Small Schools

We had a much more normal day today. We did our daily podcasts, walked, I cleaned up the house and did three loads of laundry. I started on Week 3 of my online class, and we did a “bonus” walk this afternoon.

I got two magazines in today's mail. The September issue of “Vogue” is 902 pages long........no, I'm not really a “Vogue” kind of girl, but I let myself be suckered into buying a year's subscription because they gave me a free purse. I AM a sucker for purses! The cover of Oprah's magazine for September had a photo of Oprah with hair just about as large as that “Vogue” magazine!! It all should be interesting reading.

Hubby has been in “handyman” mode the past couple of days. We picked up a new toilet seat at the big box store yesterday, and he installed that last night. This morning, he put up the new miniblinds we picked up to replace the set I broke a few months ago trying to clean them. They needed to be replaced – the slats were brittle enough that one broke when I was wiping it off. We're all fixed for now.

I heard the school bus stop at the corner this morning at 7:30 – first day of school here in town! I was always so glad for the first day of school when I was a kid. Some years that summer just got longer and longer as time passed without my seeing my classmates. Usually we were aware before school started if we were having any new students in our class. Even without good communication, that type of news usually got around.

I think the highest number ever in my class was 17 one year of elementary school. We usually held around 14 or so. By senior year, we had dwindled down to ten. Nine of us had been together all twelve years. We still have a few smaller schools in the area, but a lot of people have trouble comprehending the small numbers I'm used to for graduating classes.

My small school is now closed. The high school and junior high consolidated with a larger school district in 1980; the elementary school closed in 1982. The teachers and staff who chose to continue working were incorporated into the larger school district. That meant were were a few teachers I'd had that my children also had. I enjoyed that, though probably not as much as my kids!

When the school closed, there was an auction of property and items. I wish I could've been there and purchased some memory of my childhood school days. The different pieces of property were sold to individuals. One of the sale stipulations for the main building was that it either be actively used or it be torn down – this was a reaction to a local school district where a new building had been built and the previous one was left to go into ruin. A local family bought the main building and tore it down. Even though much of the playground equipment was moved to the new school district, the former school site was turned into a park. The gym/cafeteria/music room building burned to the ground a few years after the closure.

We now have an all-school reunion every four years. It's a great time of reconnecting and visiting. About 14 years ago, a memorial monument was dedicated on the original school building site. It's a three-section monument, each with one of the three school buildings engraved on it.

Some of the school mementos are now housed in the local County Museum. All the senior composite pictures are there, as well as plaques of the yearly Valedictorians and some special sports trophies. Hubby enjoys going with me to view those – he says he likes being married to someone who is in a museum!! It just makes me feel old.

My nine co-graduates are all nearby – two are about an hour away, everyone else is here in the local community. We lost our first classmate last fall, that was a sad time, and she was a special, sweet person. We have a small-school bond that time can't break!