Forward to the Past
I know I should write something thought provoking or extremely intelligent, but simple little memories are invading my brain so I have to pull them out and share.
As I told you before, we lived "out in the country" so to get to school I either had to ride the bus (ugh!) or Mama took me in. There were special times when I was allowed to spend a school night with one of my "downtown" friends and we would walk to school. That was fun for me because we would meet other classmates on the way and wind up with a bunch of us walking together. I know that sounds stupid but it was a treat for me, an only child with adults and cows to communicate with most of the time
.
My high school years were from 1948 to 1952 and there were particular dress codes we had to adhere to. However, we girls decided that we wanted to wear jeans so we chose a particular day and wore them only to be told to go home and put on a dress. We did the same thing the next week and went home again under threat of being expelled if we tried to do something so outrageous once more. Finally we negotiated with the principal and he gave in, giving us the privilege of wearing jeans on Wednesdays! So you see girls, you have your grandmothers to thank for wearing your wonderful jeans, which by the way, did NOT have holes in them! Those were thrown away.
I'm not sure I told you about working on the school newspaper and if I did, forgive me. I told you I forget what I said when. Anyway, I shall move on. I was the business manager of the school newspaper and we used an old cloak room for our office. I will explain that a cloak room was like a huge closet in the very old two story building which housed our high school. Where we put out coats, I don't know, but perhaps that wasn't a problem because Beeville in South Texas is hot most of the time anyway. Seldom used coats and sure didn't wear "cloaks". We wrote little articles about school activities, added a little gossip, gave sports scores, etc and then printed all that on a mimeograph machine. That, my friends, is a messy forerunner of the current printers and it was awful to try to get good prints out. I supposed though that it was better than setting up linotype. The focus of this story is the room itself which was on the second floor and had a flap in the ceiling which opened up into an enormous attic. There were pigeons roosting in the attic and that became a problem. See, pigeons, as cute as they may be, have lice and the lice dropped down into our news room. I had a terrible infestation of those little buggers and when I asked the principal if I could go home to have mother get rid of them, he didn't believe me. So....I just leaned my head over his desk, moved my hair around and out came the lice all over the place! He immediately called my mother.
We did not have to stay on campus during lunch my high school years so once a week we went to eat Mexican food at Trevino's which was about three blocks from school. It was a very small cafe which served the Mexican food by which I have always compared others. We had to hurry back to school so most of the time we walked along the railroad track which was the shortest route. One day I was
balancing along on the rails, head down, when I felt a vibration, looked up and saw a train barreling toward me. I dived off just in time and felt the air from the engine as it passed close by. Of course, this didn't deter me from going there each week for their wonderful food.
I wish that today's teenagers could experience fullness of young life without having to worry if they are going to be targeted by some idiot with a weapon or blown up by yet another. And, as I said, it may sound boring but I feel very blessed for having grown up during that era.
As I told you before, we lived "out in the country" so to get to school I either had to ride the bus (ugh!) or Mama took me in. There were special times when I was allowed to spend a school night with one of my "downtown" friends and we would walk to school. That was fun for me because we would meet other classmates on the way and wind up with a bunch of us walking together. I know that sounds stupid but it was a treat for me, an only child with adults and cows to communicate with most of the time
.
My high school years were from 1948 to 1952 and there were particular dress codes we had to adhere to. However, we girls decided that we wanted to wear jeans so we chose a particular day and wore them only to be told to go home and put on a dress. We did the same thing the next week and went home again under threat of being expelled if we tried to do something so outrageous once more. Finally we negotiated with the principal and he gave in, giving us the privilege of wearing jeans on Wednesdays! So you see girls, you have your grandmothers to thank for wearing your wonderful jeans, which by the way, did NOT have holes in them! Those were thrown away.
I'm not sure I told you about working on the school newspaper and if I did, forgive me. I told you I forget what I said when. Anyway, I shall move on. I was the business manager of the school newspaper and we used an old cloak room for our office. I will explain that a cloak room was like a huge closet in the very old two story building which housed our high school. Where we put out coats, I don't know, but perhaps that wasn't a problem because Beeville in South Texas is hot most of the time anyway. Seldom used coats and sure didn't wear "cloaks". We wrote little articles about school activities, added a little gossip, gave sports scores, etc and then printed all that on a mimeograph machine. That, my friends, is a messy forerunner of the current printers and it was awful to try to get good prints out. I supposed though that it was better than setting up linotype. The focus of this story is the room itself which was on the second floor and had a flap in the ceiling which opened up into an enormous attic. There were pigeons roosting in the attic and that became a problem. See, pigeons, as cute as they may be, have lice and the lice dropped down into our news room. I had a terrible infestation of those little buggers and when I asked the principal if I could go home to have mother get rid of them, he didn't believe me. So....I just leaned my head over his desk, moved my hair around and out came the lice all over the place! He immediately called my mother.
We did not have to stay on campus during lunch my high school years so once a week we went to eat Mexican food at Trevino's which was about three blocks from school. It was a very small cafe which served the Mexican food by which I have always compared others. We had to hurry back to school so most of the time we walked along the railroad track which was the shortest route. One day I was
balancing along on the rails, head down, when I felt a vibration, looked up and saw a train barreling toward me. I dived off just in time and felt the air from the engine as it passed close by. Of course, this didn't deter me from going there each week for their wonderful food.
I wish that today's teenagers could experience fullness of young life without having to worry if they are going to be targeted by some idiot with a weapon or blown up by yet another. And, as I said, it may sound boring but I feel very blessed for having grown up during that era.
Comments
Post a Comment