2001-08-16 - 21:10 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Supplies

From elementary school through the tenth grade about this time of year my mood would be mixed, one day I'd be mellow and anticipating Labor Day, looking forward to the last big family outing of the year, a picnic in the mountains at a place we could play ball with a place where the men could get set up and play horseshoes.

Each woman would bring special things of her making. At least three different kinds of potato salad, various plates of pickles of all different kinds. There were hardboiled eggs which had been soaked in beet juice for how long I don't know, but the flesh was red deep into the egg. Usually as many different kinds of home canned relish as there were women. I remember, our picnics were of the hamburger, hotdog type and we were hugely happy with that. A fresh cooked hamburger on a bun with a slice of Bermuda onion and a dab of mustard lasted but a short time in my hands and then a return to the line to get another. What ever melons were good were served up and there was lemonade and orangeade, real lemonade and orangeade. Stuffed to the gills with food I still stowed away pie and the special treat for a picnic, ice cream.

Even though it was Hard Times, the families would use money especially saved for the event, and then back in town going back to the weinies with beans for lunch, weinies with beans for supper and beans with weinies for dessert. It was a huge feasting, playing and talking time. Some of us kids would go on hikes nearby in the hills.

We used to trail some of the adults once in awhile, if catching them in a smooch, we would holler and laugh and try to outrun the big guy to a safe haven.

Then back to town, sweaty and supremely tired and suffering the downhill trip the weather getting muggier and hotter the nearer to town we got.

My memory is not the greatest but I think that it was the next business day after our Labor Day fiesta that we started school for the fall semester.

Being a boy and knowing that summer vacation would soon be over and then School looming ahead for the last half of August encouraged me to play my darn hardest to get as much in as I could. I had my wishes about school, one of them was wanting a nice teacher, a reasonable, communicative teacher. And of course a patient one.

It wasn't all bad though, the challenge of learning and the interest in putting useful facts in our head kept me pretty well content. We had music in elementary school, the class would sing while I sat and read. Each new teacher I had would start the semester trying to get a decent note or two out of me before she gave up. But I loved the music and still do, its in my heart and memory but never in my throat.

I was fascinated by our art classes, especially those in junior high school. I remember once we made books, from the ground up. Real books even though they were small. We made the covers with cardboard covered with leatherette, cut and assembled the pages, sewed them and glued fancy paper to the inside of the book covers. They made dandy autograph books.

I loved print shop and learning to set type, learning a new skill of reading letters upside down. I still can smell in my head the smell of it and hear that press running. Industrial arts is what wood shop or shop was called then. We learned woodwork and metalwork and were taught how to use tools safely and properly.

Although I had good English usage and choice of words and could spell like a whiz, English class was one of my downfalls. The other one was any form of math.

Then the pleasant holidays came with regularity. Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, St. Valentines Day (Where we began to feel that girls didn't have cooties at all), Easter were the main ones and there was usually enough colored paper, crayons, paste and a teacher with good ideas which made it fun for us to get ready for a holiday.

Labor Day was the great divide between unrestrained freedom and the formal ritual of school. A holiday to look forward to with longing and dread.

If I drew a cranky teacher, then half of my school year was messed up, and I guess with my rebellious way when things were bad didn't help the cranky teacher's attitude get any better either.

Junior high was a bit better as we had a teacher for each subject and a cranky one could only spoil about an hour a day.

Of course about the time we boys hit junior high, the devil in us manifested himself and great grief, the teachers had a handful.

Starting about two or more weeks ago I kept seeing little references to the school year but paid little attention, thinking Labor Day came at the end of August and then school. School started yesterday here. Then the stocking of a bunch of stuff for the Moms to buy the kids for school made sense to this dull man. I suddenly realized that I had been seeing shelves in the supermarkets loaded for quite awhile with school Supplies . . . . .

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