I feel sorry for today’s kids; everyone goes back to school in mid August! When I was a kid, oh so long ago, we didn’t go back to school until after Labor Day. Of course, in those days none of the schools had air conditioning, so waiting until a little later was just common sense, given the sweltering Texas heat in August and September. Students and teachers alike had a hard time concentrating those first few weeks until the heat finally started to abate!
To me, fall has always seemed like the start of the new year, not January. A new grade, a new school year, new friends, this was a time of beginnings, not the decline of the year! There is something about new notebooks waiting to be filled and new pens and pencils waiting to be used that filled me with a sense of anticipation. Even in college all those brand new, empty notebooks gave me pleasure. When the fall semester ended and the spring semester started, there was never that same sense of newness and anticipation that the fall semester engendered. It was more of the same old routine.
The start of school, then as today, was heralded with the trip to the local drug or grocery store for school supplies. We went to a local drugstore called Skillerns for all of our supplies. Skillerns always ran a back to school special whereby for every so many dollars spent on school supplies you could buy a pint of ice cream for a ridiculously low price. I recall it being about .19 a pint. Now that was a pretty amazing price even in those days, especially when I go to the grocery today and pay $ 4.99 a pint for some fancy gelato! Every year we stocked up on as much ice cream as possible. In the evening, sitting around and watching the old black and white television, we ate ice cream for months. My Dad’s idea of having ice cream was that we each got our own pint and spoon, none of this dipping it out into bowls! Fudge ripple, chocolate, strawberry, butter pecan, and even lowly vanilla–what could be better? Now I look at the calories in a mere half cup of the frozen delicacy and shudder to think about consuming a full pint in a single sitting!
We didn’t have backpacks back then, those practical and ergonomic devices of today. We had the lowly satchel to stuff full of notebooks, pencils, crayons, glue, and the like. We carried our lunch in metal lunch boxes complete with a small thermos. These lunch boxes, adorned with our favorite heroes pictures on the outside, carried our lunch and also served as useful weapons for our minor skirmishes on the playground. Yes, we actually played on the playground with minimal adult supervision– non PC games like cowboys and Indians, king of the mountain, and kickball. Sometimes you didn’t get chosen to be on a team, and you know what, we lived through it!
My Mother had an amazing rule; we were allowed one day a year when we could stay home from school for no reason at all other than just wanting to stay home that day. I think she used some pretty wise child psychology as we carefully hoarded that one day, not wanting to waste it too early in the year. Other than our “free” day, we were expected to go to school every day unless we were running a fever or actively vomiting.
The other time we could count on missing a day of school was on those rare occasions when it snowed in Dallas. Even if school wasn’t officially closed, my Dad always declared it a snow day for us. Of course, for a southern city like Dallas, a mere 2 or 3 inches of snow or ice is enough to bring the city to a grinding halt. Living up here in the mountains and with previous sojourns in Bangor, Maine and Buffalo, New York, I always find it amusing how quickly a little snow and ice can shut down a major city. Of course, in all fairness we are much better prepared for snow up here!
Now there aren’t many hills in Dallas, but on those rare snow days, we found what little slopes we could and went sledding. Most kids in Dallas didn’t have sleds so there was quite a makeshift assortment of cardboard boxes, old dishpans, and other creative objects that could be improvised for speeding down the hill. Being a “Yankee,” I had a real sled, a Flexible Flyer, with sturdy oak slats and bright red runners. It had a steering board in front that could be used by hands or feet, depending on whether the rider was lying down or sitting upright. That old sled still hangs in our garage, like me, rapidly becoming an antique! Besides faithfully serving my sister and me, it carried our sons down many an icy slope in both Kentucky and Colorado as well as introducing our two little grandsons to the joy of whizzing down a hill with cold air blowing in your face.
On one memorable occasion years ago in Louisville, my Dad, who was always a kid at heart, took a rather nasty tumble from the old Flyer, resulting in a couple of broken ribs, and, as I recall, the end of his sledding career! After a couple of hours in the cold, trudging slowly uphill for the momentary pleasure of speeding back down, everyone was ready for hot chocolate, laced with a little peppermint schnapps for the adult “kids.” Today Target and Costco offer an array of plastic sleds in various shapes, sizes, and psychedelic colors, but I’m not sure these new and cheap devices offer quite the same sense of wonder and delight as a shiny, wooden sled with red trim and runners lying under the Christmas tree!
Remember Rosebud in “Citizen Kane”?
©2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers
