Story of Grandma, Part 3

I am thinking I should have called this something better like, "In Her Own Words" but I'm stuck now.

When we had a real nice gentle rain Mom let Ray and me take the big umbrella that Papa had used during field work out on the lawn and with boards to sit on we enjoyed the rain.

When I was in the 7th grade our class took the 8th grade exams.  Eighth graders from country schools came to town schools to take these tests.  There were 14 different ones which had to be passed before you could enter high school.  Seventh graders could take four of them and if they passed they had only 10 to take the next year.  Miss Mettlen always graded the Winside pupils' papers.  But the year I was in the eighth grade we had a new superintendent that decided our papers should to Wayne to the County Superintendent's office to be graded.  That meant we all had to take the 14 tests in the two days.  But even so I managed to have the highest test average in the county!!  All the class passed and Mom let us have a party at our house.  I think Bonnie Moses helped with the lunch, etc.  I think we played Cootie and our dice were cubes of loaf sugar marked to look like dice.

The 14 subjects we took tests on:  Arithmetic, Mental Arithmetic, Civics, History, Geography, Grammar, Drawing, Spelling, Penmanship, Geo. & History of Nebr., Reading, Physiology.

At that time in High School each student took four classes -- the school day was divided into eight periods.  When I was a Sophomore several Juniors had to take Bookkeeping -- I guess they had flunked another class and were taking this as make up.  Regardless Marvin Trautwein and I were chosen to take the course, too.  So we were both taking five subjects for one semester and kept our grades high.

At that time the Jr.-Sr. Banquet (as it was called then) was always held at the Methodist Church.  Our class chose a flower garden theme.  Mom let us make our paper flowers at our place.  I can't remember how many kids came or how many nights we worked on our "flower garden".

This is a little short, but I picked the best stopping point to keep it from being really long.  I hate to correct Grandma on anything, but I counted 12 subjects instead of 14.