♫Yesterday........all my my troubles seemed so far away....♪♫

1967 3rd grade class, Haines Elementary

Recently Randa Hopper shared some photos taken from our grade school years.  Most pictures of me as a kid I’ve seen thousands of times but these were pictures I don’t ever remember seeing.  I always think I remember the event in the photos in my parent’s album but I have to admit the old disk is completely erased on these.  I must have brushed up next to a magnet somewhere along the line.

The first one shows our entire third grade class.  We are on the playground facing what is now the new high school.  It’s fall.  I have studied this picture for hours and every time I look at it something else is revealed.  You can see that my mother and Pat Jones were knitters.  I remember that sweater well, my mom made one for me and one for Tom and he promptly lost his at Rainbow Glacier Camp.  Mollie & Donna are standing together as they always were.  You would never see one without the other. There appear to be two girls bent over whose faces I can’t see and I would bet one is Cheri Pardee.  Chuck Correa and Richard Cox have their arms around each other like they are best friends.  They never really were and Chuck didn’t even know who that was until I told him.  Ray Lewis and Curt Marceau also make a show of solidarity.  Tommy Roeser stands right behind me.  I remember him well because he had a skin condition and his arms and hands were always about the texture of sandpaper.  Colleen Hannon has a scarf on her head like we used to wear and NO ONE does anymore.  Teresa Watson is a literal head taller than Melody Price.  I am fascinated by this picture!

In second grade Mrs. Parker was our teacher and I loved her.  She only died recently and was just days short of reaching 100.  That was the year I broke my leg falling off the monkeybars.  Our class worked on a mural that illustrated a Robert Lewis Stevenson poem:

Where Go the Boats?

Dark brown in the river,

Golden is the sand.

It flows along forever,

With trees on either hand.

Green leaves a –floating,

Castles of the foam,

Boats of mine-a-boating

Where will all come home?

On goes the river.

And out past the mill,

Away down the valley,

Away down the hill.

Away down the river,

A hundred miles or more,

Other little children

Shall bring my boats to shore.

Imagine the possibilities of that poem to a 2nd grade mind.  I remember that mural like it was yesterday.  It had colorful boats and lots of leaves floating down river.   Randa ended up with it and it adorned their basement wall for years afterwards.  I  wonder if she still has it.

3rd Grade puppet show

The other picture is also third grade and again I have no memory, not only of the picture but of the entire puppet show.  Randa was always the leader though, and the most artistic among us so she has the biggest puppet.  Craig’s photo is quintessential Craig Jones, he was kind of obnoxious as a kid.  He grew up though and is probably the most successful kid in our class.  Depending on how you define success I’m sure, but he has done very well for himself.  There’s Mollie and Donna next to each other again and cute little Chuck Correa.  In third grade we were assigned numbers, alphabetically according to our last name.  Of course, Donna was # 1, Colleen was #8, me #9 and Randa #10.  The teacher, Mrs. John, would call our numbers out when we were to read aloud or do some other task.   It was that year I one 2^nd prize for going through the multiplication flashcards the (second) fastest.  Colleen was first.  I won a puzzle of the United States and I learned all the state capitals from that puzzle.  Too bad I couldn’t repeat them now.  Or put the puzzle together for that matter!