Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Junior High School (or Middle School) Memories

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings:

1)  Do you have memories of your Junior High School (or Middle School) years?  Please share several of them.

Actually, I attended neither a middle school or junior high but an intermediate school consisting of seventh and eighth grades. Parkmead Intermediate was located on Newell Avenue in Walnut Creek, California adjacent to Parkmead Elementary, which I also attended. I walked to school. In the low water part of the year, I took a shortcut by crossing the creek and cutting through Mr. Newell’s property.

Both grade years had English, math, science, social studies, P.E., foreign language, music/art in 7th grade and home ec. in 8th grade (boys had shop), and one elective, which for both years was girls’ chorus. I took German for foreign language from Mrs. Harvey. My grades were average (couldn’t find the report cards I stored away in a safe place). I tended to have the dumber teachers. Science teacher, Mr. Rose, just had us read and answer questions from the book, unless someone asked him a question that got him talking. I had math teacher, Mr. Stromberg, both years. He did not make math interesting at all. In 8th grade, it was last period and the boys in the class all smelled of sweat from P.E. (no locker room or showers).

In 8th grade, I let Joanne talk me into running for an 8th grade office with her. It was a social activities office that two people held jointly. I was so shy about giving a speech. Our slogans though were “Go-go with Gerow and Pop the cork with Hork” where I shot off one of those party favor bottles send paper strips into the air. We didn’t win however. We just were not popular at all (though Joanne tried really hard to be).

Good Memories:

• Meeting my forever best friend, Beth in 7th grade. I don’t remember which class were in together, probably math with Mr. Stromberg (we had him both years) or maybe world history with Mrs. Ufendell.  We hung out after lunch with others at the Resource Room for the visually- and hearing-handicapped kids, several of whom were our friends. I don’t remember everyone’s names, or very many names of my teachers. We both liked to read Nancy Drew books and were not all boy-crazy as my previous friends in sixth grade were. It was nice finding a like-minded friend.

• Singing in the Girls’ Choir. It was fun performing for both schools and occasionally at outside venues. I was a second soprano and mostly sang in the alto range.

• Scouting. While not at school, I really enjoyed the two years of Cadette Scouts (Troop 993) during 7th and 8th grade. We had leaders who loved to camp and we went camping four or five times during the year. The end of the year camping was always at a camp with buildings and bunks, however the rest of the year, we slept on the ground under the stars. We cooked our food on wood fires and didn’t have supervision most of the time. The leaders dropped us off at the fire trail on Mt. Diablo, and then drove up with the gear. We hiked up to meet them. None of this would be allowed today in scouting. Most groups sleep in tents now.

• 8th Grade trip to Columbia, California. It was my first time to the gold country and I enjoyed the trip with fellow 8th graders. Here is a shot of me near a stagecoach.

• Getting a piano and lessons. I begged for piano lessons for years and finally got the chance for my 14th birthday in 1968. My parents rented the piano and I took lessons at the piano store for about a year. That was how long I could stand the teacher and didn't have the heart to tell my parents it was the teacher I didn't like.

Bad memories:

• I was pretty small for my size and one day eighth grade boys lifted me up and put me in the trash can.

• Another is I had a really hard time with my locker combination and would go to tears when I couldn’t get it open. Numbers are just not my thing—need locks with letters for me to remember.

• Sewing in home ec. I couldn’t sew a straight seam or make neat samplers. But I loved the cooking sessions.

Final memory is 8th grade graduation, held in the gym at Del Valle High School. All of the eighth graders had to sing “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Deborah Anne Latter was the pianist and I was the page turner. The class at one point I was admiring how well the class sounded, that I didn’t notice it was time to change the page until I felt an elbow in my side. My grandfather noticed and ribbed my afterwards.

Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.