Back to Delano... Eighth Grade Graduation

I just attended a ceremony for "Eighth Grade Promotion" for Ashley. It was a very nice celebration for this milestone. A small school, a "charter" school, where both teachers and students appear to be focusing on the future rather than the past. I like that.

In 1959, Cecil Avenue Elementary School's eighth grade graduation was held in the high school stadium. I'm estimating there were about 150 graduating from eighth grade that year.

I can't find it now, but somewhere in this house I have a picture of me in the front row because I was receiving an award, the Rotary Award for Scholarship. I'm pretty sure my Daddy came down on that field and took that picture. I always noticed the contrast of my dress to all the other girls' extremely wide full skirts. You can see other girls in the background basically shaped like an up-side-down "V" with skirts so wide at the bottom that you didn't notice much what was above it. Our dresses were all pastel colored. Most had lots of ruffles and ribbons.

Mine was plain. It was pale lavender, filmy but not bouffant like the others'. I loved that dress. Mama and I went shopping in Bakersfield, the "big city" thirty miles away. Maybe the dress was on sale because it wasn't like the most popular ones of that time. It was perfect for me. I was already taller than most girls in my class, with long, skinny legs and arms, and flat chested.

At Ashley's eighth grade promotion, I noticed that most of the girls wore high heels. (Very high heels.) I held my breath as they walked across the stage. Thank God no one lost their balance and fell. Eighth grade graduation was my first experience in wearing shoes with high heels. They were strappy sandals with three-inch heels, and they emphasized the skinny length of my legs and feet. I thought those shoes were the most fabulous ones ever made. I felt absolutely Grown Up while wearing them.

Ashley's Promotion Ceremony brought back a lot of memories, mostly about how children are looking forward to adulthood. At that age, young teens, they are looking forward with hope for a bright future where they will be choosing what they want to do in life after they've jumped the hurdles of high school and college. I am happy for Ashley; I think she has a positive attitude about doing the hard work of learning and growing in school. She has goals. She is looking forward...

I'm looking back... Sometimes I wish I could go back there again, but no. Only in memories can I do that...