WOULDN'T CHANGE ANYTHING

I think the saddest thing about a workbook based curriculum like ACE is all the fun things you miss out on.

And my ninth grade science class in 1964-65 just might be a prime example. It was called Earth Space science but the space program was in its infancy. The moon landings, the Mars, Venus and Mercury fly bys were in future. So were Voyager and Hubble. And Mr. E was a geology freak anyway. The deep ocean core samples were just being raised. Continental Drift was just about to become main stream. It was main stream by the time I took Sophomore geography in college. Imagine realizing you live on a planet that isn’t quite the same today as it was yesterday and will be just a little bit different tomorrow. We live on a dancing earth. Imagine that.

We took field trips. It’s not that far to Willamette Pass from Oakridge and there are some great rock formations before you get that far. So we went. We got rained on, but hey this is Oregon. You don’t melt and you don’t shrink. Forty odd miles north of Eugene is Albany. I don’t know if the company is still called Wah Chang but they had a nice little nuclear reactor, so we got to see that too. Another trip to Eugene and we got to visit a water treatment plant and a sawmill. That was pretty much an all day here’s your bag lunch and don’t forget to take notes because we had to write up what we saw.

Senior English and we managed to wheedle Mr. P into getting permission for us to go into Eugene and see a movie version of Hamlet. That was when I realized how much you rely on seeing somebody’s lips move to follow what is being said. Yes, it did star Maximillian Schell. However, it was a German production dubbed in English. Try following Shakespeare. It was fun. That year we got to perform in a band contest. It was a first for Oakridge. We didn’t win anything but we got compare us to other bands.

One thing for damn sure, the women weren’t told was that there wasn’t anything we couldn’t at least try to do. Seventy two kids in the class. Senior science class had eight students, six were women. Senior math class. Twelve students and ten were women.

I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. I wonder what kind of memories those ACE kids will have.,