class of 1990 Week 35

Monday I met Mrs. Kappel at 6:30am in the school parking lot and we headed to the NIPA conference in Grand Forks. It was a long day. Kevin and Peter were already there and were wound up. The last part of it was the awards banquet. Each time an entry from St. Thomas placed, one of us would have to go up to the front to collect the trophy or certificate. The guys kept refusing to go up stating, “That’s not my tomato.” We rode back in Mrs. Kappel’s little red Ford Escort. I was in the front and the guys were in the back. At stop lights they would sway side to side and make the car rock. They never stopped talking the entire way back to St. Thomas.
That night at play practice the guys were still wound up. I almost had all my lines down. My problem was working on volume.
Wednesday I have a note stating that the Grand Forks Harold had five sections and that none of them has a loose page that had to be attached before putting it on the newspaper poll. I think this is the first time that I wrote about a lack of loose pages being a good thing.

I finally got my costume for the play worked out. My dress had a huge bustle in the back. At Thursday’s play practice we needed to tape a paper barn to the back of the stage. Whenever someone wasn’t on stage they were rolling tap for the back of the barn. After rehearsal we had a barn raising using push brooms to get it stuck to the back of the stage wall. The brooms left streaks of dust at the top causing Mrs. Barker to comment that our barn was a bit dusty upstairs.

Friday we finally got the school paper out. The last paper of the year always featured the senior spots. There was a picture of each graduate and we would fill out a question survey stating things like our favorite food, nick names, pet peeves and advice to underclassmen. In answer to the question about what I’d miss the most about STHS I wrote, “That exhilarating rush of energy I get when I leave the building.”

Friday was also the town clean-up-day. Once a year in the spring on a Friday all the students of St. Thomas Public School were assigned sections of the town and sent out with cheap flimsy plastic bags to pick up trash. The first and second graders did the school grounds. The other grades got sections of the town. In the junior high students would be driven about a mile out of town and would then walk back in picking up trash in the ditches. The grade school classes were supervised by their teachers and the upper classes by their class advisor. A few of the senior boys would get to drive a truck around the town and pick up large trash that the people would put out. At the end of it everyone would come back to the school and the city council would treat the students to those little ice-cream cups with the wooden spoons and a can of pop. If we finished early we would be dismissed to go home. Peter and Kevin go to drive the truck. The rest of us went to pick up trash in the city park by the playground equipment. Margo, Jaci, Jason and Terry had a context to see who could swing the highest. Terry won just moments before Mr. Dick showed up to supervise us. It was clear that he would have preferred to have all the students in class. We finished our area as quickly as possible, got hour treats, and since we were seniors we didn’t have to wait for an official dismissal before heading home. I enjoyed driving out of town and passing underclassmen still out picking up trash.

Sarah came home for the weekend and we enjoyed playing catch in the front yard. Sunday Jason was confirmed. After church we went to an open house at his home in St. Thomas. Jason’s home was across the street from the school which was good since I had to be at the school at 1:00 p.m. to sing with the choir for Mrs. Billings’ (4th grade teacher) retirement reception.

Play practice was at 7pm that night and it was a dress rehearsal. The first act was OK but the second act all our props were falling apart. Peter broke his pipe. Kevin’s stage knife broke. We recorded the practice and watched it afterward.