When we were putting the Civil War Book, Dear Transcript, together a few years ago, I thought that all those letters, etc. in the papers during those years, would be all their ever was.  But I was wrong.   As I have been going through later papers I have found information on some of our men who fought, and sometimes a letter that had never been seen before.  So, have made copies of them and put them in the Civil War file.  Whether I will ever do anything with them remains to be seen, but at least they are in one place.

The trolley that came through this area in 1902 has generated a lot of interest lately.   A couple of our members have wonderful collections of photo's and articles about the trolley and hopefully one day they will get it all published.   When my Mom was in the nursing home with Alzheimers and had gotten to the point where she thought I was an older sister, there was very little to talk to her about.   But she did talk about the jitney  (trolley) that she took to go to high school.  That got me to thinking about how children got to school in the late 1800's.  Most of them walked because there were the small district schools, but some were "bussed" if they had to go out of their area.   These were wagons that someone would fix up into a vehicle that could carry a large number of passengers.  When I was in school in the mid '40's and through the '50's, I walked about 3/4 of a mile to the two room school house on the hill.  Then when I started third grade there were too many children in that room of grades 1 through 3, and the decision was made to send 6 or 7 of us to the "big" school which meant we had to take a bus.   I had to walk to the bus rain or shine, but that didn't really bother me.   It was an adventure to go to the "big" school, meet all those new kids and I can say for me it was a good thing.   There were 2 buses to take children to school.   And it meant that the primary school children went the same time as the high school children.   I thought it was wonderful that we had at least an hour to play outside.   No waiting inside for us.   And there was no "late" bus.  If you missed the bus, you missed the bus.   And you walked home!   Not a hardship, as we walked all over the place in those days.  

The two bus drivers were brothers, and ours was kind of cranky, whereas the other one was jolly and everyone liked him.   Once in awhile I got to ride on his bus and it was a treat.   And in those days the bus was very crowded.   We managed to get three in a seat when we were little but by the time we got to high school with the big full skirts we wore with the stiff petticoats under them, it was tough.   And there were many who stood in the aisle.   We never thought a thing about it, it was just the way it was.   No one ever got hurt as you hung on to the seat near you.

And no book bags!  We carried those heavy books in one arm every day and it made us strong!  

Would love to hear from others who grew up in the '40's and '50's.