# Grade School...The Rest Of The Story



## RadishRose (Jul 1, 2018)

The "How did you get to Grade School" thread brought back of flood of memories, some of which my grandchildren think of as nuts. Like-

Separate entrances, recess areas and stairways for boys and girls.

"Cloak Rooms" 
(coat closets) Nobody had cloaks- but that's what the teachers called them. From another age...

"The Lunch Nazi. "
If you bought hot lunch it wasn't by the day, it was by the week for $1.25 per week. If you couldn't stand the stuff it was difficult to toss it into the garbage can cuz the old principal stood there and determined whether you ate enough to warrant wasting the rest, or sent you back to the table.

There were NO soda machines. You were lucky to line up at the water fountain after gym on a hot day.

I have to confess, our grammar school was close to 100 years old; brick, granite and solid. The addition was much newer. Even in the semi, semi-affluent neighborhood and with Janitors, the old part of school was filthy. Dust an inch thick in the halls and stairs.  

When I started kindergarten I recall my nose being assailed with the odors of baloney sandwiches and bananas in the cubbies in the "cloak room".

I don't really remember the hot lunches except a disgusting mess of fatty hunks of beef in a greasy gravy over Minute Rice. (hurl) The baked tuna noodle squares weren't too bad though. I recall peach halves in a dish, but no salads. Also Jello.

And who didn't have a boy in the caf that laughed so hard, milk came shooting out of his nose?

High school food was much better! They even baked their own cakes, breads and rolls.

What do you remember about grade school food and anything else? I did like the plants, aquariums and artwork in the classrooms.

Anyone have a favorite or hated teacher?


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## Olivia (Jul 1, 2018)

Oh, gosh. What do I remember about grade school? I know I went to several grade schools because of moving alot. I remember having to get Kitchen Duty. That was fun. I liked that. Just because of doing it and getting out of classes. I really don't remember the food. 

And we also had cleaning duty: erasing the blackboard, sweeping the floor and pounding out the erasers. I think nowadays that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Wow, how times have changed. 

Strange what we remember or not. One stormy day with lots of rain, I walked to school as usual anyway. Only half of us was in class, and that day I remember a poem on the the screen and it was The Owl and the ***** Cat poem that was being taught.  I don't know what it was about that day, with us kids who were there with the teacher, all rainy and dark outside, but cozy and nice inside. Maybe that's what is was.

The Owl and the *****-cat went to sea 

   In a beautiful pea-green boat, 

They took some honey, and plenty of money, 

   Wrapped up in a five-pound note. 

The Owl looked up to the stars above, 

   And sang to a small guitar, 

"O lovely *****! O *****, my love, 

    What a beautiful ***** you are, 

         You are, 

         You are! 

What a beautiful ***** you are!" 



II 

***** said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl! 

   How charmingly sweet you sing! 

O let us be married! too long we have tarried: 

   But what shall we do for a ring?" 

They sailed away, for a year and a day, 

   To the land where the Bong-Tree grows 

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood 

   With a ring at the end of his nose, 

             His nose, 

             His nose, 

   With a ring at the end of his nose. 



III 

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling 

   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will." 

So they took it away, and were married next day 

   By the Turkey who lives on the hill. 

They dined on mince, and slices of quince, 

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon; 

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, 

   They danced by the light of the moon, 

             The moon, 

             The moon, 

They danced by the light of the moon.


Edward Lear

Edit:

Wow! "***** cat is not allowed?" What have things come to???

I dare not post the Tom Jones's song, I suppose. LOL


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## jujube (Jul 1, 2018)

What was the rubbery sawdust-like stuff that the janitors sprinkled over vomit?  Somebody was always throwing up and the janitor always used that stuff.

There was always a kid who ate paste.

Lunchroom angst....oh, yes.  Our lunchroom was in the dark, dank basement.  We sat at long tables on benches and once you got onto the bench, you couldn't get up until everyone else did....there wasn't room to  move.  Lunches were grim.  Things like stewed tomatoes and okra.  Salmon patties and creamed corn every frickin' Friday (I hate salmon patties and creamed corn to this day).  Dessert was usually some sort of tasteless gluey pudding except when we occasionally got ice cream cups.  Fairly warm milk in those little containers.  And you sat at that table until you cleaned your plate.  Somebody always threw up....here comes the janitor.  The lunchroom ladies were scary; always scowling at us.

