May Day - then!!

May First was a holiday of sorts when I was a girl.  You didn't get out of school and there were no bank or post office closings, but we did have a May Pole dance - and a May Queen too!

The above shows the 9th grade girls at Northridge Junior High in 1958 I would guess.  There was one special May Pole dance, where the queen and her court wove the ribbons in and out, but the rest of the girls did their own dances.

At the elementary level, we also had a carnival.  As you can see above, lots of full skirts and petticoats were in abundance too.

Eisenhower dismantled the holiday for schools when the Russians focused on May Day as a workers' protest day.  Too bad - because there is something fresh and endearing about lots of lovely young ladies dancing about in full skirts and petticoats.

And you will notice that even in black and white, you can see that the day was gray and overcast - just like today!!  (That's for all the folks who say, "Why is it so gray and gloomy?  It's May.")

Sometimes you can go home again - at least for a little while!

Met up with some good friends - Carol, Sharon and I went from K through 12 together.  Melba Sue and Laurie came in about 3rd grade.  Melba Sue left after 9th grade - but we've stayed in touch.  Laurie graduated about a semester before the rest of us.  

We'd been trying to get together a 50 year class reunion - but it was dragging on - so we at least decided to meet for lunch at Carol's house.  And spent the day talking and telling stories and having a wonderful time.

 

This is Laurie - and the sketch below is one she drew of me back in 11th grade Economics class!!

 

Friendship is so precious.  I had not seen anyone from my school years until the 20 year reunion in 1983 - and since then I've been trying to make up for lost time.  The others had all stayed in touch over the years.  Something I should have done.  The shot below is from the late 90's - includes Carol, me and Laurie.  Kathy is on the end - she lives across the country, so we don't get to see her as much.

And this is from a reunion we pulled off in 1985 - when I was pregnant with Hannah - Laurie was also pregnant - Melba Sue is next to me and Sharon is in the red striped top.

 

Today was a lovely trip down Memory Lane - but what is even better is that we have much to talk about that is current too!!

You CAN go home again! At least partway!!

Saturday morning I met up with two friends from high school, and we set out to walk around Granada Hills.  We weren't exactly sure of every place we wanted to go, so we started out by walking to our old elementary school.  Some aspects were quite different - mainly the strong fences all around, and the missing pepper tree in the middle of the playground - but our old classrooms were there, and the lunch area looked as foreboding as ever!!

 

We walked to the homes of other old friends to see if they looked the same.  They mostly did not look the same, but we felt like we were evoking another time by talking about how it used to look, or how we remembered it, or specific memories we had of the various locales.

 

After we headed to the junior high - which was a HUGE disappointment - we wandered around some more until we came to our old high school.  (The disappointment in the junior high was mostly due to the fact that there were no buildings there now that were there when we were there!  We definitely had to use our imaginations!!)

But the disappointment in Patrick Henry Junior High School - now known as Patrick Henry Middle School - was more than offset by the joy and pleasure we found at the high school.  GHHS was there and didn't appear to have changed much at all.  And lucky for us, some kind of band competition was going on, so the campus was open!!  

It was so great to wander into the girls' gym where a group of cheerleaders were practicing, to find our old lockers, to visit classrooms that still seemed to house the same subject matters we had had 50 years ago, to sit in the lunch area that had new tables, yes, but everything was in the same place it had been 50 years ago - even the vending machines - although now they were housed in vandal-proof cages!!

The above photo is an outdoor stage where we met up every morning before classes started to check in with each other, lament the scope of last night's homework, see if there was any news or gossip of note, and get ready to face another day in the trenches.  (All three photos are from GHHS.)

We used the girls' restroom  and swore that the floor tiles and stall doors were original!!

We started at GHHS in February of 1960 - and that was the first day of GHHS - we were the first graduating class to go all the way through.  (It was a 10th through 12th grade high school.)  Since the school was brand new, the trees were pretty small and new too - and that's the biggest difference we noted.  After all, 50 years of tree growth is pretty significant!

My high school years were happy years, so it was quite satisfying to wander about the campus and relive old memories, talk about teachers we had, kids we knew, dreams we had, crushes we cherished.  Maybe everyone wouldn't enjoy this experience, but we did.

Afterwards we walked down Chatsworth and headed back to my mom's house, where we had met and started out.  Walking down Chatsworth and noting where things used to be was a delightful "Memory Lane" kind of experience.  When we got back in to the residential areas, we found more homes of friends and more memories.

We ended with lunch at Brent's Deli in Northridge - and plans to get together in February for more reminiscing anyway!!

Maybe you CAN go partway home again - at least sometimes!!

Summer vacation is over; school is starting - sigh!!

This shot is from the house on Lime in September - notice I said September, not August!! - of 1979.  Bonny and Harry on their first day of school at Bradoaks.  Phoebe is standing there in her pajamas, shading her eyes from the sun!!

Bonny and Harry made out like banditos that year - school had ended in May in Utah - in August we moved to Monrovia - and in September they started school.  They got a couple of extra weeks that year!  (I won't even go into this insane trend in California for starting school earlier each year!!)

