Going to Junior High

After finishing the sixth grade it was time to move on to the seventh grade. So off to Dr. Leroy L Doig Jr. High. Yes back before political correctness, we went to a Junior High for the seventh and eighth grades. Today it’s now called an Intermediate school. But back then, it was a big step, we were almost in High School!!

My best memories of time here, include forgery, floods, and a few fools. I guess I should first come clean with my criminal past, in the eighth grade, I had a history class where I couldn’t stand the teacher. This was also the class just before lunch. As it turned out if your teacher approved you to work in the cafeteria for lunch, you could get oout of class 15 minutes early to help get ready. So I knew my teacher wouldn’t approve it, so I helped him a bit. I signed his name to the form and turned it in. And guess what, I was picked to work!! Well the first day came for me to report and the teached looked at me strange when I stood up and started to leave class.

“Excuse Mr. Johnson, where do you think you are going?” The teacher said.

“I have to go to the cafeteria, to get ready for lunch.” I replied.

“I don’t rememberr signing any permission slip for that” he says.

Oh-oh, I shrugged saying “Well I put the form on your desk and came by to pick up after class to pick it up and it was signed.”

He looked at me quizically and then shook his head and tells me “Fine, just don’t expect me to approve this for the next quarter”

So for a quarter I got out early.

As floods went, it maybe hard for some people to believe this, but one year we had torrential rains. It would rain hard enough that mom would actually have to get up and drive us to school, just for safety reasons. Well the school had a huge side grass area, this was so big that the Garden Grove Little League was able to build a regulation little league field for the “majors” and still have room for a snack bar and multiple other baseball fields for us non major ball players. And for the record, Doug was in the majors most of his little league career, while the closest I made it was, working in the snack bar behind home base, or working as the official scorekeeper, when my mom couldn’t make it.

Any how, with this torrential rain the main runoff was down the side of the school yard. To this day I can remember that for days the gutters were flooded. The water extended out into the school field for 10 feet in some places. It was amazing.

When we graduated from the eighth grade, I can still remember how proud my parents were that I was moving on to high school. But that was nothing compared to the joy the parents of one of my classmates. I can still remember Randy walking up to me after the ceremony and tell me that his dad was so proud that he had graduated, that he bought him a car!! A freaking car!! Turned out that Randy ended up being the only kid in our class who was old enough to drive himself home.