Please Excuse The Dust II

Two weeks ago I began the "Please Excuse the Dust" series, simply capturing ordinary things in life and putting a black frame around them. This week I wanted to showcase I cinder block room that holds endless memories for folks who grew up in the Nettle Creek school district: our agricultural education room.   

Past the cafeteria, through the gym and tucked back behind the shop, this room has seen countless students, peanut shells, debates, grapefruits, flashcards, muddy boots and one very Wise Old Owl.

And remember, please excuse the dust...

  

Glory Days. 

"Get your beef sticks, get your Mountain Dew - 

Come One Come All! Step Right UP!!"

The Wise Old Owl has used this more than once...

This leads to the further reflection, that no other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought, as agriculture. I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable -- nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery. And how vast, and how varied a field is agriculture, for such discovery. The mind, already trained to thought, in the country school, or higher school, cannot fail to find there an exhaustless source of profitable enjoyment. 

- Abraham Lincoln, 1859

A long standing, successful history. 

The shop classroom.

Aren't we all a work in progress?

Stairway to Heaven? Nope just where I spent 

many hours weighing peanuts and sorting citrus.

 Cheers to new beginnings. 

One of my favorite classes in highschool: small engines. Not only did I learn much about piston rings and torque wrenches, I also learned more than I ever needed to know about high school boys....

Back home at BSG, somewhere between the sequins of the prom dresses and the polyester of the cheerleading warm-up suit, rests my dear old FFA jacket. I remember how bad I wanted that old thing - and how stiff it was the first time I put it on. I remember learning how to speak publicly in it, and also walking across the stage to receive my

American Degree. 

Stay tuned for more this week as I tell stories from the "back hall" 

and reminisce fondly on a family that shaped my agriculture experience.