2024: 52 Ancestors 52 Weeks: Week 15 (April 8 – 14) School Days…

I “first” joined Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks on its “first” year in 2014… and what a whirlwind year that was… writing, editing, researching daily for 365 days! As much as I wanted to continue the following year, I found that I didn’t have the time to continue another year with that type of research… I was burnt out! I did continue blogging and writing stories at my own pace, which allowed me to write on other topics as well as family stories… but I’ve often missed it. The first year were no specific weekly prompts like today. If you’re interested in checking out my 2014 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks from my first year’s challenge… click the link above… and read over here for my return in 2019 for another 52 weeks challenge. My real challenge this year will arrive in April, as I also write yearly in the A-to-Z Challenge of daily writing… often planned on a specific topic. I’m definitely going to need a vacation after that month… but!

Whereas I always liked school for the most part… hubby is another story… as he’ll always say how he hated school. Funny how he remembers more about his school days than I do though.

Perry Grammar School

My mother dropped and picked me up during elementary school… it wasn’t until later in junior high school, did I begin walking home from school… but she often continued to drop me off on her way to work; she worked nearby in town. There was usually a group of us who walked home together… up a long hill. That’s probably what re-routed me to walk downtown more and hang out until mama went home; she worked at Perry Beauty Shop. There were no hills to downtown, and only a couple short blocks… plus more fun there in afternoons.

Early school photos… how different I looked with short hair vs the longer hair as a teenager… mama sewed all my early school dresses.

While I don’t remember… Mama’s father bought her a small one-seater car so she could drive me to school; we had only one car and Daddy took that to work. Granddaddy bought the car from one of Mama’s school teachers she had in her early years in Siloam. I wish I had a memory of the car… as I picture an odd small car in my mind… in her calling it a one-seater.

Junior High and Perry High School

Downtown offered me choices… shopping at Tot’s to Teen’s for clothes… where I bought all my various colored jeans… buying comic books and ice cream at Houston Drugs and then over to Perry Drug’s for the local favorite of cherry cokes and smashed toast at the counter. I’m sure they ordered extra loaves of bread… in anticipation of feeding us hungry kids every afternoon. If there was extra money begged from mama… I headed down to Lawhorn’s Music Shop to browse for a new 45 or the latest Elvis Presley album… but mostly I probably browsed. Kids today will never know what fun it was to linger over all the many album covers… wishing you could buy them all. If I ran out of money, I could always cross the street to the county courthouse and browse for free in the local library. In the summer it was my favorite hangout… as I always participated in the summer reading clubs… reading all the biographies of the presidents, inventors and always Nancy Drew. I strived to fill my summer reading certificate with the gold stars given for every book read. I wish I read more today… but the mind wanders to what I’m writing here on my blog or a new knitting project.

The Perry Library was located in the basement of the courthouse.

Like most kids… the first day of school is a total change to what you’d experienced in your big lifetime of five years. The funniest story ever told to me was when I asked my granddaughter, Ella, how she liked her first week of school. She hesitated before saying… “I don’t think I’m going to like it there… there’s not much time for naps or what I want to do.” Yes Ella… you are exactly right… and that will be for the rest of your life until you retire… and even at age 14 now… it still seems like eternity to her… but it comes faster than she’ll ever imagine!

While I don’t remember my first day of school… mama always told me that I seemed to have gotten in trouble on that very first day. I, like Ella, didn’t like being told when to sit, when to play, and when to eat… as I couldn’t sit still in my seat, listen, or follow directions; I wanted to go out and play. It seems my mother had more than one conversation with my teacher, Mrs. Couey, over my not listening to directions or sitting still in my seat… and if she gave us papers and told everyone not to write anything on it until she told us… well, that never happened. By second grade, I had become more acclimated with school and loved my teacher… Mrs. Pierce… who turned out to be my favorite teacher.

