RETIREMENT’S COMIC RELIEF: Back to books and field trips

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Exciting first days of school remain in memory. Besides a new pair of Keds and blue jeans, there was excitement about new surroundings. One never knew if familiar faces would be waiting there or what new experiences might offer.

With school back in session, students and teachers are again settling into their routines. Chances are, breaks from classroom activitiesents, vocational opportunities or interests that could possibly impact what their future holds

A particular field trip to a fire station just one block from school brought excitement to my kindergarten class in 1955. The class trailed single file like ducklings behind Mrs. Alley to meet the fire chief awaiting our arrival. Split in two, half the class remained on the ground floor to see and sit in fire trucks and view hoses hung up to dry after a fire while my half of the class trundled upstairs. We were shown where firefighters rested, played cards or slept in addition to the top of the fireman’s pole used to slide downstairs when the alarm bell sounded.

After trading floors, my group toured what others had seen. The most exciting part of the excursion came just before leaving. We learned each of us would slide down the pole in the arms of a fireman. My half watched as classmates emerged sliding down the pole. Totally mesmerized, I missed instructions for our half of the group to return upstairs for a turn down the pole. During the walk back to school, it was hard not to cry about missing the once in a lifetime experience.

In 1958, all third graders were loaded onto buses for a field trip to the high school auditorium where the Wichita Symphony would perform Benjamin Brittan’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” Returning home after school, I told Mother, “I want to play the trombone.” Her response was, “How about the violin?”

A springtime sixth-grade field trip to Abilene, Kansas, brought a tour of the Eisenhower Presidential Museum which would be dedicated during July that summer. One Army Jeep, a slew of uniforms, tents as well as various rifles and guns were on display inside glass cases. Despite classroom exposure to WWII history and General Eisenhauer’s connection to the war before the trip, the tour of the museum wasn’t as memorable for me as was the ice cream cone stop on the way out of town. At that time of life, history just wasn’t of much interest to this eleven-year-old.

Our sophomore high school orchestra class was required to sell The World’s Finest Chocolate bars to fund a field trip to participate in a music competition at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Not much of a salesperson, I sold a fraction of what was required and ate the rest. We toured the Chapel there, a unique and impressive structure – even to young teens.

The orchestra’s performance came off without a hitch, but trouble arrived when a handful of brass players were caught roaming around outside in the middle of the night smoking cigarettes. Returning to Kansas, short-term expulsion came for the troublemakers, rewarding them with more time away from school.

An extra-credit psychology class during summer school arrived after my junior year of high school. Enduring three weeks of focus on Sigmund Freud’s boring five stages of human development preceded a field trip to the Kansas Mental Hospital (as it was called then) in Larned, Kansas. It provided a Rod Serling style exposure to toddlers with hydrocephaly and others with a litany of unfortunate troubles.

I came away thankful for good health and an ember of desire to help sort out troubles for others someday. Things might have turned out differently had I played the trombone or made that trip down the fireman’s pole.

Sommers is a retired Minot orthodontist, violinist with the Minot Symphony and author of the book, “Retirement? You Can’t HANDLE the Truth!”