Hurricanes, Tropical Storms and Such

Rain, rain, rain and more rain. We've had enough rain for the past few days to last quite a while, thank you, very much.
I've watched videos on the news about roads in the Carolinas being washed away, more from Irene than from Lee. I can picture in my mind one such incident that happened to the Pilot Mountain community in the unnamed hurricane of 1940. Losing a vital connection to the rest of the world is a devastation to the community, no matter which natural disaster hits. It is not a recent phenomena either, although the invention of more available roadways into remote areas offers a hurricane additional opportunity for widespread destruction. The road through this valley is a good example.

The new US highway 64 through the valley had just been completed and opened to great ballyhoo two weeks before the 1940 hurricane struck. Up to this time, the road was a state road, route #181, that wound from one end of the county to the other connecting both mountain chains through the valley between them and connecting the towns of Morganton and Rutherfordton.

Here's how one man fondly remembered the old road that it replaced. Little wonder that the new version was a welcome relief.

• The old road wandered all around creation, especially up there around my house. It went in front of my shop and on up past my garden and back to where highway #64 is at now. Climbed up the top of the next hill and circled back and went back down to Brindle Creek and crossed the creek and went up to the top of the hill and come back again. Goes as a matter of convenience from one property to the next. That’s how crooked it was. You don’t think nothing about the road until you get to looking at where it used to be. (Student, 1942-48)

The new road cut the distance between the towns from thirty-five to twenty-seven miles. A car (or horse and buggy) no longer had to ford the winding creeks sixteen different times because this new highway had bridges and culverts. Two weeks it was open and then it was gone, wiped out, death by water.
 
The engineers arrived again. They started from scratch and built an even better, even stronger highway that was part of a main artery between North Carolina and Arizona. Its importance to the ebb and flow of the nation diminished when Interstate 40 opened in the early sixties, but it remains as a vital lifeline to the locals.  I live within walking distance of highway #64. My daughter in New Mexico works within walking distance of the same highway and lives within two miles. Some day I want to drive that ribbon of highway between our two homes and see for myself what the backroads reveal.
 
As long as the hurricanes leave them alone.
 
Catch of the day,
 
Gretchen

Hurricane Lee

Today might be a holiday, but a hurricane named Lee has put a damper on it. Here in the foothills between the South Mountains to the east and the Blue Ridge to the west, we are experiencing the first bands of what is ahead, not that I'm complaining. We need a little rain, as long as the wind stays light. So I'm inside, hunkered down in front of the computer, pulling out a manuscript that I've ignored for two years while I've done this more pressing Pilot Mountain project. A change of topics is most welcome on this dreary day.

Hurricanes bring out the best in people and the worst in nature. To the western North Carolina mountains, hundreds of miles from the Atlantic coast, a hurricane is definitely nature at its worst. Case in point, the 1940 unnamed hurricane that blasted through the Pilot Mountain area with its own brand of havoc.

I caught tales in my net about this 1940's storm. Mostly I caught flood stories, how the barn was washed away, how the cows and horses couldn't fight the current and gave in to be swept down stream, how the promising crops were covered with thick layers of killer muds and how the farmers' yearly income washed away in one fatal day. After seventy years, the memory still haunts:

• They was so much water til it looked like an ocean to me. The field looked like you could go swimming in it. All the stuff washed away, an old barn we had there, the stuff we had in it, the straw, hay. Crops. Everything was gone. It got it all. School construction crew member, 1941-42

Will Hurricanes Lee, Irene, Katrina and other storms in the sisterhood be so imprinted into this generation's minds that a storycatcher seventy years from now can garnish memories that are as vivid as what I see this morning?

No doubt.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

First Day of School

Today's the first day of school for the 2011-2012 year here in the county where I live. It should be a pretty nice day. The weather sounds perfect with no rain predicted, at least not until the students will be safe at home from their bus rides and the afternoon thunder showers set in. (Hurrican Irene is still a blip on this morning's radar.) The teachers are waiting, and I'm sure the students are as ready as they will ever be. I'd bet most of them woke up early this morning, even those who dreaded the day. There's a certain air of expectation around the first day.

In 1942 Pilot Mountain School had its first, first day of school. I've tried to imagine what that day was like and how it compares with this morning. School opened a little later in the year back then because there were only eight calendar months of school, one hundred-sixty days, on the schedule. There was a war going on, with rationing. To save precious gasoline and rubber tires, the bus routes were as abbreviated as possible. Any child living within a mile and a half radius of the school could not ride the bus and those who could were required to walk to designated central pick-up spots.

