Trippin' Down Memory Lane - Again!

Well, Mother Nature has evidently mellowed out again for a few days - by afternoon the sun was shining and  we were bumping toward 70 degrees. Looks like we'll actually stay in the 70's most of the week - yay! My spinach and peas look like they survived last week's snow, so we're all good.

Today is hubby's birthday - we had lunch at the local Mexican Restaurant to celebrate. Happy Birthday, honey!

I mentioned the Facebook group from my home town last week. I hope I don't run the topic into the ground, especially for my readers who are also part of that group. But what wonderful memories we have! The reminiscence threads have been running these past few days through the end of school, graduation, and senior trip. Taking a senior trip is almost a thing of the past, and probably is something that is peculiar to smaller schools.

Everyone worked hard through high school to earn the money to fund the trip, especially in our junior and senior years. We ran the concession stand at home softball and basketball games. Our school's concession stand was known for selling homemade doughnuts - made by the high school Home Ec students. It was such fun to work together making those doughnuts - I don't know the number that was made for each game, but my memory says we quadrupled the base recipe. And it was a rare night when we didn't sell out of those yummy doughnuts. We also sold magazines, with the proceeds going to the senior trip fund.

My hometown is in North Central Missouri, around 70 miles NE of Kansas City. At the time I was in high school, we were just under 300 population. The week prior to graduation, we would climb on one of the school buses at 6 am on Wednesday to start our trip. The usual was to travel to St. Louis the first day and spend the night there, then travel on to Lake of the Ozarks (and I do mean "usual" - the same route was taken by my mom's class some 23 years earlier!). We had a picnic lunch that first day, then enjoyed the Planetarium, St. Louis Zoo, and my class was either the second or third class to get to go to the top of the St. Louis Arch. What fun! We spent the night at the Sheraton-Jefferson Hotel in St. Louis......I still remember the entire class walking to a steak house a few blocks away for supper. Oh, yes - did I mention there were ten of us?  Yep, ten.....nine of us had been together all twelve years.

On Thursday we headed toward the Lake, with a stop to tour Meramec Caverns. The next two days/nights were spent at Kirkwood Lodge on the Lake, a facility that was geared toward hosting senior trips that time of year. There was boating, swimming, a ride over the lake in a seaplane, dances, one night at The Ozark Opry, and lots of fun. We arrived back home Saturday afternoon, a tired and sunburned group. That was quite a trip for all of us. And, thanks to careful management and all that fund raising, there was no out-of-pocket expense other than souvenirs.......and even those were pretty much underwritten with the "leftover" funds that were divided up among the ten of us as we traipsed off the bus back home.

I can't imagine trying to chaperone a large class of students on an outing like this, but I regret that my kids didn't get to experience anything like my senior trip. I had all my photos from the trip for a long time, but they've long since gone the way of so many things that fell victim to frequent moves.

Time marches on, and small town life just isn't what it used to be. Now, that phrase dates me, doesn't it! Seriously, I enjoy the trips down memory lane. Life growing up on the farm, going to school in a small town where everyone knows everyone, all these special things that just didn't happen in a larger setting. The school closed down in 1982, and now all the buildings are gone. But a dedicated group makes sure we have an "all-school reunion" every four years. And now we have our Facebook group as well. As Martha would say, "It's a good thing"!