JUNIOR HIGH AND HIGH SCHOOL

When I was in school, there was no "Middle School", just Junior High. My Junior High was in the same building as the high school and was comprised of the 7th and 8th grades. When that changed is  not something I would know. I'm OK with the way it was!

Junior High as I remember was pretty simple except we walked from classroom to classroom instead of being in one room all the time. The most exciting thing that happened to me was discovering music. Band was one of the classes offered and I enrolled without hesitation. I had never attempted any instrument up to that time. I started out on the clarinet and played it until I started high school. I loved performing and being a part of the band. Edgar W Williams was the leader and I think he and I hit it off right away. I still have a clarinet but don't play much due to arthritis in my thumbs which hinders playing in the upper range.



Sometime around entering Junior High I retired as a Grit delivery boy. This is due to what I thought was a better opportunity. My brother Warren's father in law  (Skipper) had a paper route and he was looking for a "wrapper". He drove, I believe, a 2 door Studebaker and I would sit in the back and wrap papers and he would toss them to people's lawns. Yes, people did read black and white papers. There was no internet or google, just reporters with pen and paper. We started at 3am by picking up papers (unwrapped of course) from the Orlando Sentinel. I would begin wrapping on the way and would continue until all papers were tossed. After that I went home and napped until time to get ready to go to school. The time didn't bother me. I was young and made quite a bit of money for the time, This, however, came to a halt one rainy morning. We were doing our usual job (in the rain) but Skipper stopped often to check his trunk. We are driving down the road and he is purposely hitting all the puddles which he said was cleaning the wheel wells. Well, well, he left the road and took down about 300 feet of fence and an orange tree! What saved me was all the rolled up papers cushioning me against hitting anything too solid. It turns out he had a bottle of spirits in the trunk which he was examining fairly often. Oh well, that was the end of that job. I think I did the paper route for more than 2 school years and I missed the income. On to the next job!!


I'll try to do more tomorrow. I have way too many memories and need to filter some

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