Memories of OVES while attending Northside Junior High School

Cleaning out my mother's attic this Fall, I discovered this gem of a hand-written scrawl. Apparently the purpose was to serve as a script for an introduction for one of my classes. I don't remember whether my poor little mind survived the presentation or not.

(click on picture to enlarge or read the moden day transcription below)

On my first day at school [,] my best friend and I started to come home at recess. We thought school was out. Another time when we were walking home [this time school was really out for the day], some bigger boys [actually I think it was only one boy, a slightly mentally challenged boy who wore a razor blade around his neck…his name is indelibly inked in my mind] started to chase us and I wanted to run to get away from them. My friend [funny that I do not remember his name] said we shouldn’t run--that we should play dead and they would pass us by. We dropped to the ground and tried to play dead, but it did not work [surprise, surprise]. The boys stopped and roughed us up, so we learned it was better to run away [and to live to run another day].

In the Second Grade [,] my class was split up and I entered another class [I don’t remember that…oh well]. This is where Gary Rudolph came into our class [changed from “came into my life”…what was I thinking]. Gary kind of took over and was our ringleader and was pretty good at thinking up pranks [I guess I handed the class crown over to him in second grade].

Since the Fourth Grade [odd that I capitalized grade levels…as if it was an important institution like Congress or Senate] our class of boys have [oops wrong verb tense] made about one trip a month to the Principal’s [must be a proper noun because I put it in caps] office. One time it was for shooting off paper caps in the library; once because someone was striking matches [in class]; once for throwing water bombs out the window at other kids; once for throwing food at each other in the lunch room [I cannot believe this only happened once]; once for locking a [safety] patrol in the maid’s closet where he remained from one o’clock to three o’clock [;] and once for shooting a firecracker off in the [class] room. One year we got in a snowball fight with a teacher. These are just a few of the pranks we played.

In the Sixth Grade we formed a gang at recess where we would get together and charge other groups of children and run them down [This was our version of Red Rover, Red Rover, Run the Kiddies Over]. When we were in a good mood [,] we would take prisoners and rough them up. (We were almost always in a good mood.) It got so [that] if any of the kids saw us [,] they would scram no matter what they were doing.

On the last day of school [,] [now that should have been in all caps] we pushed a barrel of trash down the stairs at a [Safety] Patrol and the trash went every where. I think the Principal was happy to ged [get] rid of us because we had a nice graduation party.

We left Ocean View [Elementary School] for Northside [Junior High School] where our old class was broken up. The only old classmates from Ocean View who were with me in Northside were two girls [obviously I was not impressed sufficiently to remember the names] and Randy McSpadden who was changed to another class after about a week. Tom Blackwell [now there is a name out of the past] and I became friends and helped each other in the five classes we were in together. This year I have Tom in all my classes and I have two other old classmates, Gary Rudolph and Randy McSpadden [in other classes].

This just about brings my life story up to date. [For some odd reason I deleted the next sentence from my discourse: “I’m going to try very hard to get good grades in all my classes so I can go on to the Ninth Grade in February.”] I have enjoyed my year at Northside Junior High School, but I’m wondering how I’ll do in High School where things will be tougher. I haven’t decided what I’d like to be when I grow up. My parents would like to send me to college, but I don’t know if my poor little mind can take it.

Well as things turned out; I did end up graduating from College, albeit about eleven years after graduating from Granby High School, doing a stent in the Army, and working for a couple of newspapers in Maryland and Baltimore. Ocean View now also goes by the name Ocean View Maritime School, since it is the only elementary school in Norfolk to have a saltwater laboratory. Northside has been made politically correct by being renamed Northside Middle School. Ocean View classes now range from kindergarten to fifth grade…and as far as I know, our class was the absolute last Seventh Grade class to ever graduate from a Norfolk or Virginia elementary school.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities