Afternoons and After School

 

Afternoons during my high school years really varied.  Since I grew up in a small community and attended a fairly small high school, grades 7 through 12 were all housed in the same school, so even though seventh and eighth graders were technically junior high, this A to Z challenge will touch on topics central to my life during all six years of junior high and high school.

During junior high, there weren't too many extra curricular activities available to the younger students, so most days I would either walk or ride the bus straight home from school.   Our closest neighbors were about 1/2 mile away, so I didn't socialize much after school either.    First stop of course would be the kitchen, where books etc would be left on the kitchen table, or sometimes on the hall shelf where homework and school books were supposed to be kept.   It was much easier though to drop them on the table while getting an afterschool snack of cookies or ice cream or a peanut butter sandwich, and usually a glass of fresh milk.   Our dinner time was usually 7pm or later after the milking and chores were done, so there wasn't too much danger of our ruining our dinner with a nice sized snack.

The rule for after school was to do our piano practicing and homework, but somehow I also remember quite a lot of TV time.  I'm not quite sure how that all worked with the TV and the Piano being housed in the same room and 2 to 4 teenagers needing to each have their own practice time.  Hmmm.  Could it be that we didn't always put in as much piano practice time as we should have done?  Probably so, especially since there were so many good after-school shows to watch . . . Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, Batman and Robin, Andy Griffith, etc.    I do know that there were many days that I spent several hours reading a good library book after school, either lying on my bed in the room I shared with my younger sister, or curled up in one of the easy chairs in the living room where others were practicing the piano or watching TV.  There weren't very many quiet places in our home after school during my junior high school years.  Things did get quieter as each sibling in turn left home to attend college.  

By about 6:00 or 6:30 pm the cows would pretty much milked, so then it would be my chore to go out and feed the young calves their allotted milk and hay and grain and cleaning up their feeding buckets.  As my older siblings left for college I was also in charge of feeding the cows their evening hay, and once in a while helping with the actual milking, but I usually lucked out being right near the end of the line of the children, but not the very caboose.   After chores it was dinner time, and often time to take my turn setting the table and washing the dinner dishes.

During my junior and senior years of high school I was more involved in activities, so there was often an after school drill team practice or performance at a football or basketball game.  After basketball season was over there would sometimes be practices for FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) events and competitions.  But even then, it was always a wonderful feeling to be able to come home after school.

What did you do after school?