When do we get our school clothes?
By this time of the summer, many years ago, our mother was more anxious for school to begin than we four or five children were.
All I could think of, at age 10 or 12, was what I’d have new for school. My two younger sisters and I would pore through the Sears catalog, dog-earing pages and marking things we wanted. Of course our mom dutifully acknowledged our choices, but with no promises. Our brother didn’t get to sit in on these “shopping” trips. His clothes never changed – plaid shirts and blue jeans.
From the Sears catalog, orders would be written for underwear and socks, but none of those colorful sweater sets or plaid skirts. We’d nevertheless be excited when Carroll MacDonald, our mailman, delivered the package and we’d run helter-skelter up the driveway, and tear the wrapper off the package, as though we were going to see the holy grail.
A couple of weeks before school started, the family would make a trip to Westbrook which was the shopping hub of our area. The first stop, and most expensive, was to Lane’s Shoe Store where four pairs of new shoes would be purchased. Regardless of the shiny black strapped ones we had marked in the Sears catalog as our choice, our father always purchased “sensible” shoes, one which had laces. Sometimes they were brown and white saddle shoes, but usually just a plain brown. Converse sneakers were bought for the little brother.
Next, we’d troop over to the 5 & 10 cent store near Valle’s corner where we’d watch excitedly while our school supplies were chosen. This is also where dungarees (blue jeans) and tee shirts and sometimes plaid flannel shirts were gotten for our brother.
In my childish head I was thinking “box of 64 Crayolas,” but in reality, we each got a package of eight crayons, a one-drawer (sometimes two) pencil box and a dozen bright yellow Ticonderoga pencils. In the stationery aisle, four red tablets of lined paper were selected. If there was enough money, packages of 3-hole punched paper were bought and black binders for the paper.
I always thought a miracle would happen some year and I’d get a big box of crayons with exotic names like “Burnt Sienna” and “Flesh,” but this never happened. Also I wondered what was in those pencil boxes that had four drawers instead of two, but it remains a mystery to this day.
Somewhere in America, children must have used those half-circle plastic things that came in pencil boxes, but I don’t recall even knowing what they were called. I liked the short – and useless – six-inch ruler, but knew that in school we’d each be issued our own one-foot wooden ruler with a little metal edge piece.
Our mother made most of the school clothes for us girls, five new dresses per girl each year. It’s hard to imagine anyone today making 15 dresses, with no patterns, on a treadle (non-electric) sewing machine. Lace and buttons and puffed sleeves, too. Of course at the time we girls wished for “bought” clothes from the catalog, never realizing how lucky we really were.
School (in the old days) always began the day after Labor Day. Despite the September temperatures, we would be decked out in our new clothes, almost always woolen.
So off to school we went, over half a century ago, with our little pencil boxes and our curious minds filled with all the neat things we’d seen at the five and dime store where we’d get another trip in a year and ready to learn all kinds of fascinating things in school.
Backpacks have replaced book bags; hot lunch has given way to fast food and plastic trays, and I doubt that anyone sews on a treadle machine any more. The names of crayons have been made politically correct (no more Indian Red), but do they still have pencil boxes? Do they still include those plastic things – what were they, anyway?
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