We went outside for recess except in the absolutely most dreadful weather.  Temperatures down to a -10 wind chill factor?  Ahhh, it's good for you!  

Getting to go outside to "clap the erasers" was always a treat.  

Our principal was a legend in her own time.  She had terrified three generations of grade-schoolers by the time I got there.   She was scary looking to the max.  She had short slicked-back hair, always wore plaid Pendleton jackets and straight skirts and old-lady shoes and tinted glasses.  She had a paddle with holes drilled in it called the "Board of Education", which was applied to the "Seat of Knowledge", but she only paddled the boys.  The girls, she just traumatized.  For some reason I can't remember (and I was a good kid and didn't get in trouble), I was ordered by my teacher to go out and stand in the hall outside the door (standard punishment for misdeeds).  The principal was patrolling the halls that day and took me down to her office for a "little talk".  I ended up crying so hard I made myself sick (enter the janitor with the rubbery stuff) and my mother had to borrow the neighbor's car and come get me.  We had a huge "fire bell" and had frequent fire drills.  It was the loudest and most terrifying thing in my life and I often threw up when I heard it (the janitor didn't like me much.....he was forever running out of the rubbery stuff).  It's good we had fire drills though, because the building was a 2 1/2 story brick building built somewhere in the Stone Age and it had wooden floors and wooden staircases and no fire escapes.  It was a fire trap waiting for a disaster.

In third grade, the boy who sat behind me liked to stab me in the butt with the point of a compass through the crack in the seat.  It hurt like the dickens but I was afraid to rat on him because he would have probably beat me up on the way home from school.  Interesting enough, at one of our high school reunions, he told me I was the first girl he loved.  Ah, grade school boys and their expressions of "love"...….

We had music three days a week and art twice.  Then the next semester, that would switch.

The schools were so crowded because of the baby boom, we only went to school half days for first and second grade.  I couldn't seem to grasp learning....I recognize now that I was probably dyslexic, which of course, was never considered at the time.  If you couldn't learn, you just "weren't trying hard enough".  About half way through third grade, something went SNAP in my brain and all the letters made sense all of a sudden.  By fourth grade, I was reading at a high school freshman level.  

I had three wonderful teachers for first, second and third and then a sadistic bitch for fourth, who almost put me off schooling forever.  Thank goodness for wonderful fifth and sixth grade teachers.  

On the whole, grade school was a good experience.  We were allowed to be children back then.


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## Aunt Bea (Jul 1, 2018)

In grade school, our lunch ladies still cooked many things from scratch and many things from canned/packaged government surplus food.

I remember seeing them sitting outside the kitchen door on nice days in the fall peeling apples and potatoes.

Breaded veal on a stick was a big deal so were pizza burgers and tuna boats with yellow cheese sails. The beef stew made with stringy canned government surplus meat was not so great but the gravy was good!

Most of the lunch ladies were very nice and thoughtful but the lady that collected the money at the end of the cafeteria line was a real tyrant, some kids would get so scared of her that they would actually get sick! I also remember that she always went through the change looking for silver coins or coins with rare dates on them. The head lunch lady/nutritionist would always visit each table and see who was eating and who wasn't then she would give a little lecture, comment on the food, our eating habits, etc...

I also remember a local hog farmer that used to come every afternoon and purchase the food that ended up in the trash when the trays were scraped, an early form of recycling I guess.

At that time the options were limited to a hot meal or a sandwich and special requests tended to upset them!

Funny that in those days I don't remember any kids with peanut allergies, lactose intolerance, etc... only a couple of kids with type 1 diabetes.

All in all the food at school was fantastic for the money!


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## john19485 (Jul 1, 2018)

I remember , my uncle riding his horse to school, and I would be walking behind him, our School was a mile , and a half down the road, we carried our lunch, we had stuff from the garden, grandmother always packed a good lunch, we would go out in the back of the school for a drink from the creek . my dog started going to school with me after my uncle was killed.


