Your first school

   / Your first school #21  
I can still smell my first school. The paint and everyting brand spanking new. In the middle of a brand new research community including the likes of Atomom Energy of Canada, Abitibi and GULF oil. A great time and place to have lived on Planet Earth. Never worried much about where our Garbage, polution or chemicals ended up! Heck, our school burned garbage to heat the boiler.
 
   / Your first school #22  
Late 50s just grade school and high school. I grew up in the country but rode bus into town. In winter I remember some boys peeing on radiators, flushing cherry bombs down commodes. Still had the old desks with ink wells.
I got sent to principal's office, arguing with teacher about Columbus discovering America in 1492, saying Indians were already here!
Same thing happened to my wife...only they called her Dad who was a 6'6" Cherokee!
The second grade school I attended was in the county, had outhouses and the library up the hill in a barn! Amazing reading there with goats, chickens, cows, hogs walking around!
My teacher right out of college was a pedophile (seriously! But a pretty blond).
First year high school I goofed off...So Dad sent me to Hargrave Military Academy.
Lots of memories!

Did the principle claim the Indians did not count? I got in a similar discussion when my 3rd grade teacher was talking about dinosaurs. I told her they never existed because the bible never mentioned them. It must be hard being a teacher. Do you have other memories about the pretty blond? :)
 
   / Your first school #23  
I would like to know, when it comes to immigration in this country (for matters of argument) when being FIRST, mattered?
 
   / Your first school #24  
I would like to know, when it comes to immigration in this country (for matters of argument) when being FIRST, mattered?

It seems to matter mainly to the one writing the history it seems. :)
 
   / Your first school #25  
You either have a pecking order or you don't. Which is it?
 
   / Your first school #26  
Did the principle claim the Indians did not count? I got in a similar discussion when my 3rd grade teacher was talking about dinosaurs. I told her they never existed because the bible never mentioned them. It must be hard being a teacher. Do you have other memories about the pretty blond? :)
Do you have other memories about the pretty blond?
How could I forget?
 
   / Your first school #27  
I went to grades 1 - 4 in Germany while my Dad was stationed there in the USAF from '68 - '72. Grades 1-3 were in a regular elementary school building for military kids. Right before 4th grade we had to move to base housing so I had to switch schools. That school building was so full that they had "overflow classrooms" in the basements of some of the apartment buildings on base. So my 4th grade classroom was in the basement of our building. We lived on the first floor and my bed was directly above the teachers desk. There was a piano in the classroom and they had a music teacher that traveled around to the different classrooms. When it was library or assembly day, we all had to walk over to the main school building. Our teacher - Miss Jensen, a pretty, 28 year old blonde! Of course all the boys had a crush on her! As did my dad!! LOL!

The high school at our base served several other bases in Germany. So, if you were a high school kid whose dad was at one of those other bases, you took a bus on Sunday afternoon to our base and stayed in a dorm for the week while you were at school. Friday afternoon the buses would line up outside the dorm to take you home for the weekend. The dorm was right across the street from our apartment building.
 
   / Your first school #28  
We had 3 grammar schools (grades 1-6) when I started school in 1956. One dated back the the 1800s, the others were likely built in the late 40s/early 50s to serve us baby boomers. Jr. high (also 50s era) was grades 7-9, and the high school was grades 9-12. No kindergarten back then. The high school dated back to the 1800s, was added on to in the 1920s. No air conditioning other than open windows, but then this was northern New England where you don't really need it. The high school did have these turbine things on the roof that may have provided additional ventilation.

We rural kids kind of got bounced around between grammar schools, probably to wherever there was room. Kind of a PITA having to change busses. We kind of got screwed where we lived...we were the 1st bus run in the morning and the last bus run after school, so we had a school day that was almost an hour longer because of this. Not quite long enough to make the bus if you had to stay after school though (not that I would know anything about that :D).

At the high school there were only a half dozen or so student parking spaces, alloted to kids who lived far enough out where there wasn't bus service (it was a regional high...several surrounding towns had grade but no high schools). Then again, most of us didn't have cars anyway. My father worked about 3/4 mi. away from both the high and jr. high schools...we'd usually walk over there and ride home with him since he got off work at 3:30.
 
Last edited:
   / Your first school #29  
I attended Eureka School a few miles south of Aurora. I wasn't able to start school until I was almost 7, as my Birthday is in November and school started around September. It was decided that since I was not 6 when school started I had to wait until the next year. But that was ok, as I skipped the 2nd and 4th grades, so was promoted from 1st to 3rd and from 3rd to 5th grade. I went to Eureka and finished up 6th grade when the school was consolidated into Aurora's system.

So I started 7th grade in the huge Aurora system. 7th grade thru Senior in high school was all mixed together. There was no Junior high at that time. Eureka was originally a two room schoolhouse with two teachers when my Dad went there after WW1, but by the time I got there it was 1 room and 1 teacher.

We did have running water by the time I got there, but no indoor toilets. Just the little houses on each end of the schoolyard. The school just gotten rid of the coal stove and put in LP gas floor furnaces the year I arrived. The indoor toilets were built a couple of years later. The "merry-go-round" was a focus of play with its sharp flint rock ground under it. Same for the ball field. One learned early on not to fall on your knees. I saw plenty of blood thru my years there.

I remember very well the day President Kennedy was assassinated. Our cook Jessie had left after lunch cleanup, but she came back after hearing on her car radio that the president was dead. We plugged in and turned on the old vacuum tube radio that the school had to listen for a while on the radio. It was a sad day. I was still pretty young on that fall day in 1963, not yet 9 years old, but I know something important had happened.

I have some good memories of the rough and tumble play we had at the school, we played a lot at "the old fort". and blowdown and bramble area on the north end of the playground featuring a large old tree trunk and a "jungle" of grape vines and small trees, and weeds. We had a good time there, just kids playing war in the woods.

While Missouri instituted speed limits in 1957, Still 3 or 4 years later people often traveled very fast on Highway 39 which faced the school ground. There was no fence and we were always cautioned to never go out on the highway. Many cars traveled that straight stretch of road at 100 mph. No one was ever killed or hurt because we obeyed and never strayed near that killer highway. Overall it was a good experience and memories of long ago.
 
   / Your first school #30  
Mines was School of Hard Knocks. :D

Just kidding, Dewitt Clinton in Chicago. Actually, technically that wasn't my first school, I did first grade for a month or so in Ukraine before we immigrated to the US.
 
 
Top