Monday, August 22, 2016 – What Were You Doing 50 Years Ago Today? School Starts Today! Climb Aboard The Way Back School Bus.
If you lived in Magnolia, Texas you were about to start your senior year in high school at Magnolia High School. Seniors of what would become the Magnolia High School Graduating Class of 1967 were participating in one of the following activities two weeks before classes began. Sidebar: This was back in the day when people had good sense and schools started after Labor Day.
Rolling down the sacred halls of memories, the MHS Seniors were doing one of the following.
- Practicing marching band on the gravel in the hot sun behind the band hall.
- Practicing new twirling routines in front of the auditorium in the shade.
- Practicing new cheers in front of the band hall in the shade.
- Practicing football on the practice field in the sun. It was actually called the baseball field, but MHS did not have a baseball team. It was mostly a dusty pasture like area.
- Practicing what every high school student knows. You can always tell a Senior, but you cannot tell one much.
I suppose The MHS Class of 67 was like all 17 and 18 year olds. We knew everything worth knowing and our parents were as stupid as a box of rocks. We knew everything from three TV channels that went off the air at midnight and returned at some unholy hour of the morning like 6:00 AM. We also knew everything because there were these things that were called books and magazines and other items that did not plug in a wall socket or need to charge at night.
We walked to school five miles one way in sleet and snow … OK I walked to school when the sun was shining. If you lived in Magnolia between 1956 and 1967, you know where I lived. Sidebar: We lived at The Sawmill in 1955 in case you were trying to do the John Wax math.
Many have since reminded me – “Your bedroom was almost in Room 10.”
If it was cold or raining, my mother took the princess to school. By the time we got to the detached garage and in the car, I could have been on the front row in Room 10. By the time she drove me the equivalent of one half football field in length to the front of the high school building, I could have already been on the front row of Mrs. Traugh’s classroom or Mr. Wax’s classroom down by the auditorium – the length of the high school hallway. Actually, there was only one hallway. It was the length of the entire building except for the auditorium.
Fifty years ago. As the great 20th Century philosopher Jimmy Buffet says: We are the people our parents warned us about.
Note the handicap license plate. Jimmy Buffet concert, Austin, Tx 2013. Photo by me.
Wow. If I knew then what I know now. I knew everything in August of 1966. To the Magnolia High School Graduating Class of 1967 and the Magnolia High School Graduating Class of 2017 here are some back to school words of wisdom. They come from another great 20th century philosopher who said in 1964…
“…you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’”
Had I only listened. You can always tell a Senior, but you cannot tell one much.
OK – Everybody off the bus. Go Bulldogs!
A corner in my office.
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