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## Butterfly (Jul 1, 2018)

My grade school (in the 1950s) didn't have a lunchroom; we all either brought our lunches or walked home for lunch.  I was one of the walk-homers.  I remember my  elementary school years as mostly positive, except for a notable disaster with a sugar cube castle I built and dropped.  I, along with most of the other girls, had a huge crush on my 6th grade teacher.  We all thought he was the cutest man who ever walked the earth.


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## C'est Moi (Jul 1, 2018)

I remember that Friday was fish sticks day, and I loved those small cartons of milk.   When I was in elementary school we still had "duck and cover" drills because everyone knows a small wooden desk will protect you from nuclear blasts.   

My love of books and the library began in grade school; I can still remember the library smell.   The school library was open during the summer months and I'd ride my bike there almost every day to swap out books to read.   

Girls could not wear shorts nor pants to school back then; only dresses... and I hated dresses with a passion.

Oh yeah, we also got our polio vaccine at school; on a sugar cube.


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## Sassycakes (Jul 1, 2018)

Since I went to a Catholic school and always had a Nun as a teacher I remember the yardstick she carried almost all day.LOL  I do have some wonderful memories though like getting to miss a few days of school every month because if you were a Grade A student you got to clean the convent where the nuns lived. When I was in 4th grade I got to clean the Nun who was my Teacher's room. For the first time I saw her without her head cover on. I was shocked when I saw how long her hair was. It went all the way down her back in a braid all the way to the back of her knees.


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## RadishRose (Jul 1, 2018)

I'm lovin' all these memories!:love_heart:


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## Gary O' (Jul 1, 2018)

well, gee
I'd posted some grade school stuff in my own thread, but this one is so appropriate 
Thought I would jus' go ahead and clutter this thread up too

Getting past this will be a long scroll (sorry)

*SCHOOL*

*Year One*

 We didn’t have kindergarten. Hell, we didn’t even have all eight grades in that one room school tucked deep in the Chapman hills. 
 And we didn’t have a bus, or lunchroom, or gym, or indoor plumbing.
 What we did have was Mr McDunn.

 Looking back, he was the best grade school teacher I’d ever have.
 Field trips were field trips, thru the woods behind the school house, down to the creek, buildin’ mud dams, and makin’ wood sail boats, or we’d head up stream to the beaver dam, and when the steelhead were runnin’, before I even knew of a sea run rainbow fish that would grow to enormous proportion, he’d stand straddle legged in the stream and bail out those monsters with his hands. 
 Then we’d watch him cut one open, displaying the biggest fish eggs I’d ever seen.

 One time, when it was snowin’ like a banshee, we took an old mop wringer and made igloos.
 Yeah, we went every day, snow, ice, whatever. 
 And yeah, no bus, so kids appeared at school early, and while we were waiting for teacher to arrive (from his attached living quarters) we played with these little plastic red bricks that would snap onto each other….they fascinated me. We made planes, and built forts, and skyscrapers. It was like goin’ to the beach, I could never get enough.

 But school, it was work books, my own pencil, my own desk.
 Desks were the old wooden ones you see in old movies, the kind that hook up in a row, had the ink well, and groove to put your very own pencil, and you had a place underneath, housed in black wrought iron, to put your work books, and the seat flipped up, and so did the person’s in front of you.

 That person was Francis Keller. 

 She was a tad messy, as her workbook place was eternally jammed with wadded up papers, and leaky pens, and broken things. 
 And Francis herself was a bit unkempt. But she did have a fetching look about her, and she was tough as nails. 
She could beat the crap outta most kids there even though she was only in third grade. 
 One rather disenchanting thing I recall about her was her habit of snorting whatever was in her throat and nose and swallowing. 
 First I’d ever heard such a noise. Kinda like a reverse gargle…..and she ate paste.
 Thinking about it years later, those unseemly habits may very well have become attributes………

