TBT…

Skool days

When I went to elementary school in Louisiana, these WERE the desks we had…

School desks

And how many people remember this stuff… It usually stuck to everything EXCEPT what you were actually trying to glue together…

School glue

I remember these things hanging over the blackboard and us trying to learn to write cursive. I think it was around third grade.

School wall

And last but not least… Crayons! 🙂  All eight of them… If I remember correctly, Mrs. Nixon our teacher passed out one box to each of us the first day of school.

 

crayola

I can still remember that smell… Takes me back to being an 8 year old kid…

That was the year Crayola came out with the first 64 pack of colors. But they were EXPENSIVE… I think they were a dollar…

Comments

TBT… — 33 Comments

  1. Yes, I remember all that stuff – I guess that it makes me older than dirt. Growing up when we did, naturally I recall when pterodactyls swooped down from the sky and carried off the odd sheep – or child.

    The world has definitely changed since then. Sometimes for the better. Mostly it’s just gotten faster and I think that there is more to life than increasing the pace.

  2. That was so long ago, ONFO. I bet that you took those 8 crayolas, looked out the classroom windows and drew nice pictures of the flora and fauna of the day: wooley mammoths, saber tooth tigers.

    I, too, remember those uncomfortable wooden desks bolted to the floors in perfectly straight rows, and called their instructors ‘Master So-and-so.’ Now the kids sit in circles, and call their teacher “Bob.” The good students sat in the front, and the hoods sat in the back. Until the hoods got in trouble for the unpardonable sin of…gasp! – CHEWING GUM!!! Then they got moved up front. Or even got a swat or two from the principal in the assembly in the gym. Corporal punishment, also gone the way of the wooley mammoth….

  3. What about that white glue/paste that half the kids ate during school projects?

  4. The Glue!!!!!!! I forgotten about that thing. And you had to carry a little blade to scrap away the accumulation of dried glue and reope the slit.

    How about the wall mounted pencil sharpeners that “masticated” the pencils so old and worn out they were?

  5. We didn’t have the bench seat desks, but everything else you pictured is spot on (and we’re about the same age). One thing I note with interest is that the example of cursive writing features the capital Q that looks like a 2. We learned it that way in Illinois … and then when my family moved to Missouri, my sixth grade teacher ridiculed it in front of the class, because I “didn’t know how to make a Q.” There’s much to be glad we were taught, back in those days, but I don’t miss Mr. Briggs. Grumblemumblemumble…

  6. I remember the, too, along with the backboard, chalk, and erasers. Depending on the grade level, the seats got a little bigger as we grew, but didn’t realize it because the seem to fit all the time. Some had lift top and we kept our supplies in there, others had a space below the writing surface and initially, an open space below the seat for books and stuff. Simpler days for sure.

  7. Um, well, in elementary school, Mother deciding that my sister and I needed something better than the public schools around McGuire AFB could offer, sent us off to Catholic Day School.
    So we, set two to a table with pull out chairs, had glue sticks, and used color pencils. But we did learn to write in cursive, via judicious application of a ruler. A skill I promptly ditched when entering the fifth grade and going to public school.

    However, upon the very pretty girl in S-1 remarking that I wrote well in cursive during my first deployment, I shortly thereafter started writing everything in cursive.

  8. Don’t know if it counts or not, saw the crayons and remember them fondly never got them in school. I got to walk past the display case at the plant in PA when I worked there. For some odd reason Mr Rogers never toured the parts room though.

  9. LOL… I went to a all eight grades in one room school! Learned to read, write cursive (when it was a real curse to be left handed) and which spiders to kill in the outdoor restrooms, oh and the taste of the wash room soap (for repeating a few overheard words from those big eighth grade boys). Never did get my own box of crayons, just the brokens.

  10. I was in school in the 90’s in the Baltimore suburbs and had all of that except the desks.

  11. I remember all that stuff, too. As for the green strips above the blackboards, they were there to try to keep us writing using the Palmer method. And that included all those endless pages of slanting strokes and circular strokes used in the Palmer method. Booooorrrring!.
    And those desks shown in the picture were hard but fairly roomy. Then in junior high (middle school to you youngsters), we had those chair-desks with the arm board and writing table all attached, and a drawer under the seat for books. And that arm rest/writing board was always on the students left.
    Corporal punishment was the norm. We had a junior high science teacher who had a bad habit of whacking any unfortunate gum chewer or a kid not paying attention in class over the head with at least two books. Today, he would be in the slammer before the day was out.

    Those were the good(?) old days.

    • ” And that arm rest/writing board was always on the students left.”

      Most of them were on the right, for the mostly right-handed kids. Schools had a few of the left-handed desks, but I seldom got one, or even saw them, for that matter. No idea how the schools allocated them, but they were popular with some of the right-handers, for unremembered reasons.

  12. I spent kindergarten and 1st grade in London. Our desks still had pockets to hold inkwells 🙂

  13. Memories indeed. I remember the very prim and proper Miss Collins (in her sixties) from seventh grade. Some how a couple of the guys found out we would see a movie during afternoon class. So, during lunch recess, they snuck into the class room, pulled down the movie screen, taped on the current playmate of the month, and rolled the screen back up.
    When Miss Collins pulled the screen down for the movie, the look of shock, horror, and total defeat on her face actually made feel a little sorry for her.

  14. Yes, same desks I remember. And in the event New Orleans was to be nuked you’d find each of us under one for absolute safety and security. The teacher, on the other hand, had a desk that doubled as a tank.

  15. Man, that makes me feel as old as I *am*. Most of those things of that time we had here in Australia as well – especially those desks.

    And you *are* going to get this many replies when you hit people’s nostalgia button ( though I’m not sure about calling it nostalgia, heh ).

  16. Yep…inkwells with dried ink, white paste(lumpy), cheap rag paper with blue lines for capitols and lower case, most of the desktops were carved up, dirt playgrounds, always sit behind the smart girl, and I think Mrs. Helton bought most of the pencils and paper herself. She learned us good though.

  17. We had to provide our own crayons, and, moreso than clothing, the size of the Crayola box was the absolute indicator of social status. The kid with the box of 64 (with sharpener, no less) owned the joint.

  18. I remember some of these. I also remember the Nuns being terribly strict and authoritarians. The knuckles and rulers thing.

  19. Don’t forget the jars of white paste with the brush that was in the cap. We had one girl in 1st grade that had a fondness for eating it.

  20. Remember, metal lunch boxes and your favorite hero/theme printed on the lid and a small thermos inside? How about the playground with dodge ball and what’s the name of that game where you hit the ball attached to a pole by a rope?

  21. Yeah, we’re old! And Skip, I hadn’t thought about that rag paper in YEARS!!! Press too hard and it ripped… sigh

  22. Aguila: that was tetherball.

    I had forgotten the inkwell holes in those desk shown. And we had to use pens that we dipped into the inkwells, that always tore the cheap rag paper.

    And we, too, had to supply our own Crayons. My mom would buy the eight-pack, while I was always lobbying for the sixteen-pack. Mom always said the sixteen-pack was “too expensive.” I think it was all of 50 cents. But, then, that was back during the war years of WW2. Hell, I even remember the steel pennies that came out in 1943.

  23. Scottie- Yeah, many a bloody nose at tetherball…LOL You’ve got me by a generation, but I remember seeing a few steel pennies in the 1950s too!