Small Town Girl

I’m sitting at my laptop without my usual cup of coffee. Instead, I’m sipping on a glass of water. I just got home from a two mile walk, and since exercise was topic of last week’s Spin Cycle, I know you’ll forgive me for this week’s late Spin!

From the time I was 3 years old until I was 12, I lived in a red brick house on a red brick street across from a red brick church. I would walk down the street with my sister to our school, and I would ride my bike to the playground by the water tower in the middle of town. I could walk down the street to buy a gallon of milk for my mom, and go to the post office to pick up our mail from our P.O. box. I had the combination memorized, but I could also ask the postmistress to give me my mail. She knew me, and so did everyone else in town. When I was in sixth grade, every week my sister and I would walk to every house and business in town, distributing an advertising circular. It was our first job.

In our backyard, we had an apple tree and two plum trees. My mom would make plum jelly and homemade applesauce. A huge tractor tire was our sandbox, and my dad build a wooden cover for the sand to keep the town cats out of it. We had an old metal swing set that I used as monkey bars instead of its intended purpose. There was a rhubarb patch in the back with tall, tall dill plants. My sister and I would pick the rhubarb, tear off the huge leaves, rinse the stem under the hose and eat them raw. We would climb our neighbor’s tamarack tree, and then he would come out and yell at us to get down. He wasn’t always that crotchety. He did teach me how to ride a two-wheeler in the alley behind our houses.

As the pastor’s kids, we attended every baptism luncheon and wedding in town. Wedding receptions were held in the gym at the school, with huge tarps protecting the wooden floor. Ham and cheese sandwiches on huge platters would be served, and little plates of dainty, homemade buttermints would be scattered around the table. If the reception was to include dancing, it would be held at the AFW* hut instead. Adults would be dancing inside; kids would be running around the old Air Force airplane outside. There was a cracked hole in the windshield, which we assumed was a bullet hole. Was the body of the pilot still in the cockpit? We weren’t tall enough to look inside the plane discover if it was.

When I was 12, my family moved to the Chicago suburbs. However, I will always consider my hometown to be Buckley, Illinois.

Spin Cycle at Second Blooming

*I can’t remember if AFW is the right acronym!

Also linking up with Coffee Friday today!


The Coffee Shop
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Kindergarten Memories

For about a month, all over Facebook back-to-school pictures have been taken and exclaimed over. Mommy blogs (and a few Daddy blogs) have written about the emotions tied in with that first day. I wrote my own mandatory back-to-school post last week. Lily and Emmy are pictured wearing their backpacks, loaded up with school supplies, a lunch and a snack, ready to go.

First Day of School

For Emmy, Kindergarten has really been no big deal. She has been in preschool since she was three and has been well prepped to start school. When I was three, there was no preschool in the town I lived in. I didn’t go to school until I was five years old, and then I went to Kindergarten. Emmy goes to school all day; I just went to school in the morning. Emmy has math in the morning, and gym class, and after lunch she has reading. I had nap time; our teacher would dim the lights and we would lie down on our little rugs and pretend to close our eyes.

Despite the less rigorous Kindergarten I attended, I did quite well in school. In fact, I must have liked school a lot since I went on to become a teacher myself. Way back in Kindergarten, though, all I wanted to do was lose my two front teeth, just like my friend Dawn did after putting the handle of her plastic book bag into her mouth. And I did NOT want the teacher to take my jump rope!

One day, I had decided to bring my brand-new jump rope to school. It was raining that day, so we had recess in the gym. The gym had wooden floors and a stage on one wall. Recess included many grades, not just the kindergartners. Kids would be running around playing tag; basketballs and kick balls would be flying through the air. With all the distractions, I soon abandoned my jump rope and let some other kids play with it. The sixth grade teacher saw that these kids were misbehaving with MY jump rope, and so he took it away from them. I saw what was happening, ran over to the sixth grade teacher and grabbed my jump rope right out of his hands. I told him that it was MY JUMP ROPE and my mommy told me not to lose it! My mother always got a kick out of telling me that story.

After learning all of the Letter People (for some reason it is Mister M that sticks out in memory), it was time for me to move on up to First Grade.

Mister M

 

After a year of watching me go to school and wanting to go too, my sister eagerly started Kindergarten. There was no Facebook, no blogging or Instagram or digital cameras back then, but Mom still proudly posted our First Day of School picture.

My sister, going to Kindergarten, and me, ready for First Grade.

And that, my friends, was the beginning of my formal Education.

Spin Cycle at Second Blooming

What do you remember about your school days?

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