WILKES-BARRE — Back in the day, in a far away land, kids were getting ready to return to school.
Shorts and T-shirts would be replaced by khakis and button-down shirts.
And with that, the pre-school ritual of going “school-shopping” with our moms to buy school clothes and supplies.
My mom would take me “overtown” to the Fowler Dick & Walker The Boston Store, The Hub and American Clothing — all on South Main Street.
As I got older, I can still remember insisting on buying the same colored socks as my shirts — yes, I wore yellow socks and sometimes, even powder blue ones. But back then, I was way cool.
Back then we proudly marched off to school and we listened to our parents and our teachers.
We did our homework.
We respected our teachers and our schools.
We supported our teams.
We formed forever friendships.
I often think of those days and I sometimes wish they would return.
I look at today’s world and I hope we still have supportive parents, teachers who are role models and students who want to learn.
We need all that to have a chance at a future as good as our past.
When I drive through Plymouth, I go past the old Nottingham Street School — yes, it is still standing — and I return to those great old days.
Staring at one of the landmarks of my life is all I need to remember what I can never forget.
I only went to Nottingham Street School for first grade — which occupied the same room as second grade. The schoolyard was our stadium for Wiffle Ball and tag and a lot of running and laughing.
It was hometown, neighborhood schooling.
For second grade, it was Central Elementary School on Shawnee Avenue — which is now a parking lot. I went there for second grade through sixth grade.
We had championship basketball teams there, battling Franklin Street and Vine Street for the elementary title.
Then it was Plymouth Junior High School for 7th, 8th and 9th grades. The Junior High was connected to Plymouth Senior High School — Ward P. Davenport, it was called. There was a bridge on the second floor that connected the two buildings. And it was one of the most beautiful campuses in the area — winding sidewalks, large trees that offered plenty of shade on hot days. It really was a picture postcard.
So seventh through 10th were awesome — then the merger of Wyoming Valley West came. Consolidation, crowded schools, school buses, chaos and major adjustments were the way of our new school order.
Back to that school shopping. This always resulted in new pants, new shirts, matching socks, maybe a belt and, always, new underwear.
Going back to school was a big event that we actually looked forward to — kids would want to resume friendships with classmates, perhaps meet new ones and, of course, get to know our new teachers.
We also wanted to learn. We actually wanted to do homework, write book reports and play sports. We totally enjoyed the in-school experience.
Don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed summers off as much as any other generation, but we were all-in on walking the halls of our hometown school.
But we never realized back then what we were about to lose.
We lost that hometown, small school familiarity that was so much a part of the fabric of our lives. We knew everybody, from students to teachers to coaches to custodians to, as Coach John “Snoggy” Mergo would say, “the big bosses.”
Without sounding bitter, we did lose our identity to a large extent and we struggled to find a new one. No matter how we tried, we couldn’t really grasp being Spartans and not the Sailors, the Lions, the Flyers, the Huskies, the Eagles, the Green Wave and, yes, the Shawnee Indians.
It would never be the same. The graduating classes of 1966 marked the end of Smalltown USA. And the differences were obvious.
We knew that instead of seven high school teams in sports, there would now be one — with less kids playing varsity, less chances at scholarships. School buses replaced walking to school in the morning, back home for lunch, back down for the afternoon session and back home after school. No, not uphill both ways, but yes, in deep snow and on rainy days in our galoshes.
And we still managed to have more than enough energy to play with our neighborhood pals — outside — until darkness arrived.
So many years later, we reminisce about those days, remembering things we never had the time to learn.
Hometown pride never goes away.