Since the entire nation was on year-round, war time daylight savings, the school system adapted by scheduling the morning bell for after nine AM. Students had plenty of time to milk the cows, gather the eggs and finish whatever other home chores they were required to perform before they headed off to their first day of school.

Just like today many children came wearing new shoes, except that for the most part, this one new pair in the fall (usually brogan boots) was the only pair and had to last the entire year. Growing was frowned upon, I'm sure, wartime rationing, remember. A child wore the same pair of shoes until the soles came apart and then the mamas fashioned new soles out of cardboard, slid them down deep inside the brogans. Going barefoot was a lot more simple, and certainly permitted.

Waiting for the children at the door were four teachers, six grades, but only four teachers. That was it. No lunchroom ladies because there was no cafeteria with vegetable soup temptations announcing what was for lunch. The children either packed a pail or hurried home for a quick meal. The lunchroom had not been built yet, and neither had the bathrooms. The students (and the teachers as well) used the outdoor facilities. No custodian. No one to sweep the floors other than the teacher. No librarian and no library. No music teacher, PE teacher, nurse. Nothing but the four teachers, one of whom was designated principal.

The green sign out front didn't say Pilot Mountain School. Instead it said, in big block letters, "Constructed by the WPA." That's the Works Progress Administration, a Great Depression era government stimulus program through which this school was funded. The sign was still there because construction was not completed and on that first, first day of school back then, not only did the children arrive, so did the construction workers.

The sounds on that first day of school in 1942 were hammering and sawing as much as the voices of excited children settling down to a world of wonder in a brand new school. Settle down, they did. The noises from the construction became secondary. The pressures from war time America became secondary, too. After all, this was the first day of school where children came for sanctuary as much as for "learning."

Not all that different from today.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Teacher Workdays

I'm waving at my teacher friends as they drive past my house on the way to work today. Hi, ho, hi ho, it's off to work they go. Work it is, even though it's a teacher work day with no students today or tomorrow...or Wednesday. There were optional work days last week when the teachers could come in, or not, and count the days as paid vacation days.

Things weren't always that way.

The early teachers I've written about for the last two years would never have dreamed of the teacher workday concept. What a luxury! Imagine getting paid for what they did anyway. In the 1940's, the first day of school was the first day for everyone, teachers and students, with no extra preparation days. Walk in the door with them, kind of thinking. Instead the teachers appeared a day or two before school opened, unpaid.

In the fifties, the state allotted two paid work days, one in the fall to prepare and the other in the spring after the last day of school to finish reports. Gradually the number increased and now the teachers have ten workdays, full of institutes and teacher meetings and grade level conferences and training and finally going into the classroom to put on the final touches for a promising new year.

Students in this county come Thursday and their teachers will be fully prepared in a ready-or-or-not kind of way. That's the day a group of us former teachers will drive past the school on the way to eat breakfast together. We will honk the horn in a symbolic gesture, but our teacher friends will be so busy, they'll never hear it.

It's sort of sad, though, for those of us who thrived on being in the classroom. We get over it, when we drive back home and see the classes standing in the heat having their first required fire drill.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Victory Gardens

There's an abundance of fresh garden vegetables in my back yard right now, despite the hot dry dog days of summer and despite my not so high level of garden know-how. I'll pick a mess of green beans, wash them, snap them and throw them in the pressure cooker. Garden to table in less than an hour. Life is good. No food shortage here, or at the grocery store either.

But there was a food shortage during World War II and President Roosevelt encouraged the American people to plant gardens at home and not depend so much on the supply chain for their food. Sort of reminds me of the current first lady's drive to have present day Americans plant gardens of their own. Now it's a health food thing. Then it was survival.

A good portion of the war effort of the 1940's ended up on the shoulders of the teachers in this county, as in counties across the state and nation. Ration book registration. Teachers. Scrap metal drive. Teachers. War bonds. Teachers. Victory Garden Instruction. Teachers.

