dirt floor

when i was in the seventh grade they shipped us to glenford, a small farming community it was around seven miles east of thornville and the students would ride by bus. seventh and eighth grade meant that seventh and eighth grade kids from somerset , glenford and thornville and all the areas between, would combine for the remainder of our intermediate career.

seventh grade was a big change for a small farm-town boy(not that i was small) but i wasn't extra large either. the building that the glenford junior high was held in was once the glenford high school, built possibly earlier in the 1900's(i discovered while in the seventh grade that northern local school district was building a new junior high adjacent to the high school, between somerset, thornville and glenford.

but until the newer junior high was built i spent my seventh grade year at glenford and oh! what an experience. i can still remember the chorus room/industrial arts room was in a separate building(not far from the junior high building possibly 50 feet). lunch was held in the glenford elementary, located across state rt. 204, around 100 yards from the junior high, also the dances for the junior high were held in the elementary gym, i can still remember george harrison's(beatles) "something" and led Zeppelin's "whole lotta love" playing over the elementary p.a. the dances were probably the best thing about seventh grade, and the discovery of girls.

the thing that i found most disgusting about my time at the glenford junior high was the lack of a floor in the boys locker room, it was dirt, hard as concrete from years of small feet tramping over it but dirt. that alone was enough kill the educational spirit but youth conquers all, or at least some, it was a real treat changing for phys.ed.,basketball,football and track, on a dirt floor and the following year(eighth grade) would be spent in a new building and the locker rooms were modern but lacked the down-home crappy ambiance of a dirt floor.