 Great. Well, thank you for both of you. My name is Mrs. Duke. I'm the advisor of this group and a teacher at the Odyssey. We're so thankful that you were willing to talk to us about your memories. Nice to be here. This is Cormac. Hello. He's going to read some questions. And, you know, anything you don't remember obviously that's fine. But if you do, you know, if you want to, I guess, sort of take turns answering that would be great. Okay, okay. Okay. Are we starting. Okay. So, wait, let's make sure. Hey guys, Edith, can you show us your face more. I want to see your beautiful face. She does have a nice. And Connie, can you sit back a little bit. I want to take this back rest out. I have a back rest. If I take that out. Just so we can see your face completely. Yeah. Better. Better. Better. Oh, oh, you know what. Sit on a pillow, Connie. There you go. That looks good. I sit on a pillow. That looks good. That'll be okay. All right. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. Yes, that's a privilege. Okay. Well, I have blockage here. I wish I could get rid of this piece of the middle. Oh dear. Okay. So, okay. Sorry, I'm just trying to expose my face. Okay. Did, did you guys drop in Arlington? Yes. I did. I did for part of my growing up years. I only stated Arlington through the seventh grade. And then you moved in eighth. Yes. To Lexington. Did you, were lots of your relatives like parents, grandparents? Did they live in Arlington too? Or like. My grandparents. I'm the first generation this country. They're all in Sweden. Yeah. What about you, Miss Ward? Yes, I was born in Arlington. Just a few blocks from here. My. Grandparents were from. Sweden. And my father was born in Cambridge. My mother was born in Brooklyn, New York. And. I've just lived in Arlington except for the time when I was married, living in another place for 15 years. Okay. What, what year did you enter the artisan? 1940. 1944. The same for me. Same year. Oh, how did you guys get to dull? Did you like bike? Did you ride a cow? Did you walk? I walked. To and from. I walked also. I walked from the artisan up through the woods. It's still there. And then up Auckland and over toward War choose it. And then I had to come home for lunch, of course. So there was a lot of walking. Yeah. Easy to keep thin. When you guys were students, how big was the building compared to how big it is now? Smaller. I didn't do an addition till the seventies. It wasn't very large. Do you remember 80? I can't remember how many people or anything. How long was this school day? Typically. I don't know what time it started. I was at 830. Do you remember 80? I don't remember what time it started. I don't remember what time it started. I don't remember what time it started. To what? Three. Yeah, but of course we came home for an hour and a quarter. Yeah. For lunch. What was the library like? I don't remember the library. I don't know. I don't think there was one. The schools. Couldn't afford to hire librarians. I don't think maybe that was the reason. The library. That's strange. What would like your typical tools like, did you use typewriters or calculators? Did you use like? No. No. None of that. Just paper and pencil. No. Pen. Pen. Couldn't erase anything. There's a warning for a windstorm. Yeah. Was there like a dress code and what type of. Dresses would you wear if there was one? Well, there was. Actually back of our days, there was a dress code that went for everything. Girls didn't wear pants. And they were dressed in those skirts or that type of thing. But I don't think there was a school induced. Cold. That we had to abide by. Okay. Sorry. Can you please. I don't think I owned a pair of. Well, they call it slacks. Now it's pants. If you did. Wear them. I think you should. Take them off. Under your dress. When you got to school or not with them. So what we did was. Had froze ourselves. Going down the hills and the ice cold days. And we had bare legs because we wouldn't put on funny stockings. They're so proud. Kids. Junior high kids are proud of how they look. And you know, they're so proud kids, junior high kids are proud of how they look. And if your legs would freeze with ankle socks and. Penelophers. What type of languages would be taught other than English? If there were any. French. French. I don't. Think there was England, Spanish. I don't think so. French. It could have been, but it's Latin, of course. French. What languages did you guys take? None. None. I took French on the air and. Loved it. Yeah. But I couldn't continue. Was there a cafeteria? No. No. No way. So you ate in your classroom. No. You walked home. Back again. Yeah. Quite the walls. Up the hill. We did that elementary school. Yeah. Yeah. But I couldn't continue. Good marks. Was there a cafeteria? No. No way. So you ate in your classroom. No. You walked home. Back again. We did that in elementary school too. Of course. Didn't matter if there was snow as high as your. Neck. You still have to. There was no excuse. Not to go home. Um, so. What were the lunches that you ate at home like what was it a quick lunch or. Like. What did you eat at home? What was it? Oh, yeah. Two. Campbell soup. Remember. Tomato soup. Trees sandwich or. Was there a recess or like time that you had. To do stuff. I don't remember anything like that. You're speaking of Jim. Yeah. Did you remember going out for recess or anything like that? No, I don't. I remember it from grandma's school, but. I don't remember. Junior high. There was a gym. We had to wear gym suits. Do you remember that? The gym. I don't remember anything like that. I don't remember anything like that. Not until I got into high school. Oh, we didn't have Jim suits until high school. I didn't. But I was in Lexington by then too. But you're a year younger than I am. What was Jim like? I don't recall that we ever had any. I think they thought we've done enough exercise walking home with the gym. It's hard for me. I get mixed up the high school. And the gym. I think of high school. What we did, you know, and I'm not sure about what we did at junior high. I don't remember sports teams. But I don't