped form an amorphous group with lax rules and no regulations. They held meetings, but didn’t use Robert’s Rules (or anybody elses!). Each boy talked about whatever he wanted and no decisions were made, except when to go to the Snow Cap Restaurant for a treat.

David DuBois sat in front of Carl in Mr. Simpson’s class and it was he who came up with the name for the group: "Venerable Organization Opposing Anti-American Groups" or VOOAG. I was 6 years younger than Carl, a girl and I wasn’t allowed to be a member, but I knew all the boys in the group back then. "Well, you’re in the auxiliary," Carl said. "I am? That’s great. I didn’t know you had an auxiliary." "The Relative’s Association…V-RA," Carl stated.

When the boys held meetings in my brother’s upstairs bedroom, I tried to listen by sitting with an ear at the closed door. I guess I moved and made noise once and when they found out I’d been listening, they whispered for the rest of the meeting. When my dad finished the new addition in the basement and they moved downstairs to the new bedroom, they were too far from the door for me to hear anything.

VOOAG was into Viking lore and the boys read some good history. The two organizational stipulations they adhered to were for a few of the boys to take on Viking names AND to shake hands on greeting using the first two fingers shaped like a claw. Carl, Roy, David Yetman and Jim Hills still greet each other this way. Carl and Roy adopted the names, "Lothar and Godred Gyrfalcon." Some of the other names chosen were (are): Jim Hills – "Ragnar," Art Parson – "Merdeka," Anthony Kraps – "Ahnthony" and Herman Schmidt – "Thorfin." In tenth grade, David Yetman joined as "Tostig Eros Brahms." The club had a machete for their mythical sword "In-sombre," but sadly, it was left down in Mexico during one of their exploratory trips.

Keith Bochat was (is) a family friend from the 1950s. His dad ran the "Bochat’s Auto Service" at the ‘island’ at Miller Valley Road and Hillside and Keith often helped his dad at the station. For recreation, he and Carl enjoyed many Saturday nights at the drive-in theater on Senator Highway. Keith would take along two telephones. He had a small 1934 Dodge with a rumble seat. When they passed a parked car at the theater with girls in it, he’d leave one of the phones in their car and after he parked his car a few spaces beyond, he could talk with them. He said lots of girls were too shy to talk face-to-face. Then, when the boys got hungry, Keith carried one of the phones with him to the concession stand. He left it there and when his order was ready, the concessionaires called him and he knew when to pick up his order. Only problem with all that was that he had to carry a roll of wire, unroll it first to talk, then roll it back up again! No cell phones in those days!

I asked Keith one time if I could ride in the rumble seat of his little tan car. When he came up to see Carl, he drove me around the neighborhood. I got a mouthful of dust and a nose full of exhaust fumes. I didn’t ask again. Keith rigged up the little car with a spark plug in the exhaust pipe. When he stepped on the gas, some went directly out the exhaust pipe and the spark plug sparked, setting the gas on fire. Once he had some girls riding in the rumble seat and turned on the spark plug. Flames roared out the back of the car and scared the girls. They were reported to have said, "If Keith’s car is the only one in the world, we’ll choose another way to get there." He also fixed a coin slot on the dashboard and tried to get his friends to put nickels in the slot. One nickel ran his car radio for seven minutes. No one ever used their nickels and he ended up putting all his own nickels in so he could listen to his radio.

In the 1950s, anyone was able to go into a hardware store downtown and ask for whatever amount of dynamite, blasting caps and fuses were needed for a project and they’d hand them over the counter. Keith Bochat built a Tesla coil with nice jumping sparks behind his house on Miller Valley Road. One day some policemen came to their front door and asked, "Are you running an electrical device?" Keith said that he was. One of the frustrated policemen said, "Well, turn it off. We’re running a radar speed trap and it’s not working and we can’t catch anybody"! Miller Valley Road was just two lanes at that time. The Tesla Coil gave an astonishing show but you had to be careful not to get your fingers close when it was turned on! I remember that the long, dancing sparks made a very loud noise. Roy and Carl and others made a Tesla coil in their H. S. Science Club. Carl still has a working Tesla coil where he lives in Tucson. Google ‘Tesla coil’ for some spectacular examples and to see how it is built.

One day Carl and some of his friends put a marble under each leg of the podium that Mr. Simpson used while teaching his class and they sat back to see what would happen when the teacher leaned on it. Sure enough, when Mr. Simpson leaned on it, it simply rolled out from under his arms! He was surprised and lots of snickering was heard.

The junior high building on Gurley Street was old and rickety. Sometimes the boys would march down the halls intentionally make noise and the floors would creak and shake. The principal often had to scold them. He was afraid the building would fall down!

Besides being linked to the Vikings, my brothers liked the old west atmosphere. They built their own Kentucky rifles from scratch and dressed like western adventurers. The only thing they were missing was a horse!

The boys had some great times in junior and senior high with their many antics and special projects. We had many family adventures as well. I remember our trips over Mingus Mountain. Sometimes when the main road through Jerome was closed because of snow or rock slides, we’d have to go over by Cherry Road. We were always glad to get safely home after those trips. Sometimes we would take a lunch with us to the headwaters of the Hassayampa River up in the Bradshaws (out Senator Highway). It is said that if you drink the water there you will never tell the truth! My brothers drank the water but I would dip my hand, lift it to my face and just look at it…..I knew I would be writing my memoirs someday!

Carl graduated from Prescott High in 1958 and Roy in 1961. I graduated in 1964. The high school was located along Granite Creek downtown during that time. The building is now Mile High Middle School.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Courtesy of author) Reuse only by permission.

This 1961 photo shows four of the old VOOAG members still getting together after graduating from high school. From left: Keith Hensen, Carl Noggle, Anthony Kraps and Roy Noggle with a friend Walter Soulages.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Courtesy of author) Reuse only by permission.
Young Edisons: The Arizona Republic, February 18, 1960.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Courtesy of author) Reuse only by permission.
Graduation photos, Carl Noggle 1958 and Roy 1961.