While I never disliked school… there were clicks in school and often that meant unless you were in a “click” you weren’t always picked for projects. It didn’t take me long to learn that.

In the school library for this probably “staged” photo. The one and “only” time I cut my long hair. Mama cut it… I cried… and she said she’d never cut my hair again. It grew back… all was good.

By the time I began high school in 1967 as a freshman… school wasn’t as interesting to me as it once was. Probably my favorite subjects were shorthand and typing… not so much English or any form of math like Algebra. In looking back, if my parents had been stronger on me in my academics, I could have performed better, but in as they didn’t push me… I didn’t study. Algebra puzzled me, as whenever I asked questions, my teacher would just say… “just use that number” which I pushed against, in saying, “I don’t understand“… I wanted my questions answered, not in being told… just do it.

The year I entered high school (1967), hubby graduated from high school. If we had lived near each other at that time, he probably wouldn’t have given me a look… as I was way too young to be a girlfriend to a boy who just graduated. We were, at that time, living over a thousand miles apart… and neither thinking about marrying… or marrying anyone so far away.

Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedia set was still in Steve’s old room in 1971.

What I did enjoy in school was researching and writing book reports. In those days, we had no computers… only encyclopedias… and you didn’t always have an up to date one; they were updated yearly as life was changing at a rapid pace, but parents weren’t going to buy a new set yearly. If you didn’t have reference books at home… a trip to the library was needed. I enjoyed research and questioning everything… mama often said how I should have been a lawyer… but yet neither of my parents pushed me to college. I don’t remember the exact name of the encyclopedia set I had when I was in Junior High School… but I do remember that they were very, very thick with very thin onionskin like pages. The set was given to my mother, so already old, and out of date when we received. I swear each book weighed probably 5 pounds and at least 5 inches thick. I actually can’t even remember using them, but they sat proudly in the bookcase alongside the fireplace.

Steve’s remembering of school days…

West Haven High School… of where hubby graduated from. He was the first class to begin in their newly built school in 1963. During the past several years they rebuilt the school, section by section, as classes attended… reopening in 2022. Now the school entrance is on the backside of where it once was.

Even though hubby tells me how he always hated school… I think once he discovered girls, school wasn’t so bad, and he did good in school… especially when all the girls sat around him in homeroom. He then pulled off A’s in spelling… and in as he’s a terrible speller… he must have had good eyesight. Funny how some are good spellers, and some aren’t… spelling always came easy to me.

What hubby did have a passion for, were the shop classes in high school… printing, electronics, wood and metal… wood shop being his favorite with Mr. Clarence Williams. Wood shop is where he built the justice of scales… winning him a first place in a local competition.

Funny how some save… and some don’t! Often the only things that survive from your early years are the “horrible” school photos, yearbooks, or possibly a newspaper clipping. I have a few newspaper clippings of my mom… but nothing on my dad… he hated school and attended only because he had to… skipping school as often as possible. Guess he didn’t feel he needed anything offered there. I always thought my father very smart and knowledgeable… especially in math… my worst and hated subject. Daddy quit school to join the Navy… earning his GED before leaving the Navy. Mama’s favorite subject was her “hair“… and boarding the bus daily meant only if her hair was looking good! Mr. Copeland (bus driver) told her that the best present he ever received was… when she graduated.

From all the stories Mama told me of her hijinks in school… singing on the bus, skipping class, talking back to teachers… she’s lucky she made it out of school. In home economics, she fought with the teacher over how her skirt should be sewn. While the teacher won out, Mama decided to prance across the stage hiking her skirt in creating a disturbance of laughter. She took that skirt home… ripped it apart and resewed it as she had first wanted to.

Daddy attended Mama’s graduation as her husband… and she almost missed going on stage to receive her diploma when they called her name… as they called her by her new married name!

Thanks for Stopping by… 

Jeanne

To read more 2024: 52 Ancestor Stories 52 Weeks, click HERE.

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