Eighth Grade Continues.

In 1950, there was an infusion of new students in our consolidated school. Students in the outlying communities where classes only went through seventh grade were bussed in to join us. The new girls from one of these districts came wearing bright red lipstick, making it seem they were older. The girls in our class hadn’t started using makeup, although the upper classes did. I guess those girls were in a hurry to grow up. It took me a while to adjust to the fact we were all growing up.

On the first day, I bonded with one of the newer students. Her name was Helen Cleveland and we became good friends. She happened to be another cousin that I didn’t realize I had. Her grandfather was my grandmother’s nephew. So, I think that made us second cousins. At any rate, we became close friends. She soon invited me to come to her house for a sleepover. I had never done that before, and to my surprise, Mom allowed me to go.

Helen had two sisters and two young brothers. She and her younger sister shared a double bed. I was expected to share the bed with them. At regular intervals during the night, both would flip over in their sleep flinging their arms out. Used to having a bed by myself, I spent a sleepless night dodging the arms and legs crashing across my body. I guess I adjusted, because before long, I was having sleepovers at my house, too.

The first time I brought three other girls home for the night, Mom told me I’d have to learn to make the meals for them. She provided buns, ground beef and condiments. I’d never done any cooking other than baking cakes and cookies, but with their help, we were able to make some edible hamburgers. We all had cereal for breakfast, and the visits became rare, because I didn't like being responsible for their meals.

At school, I enjoyed some of the clubs I had joined. Y-teens was an all-girls club. We had a creative teacher as a sponsor, and she came up with a lot of craft projects. We had a bake sale and earned money to send candy bars to Hong Kong. During the war, Hong Kong had been occupied by Japan. It had been ruled by the United Kingdom for a long time before that and it was getting back to British rule.

We each put our name and address on a candy bar. Two of us got letters back from the Chinese kids who had gotten our candy bars. I became a pen-pal with a Chinese girl named Freida Wong. Another girl became pen pals with a Chinese boy. Back then mail to China took over three weeks. We had to buy a special type of paper from the Post Office to write on. The sheet was folded into a mailer. The postage was expensive. We sent each other pictures and exchanged facts about our cultures. I was surprised to find her English was perfect. It would be 1997 before Hong Kong became a part of the Republic of China.

On the school newspaper, I was part of the writing staff and had some stories published. Other staff members typed or ran the newspaper off on a mimeograph machine. Once before, I’d had a long poem published in a newspaper in Houston, Texas. My mom had shown my poem to a relative. She was impressed, and when she went home to Texas, she sent it to the paper. I was eleven when I wrote it, and I was embarrassed because the paper had printed it.  

A couple of other things I wrote won prizes at school. One was a poetry contest. I’d written several poems, and I gave one which I wasn’t particular impressed with to another girl. She turned it in using her name and won first place. The one I turned in only won second place. I also won third place in an essay contest for Newton County on Forestry in Mississippi. I knew nothing about forestry other than some information I found in the encyclopedia and in a forestry textbook. Still, I won 15 dollars, and for a girl who was still getting only a quarter a week for allowance, it seemed like a fortune.

Glee club was another club I enjoyed because I liked to sing. We had a music teacher as a sponsor, and she divided us up into sections. I learned my voice belonged in the first soprano section. It was good to know I could sing soprano. I had assumed I just sang 'also' as in I also sang.

At three, my mom decided she would need to give me speech lessons because I “couldn’t seem to carry a tune in a bucket.” I don’t think I sounded that bad back in school, and I did make the chorus my first year in college. However, after I married a man with a really good voice, and ended up with four kids with excellent voices, they all managed to let me know, it was from him they inherited their talent. I didn’t feel all that welcome, when they got together for a family sing along.

Another thing our school did each year was to have an annual field day. There were no classes that day. It was a time to show off our skills. The morning was spent in the auditorium with competition between the grades. The categories were male and female quartets, solos, and speaking competitions. We tried out to compete. I’d assumed I would be the one to speak because I’d taken private speech lessons, but Jo Ann, who seemed to see me as a rival, challenged me for a chance to compete. She read a poem, and I recited Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart”, which I’d memorized earlier. The class voted, and I won the right to compete for our grade.

The afternoon was for athletic competition. Most of the kids, who were country kids, seemed to excel in physical sports. I was healthy enough, but I wasn’t an athlete. I tried for the hurdles but I kept knocking them over. The only event I competed in was the relay race. The other girls were really fast, so we did win that one. Other events were 50 and 100 yard dashes, javelin throws and high jumps.

As it got near Christmas that year, I had a surprise visit from one of the influential business owners in Newton. He came out to say he had heard I was an artist. I don’t know how he heard unless he asked around at the school. He enjoyed being one of those whose yards were decorated for Christmas every year and he was looking for someone he could pay to paint large plywood cutouts of Santa and his reindeer. Once again, I was able to supplement my quarter a week with some real cash.