Posted by Jean
on 8/16/2006, 9:37 am, in reply to "booklets"
208.134.203.12
Jules,
How many tears of frustration I shed over those damn booklets!!! Every freakin' country in Central and South America had to have its own booklet created (most creatively copied from the encyclopedia [perhaps one Mrs. Switzenberg sold]) We also read those lengthy poems like Evangeline and Snow Bound that had to have booklets made. Busy, busy, busy work! And of course we were pretty unprepared for that amount of work, because 6th grade with Mrs. Bronson was an endless round of plays, puppet shows and parties! I still see her periodically and it must be like the life of an aging celebrity who is trying desperately to look like she is 40, but who is nearing 80. That sounded pretty catty because she does look awfully well preserved! She still remembers us and asks about who is doing what.
I do remember your escape story (something about the Berlin Wall?) being read on the air! I also vividly remember being out on the playground with you in 6th grade during the Cuban missle crisis and you in an absolute state of terror that the world was about to end. Awfully scary stuff for little kids to handle, that's for sure but it was certainly one of those defining episodes of our lives--that and the Beatles! Is it my imagination or in addition to the duck and cover under the desks, didn't someone come up with the brilliant idea of having us try to make it home in an alloted amount of time when the city siren would be blown? Seems to me I can remember, again Mrs. Switzenberg,sorry, telling us that if we had been out on the street when we heard the whistle on the previous day, we'd be dead because the bombs would have gotten us. Of course, what we were supposed to do once we got home and the siren sounded was never fully explained to us either! I guess just being home was enough! I can remember going to Uncle Art's and Auntie Ragna's house and playing in their bomb shelter! It was really neat that I actually knew someone who had one. Too bad I never could make the walk home in the allotted time frame, much less try to get to the Holmens'!
This has been so incredible, making my neurons synapse in memory! Julie, so sorry to hear about Smokey's heart attack. I can certainly empathize. Pat had one in '92 and we have had trips to Marshfield and Abbot-Northwestern in the cities for angioplasties and athrethctomies (sp?). It puts a whole different spin on life when you ponder the possiblilites of widowhood at our age. Makes you grateful for every day!
Jean
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