Wondering about wild grapes

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Wondering about my school locations.

When I was growing up we lived in the country.  When I first started to school, although they had a school that had all the modern conveniences, the first three grades started out in the old one room (converted to three room) school house with no plumbing and with outhouses (one for the boys and one for the girls) out back.  I went through all 12 grades in the same school system but in three different school buildings.  All three of these were located in interesting and/or historical places.

The location of the schools where I attended from first through ninth grade were located in the town of Nixon.  No, it wasn't named for the infamous president.  (but he did visit the little town one time.)  It was very small, but had an airport and I remember DC-3s just missing the chimneys on the school.

Then after the school systems in the area consolidated and built a new high school, we were bussed to just outside of Saxonburg.  That little town had quite a history.  The inventor of woven wire cable and the suspension bridge, John Roebling, founded Saxonburg.  I attended a class reunion a few years back that was held in Saxonburg at the museum and learned a few things about the town that I didn't know.  It had artifacts from KDKA's transmitter (large tubes and equipment) which was broadcast from that area.  The area was also home to a nuclear research facility where they built a 450 MeV proton synchrocyclotron in 1946 which stayed active up into the mid 1970's. 

After graduating from high school, I was off to Penn State for a couple of years.  OK, that was just a little history of where all I went to school when I was growing up.  I enjoyed school and now I want you to enjoy yourselves and have a great day, you hear? 

11 comments:

  1. My 1st 3 years like yours, then, got to go to the OTHER side of town, for 4th, then into a new elementary for 5th. We grew up on the wrong side of the tracks,,lololol, and now we all live back here. It changed somewhere along the years.

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    1. Anybody with name "Trouble" must have come from the wrong side of the tracks. (grin)

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  2. For some reason, I never did like school much! Guess I thought I already knew it all!

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    1. From reading your blog I am sure you do know it all. You have taught me a lot.

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  3. I wish I had paid more attention in class. I liked watching rain drops rolling down the windows more...

    I went to a country school for first through third grades ... moved to the teeming metropolis of Texarkana then walked to school from elementary all the way through high school... well, drove as I got older... I mean walking 8 blocks was not for teenagers... y'know

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    1. I like to walk now. But you are right, when you are a teenager, driving is so much more fun.

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  4. Like you, I attended one room schoolhouse for the first five years and then switched to a new 1-6 consolidated school in Danboro, Pa.

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    1. Well I will be dog gone. . . We both grew up in Pa.

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  5. Not a one room school house but definitely not city. There were cloakrooms alongside of each classroom. I think the teachers taught 2 classes... I remember the rows of kids in my class divided down the middle with first grade on one side of the room and second on the other side.... those desks that the seat of one is attached to the desk right behind it... you raised up the top... had an inkwell and a routed out space for you pencil. Seems two of us shared a desk. One thing about this is that a lot of us first graders learned to read and write pretty early on... guess we were a nosy bunch and liked to pay more attention to the other class ;-) (That old school is now an apartment house - yes, it was 2 floors but... they surely couldn't have made it into more than 2 apartments!)

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    1. Oh yes, I remember the old desks like you described. Some had initials carved into them. All of them had ink stains. An no, I never stuck the pigtails of the girl in front into the ink well. Well, maybe I just gave them a little pull . . .

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  6. My country school house had two rooms, 1-3 grades in one room 4-6 in the other. There were 4 of us in the 6th grade in the back row.

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