In this Pastime, I dare say there will be only a few, if any, Big Chief tablets, and Blue Horse Notebooks present on the opening day of school in Warren this year.
They were all the rage back then as the last few humid days of August, turned into school days long ago.
The Big Chief tablet – with the broken lines half way between the solid top and bottom lines of each row where students learned to make those intricate shapes and would soon form words of understanding, were, well essential.
By Maylon Rice
Saline River Chronicle Feature Contributor
We had to learn that capital letters reached up to the top line, lower-case letters did not. The dotted lines kept our lower-case letters in the lower case.
So essential were the Big Chief tablets that each teacher had in her possession a chalk-holding wire apparatus to make such lines upon the blackboard to help the students learning in grades 1-3 learn to first print the alphabet.
And in mid-year of the 3rd grade, the cursive writing instructions took over.
Most recently, a former member of the Arkansas Legislature, from tiny Gravette in the northwest corner of Benton County – in the extreme northwest corner of the state – introduced a bill a year later “to mandate cursive writing and the reading of that cursive writing be taught” in the public schools of Arkansas.
It seems that a lawmaker gave a couple of his grandchildren a copy of the Declaration of Independence – and they complained they could not read it as it was written – as my grandmother would say, “in long hand.”
And then the lawmaker found out the grandkids could also not nearly duplicate the most basic cursive writing. Most had a Hodgepodge of printing letters of the alphabet and complained they would “keyboard” any message of any importance today.
The bill passed, but little if anything has been done to correct students’ writing ability or penmanship in the classroom.
But back to the litany of school supplies back a few decades ago.
No one had a backpack. No one.
Backpacks were limited to true backpacking outings – such as summer camping trips, Scout Troops, or hobos, traversing the American railyards.
Most all the Grades 1, 2, and 3 folks carried “book satchels.”
A book satchel, was a small purse like carry all – like a soft sided briefcase for a business’ person.
Usually these elementary sized book satchels – had a hard plastic handle in the middle of the satchel. There was an overlapping flap that was fastened by a belt-buckle like apparatus in the middle of the satchel. There were usually two or three pockets in the satchel, one for papers, tablets; another for a sandwich or snacks for lunch; and a third for pencils, pencil sharpeners and other small items.
Most of these satchels were made of plastic and cloth, usually a cloth body with a trim of bright red or blue plastic. And usually there was some insignia or emblem on the book satchel to designate if it was indeed a boy’s book satchel or a girl’s book satchel.
In your book satchel a student would place his Big Chief tablet, a couple of No. 2 pencils – almost all of them were yellow in color; a small box of Crayola Crayons (usually 8 or 16) colors, a small pair of blunt end scissors, a small plastic container of Elmer’s Glue and a 12-inch wooden ruler.
In the small side pocket, I carried my lunch money, often tied up in a very firm knot of a white handkerchief. (I later learned to carry those precious coins in my pants pocket and not lose them.) The handkerchief was always in the book satchel.
The book satchel also had pockets for your weekly spelling words to be sent home and practiced. Any graded papers that parents were to see, sign and return.
A few of those papers carried home had those tiny metallic like gold stars attached. Some had some of the letter’s grades of A. B, or C. from a red pencil sketched on them by the teacher.
And some papers, magically, fell out of the book satchel on the bus ride home.
The old book satchel as a carry-all lasted almost the entire fall semester before it was dog-eared, showing signs of wear and tear, lost the locking buckle, and often was splitting at the canvass seams with an overload of papers, the Weekly Reader, library books and other school materials.
I can’t recall if there was ever a book satchel for the second semester after Christmas – probably not.
The Blue Horse Notebooks for Grades 4,5, and 6 were usually a wire spiral bound book, where every subject was dissected and written about daily.
There were also those Blue Horse Notebooks, that were held together by some strange gum-like substances where pages could be ripped out along a pattern of perforations to make smooth edged essay papers.
I have no idea of the cost of those supplies back then. My mom thought Henry Jolley and the folks at the United Dollar Store in downtown Warren were highway robbers.
And to get a spare notebook from Farrell’s Grocery out on Highway 15 – their prices were also a little higher than normal, or so we thought.
There were no sponsored back-pack giveaways back then. No church back to school extravaganzas for free school supplies.
In fact, the facts of life, were that some kids, every time the rest of us took out the Big Chief tablet or Blue Horse Notebooks, they simply marched to Charlotte Young’s desk (or Ruth Jacks, Joan Leslie, Mrs. Lee, or any of the other teachers in the Warren School System) and she pulled out some rather cheap grade newsprint papers she bought with her own money. She also gave that child the stub of an old No. 2 pencil or box of broken crayons to use that day as writing instruments.
Nothing was said.
Nothing would be said.
There was no sharper rebuke coming from the teachers if you made fun of Johnny or Susie who didn’t have the sparse school supplies you possessed.
And we all learned our letters, numbers, colors, and shapes just fine. This is a Pastime that is often forgotten in these modern times and the plethora of school supplies sold, or donated for the upcoming school term.
