Monday, August 27, 2018

Montoursville 2018: My schools (Part 3)

[C.E. McCall Middle School on Willow Street, July 2018]

I attended Montoursville's C.E. McCall Middle School for two years: fifth grade (1981-82) and sixth grade (1982-83). The school is located at 600 Willow Street and was just a stone's throw (or two) from our house at the corner of Willow Street and Fairview Drive. So I was a "walker."

Here's what The Otstonwakin had to say about the school in that 1975 publication:
"The C.E. McCall Middle School was opened for the 1971-72 school year. It has a student population of about 1,000. It is modern in all aspects and well equipped. The Middle School provides education for students in grades five through eight. It has a building life expectancy of fifty years."
That life expectancy would take it to the year 2021. I haven't seen anything, in a cursory search, indicating that there are major plans in store for Montoursville's middle school, so I suspect that officials expect it to go significantly past its expiration date, so to speak.

My homeroom teacher was Barbara Johnson, and her classroom was located along the north side of the building. She taught social studies, but I never had her for a class. My teachers that I can distinctly remember included Mr. White (science), Mrs. Sheets (math), Mr. Koskey (chorus), Mr. Bailey (music), Mr. Derr (science) and Mr. Gruenewald (industrial arts). Looking at a staff directory from around that time, other names that ring a bell (but I can't quite place) include Dieffenbach and Solomon. I feel badly that I recall very little of English/language arts teachers from this period. I blame the early-onset Alzheimer's.

But here is a scattershot journey through things that I do remember from these two years of middle school; the childhood moments that did remain in my head, for whatever reason.

  • So, yes, since we had a "homeroom," this was also the first year that I changed classrooms throughout the day and had my own hallway locker. That was quite the adventure for a 10-year-old. It also meant groups and cliques traveling the halls together, trying to beat the bell while swapping gossip and jokes.
  • In Mr. White's science class, we were taught this great rhyme: "Johnny was a curious boy, but Johnny is no more. For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4."
  • Also in Mr. White's science class, I had to stay after school at least once for excessive talking during class.
  • My best subject was probably math. We learned a good bit about the metric system as part of an initiative toward that far-more-logical method of weights and measures, before President Reagan brought the U.S. transition to a crashing stop in 1982.
  • While I enjoyed chorus (more on that in a bit), my worst subject was probably music. One of my biggest educational regrets is that I didn't take that class more seriously and learn to read sheet music. It would have been such a gift for future me. As Red laments: "I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left."
  • If you asked Mr. Derr if you could go to the lavatory, he would reply, "I don't know, can you?"
  • Gym class was typically amazing, especially when it rained and we had dodgeball games played in a mat-covered room in the bowels of the building and kickball games played in the auditorium/gymnasium.
  • Part of our curriculum involved square dancing, and we had an evening assembly at one point to show off our skills to the whole community.
  • The school offered an elective that was basically "Electronic Games". Rather than trying to get us to give up all those battery-powered games we were carrying around in our backpacks, administrators essentially shrugged and gave us one period a day to sit around and chase red blips across tiny screens. As others mentioned in a Facebook discussion this topic, oddball electives at McCall also included macramé, hook art and what I'm just going to call Advanced Coloring, perhaps predicting the craze of therapeutic coloring books geared toward adults in the 2000s.
  • In language arts, we were assigned to read A Wrinkle in Time, but I don't remember being able to grasp it very well. Also in this class, the teacher would read to us from Choose Your Own Adventure books and let the class vote on which path to follow. There was also the monthly excitement of the Scholastic books catalog being passed out, followed by the books (and maybe Dynamite magazine) eventually arriving.
  • Chorus with Mr. Koskey was very enjoyable. We gave concerts throughout the year at the school and around Lycoming County (nursing homes, etc.). I even vaguely recall caroling from door to door during the school day. A few of the songs I remember performing were "Brazzle Dazzle Day", "Song Sung Blue", "Heartlight" (the E.T. song), "Daybreak", "Drunken Sailor", and "Let There Be Peace on Earth".
  • In industrial arts, we made a metal lamp in the shape of a stove (which I no longer have) and this blue-and-gold plastic box, which I still have and use to store skeleton keys.
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Sunday, August 26, 2018

Can we have a national discussion about this vintage toy advertisement?




Why is a white man in a dress shirt rescuing a black man ... from a sleeping bag?

Why is a 1980s pro wrestler driving the rescue vehicle?

