2000-08-03 - 23:49 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Eye Opener

Fairly early in my school life we began learning by experience the realities of life in a more or less painless way.

Field Trips - That magic phrase - what wonders we beheld. We were fortunate as I think that we got more than our share. The first I can remember is a trip to a nearby park, we walked it, carrying a little brown bag with a sandwich and two goodies. We parked our sacks and did the activities our teacher had organized and played games she led and after that we just played a bit with kids in our normal, natural groups. Gee, it was nice with green grass, leafy trees, blue sky with a fluffy cloud here and there an a gentle breeze now and then.

Later some one came by bringing our drinks for our little picnic, which I suspect that our teacher paid for out of her pocket. Then back to school after our lunch settled, for an hour we talked about things we had seen and asked questions of the teacher.

We were a fairly ruly crowd (as opposed to un - ruly) and behaved pretty well. While still in that grade we made a trip to the same location to the library there (my second home - I had an early start). I look back and marvel how well behaved we were, of course there was one rebel in the crowd who was taken aside and talked to by our teacher. I often wondered just what she said to him, he sure toed the line from there on.

Down the line a bit, in another grade we took permission slips home, got them signed and the next week we were bussed to the Natural History Museum. I can still remember my wide eyed awe on sighting just about everything there, the splendor of the ancient bones towering over us, the artifacts of long gone humans, pottery, baskets, stone tools, the display of minerals, insects. Our teacher had prepared us well, we stayed close together and she explained things as we went and answered the many questions we put to her. Thus we learned a bit about nature and how the old ones had lived.

Another time we took a field trip to our big daily news paper. It was organized to pretty well follow the news gathering, editing, type casting and the plate making of the the pictures and were shown how they consisted of little dots when looked at through magnification. We made our way through the whole thing and near the end we were taken down through the press room and watched the paper being printed with those giant presses, being shown the huge rolls of news print paper. The intricacies of the printing and assembly of the paper was amazing to me as well as my intoxication with printers ink and the attendant noise. Our final step of the tour was out to the loading area to watch the bundles of papers coming out of the plant and being loaded onto the delivery trucks. Our acquaintanceship with the real world was progressing.

Another field trip was to the factory where rubber tires, garden hose, radiator hose and "V" belts were manufactured. Different noises, vastly different smells met us as we moved on through the factory. We observed the heated molds, operated by machinery which made the tires, operated by sweaty and sooty,greasy men. We saw how the other things were made in a similar mode led by an employee of the company. We were shown the first steps of working the rubber. We were shown the various stories of the factory and what went on there. We were brought further into the reality of working for a living to be encountered when we would be adults.

I lived in our Capitol City and we made our trips through the State House, also the City and County building which didn't have the new smell worn off yet.

All through school further field trips made us familiar with life as it was to be lived.

Oh yeah, we did our bookwork, the three R's and stuff, but the excitement and spice was in those wonderful field trips where we saw in operation the places where we eventually would choose to work or were nudged into aspiring to learn much more before going on to making a living. Some of my classmates went on to University to become important people doing very important things.

I do think that the urge to go as far as we could in life came from those field trips - - - besides, what fun we had on breaks from those dull classrooms. The teachers seemed to enjoy those trips too.

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