school daze

I remember the same thing at Tonti.  Most everybody walked home at lunchtime.  One time our mother had to go somewhere so we packed up lunch and ate in this small tucked away room.  It was kind of exciting, the way any break in routine can be exciting for a kid.  You know I always liked that little bit of taste that waxed paper lent to a Wonder Bread sandwich.  Anymore lunches in grade schools are only twenty minutes long so nobody has time to go home and eat and catch a little bit of Little Rascals movie. 

Everybody eats in the lunchroom, well some kids wolf down their meals and some kids let it sit there while they goof off.  The all have to take some vegetable from the line but most of them never eat it, and it gets dumped in the trashcan because you can lead a kid to vegetables, but you can't make them eat them.  Myself I always liked broccoli when I was a kid.

Sight Savers. what a peculiar term.  I tried to google it but all I got was those little papers to clean your glasses with.  I remember that they used to check our eyes every year or two, and I wasn't all that displeased to learn that I would have to wear glasses, I kind of wanted to look smart, and when I discovered how good I could see with them it knocked my socks off.

Andy was our janitor.  When we were little we sort of admired him, but when we got older we made fun of him.  During recess balls would end up on the roof and every now and then Andy would collect them, and when we were older we would shout at him, "Andy, do you have any balls?" and then we would giggle our seventh grade giggles because how could any adult know what that really meant?

Interesting what they told you at Sawyer about young couples with kids moving out to the burbs.  A lot of that area west of Western had been owned by some batty New York woman, Hattie Green, The Witch of Wall Street, and then sold in the twenties and they had put up those block after block of bungalows.  But then the people that moved in when they were built were kind of old when we moved in.  We were surrounded by this older generation.  It's all Mexican now and they can[t build new schools fast enough.

I'm just beginning on Chapter Three.  I'll put a rush on it to catch up with you.