Except that the teachers here at this school were preaching to the choir, so to speak, when it came to Victory Gardens. No need. These families were country when country wasn't cool and when it was, they had the know-how of their own. So while the city teachers were telling their classes about going home and planting vegetables for the war effort, the Pilot Mountain teachers could go on about the business of teaching the ABC's...after they finished the business of taking up nickels for little Susie's war bond book or weighing the piece of scrap metal little Johnnie brought in.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Summer Produce

I've been knee deep in tomatoes, okra, corn and peppers this week, full of blessings from an overabundance in the garden, mine and that of generous friends. For supper tonight, I'll pick a "mess" of beans, as we call it here in the south. Nothing like walking out the back door to gather my own food.

Gathering food for a cafeteria during war time in the '40's was not nearly as simple. There were food shortages in the marketplace, but since Pilot Mountain School was in a rural area, local produce was available. The families brought bushel baskets of turnips, beans, apples, blackberries, anything the cafeteria could use. In exchange, their children ate lunch.

In yet another step to this barter system, the county superintendent announced that the school system would provide glass jars for the farm families to preserve local produce for the schools, once again in exchange for their children's lunches.

The children had nutritious meals. The school had the supply. The system worked.

Would it work today?

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Building an Auditorium

This is a good example of the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words." Look closely, because the thousand words might be different from what you'd expect.

This is a class from the mid 1940's, probably around second or third graders, by the looks of the children. They are posing in front of the school. Scroll up to the current picture of the school and look to the middle entrance. That's where these children were. Where now there is a bricked wall leading up the steps, in the forties, it was metal. (More fun to swing on, I'm sure.)

Do you see what appears to be white barrels that the boys in the back are standing on? Guess again. Scroll up and look at the current picture. Those white "barrels" are there, too. They are the columns for the auditorium that laid in the early years on the ground, waiting "like giant bones scattered," according to one man I interviewed.

I heard them talk about those columns, about how they played on them, jumped over them, walked them like modern children walk the balance beam. I read the newspaper accounts about the bond issue that passed in 1947 that allotted money for building the auditorium, and I wondered. Why were the columns there for so long if it wasn't even built until the late forties?

Then I read the school board minutes. When the school was built in '41 and '42, the auditorium was a part of the original plan. Phase one was the first four rooms at the furtherest end in the picture above. The four classes moved into them in the fall of 1942 while construction continued on the second half. It was to be four more classrooms, a cafeteria, library, office, and auditorium. But, there, in the school board minutes, I found one simple comment.

Due to cost, (as usually happens in a building project) expenses ran over. The school board instructed the builders to forget the auditorium. Instead they were to remove the wall between two of the classrooms and turn that larger room into an auditorium. The school then would have six classrooms, not eight.

But they had columns, already purchased in anticipation of a real auditorium. What to do with them?

Nothing. Let the children crawl on them, play on them, pose for pictures on them. Leave them laying like giant bones as a reminder of what was taken from them or as a promise of what will someday be built.

That someday finally came and the results were beyond what the community expected. Still is. Look at it now at this auditorium link. So worth the wait.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

The Lighter Side of the Moon(shine)

Since today is April first, to get into the spirit of foolishness and such, I thought I’d tell about some of the more humorous moonshine stories I’ve caught in my net. A rough life can have its comedic side, after all.

The children in the school were well aware of the revenuers and their never ending quest to shut down the illegal liquor business that was booming in the valley. They accepted it as a part of life, so what they witnessed was often taken in a spirit of "that's how it goes."

One day in the 1950’s, the calm and quiet of the classroom was interrupted by the sound of a huge explosion not all that far from the school. The students looked at each fully aware of what was going on. One student shrugged his shoulders and vocalized what everyone was thinking, “Well, there goes my father’s business.”

Another time the students had just arrived on the playground when the law went down the valley, flashing lights, siren. By the end of the recess, the law came up the valley with the guilty party in the back seat and a huge metal still hanging out of the trunk. Several students recognized him and waved at him as he went by. He waved back.

A first grade teacher told about the time the children were having the social studies lesson of community helpers and what fathers do for a living. One boy said, “My father makes whiskey for a living.” A surprised little girl sitting next to him said, “No, my father works for his father and they make liquor, not whiskey.”