Did Permit Patty have something to do with this?

This was the Big Jim Rescue Rig, which was part of a series of toys sold by Mattel from 1971 to 1986. (That was right in the wheelhouse of my playing-with-toys youth, but I don't have any recollection of it.) The Big Jim Rescue Rig included a shovel, pick, axe, walkie talkie, lantern and chainsaw, according to ToysYouHad.com, which has the lowdown on all things Big Jim.

The guy in the denim vest driving the rescue rig is Big Josh. The black man who is in dire need of rescue in the midst of his nap is Big Jack. According to ToysYouHad.com, Big Jack came with trunks, a dumbbell, a baseball, karate board, muscle band and Big Jack Sportsbook.

Other elements of the wide-ranging Big Jim set of toys (all sold separately, of course) included: tattoo-covered Dr. Steel, arrow-shooting Chief Tankua, outfits for every conceivable sport, a tent, a "Real Action Gorilla," a treasure chest filled with treasure (actually small pieces of non-biodegradable plastic), a ski ramp, a "Kung Fu Studio," a sports camper, a motorcycle, a buggy, a "Sky Commander" set, a "Real-Action Alligator," a katamaran, and much, much more. Check out all the details on ToysYouHad.com, and share your thoughts and memories about Big Jim and His Very Serious Adventures in the comments section.
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Late summer reads
on a sunny Sunday



It's late summer, right? We've already had regular-season high school football games here in southcentral Pennsylvania. People are tweeting out Halloween decoration displays from their local stores. And I passed a tractor trailer full of pumpkins a couple of days ago. So it must be nearly autumn.

Here's the latest collection of articles you might enjoy and/or have missed during the hectic days of mid-summer.

Serious

Not as serious
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Mystery real photo postcard:
Man sitting in chair


This slightly worn (but not bad for its age) real photo postcard shows a well-dressed man sitting in a chair. The room is otherwise blank. No thrilling fabricated backgrounds of meadows or wooden fences or Cardassian architecture. It looks like this was just another stop on this gentleman's busy day of taking care of important matters. Or maybe he was on his way to see his mother — also an important matter.

As this is a mystery RPPC, there is absolutely no identifying information. The postcard was never written on or mailed. All we have is the AZO stamp box on the back for dating purposes. The configuration of the four triangles indicates that this RPPC was created sometime between 1910 and 1930.

So that's it. Just a snapshot out of time. We don't know his life story. Where he was from. Who he loved. Who his children were, and what happened to them. What he did for a living. What books he read. What songs he sang to himself as he walked down the road...

Here are some closer looks...



Other mystery RPPCs
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Friday, August 24, 2018

Montoursville 2018: My schools (Part 2)

[Undated postcard of Lyter Elementary School, published by Merrimack Picture Post Card Company of North Springfield, Vermont. I believe that my fourth-grade classroom was the set of three windows on the far left.]

When we moved back to Montoursville in late 1980, I returned to Lyter Elementary School. This time I was an "upperclassman" within the elementary school — a fourth-grader instead of a first-grader.

My teacher was Mr. Rees Daneker, who was very cool1, and these are some of my scattered fourth-grade memories from that two-thirds of a school year (1980-81):

  • I aced all of my spelling quizzes.
  • A girl named Danielle sat right in front of me and would turn around and sing snippets of Blondie's "One Way or Another."
  • In art class, we painted, worked on a papier-mâché projects, and were introduced to those wonderful markers that smell like fruits and spices.2
  • In music class, we learned the basics of rhythm and beat. One of the songs we used for this was Air Supply's "Every Woman in the World." I used to be able to recall another song that we used, but it's slipped my mind.
  • As far as what we learned in Mr. Daneker's class beyond spelling and mathematics, my memory is hazy. There was almost certainly a unit on Christopher Columbus, but I'm pretty much drawing a blank.
  • One day we gathered in the cafeteria to watch Pollyanna.
  • I have a memory that the principal announced to the entire school, via the intercom system, the news that President Reagan had just been shot on March 30, 1981. I see that TV reports first aired around 2:42 p.m., so it's certainly plausible, timing-wise, that this happened. But I do not 100% trust my memory on this and might be conflating it with something else.

And then it was on to middle school...