know what it is. I just don't remember that. Yeah. What were like the people divided up into, other than like classes was, were there like groups of students that would stay in that group? I don't think they did that. No, I don't recall anything like that. I was seeing that done at another school that I went to. They move the desks all around into groups. But that was a little advanced. I was in elementary school. But I don't remember much of that. You didn't really mix with the other students that much. Hmm. How many students would be in each class? What do you think, 80? I would say 20 to 20. He valid 20 between 20 and 25. That sounds reasonable. Yeah. In this school, we had 30 in the class, and there were two grades of 30. So that was 60, which was a lot for the depressur. They didn't have this many big families. If students did get in trouble, like what would they get in trouble doing? Talking. In class. You'd have to stand in front of the class. For a while and just face the class. Nobody likes to do that. Yeah. I think that was the punishment. But I'm not sure kids were sent to the principal's office. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Why were they sent there? They were in college. They were in college. What was it? I said they were in college or collegeable. They would have to have done something either. Plating with somebody or. You know, it would be something important. It wouldn't just be a little infact. And I suppose to chew gum. I don't remember that. I don't remember that. I don't remember that. That was very bad. Yeah, but you can go to the principal's last. No. No. I don't remember many kids going to the principal, but maybe they. You'd have to get it from another source. I don't know about that. Yeah. Did the schools have like fire drills? I don't remember fire drills. I just don't remember. Yeah, I can't remember either, but there again, I think it's a rule that has been forever. I can remember. I can remember in drama school. So I'm sure we must have had it in junior high. Yeah, it can. I can remember more. I was a grandma school. I drill. Did anything scary happen? Like maybe there's a rabbit animal in the building or somebody in there that was not supposed to be in there. No, I don't remember anything. I know it either. Nothing that bad. Was it hard on good grades? Was it hard to what? Was it good grades? Yeah. Good marks in school. I was at heart. Well, it depends a lot on the subject matter. I mean, I've never been a math student and math was difficult. I never got good grades in it. Yeah. I had a teacher that said, she'd passed me if I promised her I was going to take it on the math course. But I promise. That was later on. That wasn't it. But. I was in the same boat with math. The first D I ever had in my life was algebra. My mother and father never had algebra, so there's nobody to help. Another student probably could have helped. What classes did you have? Art, we had a whole class for penmanship. Can you imagine that? And we stopped using the ink well. We had to do the penmanship with a pen and ink. And then the next year, they got the other kind of pens. But before that, we had to learn the penmanship with pen and ink. I had home economics. They taught nutrition. We had a cooking teacher. Economics. They had sewing. Mrs. Lee was the home economics. And Mrs. LaChute was the penmanship teacher. And she was young and very, very nice and very friendly. Mrs. Amason was the music teacher. We had a music supervisor come to test how we were doing. Mrs. Marseille was Mrs. Oh, there are very few Mrs. teachers. Mrs. Marseille was a French teacher. And Ms. Vydebedean, Ms. Vydebedean, she was a geography teacher. But what she would do was, when you got in the room, she would say, now turn to such and such a page and copy that whole page. And copying pages would take the whole... It was really kind of funny. We couldn't understand that. They always have one person that's sort of different. Any other classes or teachers come to mind? Yeah, Mrs. Doyle. Mrs. Doyle, she was a seventh grade teacher. And she wanted us to send a V-mail, not email, victory V-mail to someone in the law, a service man. She said, we need to send a V-mail. And I thought, oh, what a home I'm going to send it to. I don't have anybody special I know that I could send. But I just went to my sister and asked her. And she had a boyfriend in the Navy. She said, you could write to him. And so I said, oh, I say. And she made up the thing for me. So she did my homework. But it was a nice idea, too, for the kids to think of somebody else in the law. What are some of your favorite memories of Audison? I remember Mr. Audison. He was a respected man, someone you look up to. He was serious. I never talked to him individually, but we all respected him. And he had a face that was similar to President Nixon, somebody serious. But he was a very good man, Mr. Audison. And he lived in the top of the woods there, where I used to cut through each day. And he had a house right there on Gray Street. What about you, Ms. Fountain? I think one of my most memorable things was an assembly that we had when President Roosevelt died. It was an extremely meaningful situation. And we sang his favorite hymns and everything. At that point, religion wasn't in the schools. So it was a deviant from what we were used to. But it was very, very well done. And I remember that almost vividly. That's interesting, because I don't remember that. Oh, I might have been away. I did go to another school for the winter in Florida. It could have been at that time. Well, this was April of 1945. No, I was there in 1945. It was 1946 that I was missing for the winter. That's strange that I wouldn't have been remembering that when I remember everything else. That's odd. Did Audison have any sports teams or main sports? I don't know anything about that. I don't remember anything of that nature. Because I'm not that into sports, anyway. I didn't like Jim. Like I said, all of our walking to and from school, they probably thought we got enough exercise. We sure did. And then babies sitting after school, walking