Buying School Supplies

 

What was Sam's Drugstore

Tomorrow is the first day of classes at North Park University for the 2022-2023 Academic Year. 

I love the first day of school.  It is like New Years Day and the start of the Baseball Season rolled into one.  It is a fresh start.  Everything is optimistic.  The glass is more than half-full.  Everyone is excited to be back, well everyone that has been there in previous years.  For first years, transfer students, and new faculty, it may even be more exciting because they are at a new school and their expectations are as high as they will ever be for the place.

When I was in grade school, the excitement was something else.  We would meet new teachers and maybe new classmates.  We had new clothes.  And, of course, there were the school supplies.  A new loose-leaf binder was the central part of the supplies.  Back in the day, I recall they were powder blue canvas with no pockets and three rings.  The are a far cry from the fancy-schmansy binders of today.  We would buy like 2 pencils, the were #2 pencils as stated on the list and wooden.  Mechanical pencils were expensive and wonky back then.  Somehow two pencils sufficed for a whole school year.  I remember in later grades having to get one blue ball point pen.  The pen made the list about the same year the 8-pack of crayons were no longer required.  Yes, my era was only crayons, only Crayola would do.  I never had colored pencils or markers.  The organization in my looseleaf binder was provided by a pencil case that fit the rings and subject dividers.  We bought a package of lined looseleaf paper which lasted the whole year.  Some years I would by reinforcements but not always.  That was it. The lists were simple, proletariat, and fit our lower middle-class budget.

When I was at Burns Elementary in Detroit, there was only one place to go for school supplies:  Sam’s Drugstore on Fenkell and Ardmore.  Today, everyone gets their supply lists online basically a month before school starts and orders directly from the school or from Amazon at their leisure.  Back in the 1960s when I was at Burns, we got the list the first day of class.  That evening, everyone and I mean EVERYONE, would go to Sam’s.  It was jammed.  You could barely navigate the aisles and it was chaos… a kind of 1960s genteel chaos.  We saw kids and their parents that we knew.  But, there was no socializing.  We were all on a mission.  While others bought more than were on the list or superfluous doodads, we stuck to the list and bought basic functional supplies.  Education was the purpose not fashion.

The list would always call for an eraser.  Most people bought the Pink Pearl, still the basic eraser of choice for many.  I hated an extra eraser.  What was the bought of writing and correct with two items when the basic yellow wooden pencil had an eraser on the top.  It was much more efficient and easier to use from my perspective.  The problem was I needed to erase a lot.  I thought I erased more than other kids.  I talked my mother into getting those replacement erasers (a google search revealed they are called, duh, pencil-top erasers).  I loved those.  After the eraser that came affixed to the pencil by the ferrule (did not have to google this), I would pop another eraser on the pencil and it lasted for the rest of that pencil and probably two more after that.  Others bought those silly handheld pencil sharpeners.  Nope, not for me.  They were useless.  I liked the ones bolted to the wall in each and every classroom.  You could get a great point with those babies.

I don’t think I have any new school supplies this year.  I miss those days of everything being new on the second day of school.