Sunday, November 15, 2009 9:47 PM CST
COLUMN: 'Glancing Back' at school box suppers and Dean Martin!
By BILL LAIR, Managing Editor
blair@jg-tc.com
Despite my all-too-rapidly advancing years, I really don’t get nostalgic very often.
I don’t have time to look back.
Between the fast pace of the newspaper business, my work in Rotary Youth Exchange and my extended family’s activities, who has time to think about the “good old days,” whenever they might have been.
Let’s see, were the “good old days” the 1950s of my childhood? The 1960s (whoo-hoo!) of my high school and college years? The 1970s of starting a family and settling here? Perhaps the 1980s, when I began jogging, moved in to my current position at the newspapers and the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier both began publishing in the morning?
I haven’t had time to think about it.
But I have to admit that an item in Glancing Back on this page Friday sent my mind rushing back.
In the “100 years ago” section (no, I don’t go back quite that far!), Alice Larrabee plucked this item out of the Journal Gazette files:
“COOKS MILLS — Fifteen dollars was cleared for the library fund of the pupils’ reading circle at the box supper given Friday evening at the Cooks Mills School. Miss Blanche Dawson, a school teacher of North Okaw Township, was voted the most popular young woman present and a plate which was awarded her brought $8.05 at auction.”
The box supper.
When I was in grade school at Washington Elementary School in Ottawa, Ill., we actually had an annual box supper.
You probably have to be as old as I am to remember box suppers.
I don’t know how they did it in 1909 in Cooks Mills but in the late 1950s in Ottawa, the fifth- and sixth-grade girls made box suppers and the boys bid on them.
At Washington, classes were kindergarten through sixth but it was just the fifth and sixth grade that had an annual box supper.
The fifth and sixth grades were in the same classroom.
Our teacher was a man named Dean Martin. Again, you have to be close to my age to appreciate having a teacher named Dean Martin in the 1950s. Today, it might be like having a teacher named Elton John or Madonna(!).
The box supper must have been a PTA fundraiser or something. I really don’t remember why the fifth and sixth grade had a box supper each year, but we did.
The girls would bring a supper in a decorated shoe box. They brought it in a sack so the boys couldn’t see which girl brought what box.
When all the box suppers were in the all-purpose room, the boys were called in.
The shoe boxes were decorated in various colors and ribbons and bows.
Mr. Martin would pick one up and show it to the boys. He also showed us what the box contained. It might have two pieces of fried chicken or two sandwiches with some fruit or vegetable and dessert — cookies or some pie or cake. The boys bid anywhere from 25 cents to a couple dollars, depending on how much they wanted that dinner.
Of course, we weren’t supposed to know which girl had brought the box suppers but even in fifth and sixth grade some of the kids were sweet on someone and could find out.
Because, you see, the winning bidder not only got the box supper but he ate with the girl who brought the box supper. That’s why there were two pieces of chicken or two sandwiches in the box.
If you liked the girl whose box supper you bought, it was great. But if you ended up buying the box supper of a girl you didn’t particularly get along with, well, it could be a pretty quiet and fast meal.
I recall that one of my two years of box suppers was stone silent and lightning quick but the other year, the box supper was fantastic, the greatest meal I had eaten in the first 11 years of my life and over much too soon.
As in many communities, the old neighborhood schools in Ottawa were demolished several years later.
Washington was similar to the old elementary schools in Charleston and Mattoon — two- and three-story square brick buildings with huge windows.
Washington was heated by coal when I was a kid. The boys (it wasn’t a girl’s task) were assigned turns helping the custodian shovel the coal for burning.
Not only did the girls not shovel coal (I don’t recall what their gender-assigned jobs were), we had separate entrances for girls and boys at Washington.
The girls side had a playground and the boys side had a playground.
The girls side had swings, slides, a merry-go-round and grass while the boys side had a paved basketball court and paved kickball field.
Boys and girls could play on either side but when it was time to go in the building, the boys went in on the north side and the girls went in on the south side.
And you know what? It didn’t seem weird at all.
Because Washington was a small neighborhood school, no one ate lunch there. It had no cafeteria. I don’t know how much time we had for lunch but my brothers, sisters and I always walked home for lunch and made it back in plenty of time to play some kickball before school resumed.
Box suppers. Dean Martin. Separate doors for girls and boys: The good old days?
I’ll give it some thought someday when I get old.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
Mama says wrote on Nov 16, 2009 7:22 AM:
Who is there, herb asks.
OLE MAN WHO AGES YA. hehe.
Herb, I went to bed age 20 and wokeup
age 65. That is how fast time seems to have gone by. Only an ole fxxt knows this. Good luck in remembering later.
Sometimes, it is great not to remember all things. "