Oldies but Goodies

Last week I went out to buy a calendar planner. The one I was using was coming to the end of its 12 month year.  It’s a school year calendar, covering the months of August through July—instead of January-December—which I had bought by mistake but had gotten used to. It was time to buy a new one, something I always looked forward to: a chance to make a fresh start, to write my contact information on the first page as neatly as I could, with a resolve to make all my calendar entries throughout the year just as neat. I never did, of course: by mid-year, my hand-written entries looked like scrawls and, by year’s end, more like hieroglyphics.

  Buying calendar planners always reminds me of elementary school and the black-and-white marbled composition books I would buy for the first day of every school year. I loved opening the book to the first page, which looked fresh as a daisy and offered me the opportunity to start anew. I would write my name, address, phone number, teacher’s name and class, centered perfectly on the page, in the best handwriting I could muster. I always intended to keep the remaining pages of the book as neat and well organized as that first one. It never happened. But hope springs eternal, so I started each school year with the same genuine intent and ended the year with the same messy scrawls. Year after year.

  The black-and-white composition book, which still exists today, was only one of the many fond memories I have of beginning each school year. I entered 1st grade in 1945, and for the following 8 years, loved buying all the necessities, including my school bag into which would go: a pencil box, six yellow #2 pencils, a pink eraser, a small pencil sharpener, a box of Crayola crayons, and a 12” wooden ruler.  Everything was new. But that wasn’t all. So were my clothes.

  I typically wore a white blouse that buttoned down the front, with a round peter-pan collar—a flat collar with rounded ends that met at the front named after a fictional character by JM Barrie—tucked tightly in a dark pleated skirt, a coordinated sweater, unbuttoned, and Buster Brown shoes worn with short white sox. Buster Browns were brown leather lace-up shoes, named after a comic strip character and adopted as the mascot of the Brown Shoe Company in 1904.  They also were known as “Oxfords” and renowned for their good fit and wide widths, which children’s feet often need. These sturdy shoes, I was recently read, had gotten their name because they were worn mostly by men attending Oxford university.

  By the time I was 12 years old and in the 7th grade, I had traded Buster Browns for brown and white Saddle Shoes, and cuffed white sox called bobby sox. The shoes and sox were made popular by the adolescent females fans who swooned over Frank Sinatra in the mid-1940’s; hence the name Bobby Soxers came into being. Also fashionable were Penny Loafers—the first slip-ons that I can recall—made of dark brown leather with a slit on the front for a penny, and Poodle Skirts, knee length and flared and with cute appliques, of poodles or cats, or anything else that appealed to the wearer, and always cinched tightly at the waist. With some variations—but not many—that’s what I wore all through high school.

  My parents and I lived in a small three room apartment, with little space for anything but the necessities. Nevertheless, my mother made room for a desk in the corner of the LR. It was a drop-front chest of draws called a “secretary.” The top came down to make a desk and there were small open cubbies in the back as well as three large drawers beneath the drop front. I did my homework there for all my elementary school and high school years. The cubbies held extra pencils, pens, crayons, erasers, scissors and rulers, as well as scotch tape and a stapler. The drawers held composition books from prior school years, note pads, and sheets of colored construction paper. Somewhere in the 7th or 8th grades, the composition books evolved into 3 ring binders with 3 holed paper and colored sheets with tabs called subject separators.

  Throughout all my years since, I’ve always made room for a desk of my own—in the foyer, in the den, in the living room, in the kitchen—wherever space has lent itself to a desk. Now it’s in my bedroom, next to the window looking out on St. John the Divine. It’s a simple 5.5’ X 2.5’ white-topped table from Ikea, with three wooden shelves mounted on the wall behind it. And my desk now includes a laptop, a printer, a TV, a remote control, a clock, small lamp, a calculator, yellow post-its in three sizes, a box of paper clips, and a collection of colored Sharpies.

  I miss my old drop-down secretary, but it’s still in the family. I passed it on to my daughter and it’s become her husband’s computer desk. It stands apart from the rest of the more modern furniture in their living room and reminds me of how that “oldies” can fit in and be functional even at a ripe old age. That includes me.