kids all over. Did you know most of the students in your grade? No. School was pretty big. We didn't have contact with each other much, like clusters of groups, clusters to work on a project, things like that never happened. We were more individual and didn't have the closeness to the other kids. Well, we didn't have a cafeteria. It wasn't that time that we could get together and make friends and know everybody. That's right. And the sports not being there. That was another area where we make friends in school. It's difficult to build a friendship in a classroom, and that's where we were. You were there for the classroom, and you were gone. That really explains it, Edie. Yeah. Did you have a favorite friend or friend group while you were at the Otterson? I did only because neighborhood kids came to the same school. It wasn't building new friendships. It was just keeping the old ones alive. I'm trying to think. I made a couple of new friends. A couple, but there wasn't a watch. Any college. If it had been an interest group, when you get to high school, you join Gilbert and Sullivan or something that you would be with other people in a smaller group. But it wasn't that way at junior high level. How did you talk to some of your friends since you didn't have email or texting? Did you just go over to the house or what do you do? Telephone. Oh, yeah. They're on the top of our means of communication. And going to their homes. I was very fortunate because a few of my friends that I met, I went to their homes and I sort of felt like their family knew me well, too. We'd go inside their home and sometimes they even invited me to go on vacation with them, a family. And that's how you really learn so much. I don't know if it's that way now. I was fortunate in that way. What was some of the popular music of the time? Oh, let me see. So I know all the songs. I could still sing them. I know all the songs. I thought they were smoky. But I'd have to give them fun. The music of the day really told a story. I mean, they were words that were coordinated together and told you something to the tune of music. Whereas today, a lot of the music is words at random. They're not telling a story. So you don't remember them as well, either? That's right, yeah. I know I had a couple of really, once in a while, I sing them myself, even now. They were the sort of stage, you know. Yeah. What were some of the books you read and did you have any favorites? Did they have a favorite? Favorite books. Oh, I did. Did you have a favorite book, Edie? A favorite book? A favorite book. Yeah. Well, I know I did. I might have, but it was 77 years ago. I can't remember it. Well, I couldn't. There was a book that really impressed me. And I asked a friend if he could look it up. And so he looked it up. And I remember very well now. It impressed me, this book, and my whole life. What I read in that book, I sort of went by in my whole life. The name of it was In His Steps by Charles Sheldon. And it impressed me. And to this day, I think of that. It was a very interesting story of someone choosing how to live their life. And showing your high, you get disappointed at that time. Some of the friends would start changing their way of life. It was very popular, smoking and things. And I'd be disappointed if my friends started just smoking. So different things were going on. Like now, it's so much more serious. Junior high is hard for kids, very hard. The changing and the culture is influencing them. So. Did you guys have any sad memories at the junior high? Other than the death of the president and the activities around that. I saw it by finger. That was upsetting. What was upsetting? I saw it by finger. Oh, oh, tell about that. That's what Madison did. In sewing class, I got my finger and the needle went right through my finger nail on my index finger. And broke off the sewing machine. So that was a little traumatic. But Edie, you told me that I asked you who helped you with it. Did you take you somewhere to have it done? I took me to the office and he pulled it out. Mr. Madison took care of it. I'm telling you, he's a nice man. I like that story. You guys have any other memories you'd like to share with us? Just generally, it was a pleasant experience. I didn't want to leave when we were moving. They decided to take me and not leave me behind. You wanted to go to another school? Well, no, when I moved, I had to go to another school. But I didn't want to come back to Arlington and high school, but we had to pay tuition. And that was not that much money around to pay tuition. And transportation and everything else. Oh, I thought of something. The graduation. We had a graduation from junior high west, as it was. Yeah. And we had to make up a song. We made up the words and used Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean for the music part and the lyrics we had to make up ourselves. And I have it somewhere, but I couldn't seem to find it. So they had a nice graduation, you know. And I was glad to get back for it because I was away for the winter and went to another school in Florida. I did like that school because it was, I made a lot of friends in a short time. It was smaller probably. And I seemed to fit in that environment better, a small environment, being shy at the time. But I was glad to come back and graduate with my class. OK. We'll go on to end it soon, I believe. So, yeah. Thank you for coming. You're welcome. Yeah. Thank you for letting us go back on our memories. Yes, it's good, isn't it, Nity? It is. So much. That was so fun to hear about. It was just great. Yeah. That was really fun to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I was a teacher when I was this. You're very welcome. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. You were a very good interviewer. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. This is a happy new year. Happy new year. Hello. Happy new year. Happy rest of your school life. So make the most of it. It's a good time in life. Yeah. OK. I love school. This is so much. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Thank you.