Back To School

After a few very busy weeks life is getting back to whatever normal is around here so back to the story........

It is the fall of 1983 and I am still the Librarian, still the President of the Home and School Association and back in college.  All this severely cut into my time for Porch Club, the Friday craft/potluck afternoons and the amount of time I had to sit and visit with friends. Living in a town that was one square mile in size with an average age of sixty-two, some of whom had never learned to drive, did make me look a little strange.


When I had gone back to college at Texas Women's University in 1975 it was not quite so daunting as it was this go round.  Although most of the classes I took back then were filled with eighteen and nineteen year old's there were several students older than I for me to bond with.  This time the class was filled with faces straight out of high school plus I figured the professor, Dr. Grey, could not be more than thirty although he looked like he was twelve. The first few weeks there was probably not a day that went by when I did not question myself on why I was taking a Calculus based Physics class.

The question of what I was doing really came to a head after the first test. Somehow I learned how to type a ten page Lab report on my new electric typewriter to at least get a passing grade.  The first test score was a lot less than I even dreamed of.  By the look on the faces of the entire class I did get the opinion that I wasn't the only one that was disappointed.  But Dr. Grey was nice about it and made the suggestion that perhaps a little time spent in the school Library on the computer might be to our advantage.  There was that word again - computer.

I had heard words like Main Frame and Computer before but had no idea of what they really meant.  My choices at that point were to drop out of the class or drop into the Library to see what this computer thing was.  Dr. Grey had given us some information on what to do or how to use the computer all of which made no sense to me but I decided to at least see what this thing was all about.

The Library at the school had a huge room filled with tables that had little television screens and keyboards.  With my information in hand from Dr. Grey I sat down at one of the computers and had no clue as to what to do although crying at that moment was a definite option. Before the tears of frustration begin to fall a young man came and asked if I needed some help. I guess I had looked pretty forlorn staring at the thing and very thankful he came to help.  I gave him all the information and he showed me how to "log in". When I did the words came up on the screen "Hello, Donna"! Wow, was this special or what?

Dr. Grey's computer program seemed nothing short of brilliant to me.
There were physics problems that required the use of whatever formula we had been studying and you had to solve them using the formulas and a scientific calculator.  If you got it right there were stars that popped up but if you got it wrong you had three chances to try again.  If you failed to come up with the right answer he walked you through what you did wrong plus there was a print out of everything you did. Needless to say I became addicted to that thing called a computer and there was never a flunking test score again.

Halloween was a big deal in Riverton, New Jersey every year.  The night before Halloween, known as Devil's night due to the fact that if kids were going to paper trees or soap cars that was the night.  To keep the kids busy Riverton and Palymra had a parade and hot dogs in the park.  I thought it would be fun to enter a float in the parade that year.  It was actually the Library doing it and someone loaned us a trailer.  I had the kids dress up like their favorite characters in a book and sit in front of a huge cardboard replica of the book. I must say when I needed a costume to wear so I could keep the kids from falling off the trailer it was nice to know my ninth grade cheerleader uniform still fit.  The best thing was that out of eighteen floats we won first place.

At school the next day there were the usual Halloween parties plus the kids wore their costumes to school and then did a parade down all the sidewalks in town so everyone could see their costumes. I think that was the first year people did not give out so much candy due to idiots trying to ruin a really fun day.

Wes was playing soccer on a little league team and it seemed like there was a game several evenings a week.  The team was really good and ended up the area champions which was a big deal.  He was quite proud of his red championship jacket.  Wally had tried soccer but was more interested in the dirt clods that were all over the field. It was plain to see that Wes was the "go do anything" competitive person while Wally needed to stay far away from all sports.  When the little leagues for soccer or baseball started forming I can remember asking Wally if he wanted to be on a team and he was always thankful when I didn't sign him up without asking him.  Actually I am not sure I could have managed to sit through sporting events for both of them.

 Barney flew into Philadelphia the first part of November on his way to New York.  He had finished his second book and needed to meet with the publisher.  Although we still talked on the phone every Tuesday it had been four months since I'd seen him.  He had a four hour layover so we grabbed a brown bag lunch and sat by the Schuylkill River and Boat House Row which was beautiful with the leaves just beginning to turn into brilliant colors.  Needless to say it was wonderful to see him. I was very proud of him on the new book and he was tickled to death about my physics class.  He asked me if I had heard of the Kaplan course to prepare for the medical school entrance test. I hadn't but he thought it might be a good idea and would look into it for me.

It was always hard to take Barney back to the airport and have him fly away but this visit we had managed to stay away from too much conversation on the subject of our particular situations. We did talk about how different our relationship would look to others.  Both of us laugh about the fact that no one would believe that we didn't rush off to a hotel the moment we had the chance, not that we didn't want to.  Our relationship is quite complicated but I do not  ever want to lose it.

It seemed like our Oklahoma families didn't make the trip to New Jersey to visit as much as they did when we first moved there but at the same time we did not go there as much either.  So, as the holidays approached it looked like there was not going to be any visitors. This was perfectly fine with me as I was never much for holiday gatherings and looked forward to a few days away from work, school and all the activities the boys were involved in.  A nice quiet time sounded really nice until a guy Dennis worked with invited us to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with them in New York City.  

Ever since I could remember the Macy's parade had been the thing I watched or tried to watch every year.  What could be more exciting than to actually get to go?  I could hardly believe I was really going to stand on the streets of New York and see all the huge balloons, the bands and all the stars.