The RatSkats, a Secret Club Trying to Blend In

This picture was on Facebook's Marietta O.M.  section.    The picture caption said it was the Rat Skats going through initiation in 1948 in downtown Marietta at Atherton's Drug Store.   It gives three names :  James Morris, Jerry Turner, and George Harrison.

The Rat Skats was a secret society, sort of, but that didn't take away our bragging rights.  It was a secret society as far as school leaders went.  They frowned upon the Rat Skats.  I think we were just Frat-Brothers wannabes.

I was in the Rat Skats about ten years after this picture  and don't remember actually getting down and getting messy like that.  We had to carry a brick around and if any of the full fledge members hollowed "AIR RAID!" we were suppose to hit the ground or floor or deck or mud and wait for permission to get up.  But that was about it.  Wait.  There  was a little more.  We had to run three miles down Stilesborogh Road and let members drive by and haze us.  We should  carried a note pad and took names telling them they had better watch it or we might tell on them and they would get into trooblle.  Wait, there is more, on the run we had to wear a bra we had taken from a girl.  I didn't get mine by romantic means but just pleading.  If there is anything else I am either sworn to secrecy  or I forgot.... I think the latter.

The picture makes the boys look like a bunch of hogs rooting and wallowing in their own filth and mud doesn't it?   This picture was taken when I was about 7 years old - maybe I was part of the crowd and it looked fun.  It was supposedly a secret organization, so not only did it look fun but being secret it look mysterious, just like the Shriners.