I have a confession: I once loved the smell of mimeographed tests. It's true; I think I may have well been a mimeograph junkie by the time I graduated from Rison High in 1975.
In the 70's, you may well recall that we had no Xerox machines, at least not in Rison. And, if we did, we certainly didn't use them for tests papers. Tests, if you remember, came on (sometimes damp) mimeographed paper.
The mimeograph machines (sometimes called stencil duplicators) were used for a variety of things in our years: office work, church bulletins and certainly classroom materials. The stencils, I'm told, could be produced in a variety of ways. But the approaches that I recall used by our faculty was either by typewriter or by using a special stylus pen that cut an impression in the mimeograph paper, which was subsequently run through the machine to produce copies of the master.
Evidently, our teachers would often run the masters through the office mimeograph machine at the last minute, because I certainly remember getting test papers that were still wet when they were passed out. The smell was always intoxicating too: kind of a sweet, aromatic fragrance that made the test-taking almost bearable.
Coach James Hendricks used to create his tests by hand - and he was always late, so the tests were always damp. Others (I can't recall which) would typewrite their tests ahead of time - thus no dampness. But, thank goodness the aroma was still intact. Mrs. Sandra Wright (our typing teacher) would have typewritten hers I'm sure - but hardly any of her tests were written if I remember correctly. We mostly had the joy of producing our own typewritten results in Mrs. Wright's class. (Funny story: Sandra Wright was also my Sunday School teacher, which always put me in a tough spot! I mean, how many of us made it through typing classes without letting a swear-word slip out? Well, I couldn't - and then had to face Mrs. Wright each Sunday morning! Thanks goodness she was as gracious in class as she always was as my Sunday School teacher! Besides, Larry Hurst was in my typing class and Sunday School class and he was a better cusser than me!)
Seems odd now that we didn't have the luxury of copy machines. How did we survive? And, how did we produce a Rison High School paper? We did have one didn't we? (Please remind me of the name of our school paper).
Thinking back just now, I remember that we didn't have white boards either. We had "chalk boards" that, in our case, were dark green. And, to our chagrin, some were painted, such that in some places on the board it became difficult to write or print legibly because of the rough surface produced by the poor paint job. We never were fancy at RHS anyway.
I suppose kids today don't know what they're missing. I'm certain that no one "dusts the erasers" anymore, because you don't have to dust off whiteboard erasers do you? And, what copy machine gives off a delicious fragrance? Copy ink doesn't elicit much charm!
We lived in a simpler time in the 1970s, it's true. But, I'm sure when we were 17 and 18, the world seemed like a difficult place. The Vietnam War was coming to a close, gasoline was sometimes as high as 40 cents per gallon, Elton John was turning gay and Olivia Newton-John was far too young and beautiful for adolescent boys to imagine.
But, by golly, we had a Country Club complete with a golf course and swimming pool. What did we have to worry about?
Right on!
- Ken
No comments:
Post a Comment