Tilt-in Windows and Big Fans

Classrooms when I was young weren't air conditioned. When we started school in the fall it would be rather warm. We would all be sitting in our desks working hard and the teacher would walk over and open the window sometimes all the way. Sometimes just a little. The air would get somewhat heavy from all our little bodies, especially after recess. Perhaps the teacher was having hot flashes, too. I've always been a little cold natured. I have wondered what might have possessed the teacher to open the windows on occasions.

Classrooms are such tidy little arrangements. Straight rows of desks all facing a teacher's desk and blackboard. When I was a kid the desks were wooden desktops and seats with metal boxes underneath for all the books. They're, what?, plastic or something now. Classrooms had a definite smell to them. I think the wood helped. Maybe the ancient buildings did, too.

Oh, I remember when I was in second grade. In the back of the classroom was a huge barrel. It was brown. It looked like some of the generic packaging we see today. The printing and wording gave it a somewhat military feel. It had supplies for an emergency. I don't know how long it had been there or what the school system was anticipating. I remember thinking that maybe we were going to war and that maybe some people from far away would drop a bomb on my school. That was in 1966. Looking backward, maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis was still too fresh on the minds of the adults in the world.

The way it seems to me now, I guess we've always had some kind of terrorist at our door. Cuba, Russia, or Afghanistan. Children probably have the hardest time assimilating the information at hand. I know that barrel brought all kinds of imaginary scenarios to my mind.