Ellary promoted recently from Dana Middle School, aka Richard Henry Dana Jr. High. This is the school we went to as kids, so returning for the promotion exercises once again caught me in a nostalgic mood. The ceremony was set up on the field, on a very hot morning. As I looked for a seat with a good camera angle, I noticed the school band playing "I'm a Believer" by The Monkees. Now, if you had told me when I was in Jr. High that 40 years in the future the school band would be playing a Monkee song as a prelude to commencement I would have thought you were crazy! Monkee muzak! The whole thing took me back to the terrors and high jinx of Jr. High, so I stopped off after the exercises to peek into Mrs. Erber's old room. The grand dame is long gone, but I thought I heard her ghost clicking her teeth in disgust at the decline of civilization as verified by the outrageous selections of the school band.
2 comments:
What a good-looking kid! And a good-looking grandma, too! Allen saw the plaid shirts and said, "Good heavens!" It's a blast from our past. Every boy in the fifties and early sixties had a whole wardrobe of them just like it. OK, maybe they wore their sleeves a little shorter back then. Still, when you're as old as we are, it's interesting to notice the various reincarnations of clothing styles. I'm looking forward to pix of Alex....
Allen is right! Those shirts are just like what kids wore to Dana back in the day. There were a lot of similarities, but one big difference. The school is now much more ethnically diverse than it was when we went there. I guess the pre-teen population has shrunk significantly in Pt. Loma, as they bus in kids from all around the city. Dana has 5th and 6th graders. Correia (used to be Collier) Middle has 7th and 8th. Ellary hopes to be able to attend there, but may have to go to his neighborhood school, Roosevelt. Kind of fun to see the old place again.
Post a Comment