Paul Harvey was a friend of mine
Growing up for reasons too complicated to go into, the three of us kids came home for lunch. This wasn't way back when horses and buggies roamed the streets; no this was in what is nominally called the modern era.
Before we moved from St George street to Clay street, we all came home from Nicolet grade school for lunch every day. It wasn't a long hike, 0.4 miles according to expedia.com, and I barely remember anything other than eating lunch. Mom was home in those days so that the meal was hot and ready by the time we arrived. Apparently the whole child feeding when by without a hitch, as I have nothing in the old memory hole to recall. No lost kids. No family fights. Just a full stomach and back to school. I recall that everything was timed perfectly. We never got back to school more than a minute early and we were most definately never tardy. No one wandered in late. I'm not sure what would have happened if you did, but it wasn't something I expected to ever experience.
Later I went to Washington Jr. High and ate lunch in the "lunchroom". This was a mini auditorium across the hall from the principal's office. It had fixed chairs with pull down worktops and fold up seats. Once in you had to stay the entire period with no exception. I would sit there with friends and eat my sandwich. My lunches sucked. I might never had known if I hadn't sat next to John Rose on occaision. Someone I knew, knew John and we sort of sat in these ad hoc groups that teens do. John was the son of the bank president and had a maid who would make him what today would pass for an average lunch. He had these little wax paper bags with chips which he would share with me once in awhile. The prize was the ham sandwich. John didn't care much for it and used to give it to me. Smoked ham, real butter, crustless bread and a sliver of real cheese. Not the velvetta we ate at home, real flavorful cheese. I never ate once in the cafeteria. The other option was to peddle home on my bike for lunch, which was the more usual lunch. This was a 0.8 mile jaunt that in nice weather was over in no time, except for the time I ran over the cop at three corners. Later during the three years in High school I never once missed going home for lunch.
This was in northern Wisconsin so the weather was sometimes unpleasant, but it didn't matter. In fact one year I rode my balloon tired single speed bike to school everyday. There were days when my bike shared the rack at school with only one other lonely bike. So there I was at 11:45 racing down the stairs from my locker, jumping on my bike and then pumping my way home. No one gave me a hard time about it although I'm sure there was a high weird factor to my behavior. I didn't notice, all I knew was I was free and flying. By this time in our family my mom was working and my dad was finally on a consistant day shift. This left me the ranking Boye and the first one home. I opened the can of ravioli or the can of corned beef hash or whatever was on the menu that day. After the meal was on the stove on went the radio which was welded to WDUZ and Paul Harvey at noon. "Hello Americans, stand by for the news". By then we were eating. After the "Good Day" on went the TV to catch a few minutes of cartoons and then dragging it out to the last minute we finally left for the afternoon at school.
So with the exception of a few months in total for 12 years I never missed Paul Harvey at noon. And if I were to apply my patented total human benefit theory to dear ole Paul he would rank as one of the greatest. If one could add up all the warm moments, all the amused moments and all the just plain old good times Paul Harvey gave me he would rank, over most people in my life. If you add up all of those moments from the millions and millions of people who have listened to him over the years, you would have a stunning total.
Growing up for reasons too complicated to go into, the three of us kids came home for lunch. This wasn't way back when horses and buggies roamed the streets; no this was in what is nominally called the modern era.
Before we moved from St George street to Clay street, we all came home from Nicolet grade school for lunch every day. It wasn't a long hike, 0.4 miles according to expedia.com, and I barely remember anything other than eating lunch. Mom was home in those days so that the meal was hot and ready by the time we arrived. Apparently the whole child feeding when by without a hitch, as I have nothing in the old memory hole to recall. No lost kids. No family fights. Just a full stomach and back to school. I recall that everything was timed perfectly. We never got back to school more than a minute early and we were most definately never tardy. No one wandered in late. I'm not sure what would have happened if you did, but it wasn't something I expected to ever experience.
Later I went to Washington Jr. High and ate lunch in the "lunchroom". This was a mini auditorium across the hall from the principal's office. It had fixed chairs with pull down worktops and fold up seats. Once in you had to stay the entire period with no exception. I would sit there with friends and eat my sandwich. My lunches sucked. I might never had known if I hadn't sat next to John Rose on occaision. Someone I knew, knew John and we sort of sat in these ad hoc groups that teens do. John was the son of the bank president and had a maid who would make him what today would pass for an average lunch. He had these little wax paper bags with chips which he would share with me once in awhile. The prize was the ham sandwich. John didn't care much for it and used to give it to me. Smoked ham, real butter, crustless bread and a sliver of real cheese. Not the velvetta we ate at home, real flavorful cheese. I never ate once in the cafeteria. The other option was to peddle home on my bike for lunch, which was the more usual lunch. This was a 0.8 mile jaunt that in nice weather was over in no time, except for the time I ran over the cop at three corners. Later during the three years in High school I never once missed going home for lunch.
This was in northern Wisconsin so the weather was sometimes unpleasant, but it didn't matter. In fact one year I rode my balloon tired single speed bike to school everyday. There were days when my bike shared the rack at school with only one other lonely bike. So there I was at 11:45 racing down the stairs from my locker, jumping on my bike and then pumping my way home. No one gave me a hard time about it although I'm sure there was a high weird factor to my behavior. I didn't notice, all I knew was I was free and flying. By this time in our family my mom was working and my dad was finally on a consistant day shift. This left me the ranking Boye and the first one home. I opened the can of ravioli or the can of corned beef hash or whatever was on the menu that day. After the meal was on the stove on went the radio which was welded to WDUZ and Paul Harvey at noon. "Hello Americans, stand by for the news". By then we were eating. After the "Good Day" on went the TV to catch a few minutes of cartoons and then dragging it out to the last minute we finally left for the afternoon at school.
So with the exception of a few months in total for 12 years I never missed Paul Harvey at noon. And if I were to apply my patented total human benefit theory to dear ole Paul he would rank as one of the greatest. If one could add up all the warm moments, all the amused moments and all the just plain old good times Paul Harvey gave me he would rank, over most people in my life. If you add up all of those moments from the millions and millions of people who have listened to him over the years, you would have a stunning total.
posted by garrison at 3:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home