Aug. 12, 2003 - 21:51 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Time Of Year

For a guy as deaf as I am, my memory still remembers sounds quite well and I am happy about that.

Last day of school, on the way out, the last thunk of a locker door being slammed shut -- with out the sound of the padlock being put on. Then blessed freedom.

Summer is fleet and was over before we had time to do all the things we wanted to.

Then it was back to school. Through the doors once more, inhaling the smell of the oiled floors, going to get padlocks for the locker and finding out where our home room was. Each year the procedure was a bit different but essentially the same.

Then came the classes, every room had a blackboard and chalk, the same smell, the roll up map at the center of the room (United States of course) with north always UP. The big almost floor to almost ceiling windows. Gave us lots of light but I can imagine the BTU's that the boiler had to send through those clanking radiators. to keep us warm in the winter.

I can remember the sound of the bell for class change and trying to make it to home room before the last bell rang in the morning.

I remember the shop in junior high - the class was called "Industrial Arts," it was in a building all by itself for some strange reason -- it might have been an afterthought or might have been a house at one time converted into a shop. We learned woodwork, soft metal work, the use of drills, soldering irons and the use of the furnace to heat iron for bending. I remember making a hammer, drilling the holes to fit the handle in -- seems to me there was a lot of filing to connect the two holes for a handle. The fun part of the whole thing is to take a piece of metal that is fairly soft, shape it, temper it and then case harden it. Later after a handle was installed it was really neat to find out that that chunk of metal I had labored over was actually pretty darn hard, much more so than when I began working on it.

The shop had a multitude of smells, wood dust in the air with its smell, glue pot on its heater, the smell of hot iron, paint and varnish smell somehow all rolled it up into a fascinating place to be. A variety of sounds not heard in other classrooms. Mallets pounding on chisels, hammers pounding nails, the little furnace where iron was heated to make it bendable had its own sound too. It was a place where I could make something with my own hands.

I remember the afternoon socials and trying to learn to dance - never did master that really but I had a lot of fun even so.

Remembering the thunk of locker doors reminds me that its once again that Time Of Year . . . . . . . .

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