I feel like I went to school at a special time, with really neat teachers. I thought it would be fun to write down memories from those years of school. As I age, my memory clouds up more and more. If I have any of these wrong, please correct me, or add your own memories as well. I’ll try to group them together the best I can.
Kindergarten: Mrs. Cook’s class
On the first day of school, I cried. Mrs. Murray comforted me. I never really had a babysitter up to this point and never went to any kind of pre-school. I was scared.
We didn’t go every day of the week. I believe it was every other day.
Doing eye tests by using your hand to point the direction of the letter E.
Wearing those headphones in those cubicles and using a crayon on laminated paper. Mrs. Sauer (I believe that was her name) helped out.
Mrs. Cook would give you a sticker for finishing your lunch.
Monaghan reminded me of Animal Island. I nearly forgot about that.
Nap time.
I actually had a real cigar box for my pencils, etc. That wouldn’t fly today.
Marching around the room, I didn’t like being last, so I budged in line and had to sit in the corner. I was pissed.
Donald knocking over the Christmas tree and breaking my ornament.
Rory Higgins!
Andy Hansen was in our class too.
Melissa Sprague stuttered, but got much better as she got older.
Painting with those backwards shirts on.
Dancing Ducks was the workbook that I worked from. Maybe we all did?
Before the playground was paved. I don’t even remember the chain link fence being like it was a year or two later. I remember flying off of the merry go round and landing face first in the gravel and tore up my upper lip real bad. I’m surprised I can grow a mustache to this day.
Didn’t we ride on the Quasky fire trucks?
I rode bus 11. It only had 48 capacity and was shorter than the others.
At the end of the year, I remember Mrs. Cook saying that she’d watch us grow up and be proud of us. A year or so later, Jason Franck and I were playing outside the kindergarten room and hit a ball into her window. She looked out the window and scowled. I thought, “I bet she isn’t so proud of us now.”
Mrs. Cook taught us how dirty snow was by melting it and showing us all the dirt in it.
Mrs. Cook sent us home with gladiolus flowers to take to our mothers on mother’s day.
We also made a card for our mothers with an SOS pad.
I remember when Sean Monaghan came to school. He was the new kid, but had been in an accident and was recovering, and that is why he didn’t start when we did.
Lunch tickets were paper and had to be punched. Milk tickets were the same.
You actually could get a straw for your milk.
Using the parachute in gym class.
We also played cowboys and Indians in the gym with Mr. Steffen.
I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot more.
First Grade: Mrs. Bovenmeyer
The first thing we did on the first day of school was color the letter L. It was color by number if memory serves me correctly, and it got colored red.
Hey – who are all these new kids?
Ferocious Fish. Blue Tailed Horse. Runaway Monkey.
Letter People – Tall Teeth and Funny Feet.
Samantha Morris. She didn’t stay with us long. She attended North Linn with me years later.
Jeff Westemeyer as well. He came to North Linn years later and his name was Jeff Pentecost. Not sure why it changed. I think he had a very troubled home life.
Cutting photos out of magazines when we’d do each letter. I remember cutting a refrigerator out for the letter F and Mrs. Bovenmeyer got a kick out of it and said that she knew I was doing my own work. I learned that fridge was short for refrigerator. I never heard it called anything else!
Nap time. Mrs. Bovenmeyer would do these goofy things where it looked like she was kissing her knees.
Hide the checker.
The coat closet after the early kids left – jeesh!
Mrs. Hagie (Is that how it was spelled?) She was our helper. Jeremy DeMuth asked her if she farted dust in the gymnasium during lunch. She wasn’t amused.
We left a note for Mrs. Hagie and went and “played hookie”. Mrs. Bovenmeyer took us to the grocery store (now Wee Willy’s) and bought us little Snicker’s bars. We took the afternoon off and played.
The whole class going to Cato Webb’s home who lived in town. He raised rabbits. He helped build my father’s root cellar and put in a chimney for us so I already knew who he was. He had a lot of rabbits!
Flying kites with Mr. Steffen. Man that was fun.
Using those turtle scooters in gym class.
Was it about this time that we played under those oak trees and used the leaves to build houses? Weren’t we supposed to be a family of moles, or some sort of critters? Oh, it was fun whatever it was. To this day I smell the oak leaves in the fall and remember that.
Film strips. Advance one frame every time you hear the beep.
All of our worksheets had purple print. That’s because they used a mimeograph machine in the office. It had a very distinctive sound as it ran. It had a round drum and sounded like a little engine when running.
Puff the Magic Dragon
The early bus leaving school with the Winthrop and Aurora kids.
Mr. Meyers as our principal, and his bald head. He retired at the end of our first grade year.
Singing the Kookaburra song with Mr. Meyers as he took us up to Winthrop in the old Ford van the school had. Only a handful of us got to ride up with him.
Was this the year that Cindy Conrad was the snowman and knocked a microphone over? Wasn’t Janet Klein Santa? Vague memories. Maybe this was second grade?
Some older kids came and put on a puppet house type show in our classroom.
Dressing up for Halloween and going to Mrs. Sullivan’s room to see if her class could identify us.
Was this the year Craig Johnson from KWWL came to visit us in the gymnasium?
Wasn’t this also the year we would go to the gym and work on telling time with those paper clocks?
Ms. Thiesen telling us a “scary” story and having it involve hearing footsteps. It was Mrs. Bovenmeyer coming to get us from class. It wasn’t very scary, but memorable.
2nd grade: Mrs. Hogan
Jeremy DeMuth stabbed me in the arm with his pencil. Man that hurt and I could still see that lead in my arm up to a few years ago. It has since faded.
Travis Cook had a pizza party for his birthday. I couldn’t go because I had the chicken pox.
Monaghan and Greg Schmeltzer skipping around the room after the early bus left.
Sean’s mother would substitute and Sean would be a smartass to her!
Pee-Wee wrestling up at Winthrop.
Jennifer Schweitzer’s last year with our class.
Kelly Short threw me down the stairs. They were concrete and that hurt my knees pretty bad.
Either this year or back in first grade, we had a thing in the gym where we all brought green food. I remember my mother made some sort of salad that I didn’t like, but I remember Candy Meier liked it, whatever it was.
We got a new bus. I can’t remember if it was here in 2nd grade or in third. It was bus #8. I remember being excited about it.
Mr. Zimmerman was the new principle.
Didn’t we learn cursive here in 2nd grade?
Going upstairs to Ms. Tassler’s room for math (later Mrs. Stafford)
Ms. (or was it Mrs.) Cherry would also be a substitute.
Was this the year we went to the Grout Museum on field trip? I remember the planetarium.
I should probably remember a lot more than I do about second grade, but for some reason, I’ve forgotten a lot.
3rd grade: Mrs. Blumenshine (Later Mrs. Bisinger).
Brushing our teeth and fluoride.
Janet Klein’s mother would substitute. She was a fun substitute teacher. I remember her spelling bees.
Read all about it.
Using those old Apple computers. Wasn’t there a program where you had to make the guy jump over something by finding the letter on the keyboard?
Was this John Bare’s first year with us? I remember him talking about Dunkerton like Rose Nylund from Golden Girls spoke of St. Olaf. You knew John came from Dunkerton!
Going to Mrs. Bovenmeyers for reading. I remember we had a tornado drill during reading and we told Mrs. Bovenmeyer that it wouldn’t scare us since the sun was out. She said that tornadoes can happen even in the sunshine. Sure enough, on the morning of April 23rd, 2001, a tornado formed in broad daylight and damaged many homes and businesses (Jensen trucking for one) there in Independence, Iowa.
4th Grade: Ms. Decker
Having to take showers for gym class. Boy those shower floors were slick.
They had those exercise stations around the school. I last drove by the school a few years ago and you could still see a couple of the stations, but in terrible state of repair. The signs were very faded.
There was one girl in special ed – I think her name was Rachel – she got mad and slammed her plate on a table. It shattered and was as loud as a shotgun. Pieces of it flew everywhere. Everyone got real silent and she got even more upset and cried.
The space shuttle Challenger exploded.
The Indianapolis 500 was rained out.
Hacky Sacks
Chris King and me flipping a video camera off in class.
We went to the restroom one floor about the fourth grade. Adam Hamilton tried throwing me down the stairs. After Kelly Short doing it to me, I wouldn’t let Adam do it. We about came to blows over it.
I remember picking on Donald McIntosh while waiting in line at the bottom of the steps in Ms. Decker’s class. We would kick his feet out from under him. Yes, I was one of those who added to his burdens.
Speaking of burdens, Ms. Thiesen had a lot on her plate. She got pissed off during class, cursed at us, and slammed her piano lid down – not necessarily in that order.
This was the year that we got to monkey around picking out our instruments. Elizabeth Loughren and I had trombone. Monaghan was on saxophone. Keith Weiland was on tuba or sousaphone. I can remember some of the others, but not all that well.
Was this the year that we’d go to the computer room and run those “turtle” programs, or was that the 5th grade?
