Our acclaimed school newspaper
was called the Sider Press, so
named because it was written by OceanSiders
about OceanSiders
for OceanSiders
― and
if that explanation has escaped you
all these years, join the club. (In
fact, as told by Richie Woods in his book,
Oceanside,
our teams were referred to in the local newspapers as the "Siders" before
they first became known as the "Sailors" in the early '40s.)
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As set forth in
the following 1941 newspaper account of its origin and early
history, our Sider Press started out as a weekly in December
1933 and quickly became one of the top rated student newspapers in
the region. Note the two familiar names of early faculty advisors
mentioned near the end of the article: |
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Below is part of
a sample front page and to the right, an interesting, lighthearted
article from our sophomore year (February 28, 1958) featuring some
familiar names:
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But by the time we were seniors, the content of the Sider Press (and
the masthead) had improved substantially. In fact, the artful masthead
that appears at the top of this web page, and on the pages shown below from our senior year, was
found to be still in use at OHS as recently as May 2005.
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In the
1959-'60 school year, our senior year at OHS, after
Spindrift,
the second most popular extra-curricular activity to
participate in directly, one that involved almost 100 Sailors at various
times during that year.
According to Spindrift,
during our senior year, the students worked during their
lunch hours to produce 10 editions (today, with all the
new technology, only 5 were produced in the 2005-2006
school year) with a wide range of contents that included
coverage of matters such as OHS sports, school and
national elections and witty, satirical essays
―
we even sold advertising
―
and
we met every deadline.
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The Sider Press student staff,
early in our senior year, October 1959 |
Here's the front page from the
October 30, 1959, issue:
And here's the front page from the March 28, 1960, issue:
Click
here to "get the news" by viewing an enlarged, more readable
version of this SP page and to
hear another music selection.
And finally, here's another front page,
this time from the June 10, 1960, issue:
No, the articles were not just about
school life or trivial local matters. In case you missed it the first
time, here's a sample quote from Dan Colodner's column entitled, "Our World
Today" from the March 28, 1960, issue:
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"Castro has shown himself
unreliable and capricious, and his oratory resembles Hitler's wild harangues,
except for the fact that his speeches are televised. His influence has
spread and he now serves as a rallying point for all opposition in other
American countries.
"... His hold on Cuba is firm
and he has the steadfast support of the masses ... As for now, all we can
expect are increasingly bitter attacks on the United States, more trouble in
other Latin American countries, and the arrival of a strong Communist movement
ninety miles from our mainland."
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But on the lighter side, because we
were young, the March 28, 1960, issue also contained a brief article without a byline about girls' fashions at OHS in
the early spring of 1960:
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"While half seem to be
suffering from winter frost, bundled in their heavy sweaters and long tights,
the other half wear skirts at (or above) knee length and shirt tails free.
"Olive drab and gold are the
popular combination this year. It's considered 'ivy' by most of the
girls. Of course, she who wears an olive drab shirt must have olive drab
sneakers to match.
"For those who wear shoes ―
not sneakers ― the style is the Queen Ann
heel. Short girls especially like this..."
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While
most of the ads in the Sider Press were, of course, for local merchants,
names you might remember such as Levin's Pharmacy,
See Hear (the record
store in the Great Lincoln Shopping Center), Hoffman Jewelers and Farmer Joe's,
up the street from the Oceanside movie theatre, where
many of us bought sandwiches for lunch in jr. high (later known as Farmer
Joel's),
but by the time we were seniors, others were for such as the
then mighty New York Telephone Company (inviting "soon-to-be high school
graduates to discuss the many diversified job opportunities that are
available"
―
because we were young)
and the following that also appeared in that
March 1960 edition ― a
genuine period piece from Columbia Pictures
― for
Dick Clark's first (and, as it turned out,
only)
movie. This advertising was directed at us for one reason only
― because
we were young.
Copyright ©
2000-2017
by Howard B. Levy
and
1960 Sailors
Association Inc.
All rights reserved.
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