And now Bonny has already gotten her kids off to school last week.  Harry's kids go tomorrow, and Phoebe and Eliza's Theo go after Labor Day - the way it should be done!!  (In fact, I think someone ought to get real and have school go from October 1st to June 30th and we get July, August and September off.  I'm not expecting that to happen anytime soon though!!)

 

And that means I go off to school tomorrow too!!  I go kicking and screaming every year - I just have to get through the first day and then I'm fine - but getting there is brutal!!

 

I should not go on like this.  Noah helped me set up my room.  Lesson plans are lying on the front desk.  There is food in my cupboard at school - I will not starve.  

 

But I will have to set my alarm.  I will have to get dressed before 9.  I will have to think about what shoes I'm going to wear since I will have to wear them all day!!

 

I will let you know how it goes - in case you care!!

School Daze!!

Me with my instructional aides Beth and Julie about 3 years ago.

I've probably posted these ruminations on prior occasions - maybe I do every August in fact.  But I am looking to start school again in two weeks - summer vacation flies by faster and faster every year!!  (I  posed the question once, "Why does the time seem to go by faster every year?" and someone answered, "Because you are older and so there is more time to flash by."  Not sure if that's the answer, but it's a thought!)

(Note I said  summer vacation - summer is still with us and will be for many weeks I fear!!)

But when I contemplate the start of the school year - which for some points in my life truly did mean the end of summer weather and the change of seasons - I am impressed with the thought that school and all its controlling  parameters has dictated most of the days of my life.

I don't remember much before age 5 - and I don't remember a whole lot of specifics about my childhood.  But school figures prominently in most of the memories!  

Walking to school.  Walking to school with friends.  Walking to school with siblings.  Riding the bus one year when we shared a campus with Northridge Junior High.  Hiding my socks in the bushes when it was not cool to wear socks - and putting them back on when I headed home. Packing lunches.  Frosting the graham crackers for those lunches.  Begging for a lunch box and thermos.  Usually not getting either.  Choosing new school clothes.  Dreaming about having a dyed to match sweater set.  Wondering whose class I would be in.  End of school.  Report cards.  Homework.  Folding your paper so that there was an answer column.  Reports.  Projects.  Dad helping me with my posters.  Dad covering our books with paper sack book covers.  School carnivals.  Blackboard monitors.  Cafeteria food.  Rainy day schedules.  Pledge of allegiance.  Chalk dust.  Proms.  School plays.  Football games.  P.E. clothes - washing and ironing said P.E. clothes on Sunday night!  Studying for tests.  Exulting over good scores.  Despair over poor scores.  

 

(Mrs. Anderson saying, "Barbara, are you going on with math?"  "No, ma'am, I'm not."  "Well, I will give you a C in Trig then.  But you aren't ready to go on to Calculus."  "You have my word, Mrs. Anderson,  I will never take another math class."  I kept my word - I'm so old you could take 4 years of a foreign language in college to fill the math requirement!!)

Dorm life.  Roommates.  Choosing majors.  Homecoming.  Saturday night stomps at Cannon Center.  Hamburgers in the Cougar Eat.  Guys.  Cute guys.  Y Center Grand Opening.  Meeting Harry at same.  Working at the BYU Laundry.  Studying.  Study Abroad.  Reading, reading and more reading.  Writing, writing, and more writing.  Commencement.  Grad school.  Teaching Freshman Comp.

I could probably go on forever!!

The only times I was not in school were dictated by the times I was in school.  For a brief few months after I graduated from high school, in January of 1963, I worked in Saugus to save money for college.  So even though I was not in school, school was the reason I was where I was.

When I graduated from college, I went on the graduate school.  We even chose our wedding date based on the school calendar!  And when Harry graduated, we went on the graduate school at the University of Utah.  Even though I was not in school, I worked in the Registrar's Office and my schedule was dictated by school calendars and events.

When I stopped working when Bonny was born, Harry was still in school.  When he was through with school and I was expecting Harry, I enrolled in some classes.  For a few years I guess school did not impact us directly - maybe from the time Harry was born until Bonny started school 3 years later.

Then we started on the road to having our children in public school.  That started in 1975 - and ended in 2005.  There was even one year when Bonny was in college, Harry was in high school, Phoebe was in middle school, Eliza was in elementary school, Hannah was in nursery school - and Noah was home in diapers!  That was quite a year!

 

School memories and kids take up a lifetime.  Packing more lunches.  Frosting more graham crackers.  Buying more lunch boxes each year that usually end up being replaced by paper sacks.  Walking kids to school.  Driving kids to school.  Helping with projects, and homework, and carnivals.  Dressing up for Halloween.  Cupcakes for birthdays.  Room mothering.  Parent teacher conferences.  Book fairs.   Seminary.  Commencements.  Getting kids up in the a.m.  Getting kids to bed on time at night. 

In the midst of our children being in school, I started substituting.  Soon I was teaching half-time, then full-time.  School drove the days of our lives - not just public school either - soon college drove our schedules too - and drove wedding dates and vacations and trips too!

I am still teaching.  School still runs the show.  No one is in college at present - but probably before I retire, we will see Ara in college!

School will always run the show I suspect!!

(Where would our lives be without school?)

(This could be a book!)