Riding through Robbins

Here I am in Robbins again. Reckon I will ever get over this and grow up? This is Elise High School. Still in use, but now it is Robbins Middle School...

Entrance to the school was at the top of this circle drive...that's where daddy dropped us off every morning on his way to work.

When the school system moved all the eighth grade students and part of the seventh grade students to the high school, I was one of the seventh graders picked to move. Just as sure as the world, I was sent to Elise High School to embarrass and drive Shelby crazy. Now tell me, was it my fault that I was bashful and backwards and scared of everything. Nobody will ever know the fear I had of climbing onto one of these school buses parked here at the top of a cliff overlooking the railroad tracks down below.

Back then a sixteen year old student with a driver's license could drive a school bus. Why if he didn't let that clutch pedal out just right we would have rolled back and down that cliff. That would have surely been the end of us! Today there are trees growing back behind the buses.

Shelby was loved by all the teachers. She was popular, had lots of friends, always in the Beta Club. Me, not too smart. Oh, I did pretty good until they sent me to the high school...

Have I ever told you about the lint on the girl's back? We were at a basketball game. A home game here in the gymnasium. Daddy told Shelby she could go to the ball game with her boyfriend Garland, but they had to take me along. I tagged along behind them as we walked that beloved sidewalk to town.  Now I didn't care one thing about basketball. I had much rather been home putting my dolls to bed, but here I was up on the bleachers with Shelby and Garland. Coats and sweaters were piled between us, probably so no one would know I was with them. Well friends, I went to work picking those little lint balls off all those coats and sweaters...every color you could think of. Sweaters used to knot up worse back then than now. It turned out to be a good size ball of lint...and kind of pretty. I flattened it out real good and when that horn went off at the end of the game...I gently placed that lint on the back of the girl sitting in front of me. How funny it would be when someone said to her, "hey, you have some lint on your back". Makes you understand why Shelby ignored me in school.

Let me show you one more building, run down now, but beautiful when we were growing up. The Community Building. This building was down the hill from our house...within walking distance...

Upstairs was the skating rink, downstairs the bowling alley, the windows on the left was the library, on the right downstairs was where we met for Brownie Scouts, and also downstairs where Shelby met with the Girl Scouts. We were here many many times roller skating. In fact, we were here the evening Daddy came walking through the door. He called Shelby aside to tell her that he was on his way to the hospital with Mama. She was in labor. We were soon to have a baby brother.

Better get off this computer and check on things. Eli has been mighty quiet. Thank you if you have managed to read this mess, these times that are so near and dear to my heart.

Love,
Henny Penny