Is it Memorial Day already? Has summer vacation really begun? Weren’t we on spring break just a few weeks ago? Where has the time gone? Yes, summer break is here. It started Friday. Jenna got up that morning and said, “This is the best day of the whole year!”
THE LAST DAYS OF SCHOOL. The last days of school for the kids have been filled with all sorts of activities. Everyone enjoyed Field Day over the first half of the week. The fifth grade also took a field trip to Mammoth Cave. Now the report cards have been mailed home and we’ve got a new daily routine until August 10.
Around spring break I wrote that the renovations at East Robertson Elementary had progressed to the point that the boys’ classes had moved to new classrooms. The work out there is far from complete and will continue through the summer. My job took me out there Friday to pack up computer equipment that needed to be moved out of the way of the construction work. While there I took a few moments to walk the hall of the oldest part of the building as this will be demolished this summer.
The original part of East Robertson was built to be a high school for Cross Plains and Orlinda in 1949. This part of the building has held classes continuously for 60 years. The first addition was built in 1974 making it a K-12 school. That was my third grade year. The current East Robertson High School was built around 1990 with the middle school wing added a few years later making my old high school a K-5 school now.
Friday gave me a perfect chance to walk through the old building as practically all the furniture had been removed. It was amazing how I could remember which teacher taught in each room and how they had their rooms decorated and arranged when I was a student there. Well, maybe it’s not so amazing -- there are only 12 classrooms in that section. But it was nice to walk through and remember one last time. Even after 20 years as an elementary school the old weight room still has a hint of that musty, sweaty smell and Mrs. Thomas’ science classroom still carries the odor of chemicals. One powerful memory came when I turned the corner to go to the gym (the only part of the building that will not be torn down) and remembered how I felt when we lined up there before our graduation ceremony started (and helped me put away my sentimentality).
For those of you who also attended East Robertson let me pull you back to the present for a bit. Another nice thing about walking through the empty building was that I could easily see its true condition. Six decades of service have taken its toll on the structure. Student abuse aside, the floors are sagging in places and in other places you have an added bounce in your step as you walk. The furnace is also about shot (and had to be repaired twice this year). It is time to tear this down and move on.
MEMORIAL DAY. We spent today at home enjoying the peace so many have fought for. We have also been going through stuff that needed to be organized. This evening we grilled out at Pauline’s. Mom and Aunt Mar came over too.
I guess you could say we celebrated Memorial Day on Saturday. The kids and I got up early that morning and drove to the National Cemetery in Madison where we joined hundreds of other Cub and Boy Scouts in placing flags on some 35,000 graves there, which we did in about 90 minutes. They had a really nice opening ceremony before we were dismissed to plant the flags.
Later that day Vicki and Jenna were in the van together. Vicki, with Memorial Day on her mind, had just finished singing The Star-Spangled Banner. A few moments later Jenna spoke up, “I thought it was ‘home of the rare.’” Jenna has heard our national anthem at least weekly the whole time she has been a student at East Robertson, and all this time she’s thought we were the land of the free and the home of the rare.
MUSIC VIDEO STAR. In our cleaning out some things Vicki ran across an article we clipped out of the the Robertson County Times about a year ago. The article related a story as told by Alice Keith. Lynn and Alice live in the house where my father (and Lynn’s mother, Aunt Helen) grew up. Back in the late 1980s a scout for a video production company knocked on the door and asked if they could use the house for a music video. The Keiths agreed and even got to be in the video, taking the day off work and school to do so.
The video is for Don’t Toss Us Away by Patty Loveless and can be found on YouTube. Their house is first seen about a minute into the song and shows “family” moving furniture in the front door. The wedding scenes were shot at a church in Adams, and the hardware store scenes were shot in Cross Plains. It was interesting to see the video, though I had to brace myself for the twangy country music. Much more of that and I might be fighting the urge to grow a mullet.
A BAD INFLUENCE. Our family enjoys watching America’s Funniest Home Videos. I guess it satisfies that sadistic streak in us that enjoys seeing other people fall, get hit, or do some stupid things on camera. This show has ignited the practical joker in Ben.
Yesterday the boys and I beat Vicki and Jenna home from church. When we got here Ben was dying to put a rubber band around the spray nozzle on the kitchen sink because he knew Vicki would go there to wash her hands. (Hint: electrical tape works better than a rubber band.) She reacted pretty quickly, but not before getting wet which please Ben to no end.
I got Ben back for Vicki that night. I short sheeted his bed (as well as Jenna and Nate)
FALSE ADVERTISING AND OTHER SAYINGS. Nate does not like his new tennis shoes and wants us to take them back to the store. He says, “Sneakers shouldn’t squeak!”
On the subject of funny things said, one day recently Nate told Vicki to turn off the radio in the van because it, “interferes with his imagination.”
Yesterday Ben looked at the brush after I brushed his hair for church. Seeing some of his hair on the brush he asked if he was molting.
Joe
