School Days

It's the first week of school & I imagine more than a few of the children are glancing at the clock as the weekend's almost here. Yellow buses will soon be gathering at the schools for the journey home. My grandchildren will be amongst them.

When I started school, there were no buses to pick me up & deposit me on the school or home doorsteps. At that time, we lived on a farm. The one-roomed school house was about a mile away & if my dad, or a neighbour, wasn't around to drive, I would walk with 3 older boys. Sometimes we would hitch a ride with our teacher when her husband drove her there, but mostly, we walked the dusty road or took a short-cut through the woods. Winter was more difficult, but we managed.....

It was during the war years (Second one, NOT the First) & the school board had decided to continue with serving something hot to go with our home lunches. That had began during the Depression & while the War had brought some prosperity, farm kids usually didn't have too many luxuries. Our teacher would heat whatever the food was (really, I can only remember weiners, but likely more than just that; also think was only during the winter) on top of the wood stove. Simple fare, but it did taste good. Mom would usually pack sandwiches (beef or pork, with homemade mayonaise..Dad always killed a pig to feed us in the winter months), homemade donuts, milk in a small sealer jar, all in my small red metal lunch box. After Christmas, she would add an orange that had been in my Christmas stocking. Our apples from our orchard were kept for pies & sometimes she would place a slice in the box also.

We moved off the farm a year later into the nearby village. I didn't have so far to walk as our house was very close to it. Out our back door, across the backyard, up two steps & I was in the schoolyard which overlooked our place. This school was larger, two stories, two rooms. Took awhile to make new friends, missed my old ones terribly, but like getting to my former school in the winter, I managed....

High school days arrived, as did the yellow school bus, which entailed an hour's drive to the school & back. My big brother, twelve years older, had to walk or bike from our farm to the village (one mile), then catch a bus (not a school bus, just regular one) to get to his high school. He had to take his lunch, but by the time I went, there was a choice of buying school lunches or taking own...I took my own, still eating sandwiches, only this time was ham with the homemade mayonaise, bananas, but instead of bringing milk, would buy it or a coke. Was "eating high off the hog" as they say.....

Only one of the 3 boys I walked to school with is still alive, but my memories are vivid. Two were brothers (he quit school partway through the fall) whose sister was my best friend. A year or so older than me, she didn't go to school for 2 years or more as she was unable to walk & had many operations. The brothers, used to taking care of her, extended their concern to me as if I needed the extra help..I didn't, & being quite independent, didn't fully appreciate having them help me over fences! :D The next fall, when we started back to school, the remaining brother quit also (too much time working on the farm & too little money in the family which was why the brothers didn't finish school, but had to go into the working world), so that just left the one boy & me. He didn't believe I needed any aid in getting over fences which was great. He did teach me how to skip stones over the water & I remember how surprised we both were the first time I did it, perhaps on the 2nd or 3rd attempt.

Times have changed, no more one-roomed, or even two-roomed, schools. Both of my two public schools were closed & people turned them into homes. Sadly, the first one burned several years ago, but it still "lives" in my memory, as do the children of then.

School days...good, bad, funny, sad..remember them always.

Starfire

After The Storm

I haven't posted in nearly a year. Away during the winter and busy with life..ya know, time flies when ya're havin' fun. This past week sure hasn't been fun for many, many people, a nightmare in fact.

I think I will always remember the morning after Katrina went roaring though LA, MS and AL. I was watching a CNN reporter on TV, almost in tears herself, as a man, holding a hand of one of the three children with him and saying "She's gone. She's dead.". He was talking about his wife. They had fled to the roof of their home, but the waters split the house. He grabbed her hands and held on for awhile, but she told him "Let me go. Save the grandchildren". He and the children were roaming the street when the reporter met them. Faces drawn, eyes filled with the memory of the last moments of their wife, mother and grandmother, their images burned into my mind.

Harvey Jackson, where ever you are now, tho' we've never met, I won't forget you. God Bless.

Starfire