One time during recess, nature called, and I headed to the outhouse.
 It was a three holer, and it had a trough.
 I grabbed the middle hole so I could peek thru the crack in the door for female invaders.
 But Francis got the jump on me.
 There she was. But she wasn’t there for business. 
 Next thing I know she’s flippin’ her dress up and her underwear down. Standin’t here starin’ at me.
 Whoa, I immediately had a flash back of me and Connie in grampa’s tool shed, and made the brilliant deduction that Connie was not deformed, as most or all girls were missing some very vital things.
 Then I took care of my back side and jumped off my perch to button up and head the hell outta there, but not quick enough to skirt Mr McDunn’s shadow.
 So there we all were, Mr McDunn in his aura of teacher/god like omnipotence, Francis of who magically had put herself back in the altogether, lookin’ at me like I was satan, and me, standin’ there with my bib overalls huggin’ my ankles.

 I learned a couple things that day.
 1) Wimin are way ahead of any mind game you may ever venture to get conned into playing.
 2) It’s because they are not distracted by all the apparatus us guys have.

 So, yeah, we didn’t have all the facilities of the schools in town, but my first classes in psych and anatomy were right there in the three holer. 

 Over all, I learned more about social life that first year, than all the other seven grades put together. 

 And now, every time I go fishin’, wading a small stream, and catch the faintscent of roiled mud and creek water wafting thru my nostrils, my mind flashes back to those first golden autumn days of school.










*School, The following years*

 The local craftsmen had united and built us a real school.
 Closer to town.
 Two rooms.
 Indoor plumbing, one for boys and one for girls.
 Newer desks.
 Swings.
…and a huge field.
 Mr McDunn took us out to the field to explore. 
 Now I’d been runnin’ thru woods all my life, so I was a tad unimpressed….until he had us kneel down and move slowly thru the weeds and thistles, identifying everything that grew or crawled.
 It got so I couldn’t wait for the next discoveries.

 OK, we were all a bit rowdy, but he had a presence about him that got your attention. It sorta made the teachers that followed pale in comparison….and we took advantage.
 Seems every one after him ended up having some sorta nervous breakdown right in the middle of the year.

 Not sure what happened to Mr McDunn, but I got drift that our folks were not impressed with his philosophy, cause he was quite direct and they were a bit protective of their little darlings.





*
The Year of Taboli*

Mr Taboli arrived my third year, straight from the Philippines….or as he said, the ‘pillippeens’.
He wore a suit.
 Reminded me of Desi Arnaz, hair all slicked into a pompadour with half a can of pomade.

 And that accent. He didn’t have a chance.
‘OK turd grade, turn to page turdy eight.’
We slowly sacrificed that poor soul.


 Francis had a little brother, Dicky. Remember, this was in the ‘50s. The term ‘Dick’ had yet to have a negative connotation. Fun with Dick and Jane was just that.
 We called him ‘Dicky’.
The kid was just one happy little guy.
 Always grinnin’ that huge grin, buck teeth spaced wide apart, gigantic mouth….but had some intellect issues.
 However, happy…just glad to be included in anything we did.
 Unfortunately what we did was mostly to his detriment.
 Andy had this oversized gravenstein apple.
‘Hey Dicky, I bet you can’t put this whole apple in your mouth.’
Turns out he could.
 It’s just that he couldn’t get it back out.
 So, we’re all laughin’ our asses off, and Dicky is laughin’ and droolin’ and chokin’ some, when Mr Taboli blows the recess whistle.
 We all file back inside to our desks.

Dicky’s sittin’ there with his gigantic mouth stretched to the max, buck teeth clamped on that apple, just starin’ down at page turdy eight, droolin’ all over his work book.
We’re all lookin’ straight ahead.
 Then Dicky begins to get a little red and choke. 
 I gotta say, he held it together pretty good, not bein’ able to swallow and all, but once he commenced gagging, it was pretty much all over.
 Remarkably, Mr Taboli was pretty good with a knife. He leaped over Bart’s oversized legs hangin’ in the aisle, and proceeded to perform an applectomy right there in class.
 So, he was a hero…….for a few minutes.