Each fall on the first day of school the parents had to fill in a form with information about their families including contact numbers and other necessary emergency details. One question was about employment. Never did the response actually say “bootlegger.” Usually the word was “farmer” and that was the truth. They had to grow corn.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Recitation and Declamation

I will not be not sitting in front of the computer today. Instead, I will be at the EBOB, as in Elementary Battle of the Books. I’m a judge for the fourth year in a row and I love it! I love watching children get excited over books. Team cheers. Team t-shirts. Clapping for each other. Huddling and discussing the books. Don’t tell me children aren’t reading. I know better. I’ve seen it.

There was no EBOB during the years Pilot Mountain School was open, but there was one competition many former students do remember. They were just as excited about it as the children of today are about the Battle of the Books. It was the yearly Recitation and Declamation contest.

This was a memorization activity for the older students, usually sixth, seventh and eighth graders, but sometimes fourth and fifth, too. The student would memorize a three or four page script and present it before an audience of squirming children and serious judges. Just like EBOB, these students were excited. They'd clap for each other and cheer each other along. Maybe they didn’t have matching t-shirts, but that was not a consideration. Not back then. They didn’t need them. They had spirit and that was enough.

Sometimes the speeches were patriotic. Usually the boys picked those.

Sometimes the speeches were religious. Sometimes humorous, in an attempt to mimic Minnie Pearl.

Or sad. That would awe the judges if the speaker could pull it off. Dog died. Mom sick. “Little Match Girl” kind of tragedies.

The winners went on to a county competition. Several Pilot Mountain students won on that level as well.

Give them the first few words, now, sixty years later, and they can take it up and recite, if not all, at least a phrase or two.

There's more to competition than meets the eye.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Corporal Punishment, part 3

I heard the following story last week about the first grade teacher during the 1940's, and I'm copying and pasting a former students exact words:

"She was so sweet and tenderhearted. It hurt her to even raise her voice toward us. If we did anything wrong, she would bring out the ruler, wasn’t a long yardstick, just a ruler. She would ask, 'Do you want me to do this to you, or do you want to do it to me?' The students would never hit her, but she would have taken it. That’s just the way she was. That in itself, you know… The students seen it and seen that she would have taken it from one of us, then we better not do it again. And then she would bend your hand back, and hit one time on the hand."

A teacher offering to take the punishment for a child? Sixty years later, that child still remembers. I would have, too.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Corporal Punishment, part 2

If you get a spanking at school, you'll get one at home.

That's the warning the majority of parents gave their children. It was understood. That's how things worked with corporal punishment and the community during Pilot Mountain Schoolhouse days.

Listen to this conversation between a husband and wife as they remember school spankings:

Wife: They spanked us if we needed it. That’s what made us what we are. Our daddies and mamas spanked us. If I got one here, I got one at home.
Husband: I would have, too, if I had told.

Wife: I had a little cousin that told every time, so there wasn’t no way I could get out of it.

Catch of the day,
 
Gretchen

Corporal Punishment

As I've interviewed the former students and teachers of Pilot Mountain School the topic turns inevitably to discipline techniques. Make that technique, singular, in the form of corporal punishment, spanking. The very thought horrifies the modern thinker, yet it was never given a second thought in the 1940's, 1950's and even into the enlightened sixties. It's just the way things were and looking back through the telescope of time, I must remind myself of that fact as I listen and nod in sympathy as each person relates a particular story, often with tear brimmed eyes. For many students the sting of corporal punishment lasted longer than the five minutes after the actual whack. Sixty years later it still stings.

Despite the sting, time after time, the students and parents defended the method. A little spank in the hall echoed throughout the school and stopped many a potential problem before it ever started. The children behaved because they knew the consequences.

Now they can laugh about it. There was the time an eighth grader put a spelling book in the seat of his pants. When the whack sounded odd, the teacher knew, the class knew, the guilty knew, too, smiling until he had to remove the book and take even more punishment.

There was the time one sassy boy was spanked in the principal's office, made a comment, was spanked again, made a comment, was spanked again. Six times it took him to connect the cause with the effect.

Then there was the fifteen year old seventh grade boy who took the last spanking he would ever endure at school. He would be sixteen in a few weeks, but he dropped out that day. Never returned. Who is laughing now?

Things were different then.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Valentine's Day Card

As the construction workers ripped apart this old school building, they found a few long forgotten items slid behind the bookshelves or tucked under cracks in the floor. A rusty pair of scissors. A few pencils.
A Valentine.  