Footnotes
1. Rees Daneker, on the right in the top row, was an assistant coach for the 1978 Montoursville High School baseball team, which finished the regular season with a 30-3 record and was the No. 1 seed in the PIAA District Four playoffs.
2. The blog Children of the 1990s states: "For a generation facing increasing concerns of huffing and household chemical abuse, it seems strange in retrospect that our parents and teachers once actively encouraged good old fashioned marker sniffing."
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Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Happy 132nd birthday,
Ruth Manning-Sanders

Today is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of author and modern Renaissance woman Ruth Vernon Manning-Sanders (1886-1988). She gathered and retold folk and fairy tales from all over the world, publishing more than 90 books during her lifetime. And she was a friend to elephants.

She has her own label on Papergreat, so you can check out the 60+ posts in which she's mentioned. Here are the previous birthday posts:


Earler this year, I wrote about her early children's novel, Adventure May Be Anywhere. And this summer I took a trip to the northcentral Pennsylvania library where I first discovered her books in the early 1980s.

For her birthday, here's the lowdown on one of her novels, Mr. Portal's Little Lions, which is one of her toughest-to-find books and hasn't been documented elsewhere in cyberspace, to my knowledge.


  • Title: Mr. Portal's Little Lions
  • Author: Ruth Manning-Sanders
  • Cover illustrator: The only clue is the name "Sax" on the dust jacket. There is no credit inside.
  • Publisher: Robert Hale Limited, 63 Old Brompton Road, London
  • Price: 10/6 (ten shillings, six pence; same as the price of the Mad Hatter's hat)
  • Year: 1952
  • Pages: 256
  • Format: Hardcover
  • Provenance: This copy once belonged to "C Bowman"
  • Dust jacket copy: "This is a sensitive and beautifully written story of what happened to a timid, unobtrusive, little middle-aged bachelor when he unexpectedly inherited money and should have found freedom at last.

    "But Mr. Philip Portal's lifetime of devoted service as head clerk in a solicitor's office, lonely, hypersensitive and in a rut of accepted drudgery, has unfitted him for complete freedom. He both yearns for and shies away from the solace of love. He tells himself that he has escaped from the tyranny of his characterful old landlady on the sea front, when he has a home of his own with an attractive, domesticated widow as neighbour on one side and a poetically minded spinster, who is a painter, on the other side.

    "And then there is Cynthia — the young, pretty niece of his landlady — cropping up to play havoc with his wavering emotions, until he sees and hears 'little lions' on every path!

    "The solution is surprising, and to no one more so than to Mr. Portal himself."
  • So there are no real lions? It would appear not.
  • A thought: This should be a movie with Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Helen Mirren and others.
  • Also, Hugh Grant: Yes.
  • Kelly Macdonald, too? OK.
  • First sentence: Two men sat facing one another across an office desk: James Harley, a middle-aged solicitor, good-humoured, good looking, a thoroughly good fellow, and Philip Portal, his head clerk.
  • So, Grant as Harley and Firth as Portal? Indeed.
  • Last paragraph: Did she understand? Perhaps. If she didn't, it seemed to Mr. Portal that nobody ever would.
  • Who is she? Who did he pick? I'm not telling.
  • Random sentence from middle: On a low stone hedge some young lambs were playing at king-of-the-castle, butting their woolly heads into one another's ribs and leaping sideways.
  • Manning-Sanders biography: This is from the back flap of the dust jacket. There are a couple details here that were new to me:
    "The wife of George Manning-Sanders, the artist and writer, Mrs. Manning-Sanders was born in South Wales, of an old Unitarian family. She was a Shakespeare scholar at Manchester University but, before completing her English Honours course, left to get married. With her husband she toured England, Scotland and Wales in a horse-drawn caravan. Then they joined the artists' colony at Newlyn and finally settled in their present home at Sennen Cove, near Land's End. They have two children.

    "Ruth Manning-Sanders began writing verse, and never thought to write anything else till economic pressure acted as a spur. One day she met an elephant in Sennen, and became interested in circus life. She joined a family tenting circus, travelling and living with them to study the practising of the artistes and the training of the animals. She worked as an advance agent, rode an elephant on parade, and went into the lions' cage with the trainer.

    "This has provided material for two circus novels already published and a third in preparation; also for her forthcoming history of the English circus. Her hobbies are gardening, animals and birds, astronomy, poetry and painting, legendry lore and prehistoric research."
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Monday, August 20, 2018

Peaceful postcard of a steaming log


Yep, yet another "steaming log" post on Papergreat. This is a Cardinell-Vincent Company Color Type postcard that has never been used in its century-plus of existence. According to MetroPostcard, that California company was in business from 1907-1919 and "published view-cards of California in a variety of techniques through a number of different printers. They were chosen as the official publisher of postcards for the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915."

