What I Was Like As A Teenager!!!

 What was I like as a teenager?  This question is going to be a challenge to answer so that I will be "accurate" even when that feels like "bragging" or "disparaging."  Neither of those responses will be what I will be attempting to illicit but I will be wanting to be truthful.  If I had been asked to answer this question as I entered my 20's, I would probably have answered much differently than I will answer it now as I look back from the many decades that I have lived since I left my teen years. 

Since I now know that I am a person who likes to operate with accuracy on most everything in my life, I will begin this story about my teenage years as I have my thirteenth birthday and will conclude as I complete my nineteenth year of life.  What I was like during those years is the question I will attempt to answer.  I have never been asked this question before so I am not sure what I will say as I reflect on a period of time which is quite far in the past for me but "here goes".

I turned thirteen years old on December 7, 1957 when I was in the seventh grade at Cross Ridge School.  I believe the photo below was taken during that school year.

When I look at myself in this photo, I can see that I have had a recent hair perm which Mom gave us girls before our school pictures were taken each year.  My hair is naturally straight.  I can tell that my middle front teeth are in though crooked  but there is a space on the left side of my jaw where teeth have not yet come in.  I had been in a car accident when I was four years old.  Six top baby teeth had been knocked out in that accident causing  damage in my jaw to the permanent teeth on each side of my two front teeth.  The tooth on the right came in but was smaller than normal and about the color of butternut squash.  Upon an x-ray to determine the cause of no tooth coming in on the left side when I was in fifth grade, it was found that an undeveloped tooth nubbin was lodged against the next tooth and preventing that tooth from coming in as a normal, healthy tooth.  The nubbin was surgically removed allowing the healthy tooth to come in during my eighth grade of school.  The effect of my compromised permanent teeth was that I felt significant shame about my looks.  I tried to keep my mouth closed or covered as much as possible to hide my missing and deformed teeth.  

The photo above is the student body during my seventh grade year.  I am standing in the middle of the top row.  There is not a teacher shown in that photo.  The school year, 1957-1958, was the fifth and final year of Mrs. Bonnie Steltzner who is shown in the photo below.  

It may be that we had a substitute teacher the day that the group photo was taken.  Mrs. Steltzner's husband became very ill that year bringing about her retirement as the year ended.  I am the tallest student in the school as you can see as I'm standing in the center of the top row.  The two boys beside me on my left are in the eighth grade along with the boy at the end of the top row.  To my right are my classmates, Sonia Ziegler and LuAnn Veraguth.  We had been a class of four girls but one of the girls, Noreen Litscher was going to the Catholic Elementary School in Fountain City for her seventh and eighth grade years.  The fourth girl to my right is my sister, Kathy, who is a sixth grader along with the girl standing in front of her, Adele Suhr.  Next to Adele is my sister, Barbara who is in fifth grade.  Our youngest sister, Margelyn is sitting in the middle of the front row wearing the dress with a big bow at the neck.  She is in second grade.  

I do not have a whole school group picture for my eighth grade year but I do have the individual picture that was taken the year of my fourteenth birthday.   This must have been the first year that there was color photography used for our individual pictures.  The top right tooth beside the front tooth has come in enough to be seen when I smile.  The discoloration of the tooth on the left of the front tooth is not evident here so may have been minimally retouched.  

For my eighth grade report card, there are 42 items to receive an S, ck, or I each quarter of the year.  I had 3 cks, 4 I's and 161 S's.  I was 67 1/4" tall and weighed 130 #.  

So the first two years of being a teenager I attended Cross Ridge School (photo below)  which was three miles from our farm.  We were picked up by a school bus each morning and taken home the same way.  The school bus driver was Delbert Heuer who owned the farm next to ours.  He was the driver of the bus for all twelve years of my elementary and high school years.

What kind of teenager was I during those first two years?  At school I would have been considered one of the "big girls" who would have done all of my own desk work while at school but would also have been a helper for the teacher.  In this role I sometimes gave the spelling test to a younger group and also listened to younger children read.   Since the teacher was not outside during our recess times, the older students were expected to be responsible for fair and safe playing for all ages.  All of us in the seventh and eighth grade had younger brothers and sisters in the classroom and on the playground with us so we kept them in mind as we played and learned.

I have four siblings so we were all in the same room for our years at Cross Ridge School.  Our family was quite poor.  We had one book bag and one dinner pail though we may have each gotten a lunch pail during our elementary school years.  I had responsibility for both of those things.  My day started with making our sandwiches for our school lunch and adding whatever else we would have for our lunch.  I had started doing that before I started school as my brother was three years older than I was.  I made his lunches each morning then as well.   My mother baked all of our bread so she sliced the bread.  The book bag I was responsible for took all school work back and forth as needed.  I would go to each siblings desk at the end of each day to see if they had things to take home to our parents.

At home I was probably also responsible for many household chores.  I would not be helping yet with outdoor work in the barn and the fields but that would soon change as my brother would leave home for college.  There was lots of work that had to be done to keep wood for the wood burning kitchen stove and the furnace in the basement.  There was a big garden to plant, weed and harvest.  Wild blackberries needed picking during the summer months.  Lots of vegetables and fruit had to be canned.  All those things required lots of help from growing family members.  There was also laundry with a wringer washer, clothes hung on outdoor lines to dry, meals to prepare, house to clean, eggs to collect, cows to go after in the pasture and piano to practice.   Every available family member with some level of strength helped with seasonal jobs such as shocking grain, sawing wood, mowing the lawn and helping prepare meals for the thrashers.  That preparation started with killing a chicken and plucking the feathers before it could be roasted.

It seems we spent most of our time working but we did have some times to play outdoors during the whole year and that was fun.  

We attended church twice every Sunday in Winona, MN.  I had a best friend there and loved our whole church family.  My parents believed in keeping the Sabbath holy and only did the necessary work on our farm on Sundays.  The cows got milked but no field work was done.  We had free time on Sunday afternoons for play, visiting our Grandparents in Fountain City or reading.  

I have been describing life for me as a thirteen and fourteen year old.  I will move on to describing my high school teen years but will take a break from this story as I give attention to some other things requiring my attention this week.