An event that I recall was pretty much the end of Mr Taboli;


It was only a matter of weeks that his rosy outlook of teaching the children of the trees would take a turn.
The event that became the clincher to his destiny was our zip guns. Little simply made ‘guns’ from clothes pins, springs and pebbles. 
 Just enough zip to cause a welt. 
 A well placed shot destined for a girl’s hind end…unless it was Francis….she’d take it from you and feed it to our own hind end.
 Well, after all the lunchtime screaming and running, Mr Taboli rounded us up and just sat at his desk for several minutes.
 Then calmly gathered up our zip guns and placed them on the floor in a little pile and commenced to jump up and down on them, screaming something in a language other than English.
 Then he strolled over to his desk, sat down, put his head down, and started beating the surface of it with both fists.
 Fascinating.
 We didn’t have school for a couple days after that. 
 The Wadsworth years would follow.




I bumped in to Dicky a decade or so later.
‘It’s Richard now’

The poor chap had been working in the woods.
 If you are short on brains, the woods are not the place to work. It’s bad enough if yer quick and sharp.
 Seems Dicky had run a chain saw up his hand, right between his fingers, up to his wrist.
 They didn’t do much for him in the patchwork dept.
 At first, seein’ him at a distance, I’d thought, geez, Dicky is a Trekie, showin’ me his Vulcan wave.

 Wonder how they're all doin' now..............






*The Wadsworth Years*

 Mrs Wadsworth was our teacher for a couple years…..actually 2 ½ years, as she stepped in when Mr Taboli made his infamous exit.
 The white coats didn’t come to get him, but after the zip gun affair we never saw Mr Taboli again…our first conquest.

 Mrs Wadsworth was different. 
 She was old, and done with it all, but folks gathered around her and conned her out of retirement.
 Turns out she’d run a concentration camp of grades six thru eight back in Milton-Freewater for centuries.
 Quite the disciplinarian, as she could still wield a bamboo rod with the deftness of a samurai.
 And those high top orthopedic oxfords that housed her rheumatoid ankles were nothin’ to mess with either.
 She stood about five six, and weighed in at oh say 97 lbs, but still had a presence about her.
 I got her to smile a couple times, but usually she wore this sour look, like she just got fed some horse shit, of which we tried.
 She had what was sometimes referred to as denture face, some real jowls, kinda looked like Deputy Dawg’s gramma….and she used it to her advantage, lookin’ down on you thru her bifocals.
 Eddy P, the terror of turd grade, was putty in her gnarly hands, and even his little brother, satan of second grade, was no match.


So things were as quiet as they could be in those two years.


We all respected her, and I even admired her, and I’d like to think she got a charge outta me, as she would single me out as an example for others not to follow.
When she gave me her special attention, I’d notice her neck would commence to sorta blossom into a rather deep crimson beginning at the start of her collar and creeping up to her chin. 
 This aurora was gradual, and mesmerizing.

 Grammar was her specialty, and diagramming sentences on the black board was what we all did, over and over…past participles and me became friends, as we both found our little special place in the parse tree of life.

 But the second room in that school held my fond attention.
 Miss Dickerson taught kindergarten thru second grade.
 She had a dimpled smile that would melt me into deep daydreams of her and I.
 I’d sit thru history class, fanaticizing about us goin’ campin’. Her lookin’ on with admiration of me building a camp fire with nothin’ but my woodsman’s prowess, and then skinny dippin’ and then, well things got sorta grey from there, so I’d be stuck on replay, filling in more details with each re-run of my boyish manliness and her absolute womanliness, then fog, then back to camping, swimming, fog….sometimes we’d just lay on the bank after skinny dippin’, all naked, basking in the sun, fixated on each other’s genitals…but there was always that darn fog…….




*The Mrs Nelson half year….aka The Half Nelson*

She tried to be nice.
‘You can attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.’
Killer bees

The white coats did come for her




*High School (I’m still trying to forget)*

Sophomore year I had a task master of an English prof.
He wanted a poem.
 So I gave him a poem.
 I happened to be reading a James Bond novel in class when this poem leaped to the fore.
 Only it was a bit short.
 So I added my own words for length and to be able to say with a semi-serious face that I’d written it.
 He asked me to stay after class, and expounded on how profound the words to that poem were….right up to where Ian left off and I began, or as he said (since he’d never read that crap) ‘right up to here, then you seem to lose the gist’ his index finger pointing to the first word of my submission.
 I told him I got in a hurry right there cause I didn’t want to be late for class………….
He seemed to buy it.


