..or chalk and slate?
January 21, 2010 (Thursday)
Do you remember your public school days? Every year in the fall we bought school supplies. I bought most of mine at the 5 & 10 cent store on Hardy and Lorraine Streets, and my school clothes (new blue khaki pants and, if I needed them, new tennis shoes) across the street at Rite Way. When I got to the Sixth Grade, I also bought Brilliantine Hair Oil at the 5 & 10.
I don’t remember all the school supplies we had to have, but I think I bought a tablet, pencils, eraser, crayons, and I don’t know what else. Pen staffs and steel pens were provided by the school, I think, for penmanship lessons. The ink wells on the desks were a constant source of temptation for the boys.
My father would always tell me that his main school item was a slate. I never had to use a slate, but he did, along with all his class mates. Remember the song, “School Days,” that has a line in it about a slate?
Dear old golden rule days
Readin’ and ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful barefoot beau
And you wrote on my slate, “I love you, Joe”
When we were a couple of kids.”
When we got older, we used fountain pens, and nearly every person with a shirt pocket had ink stains on it because somehow those fountain pens would leak. Ball point pens didn’t show up until long after I graduated from high school.
Hope this gets you to thinking about your annual school supplies purchases. Hope you remember what you used better than I do.