Hot Dog Day

In a few days, we would empty our tilt-top wooden desks of the accumulated contents from a year known as third grade. The remains of number two pencils, crayons, assorted scraps of red, blue, and green construction paper, solidified mucilage, red rubber erasers worn stubby at both ends, safety scissors, a wooden ruler with our names carefully written on the back in dark marker, plus a variety of other detritus from our year of learning, all stuffed into a brown paper grocery bag we would carry home the few blocks we walked to school. And what a joyful walk it was!

The timely arrival of sunshine and warm days signaled the beginning of our yearly break from regimen and crowded classrooms. We didn’t realize how we had grown since that day in September after Labor Day when we trudged off en masse to nine months of childhood drudgery, reading, writing, social studies, science, sports, music, arithmetic, crafts, and special celebrations. We didn’t know how good we had it, until many years later those of us blessed with children of our own vicariously enjoyed it all once more.

 

Several days before our summer exodus we gathered on the playground in back of James Madison Grammar School for lunch. It wasn’t just any lunch; it was the yearly event known as Hot Dog Day! 

To read the rest of this story and more than seventy others, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories on Amazon. Click on the image below.

 

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.