High School Revisited

To start off, how about a little Throw Back Thursday?  These are my kindergarten and  senior year pictures. My kindergarten picture was taken right after a home perm.  Can you tell? 

My high school years (10-12) were spent at Ruskin High School, Home of the Golden Eagles. I graduated in 1976. While there, I was in the pep club, was a Chanter (wrestling cheerleader), Senior Class Vice President, on the Yearbook Staff, in Gold Choir and a few other things. I loved being in high school and hated to see it end. My best friends were Patti (Johnson) Buie and Sheila Smith.

I was a Chanter for only one year, although I did make it for my senior year as well. However, we thought we were going to be moving from Kansas City and I gave it up. We found out shortly thereafter, that we were not going to be moving for another year. So, I got in pep club and cheered the teams on that way. Here is a picture of the Chanters. My friend Sheila is the third one down on the left column. 

We had a lot of fun cheering for the wrestling team.  We got to go to a lot of meets and met lots of people from other schools.  That was a time when "mooning" was a big thing.  So after just about every meet, some of the wrestling team would find us girls and moon us.  They thought it was so funny how we would all scream when they did it.  Boys!  

Another thing that happened a lot during that time was "farming yards", and ours got farmed more than once. "Farming" was driving your car up onto someones lawn, stopping, then gunning the engine and leaving huge ruts in the ground.  They would tear up a lot of yards and since ours was on a corner, we were a prime target.  

And if that was not enough, there was TP'ing!  Oh yes, that still happens today too, but we got TP'd so many times that the people doing it almost set up a routine.  So one night, my mother stood at the window waiting for them. Sure enough, here they came, not being very quite I might add.  Just as they got to the yard, she yelled out, "You better get out of here right now!" Boy, they high tailed it out of there so fast.  Yes, we did get TP'd again after that, but not near as much. Inevitably, it would rain after they did it and what a mess that would make.  We would be out picking up tiny pieces of toilet paper, off the yard and trees, for days.

My ballooning.  Not a great picture but you get the idea.

I got ballooned one time, which was a whole lot easier to clean up.  They bought the long balloons and tacked them down into the yard, where they stood up straight.  There were balloons everywhere.  

Did you have a "strip" that you used to cruise in high school?  We did and we cruised it almost every weekend.  Ours went from the high school, all the way down to Truman Corners, on Blue Ridge Blvd.  Many times we would turn around in the McDonald's parking lot and head back the other direction. My friend Patti and I made a habit of stopping at McDonald's, getting an order of french fries to split and a drink.  We had such a great time hanging out together.  I got the opportunity to spend some time with her in Missouri about a month ago.  You would have thought that there was no time between the last time we saw each other.  We picked right up where we left off.  

Patti Johnson Buie and I, a few years ago.
Still great friends after all these years.

I fell in love right after my sophomore year with a boy from the rival high school.  A mutual friend introduced us and we dated, off and on for four years.  I remember going out on our dates and sitting next to him in his car, before consoles. Our first date was to the very first Star Wars film.  My mom and dad loved him and many times, after we broke up, he would still come by the house, I think to see them.  A funny thing happened at my 26th class reunion (no typo, we just decided to do it then instead of the 25th).  We had our reunion at a bar that one of our classmates owns.  I happened to look up and who should be sitting in the band area but my boyfriend from high school.  Now remember, he went to a different high school. So I walked over to introduce my husband and before I could say anything, he jumped in and said that he was not crashing the reunion but was there to hear the band.  Okay...  He didn't stay long after that.  What a coincidence...ha!  Our reunions are always so much fun and filled with lots of surprises. It is hard to believe that next year we will be having our 40th!  Yikes, can I really be that old?

Today's Terri's Tidbit:  Do you have a dear friend from grade school, high school or college?  Give them a call, right now, and catch up on each other's lives.  It will be a great way to brighten your day!

New Home, New State, New Beginnings

We finally arrived in Kansas City, Missouri, in the summer of 1973. When we got there we lived in an apartment in Grandview for a couple months, while we looked for a house. I wanted to get a recent picture of them but they have since been torn down. The picture to the right is my mom and dad coming out of those apartments. Ours was the one on the second floor.  There were a lot of changes at once that summer: new state, new home, new school and new friends.

We found a house and all of us were ready to move in but we had to clean the place first. We also did some painting. It took several days to get the house clean because the previous owners were smokers. I can remember my mom taking the venetian blinds to the bathroom tub, spraying them down with 409, and the nicotine turning the water yellow-brown from the build up. It was so gross. I don’t think they had ever been cleaned. 

Our subdivision, Terrace Lake Gardens, was quite a ways from the school so I had to ride a bus, which I hadn’t done in years (since I was in grade school) so that was going to be a new experience. I can still remember the first day of school, getting on the bus, not knowing anyone and before we got to school, having several friends. They knew I was the “new girl”. Things traveled fast around our neighborhood. 

Our house sat on a corner lot and was right across the street from where the bus stopped. My bus driver also happened to be my neighbor. That was helpful at times, because if I was running a little late, she would usually wait for me, whereas other drivers probably would not have. There was a really cute boy that lived in our neighborhood, that I kind of liked. He started hanging around and I have to say, my parents weren’t as fond of him as I was. Nothing became of that, other than friendship.

Our house in the Terrace Lake Subdivision.

My sophomore year was a busy one. I tried out for several plays and had small parts. I still remember my drama teacher saying, “there are no small parts, just small actors”. Supposedly Ed Wynn, the actor/comedian said that. But I have seen it attributed to a Russian actor named Konstantin Stanislavsky, too. I loved being in the plays and with each one came a great group of people to work with. I was a nun in the Sound of Music and had a one-word line in it. I got to call out “Maria” during one of the scenes. (I still get teased about that) I didn’t have much to do in that play but it was a lot of fun and quite a production. A lot of the seniors were in it and I thought it was cool to be able to hang out with them at rehearsals.

I was chosen to be the understudy for the lead female role in the play “Mary, Mary” during that year too. I was the understudy for Cheri Buie, who was so awesome. She was a senior and so talented. Anyway, they decided to do an Understudy Night that would be performed the night before the regular opening night. It was so scary. David Dahm played the male lead, my ex-husband, Bob.  We made it through the evening and I got to experience my 15 minutes of fame. 

David Dahm and I rehearsing for "Mary, Mary'.
Don't you just love the pants?

That same year I was nominated for an award with two other students. I think it was a DAR award.  I didn’t get it but one of the other people nominated was Sheila Smith, who went on to be one of my dearest friends. We both lost to a guy in our class.

I didn’t have to take any PE classes during high school because my credits transferred over from my junior high and were enough to get me through. I was ecstatic! I did have to take some electives like Spanish and drama class. I took Spanish all three years but can honestly say that if you don’t use it, you lose it. However, I can still ask where the bathroom is. Important, right? I wish I had paid more attention and had a way to practice what I learned, because I could sure use it in many ways now. I have been saying I am going to try Rosetta Stone. I have had it for several years and haven’t done it, so the odds are probably not in my favor. Oh well, if anyone needs to know where the bathroom is located, in Spanish, give me a call.

Ruskin High School, my alma mater.  
It has changed a lot over the years. 

Today's Terri's Tidbit:  The United States Census Bureau has a really fun website, with lots of valuable information, including a running meter of the current population, US and World.  Check it out here.  It is a great source for those working on their family history. I usually go to Ancestry.com or familysearch.org to look at the actual census forms but you can do it through this website.

Not all census takers enjoyed their job or had the patience needed to deal with many different people.  One of those individuals was a man named Frank Wilkeson, who had some interesting entries on his forms. Check them out here, in an article on Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems website. Based on my research, this was a very important job that was not always taken seriously. The assessor would go house to house, taking notes and many times would then transcribe that info onto the forms.  They didn't always get transferred exactly right and many times the names were spelled phonetically or just plain wrong, so it makes a genealogy researcher's job more interesting and many times more difficult.  The most recent census that is available online, free to the public, is the one from 1940.  They have to wait 72 years after the census to release it, which means the 1950 one should be available in 2022. Will your name be in that one, or will you have to wait, like me, for the 1960 census to come out in the 2032 timeframe?