My youngest son is a freshman in high school. The other day we were contacted to see if he was interested in a school trip in October to Rome. Italy not Georgia. This kind of floored me because my experience in places with such exotic names is limited to London, Kentucky, Paris and Athens, Tennessee, and Rome, Georgia not Italy.
Anyway, it got me to thinking about school trips I’ve been on. Now, some of these are really cloudy so I’m not sure which year we took which trip. Heck they could have been Junior High trips for all I know. But do you remember these trips (usually taken with a rousing vocal arrangement of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall or some other nifty tune)?
Fort Loudoun. I’m really not much for historical places, although Shiloh and Gettysburg were interesting. But watching someone churn butter or walk around a fort in historically correct dress is not usually my cup of tea. I know there are lots of people who do like this kind of stuff (besides history teachers) and that’s good. I’m just not one of them.
Oak Ridge. Somewhere in a box I still have a dime in a little cardboard/plastic holder that was supposed to be radiated or something. Were they lackadaisical with that stuff back then or what? Remember the little platform you stood on and touched your hand to the ball and it made your hair stand on end?
Some nameless park in the Smokies. The one and only reason I remember this is that a few of us bought these massive cigars that were something like 18 to 20 inches long and about 3 inches in diameter, and at least one of us tried to smoke it. I think it made him sick because the things were as dry as an old piece of shredded wheat and were never meant to be smoked.
The annual pilgrimage to the fair in Knoxville. I didn’t go freshman year, and I wasn’t there sophomore year, but I made up for it the last two years.
Senior trip to Six Flags? My son said, “Is that all?” Mostly because he’s already been all over the country and a couple of places in Canada and he’s just a freshman, so for once saying that times have changed just didn’t fit. I have no idea why someone didn’t think a little bigger in 1970. Man landed on the moon the year before, but we were limited to Atlanta. Hardly a giant leap.
To the TV studio to be on Disco Teen? I had to work.
I didn’t go but what about the Latin club going to Memphis in April of 1968? Talk about a front row seat to history in the making.
Do you remember any others?
3 comments:
I remember going on a trip to Lake Winnepesaukah with no chaperones except for the bus driver. A whole busload of us paid Tom Williams a few dollars each and he took us on a Saturday. We stayed all day. Tom picked us up in several locations - for me it was Davis School. I don't remember any trouble except some of the guys smelled like beer and laughed a lot!
I guess I have led a sheltered life, but I had no idea where Lake Winnepesaukah is. I do now because I looked it up on the internet, but this is the first time I've heard of it.
Can't believe you didn't know where Lake Winne is!!! That is about the only place we ever got to go to on school trips at Davis. Wasn't our class ('70) punished for the class/es before us drinking or misbehaving while on school trips? OR maybe it was because of the trip Brenda referred to???? Our big end of school trip was going to Six Flags for the day. The class/es after us got to go to the Bahamas and places like that!!
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