The caption on the front of this card states:

A FALLEN MONARCH
MUIR WOODS, MT. TAMALPAIS
STEAMING LOG

Mount Tamalpais, which rises to 2,571 feet, played an important role in Miwok culture, as those Native American peoples warned that a dangerous witch dwelled there (although they might have said this just to scare the white people into staying away). Today, Tamalpais stands as an important wildlife refuge, especially for some endangered species, so, witch or no witch, we can hope that humans will continue to stay away as much as possible.

Finally, on a related note, I mentioned the Muir Woods in this post about Gray Line tours of the Stanford area last fall.
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Montoursville 2018: My schools (Part 1)

[Lyter Elementary School on Spruce Street, July 2018]

With regard to my Montoursville memories, I only have two schools to talk about — the elementary school and the middle school. Given the years that I lived there, I never attended Montoursville Area High School, which is embedded so beautifully near the center of the town's residential grid. In fact I was only ever in that building a couple times, once for a middle school choral concert. So I'll leave the history and tales of Montoursville High to others.

I lived in Montoursville for the following school grades:

  • Nursery school (at a church)
  • Kindergarten (C.E. McCall Middle School)
  • First grade (Lyter Elementary School)
  • Second half of fourth grade (Lyter Elementary School)
  • Fifth grade (C.E. McCall Middle School)
  • Sixth grade (C.E. McCall Middle School)

I attended two years of nursery school (1974-75 and 1975-76) at what is now Faith United Methodist Church on Fairview Drive. (I would also attend Sunday School and Boy Scout meetings at that church, in later years.) The story goes that I wasn't quite ready, in terms of social adaptation, for kindergarten following my first year of nursery school, so I went through a second year. Regardless, I don't have any memories of either year. But there are snapshots! Here is a group picture from June 3, 1975 — the end of my first year of nursery school. That's me in the blue shirt, sitting on the ground in the far left of the front row. I definitely don't look like nursery school graduate material at that point. I look like I need a nap.


Following the two-year nursery school grind, I attended kindergarten in a first-floor classroom toward the back of C.E. McCall Middle School. Mrs. Bonazzi was my teacher, and I previously wrote about the ephemeral proof that I graduated on June 10, 1977. I remember generally enjoying the kindergarten environment. We learned the alphabet, and it was a high-energy classroom full of colorful educational materials on the walls. I wish I had other recollections beyond that, but it's just been too long.

By that point we were living on Spruce Street and, for first grade, my new school was Lyter Elementary School, aka the "George C. Lyter Building." In that September 1975 issue of The Otstonwakin, the following was written:
"George C. Lyter Building — It is a modern building located on Walnut and Spruce Streets and is used for grades from kindergarten through grade four. It is estimated the building can be used to provide for the needs of the school district for thirty years."
Lyter Elementary opened in September 1959, so in 1975 they were estimating that the building would remain in use until at least 1989. It has far surpassed that estimate as it enters its 59th school year of existence this fall. The school is named after George C. Lyter, who was supervising principal of Montoursville schools from approximately 1918 to 1950.

It was about three blocks along Spruce Street for me to walk to first grade at Lyter Elementary during the 1977-78 school year, and I recall doing so often. My teacher was Ms. Miller, and my room was straight ahead, then on the right, after you went through the main entrance on Spruce Street. My first-grade memories include:

  • Praise for being way ahead of the curve on my reading level.
  • Counting by fives with aplomb.
  • Our desks were usually organized in a circle (or perhaps a rectangle), with everyone facing inward and being able to interact with each other.
  • Frequently breaking into smaller groups for learning and practice.
  • Our class made a recipe book that all of the parents contributed to. Mom's contribution was "Mommy's Favorite Hamburger Hash," and I wish like hell I could find that mimeographed book, but it's surely gone.
  • I had to stay after school one day for talking out of turn, and I cried.
  • The playground was patrolled by a paddle-toting administrator. I never actually saw anyone paddled, but, oh, there were stories.

When our family return to Montoursville two-and-a-half years later, after a stint living in southern New Jersey, I would return to Lyter Elementary in the middle of the school year as a fourth-grader...

TO BE CONTINUED
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