Image courtesy VintageHolidayCrafts.com

Found, one Valentine, a Will You Be Mine? Valentine similar to the one here. It took sixty years to be delivered. It sat there, silently waiting behind the nailed-to-the-wall, painted-over-the-cracks bookshelf. When it finally saw the light of day, it was barely faded. The name penciled across the back could still be seen.
It is now delivered. It no doubt brought more joy arriving late than it would have so long ago - well, a different kind of joy, at least. Then it would have been hastily read and stuffed in a folder with the other cards. Now it is relished, held up as a message from the past.

What a wonderful Valentine's gift.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Eradicate Polio

I saw on the news that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has declared the elimination of polio as a top priority. Once and for all. Gone. Thank you!

Like most of the world, I live in a polio free country. I don't have to worry that my child will wake up this morning gasping for breath because the muscles that work the lungs won't work. Or worse, that my child won't wake up at all.

That was not the case for the parents of Pilot Mountain School in the mid 1940's during the first wave of a polio epidemic. Their children had no protection from this dreaded disease. During the summer of 1944, when fifteen cases of polio were reported in the county per week, local officials made a desperate attempt to stop the spread. Quarantine.

Children under the age of sixteen could not leave their property. No Sunday School. No movies on Saturday morning. No summer camp. No trips to the store for candy. No playing with friends. They did stand on one side of the creek and wave at their friends on the other side - when their mothers weren't watching. But for the most part, they obeyed. They were too scared not to.

Ever wonder what the town of Hamlin was like after the pied piper drew away all the children? That was this community, childless. Joyless.

School didn't open on time in the fall because the children were still confined to their homes. When new cases dropped to one or two, officials lifted the quarantine and life began again. Wonder what the teachers said to their classes the first day of school?

We can't forget the past because that's how we understand why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiative is so important. No town should be like Hamlin. Eradicate polio. Now.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Mornings at the School

One not so favorite fact of life for teachers is the meet-them, greet-them, get-them-in-the-school chore known as "bus duty." Rainy days, bring an umbrella. Windy days, bundle tighter. Frigid days, add extra layers. Yet, seven o'clock in the morning when the roosters are still announcing the day, watching those yellow buses pull into the drive brings a certain thrill of anticipation. And when the children, regardless of whose class they are in, give the hugs or the smiles...that's when bus duty turns into a reward.

Teaching in a small school means bus duty comes far too often. Get a week of duty over, and boom, here comes another week the next month.

Mornings at Pilot Mountain Schoolhouse from the students' point of view were pure joy. They hurried off the bus, plopped their books down, and headed to the playground. Even the students who walked to school couldn't wait to get there. They were often at the doors greeting the teachers as they arrived. This was the free play time and they didn't want to miss a moment of it. The teacher chaperoned. That was it. Chaperoned, stood back and watched and rarely interfered. The children organized ball games. They made their own rules for marbles. They took turns at the swings. They settled their disagreements themselves.

The older students welcomed the younger children to their games. They mentored them, taught them the rules and the possibilities. The younger students chose role models, learned how things work. They played hard. They ran and sweated, even on frosty mornings when their breath puffed in little clouds.

When the bell rang, they lined up outside and went to their classes. They were ready to settle. Their minds were awakened by the exercise. Their bodies had worked through the squirmies.

Mornings at Pilot Mountain Schoolhouse. Could it work today?

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Home Grown Food in the Lunchroom

Back before there was such a thing as free lunch, there was such a thing as barter. Children from families who could not afford to pay for a school meal could bring food from the garden as payment. They could take a bushel of turnip greens to the cafeteria and get a food exchange note. One bushel would equal maybe five meals.

They would bring home-canned vegetables in glass containers. They would bring gallons of blackberries in pokes, paper bags. They would bring apples, pears, tomatoes and potatoes. Eggs, too.

Never meat, though. The cafeteria ladies could not accept meat and any milk that was brought was used in cooking. The milkman brought the drinking milk.

By the mid 1950’s this practice dwindled thanks to government surplus commodities and a centralized food service system in the county. The abundance from the farm community no longer counted. Fresh from the field no longer happened. The day of processed food had arrived.

Catch of the day,
Gretchen

A Sport Called Marbles

Ever played a game of pig’s eye marbles? Oh, yes, there was such a game. I heard it from an expert. The usual ten foot circle-in-the-sand wasn’t the only marble game in town, not at all.

