School Days

My school days began in a two-and-a-half story brick building that held all grades from first through 12th. I think I spent 1st and 2nd grade there. Then we moved to a new elementary building that was really nice.

My high school years were spent in the same brick building where I started. It seemed strange to have a different teacher for each class.

My freshman classes were English I, Latin I, algebra, a science class I cannot remember, and phys ed. You should have seen the bloomers we wore in Phys Ed. Fortunately, none exists, as far as I know. I had the same teacher for English I and Latin I. There were three men teachers and one woman teacher for me that year.

Every year the seniors got to initiate the freshies. We had to dress as comic strip characters for that one day. One boy was Popeye, a girl was a gypsy, two guys were L'il Abner. My good pal and I were Hans and Fritz from the Katzenjammer Kids. One of the boys was the Captain from the same comic strip as Hans and Fritz. My good pal drew pictures of Hans and Fritz and we pinned them on our backs.

Some of the time we wore jeans, oversized (men's) white shirts, a scarf tied at the throat and saddle shoes or penny loafers. We were allowed to wear jeans and slacks to school by our freshman year.

All the activities in a small school like NCHS were done by most of the same people. The old 20/80 principle - 20% of the people did 80% of the work. I played clarinet in the concert band, pep band and in a clarinet quartet. I always played the 4th part (it was nice and low and I really liked that!) I sang alto in girls' glee club and mixed chorus; played 6-girl basketball - not well, however; was active in Y-Teens, a Christian organization; and worked on The Eagle yearbook staff.

I liked school and usually had the assignments done before the school day was over so I didn't have much home work. I really liked my Latin class. There were only nine of us, all girls, in class. It was a mixture of freshmen, sophomores and juniors with no seniors.

I did not take any home ec classes in school. My Mom was my sewing teacher. I made a blouse or two. I didn't really want to sew. I think Mom saw I was just this side of hopeless where sewing was concerned, at that point in time, so she just let it go. We had an old treadle sewing machine that I always treadled backwards and broke the thread. She may have just run out of patience with me!

Not many of us dated in our freshmen year. We would meet the boys at the movies and hold hands. That's about as daring as we got. It was a different time. I was somewhat bashful and very naive.

After my freshman year in school, I went to Ft. Hays State Teachers' College to a band camp that lasted a week. It was my first time away from home. I think I got along ok because I made it through the week. I played in the "A" band which was the most advanced of the three bands. I was thrilled to be chosen to play in the "A" band. We had college band instructors there directing us.

There were 8-10 girls who sort of hung out together at school and after school. Sometimes there were more and sometimes less. We had slumber(less) parties that were sometimes at the principal's home because his daughter was in our class; and sometimes they were at one of the hotels in town because one of the gang's parents owned the hotel. These parties were a real blast!