Was this the year we took the field trip to Waterloo to see the bakery and newspaper? Maybe that was the fifth grade. Whatever year it was, Adam Hamilton and I got into trouble for flipping the bird to cars on the road.
5th Grade; Mrs. Higgins
Intramurals. I cannot remember if we did that in 4th grade or not.
Science class with Mr. Schloss. That space game was fun. Amy Smock was out of school sick and she was our captain. We did pretty good in her absence.
Mr. Schloss taking us over to the buses to measure the windows.
Mr. Schloss teaching us the difference between the speed of sound and the speed of light. Whoever fired that starters pistol off by the school had a surprise when Mr. Gillihan came out wondering what the hell was going on.
Mr. Schloss’s blue camaro.
Mr. Schloss telling us about how our sense of taste and smell would get worse the older we got. He talked about old people drinking sour milk. He also explained why the television sounded louder in the morning after you slept even though you hadn’t touched the volume. It’s because your hearing restores itself over night.
I got into Doctor Who. I got made fun of for it, but oh well, it’s pretty popular now. Guess I was ahead of my time!
Them really dark sunglasses with the goofy designs on them.
Didn’t we do product advertising that year? I remember Lisa Jones do something about flavored hair mousse, or something along those lines.
Didn’t B.J. Bass move to Tennessee this year?
Field trip to the Old Capitol in Iowa City.
First year of band. I really enjoyed it. I remember there was a song called Trade Winds, but I cannot remember if we played that, or if it was the 6th grade.
Happy Notes from Ms. Thiesen
Catching Mr. Schloss’s fly ball on the last day of school bare handed. Afterwards, Amy Smock gave me hell for “bragging”.
Other memories:
Jay Bonefas, Jason Franck, and I rode Connie Oliphant’s bus.
Cindy Conrad and Sean Monaghan rode Nan’s bus #12
Travis Cook rode bus #6. Some older fellow drove it and had a reputation of being hell on the bus and it breaking down a lot.
Sue Walhart was also a bus driver, but I cannot remember who rode her bus. When I did Pee Wee wrestling, it was her bus that I rode to Winthrop.
There used to be a basketball game every year where the Iowa Hawkeye football players would come and play basketball against some of our teachers. I remember Mr. Schloss always got in on it. It would be held in the evenings and I went to one or two of them.
The janitor who rode the three wheeled bicycle. Donny was it? I remember they did a mural on the wall or something like that and his bicycle was painted on it.
Jennifer Jensen’s father came and showed us ventriloquism. He told us how to say certain words like peanut butter like “kteenut dutter” and how that would fool the ear.
Amy Smock’s parents brought horses to the playground in Quasky.
The morning a fire destroyed the home just south of the Winthrop school. One of the kids went to school and was a grade or two behind us. I heard they had to get out of the house with just the clothes on their backs, and it wasn’t much.
Corey McMurrin skipping school.
One April Fool’s Day, someone took a “For Sale” sign from a home and placed it in the school yard there in Winthrop.
Bobby Steffen (I think that was his last name???) Hee Haw!
Who was that world traveler guy who would come to school and show us film of his travels across the globe?
Didn’t Santa and his elves visit us in the school gymnasium at Quasky?
Bus #5 was my favorite substitute bus. It was probably one of the oldest buses, and it would backfire when it shifted!
Woody would run the bus route sometimes.
Stopping at the railroad tracks in Winthrop with the bus per state law.
Connie Oliphant running over Hepker’s dog with the bus!
Lopata’s fire. We stopped to get the kids and the fire department was there putting the fire out. I can’t remember if the kids went to school that day or not.
Sliding on the ice in the wintertime at Quasky.
I used to play jump rope with the girls there in Quasky. I guess you could say that I liked being around girls early on!
The playground at Quasky also had an extra merry go round on the north side of the school that was a good spot to go to if you wanted to get away from other kids, but don’t stray too far or you’d get in trouble.
I mentioned Samantha Morris and Jeff Westemeyer, but Penny Power and Mike Schrock were other East Buchanan kids who wound up at North Linn. Tonya King was in our class for awhile, but was held back a year. I went to school with her and Chris King’s cousins, Deryl, Sheldon, and Tricia at North Linn. I also had Chad Manson’s father as my gym teacher and football coach at North Linn.
I’ve got a lot of things that I’m sure I am forgetting. I spent 45 minutes each morning and each evening just on the bus ride. I have a lot of memories from that too, but very few would remember those like I do. This list is not meant to be all inclusive. I just thought it would be fun to tiptoe through a few of the memories that I can rattle off of the top of my brain on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon.
