Chester Chatter: Joys of the new school year

By Ruthie Douglas
©2018 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Summer was over. The swimming pool closed, day camps were all done. Little League played its last game. School had begun, and most kids were very excited. At last they would see the friends they had not seen all summer.

And — even though they would not admit it — they had become bored with summer. When I stepped inside my new classroom, I loved the shiny black floors, the sparkling clean windows and the desks that were highly polished.

I turned the pages in my new textbooks; I loved the smell of fresh ink. Next we got our new workbooks and I looked through them and thought how hard the work ahead was going to be. I sat at my desk in my new school outfit smelling the mimeograph paper and looking around at my classmates. I wondered what was ahead.

News from here and there

Bea DeGrasse, a longtime resident of Chester, has died. She was 86. These last few years she has made her home with her daughter Cheryl Cook in North Carolina.

My neighbor Sally Pajala has ended up in Springfield Rehab with me and we’ve ridden our wheelchairs down the aisle for a visit.

The Fall Festival on the Chester Village Green held this past weekend could not have asked for better weather. What a great time for everyone who attended.

Former Chester resident and math teacher Dick Sweet and his wife, now of Florida, have spent the whole summer at their camper on Loon Lake. He is driving part time a bus for short trips for senior citizens and others.

Don’t forget Friday Night Food at the American Legion Post #67 in Chester. There is always a fish fry an a special for only $13.

• This week’s trivia question: What teacher taught 6th grade math at Chester-Andover Elementary School?
  
• Answer to last week’s trivia question: Chester’s freezer locker was located where NewsBank’s Conference Center was built. The original building burned down.