When there was a one-on-one challenge, these Pilot Mountain Schoolhouse children preferred the “pig’s eye” version of the game. It sounded simple when I first heard the rules, but then I realized there was more to this version of marbles than met the eye.

Whoever threw out the challenge, drew the pig’s eye.

Size didn’t matter.

Shape didn’t matter.

This was a game of strategy.

Each player put five marbles in the pig’s eye. Then they both stood about ten feet away and rolled another marble toward the eye. The player whose marble stopped closer to the eye without going in won the honors of shooting first, but the first shot had to be from that same spot.

The object was to knock a marble out of the eye with a shooter, a larger marble. When a player accomplished that, he could put the marble he captured into his drawstring bag. For keeps. And it was still his turn.

The catch was he had to shoot from the spot where the last marble stopped rolling when it came out of the eye. Power and thumb muscle didn’t always triumph when that marble went rolling merrily too far along its way.

Just curious, how many other ways can a child play marbles?

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Marbles Play Time

The game of choice for the 1940’s children at Pilot Mountain School was marbles. Since there was no such thing as Physical Education as we know it today, the children were free to entertain themselves during recess and before school. Entertain they did.
The young boys brought their toy guns to play cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. The older boys brought balls and bats. The girls had jump ropes. But most everyone, young and old, even a few girls, had a little bag of marbles in their pockets.

First step, draw a circle. No, wait, first smooth the grit and lumps from an area, then draw the circle. On official tournament days, the circle was defined by a string with a nail at both ends and a geometry lesson of their own making. But most often it was a hurried circle that fit everyone’s liking.

Those who were playing that round placed an equal number of marbles in the center. The first person, usually the one who drew the circle, “broke” the pile with a strong thumb flick of his shooter. He kept any marble that he knocked out, for keeps. If no marbles went out, the next person took a turn.

The shooters were larger, often left over steel ball bearings from their fathers’ machines. The playing marbles were from the dime store, seven marbles for a nickel. Agates, Cat Eyes.

They made their own calls and abided by them. They refereed themselves and settled their own disputes. Adults had nothing to do with this game. Except twice.

Once the teachers decided playing for keeps was gambling. They imposed the adult rule of playing for fun. That didn’t last long. Playing for keeps came back and stayed. For keeps.

The other time adults had anything to do with the game was when the mothers complained. Seems that their sons were coming home with their pant knees worn bare, but nothing a little patch couldn’t solve.

There’s not much marble action these days. The ideal spots for marbles, good old fashioned dirt fields, were long ago grassed in by adults or paved over by youth organizers.

What were they thinking?

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Library Books

What is more basic to a school than library books? No money? No books. Not true, because when talking about the most precious element of a school, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Teachers and school systems can get very resourceful.

Pilot Mountain School in the 1940’s had little money to establish a library. The few books that were available stayed in the classroom of the teacher who brought them from home. The school system contracted with the county public library system for a bookmobile to make bimonthly stops at the outlying county schools such as Pilot Mountain. The original bookmobile, an old clunker of a converted delivery truck, sat disabled on the side of the road all too often. Next came a government surplus vehicle that had seen its fair share of battles during World War II. This library on wheels arrived at Pilot Mountain School every other week, on schedule, for the children to exchange their books for new ones.
Speaking of World War II, there were several army bases in North Carolina that were no longer needed after the war. There were libraries on each base. In fact, during the war, there had been a home front/war effort drive to collect gently used books to supply these base libraries. Now those same books were government surplus and available to schools. Pilot Mountain received several shipments of books. A good thing, isn’t always a good thing.

Imagine the delight! Books. Finally. Boxes and boxes of books. But also, there was no librarian to check through the books for appropriate language and content. These books were for mature readers. These children had never seen such words in print. They didn’t know things like that could happen. Sixty some years later, those former students still remember those books and chuckle.

Catch of the day,
Gretchen

Shoes? Students didn't wear shoes to school in the 1940's at Pilot Mountain School, not until cold weather hit in October, at least. For the most part, children had only one pair of school shoes and a second for Sunday if they were lucky. The everyday pair had to last a whole year and if it wore out on the bottom, tough. They made it through the year by patching the soles with rubber from bicycle tires or stuffing the holes with cardboard.

I helped my granddaughter get ready for school this morning. She was determined to wear her tennis shoes, the silver pair, not the brown soccer pair, not the pink pair and certainly not the clogs. Times have changed.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen