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Show High School Graduation ends phase of life p.g. blab By MARCELLA WALKER Here it is the last week of school. This school year moved along at a right good clip. It didn't do that as much when I was a student as it does now. Friday will be a day of glorius celebration at all levels as school is dismissed for the summer. Except those places in the district where they hold year-round school. Although I am highly in favor of year-round school, it will eliminate this one great day of the year, the day school is out which has been a special day since Adam and Eve told the kids they could have the summer off to plant corn and wheat. I suppose that is why the schools have traditionally been closed in the summer, so that kids could help out on the farm. There aren't hardly any farms anymore and where there are they are ofttimes big co-ops which do not hire kids. We used to pick cherries, peaches, berries, apricots, etc., when I was growing up. We lived in the city and did not have our own farm so we went and worked on other people's farms. Farmers cannot get kids to pick fruit anymore. Those kids are missing a wonderful opportunity. The cherry throwing fights were a daily necessity to keep us from dying of boredom as we picked those pesky little buggers. The races to see who could fill their bucket first resulted in terrible arguments because someone else had a "better tree" to pick on than the others. Lunch time did not come soon enough. It was a wonder the farmers ever survived the entire season. verging on the downtown area with their shaving cream, water balloons and honking horns, it will be graduation. It seems only yesterday that I stood with over 500 other graduating seniors and sang, "For all we know, we may never meet again. We come and go like the ripples on a stream . . . ." The tears ran down my face as we sang this, the theme song of our graduation, as well as the school song. The boys wept and the girls wept. It was a time of mixed emotions. We were glad to be out of school but we knew we would miss the good times, the friends and the teachers. It is strange how you can be quite good friends with some kids at school, but somehow your paths never cross again. Your very closest friends you do see on occasion. The others become only a fond memory. When we had our twentieth year class reunion, this sharp looking little lit-tle blonde came up to me and called my name, threw her arms about me and I just had time to glance at her name tag. I didn't recognize her at all. - j She had been one of my best friends frien-ds from the time we were little. I was one of her bridesmaids. But at that time she had been a little chunkier and not so blonde. The only thing that saved my skin was her name tag. I felt so dumb. But she had changed and I had not seen her for a very long time. She was also a grandmother at age 34. She could be a great-grandmother great-grandmother by now and I am just starting out having my gran dchildren. Of course, I am way tr young to have any . " grandchildren. She is my , fact I am older by about fivem J So, as you can see, it happens vr don't see kids that you were real close to, maybe some of them it will never see again. It is funny , always mean to. You tell each (ft you will not lose contact, noma what. But life takes you on differe trails. You can never go back. In yearbooks, the kids right he at dear old P. G. High, write "Q me this summer and lets have a u ty" or "Lets do lots of fun things 4 summer." They never do. We didn't either. It probably hi always been that way. Abel's fci probably told Cain's, "Let's j together this summer for a ne game of kick the rock" and thentk never did. Maybe that was tl summer Cain did Abel in, something. You never know. One boy wrote in my yearboi "You are a neat gril. Stay It way.". He had completed tat years of school and still could n spell "girl." It 'really makes y; wonder. . ;; Here is my toast to the new PGE graduates: Have a blast this si mer because next year it is colli) or work, work, work. Don't married for at least two years. 1 to go to a college of some kind, if it is parttime. You'll need it to j through this old world. "Stay as sweet as you are." It is probably the last time you'll Ik that, cause no one writes that i college yearbooks. Here's ton Good luck! Another result of fruit picking can sometimes hit you in your older age when you least expect it. I had a little lit-tle thing grow on the side of my nose. When I went to see Dr. Bezzant he informed me that it looked like a skin cancer and it was. I asked him how come I got such a thing. I was not one to spend all my time lying out in the sun. He asked me if I had picked fruit when I was a child. I said I had. He told me that that was probably the cause. You would think that in the tree you would be in the shade, I suggested. He said, "Sorry, a lot of sun gets through those branches." I figured he should know because he is not only a doctor but the son of a fruit farmer. So far, though, I am the only one out of all the kids I picked fruit with who has had a cancer develop, that I know of. In addition to Friday being the last day of school and all the kids con- |