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## SeaBreeze (Jul 1, 2018)

jujube said:


> What was the rubbery sawdust-like stuff that the janitors sprinkled over vomit?  Somebody was always throwing up and the janitor always used that stuff.



Lol, that's the first thing I thought of when I read this thread.  Don't know if it was rubbery, but they kept a bucket of green stuff in the cloak room that someone threw on the puddle when a kid upchucked.  As soon as something like that happened, I started to gag and had to look the other way.


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## Gary O' (Jul 1, 2018)

SeaBreeze said:


> Lol, that's the first thing I thought of when I read this thread.  Don't know if it was rubbery, but they kept a bucket of green stuff in the cloak room that someone threw on the puddle when a kid upchucked.  As soon as something like that happened, I started to gag and had to look the other way.



We didn't have that stuff
'Course we didn't have a cloak room either

Can’t recall whatever happened to vomit
I do remember when Jerry B blew chips right after coming thru the door, first thing in morning.
It was alphabet soup, in a spreading puddle
Someone said, ‘Hey, I can spell my name in it!’
Can’t imagine anyone having alphabet soup for breakfast


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## jujube (Jul 1, 2018)

Hey, Gary....wasn't allowed to give you any more rep points but man, can you write!  Keep it coming.


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## Gary O' (Jul 1, 2018)

jujube said:


> Hey, Gary....wasn't allowed to give you any more rep points but man, can you write!  Keep it coming.



I....I....Can't keep it_* from *_coming
Thanks, JJ
Yer prose ain't so bad themselves


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## Butterfly (Jul 1, 2018)

Gary O' said:


> well, gee
> I'd posted some grade school stuff in my own thread, but this one is so appropriate
> Thought I would jus' go ahead and clutter this thread up too
> 
> ...



I had one of those old desks, too, in the first and second grades.  The top of mine and most of the others was carved up with assorted initials, hearts, etc., done by previous occupiers of the desk with a penknife.  Haven't thought about those old desks in a long time.  

I thought learning to read was one of the most magical, wonderful things ever!  Now I knew what daddy was doing with that newspaper in front of his face.  I was absolutely gleeful and jubilant about learning to read and I started then, and still do, reading everything I could get my hands on.


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## Gary O' (Jul 1, 2018)

Butterfly said:


> I had one of those old desks, too, in the first and second grades.  The top of mine and most of the others was carved up with assorted initials, hearts, etc., done by previous occupiers of the desk with a penknife.  Haven't thought about those old desks in a long time.



We had one kid who took it upon himself to strip his desk to raw wood, no etchings.
Then shellacked it.
He always had a knife and a hatchet in sheathes on his belt.
He was a sixth grader.
I was in first.
I revered him.
I tried to clean my desk with my three bladed folding knife.
Then went outside.

Three years later I had my own knife in a sheath.
Some first grader began following* me *around.

Never did strip my desk.

Funny...how being two or three grades up meant eons of superiority.

Heh...I married a first grader.


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## Butterfly (Jul 2, 2018)

Olivia said:


> Oh, gosh. What do I remember about grade school? I know I went to several grade schools because of moving alot. I remember having to get Kitchen Duty. That was fun. I liked that. Just because of doing it and getting out of classes. I really don't remember the food.
> 
> And we also had cleaning duty: erasing the blackboard, sweeping the floor and pounding out the erasers. I think nowadays that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Wow, how times have changed.
> 
> ...


 
Glad you posted this  For some reason, the song was running through my mind the other day, and I couldn't remember all the words.

Anyway, thanks.  I always wondered what a "runcible spoon" was. So just now I looked it up on the interwebs:

*"*The term “runcible spoon” was invented by the English writer Edward  Lear, whose “nonsense poems” have entertained children and adults since  the late 1800s. Lear’s “The Owl & The *****-Cat,” written in 1871,  contains the first mention of “runcible” in the verse “They dined upon  mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon, And  hand in hand on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the  moon….”


 Lear used the word “runcible” in several other works, in which he  mentioned a “runcible raven,” a “runcible cat” and a “runcible wall.”  Unfortunately, Lear never explained what “runcible” meant or where he’d  found it. One theory is that “runcible” is derived from the archaic term  “rouncival,” meaning “large.” It’s also entirely possible Lear simply  made up the word.*"*


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## Butterfly (Jul 2, 2018)

Gary O' said:


> We had one kid who took it upon himself to strip his desk to raw wood, no etchings.
> Then shellacked it.
> He always had a knife and a hatchet in sheathes on his belt.
> He was a sixth grader.
> ...



Back then, almost all the boys carried a penknife.  Nowdays they'd probably throw you in jail for carrying a penknife on school property.


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## RadishRose (Jul 2, 2018)

I've always loved that poem. Teacher explained "runcible" as a nonsense
word and the writer had "poetic license" to use it for laughter.


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## Butterfly (Jul 3, 2018)

Funny how stuff like The Own and the Pussycat (from 60+ years ago) stays in your mind when you can't remember what you did with your keys when  you came in the house a few minutes ago.


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## Aunt Bea (Jul 3, 2018)

We had to memorize this for a presentation to parents!

It brings back the memories/trauma of trying to get everyone in our class to wear white blouses/shirts and black skirts/pants, black shoes, and black socks for the presentation. 

Amazing the nonsense that they put us through in the name of education, LOL!!!

*Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll*

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 

 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 

All mimsy were the borogoves, 

 And the mome raths outgrabe. 


“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 

 The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 

 The frumious Bandersnatch!” 


He took his vorpal sword in hand; 

 Long time the manxome foe he sought— 

So rested he by the Tumtum tree 

 And stood awhile in thought. 


And, as in uffish thought he stood, 

 The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, 

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, 

 And burbled as it came! 


One, two! One, two! And through and through 

 The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! 

He left it dead, and with its head 

 He went galumphing back. 


“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 

 Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” 

 He chortled in his joy. 


’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 

 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 

All mimsy were the borogoves, 

 And the mome raths outgrabe.


Source: _The Random House Book of Poetry for Children_ (1983)


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## jujube (Jul 3, 2018)

Ah, Jabberwocky.....there was an old hymn that we used to sing in church called "Tis Midnight and On Olive's Brow" that you could sing Jabberwocky to perfectly.  It got to the point where I _couldn't_ sing the real words to it and would sing the Jabberwocky words under my breath.  The first time my mother caught me doing that I got such a pinch.  After that, I'd sing it very, very quietly.  Deliver me from pinches. 

I was such a little heathen back then.  Still am.


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## Aunt Bea (Jul 3, 2018)

jujube said:


> Ah, Jabberwocky.....there was an old hymn that we used to sing in church called "Tis Midnight and On Olive's Brow" that you could sing Jabberwocky to perfectly. It got to the point where I _couldn't_ sing the real words to it and would sing the Jabberwocky words under my breath. The first time my mother caught me doing that I got such a pinch. After that, I'd sing it very, very quietly. Deliver me from pinches.
> 
> I was such a little heathen back then. Still am.



We used to get the giggles when my uncles sang these lyrics to the Old Rugged Cross, it's a wonder that we all weren't snatched up on the spot! 

_"On a hill far away rusts an old Chevrolet
Its tires all __tattered__ and torn. 
It just wouldn't crank. has a leak in its tank.
Someday I__'ll__ exchange it for a Ford..."_


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## Butterfly (Jul 3, 2018)

Aunt Bea said:


> We had to memorize this for a presentation to parents!
> 
> It brings back the memories/trauma of trying to get everyone in our class to wear white blouses/shirts and black skirts/pants, black shoes, and black socks for the presentation.
> 
> ...



I remember this one, too.  I didn't have to memorize it, but I remember most of it -- the non-words fascinated me.  I've always been a word-nerd and always looked up words I didn't know.  Nowdays it's a lot easier to just type 'em into Google rather than drag down the dictionary.


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## C'est Moi (Jul 3, 2018)

I don't think we learned Jabberwocky until high school English class.   We were still doing Dick and Jane in elementary school.


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