For your reading enjoyment, we continue to publish Rambling Vines by the late Marylea Vines as she recalls events and names of Corning folks from many years ago. We are currently in the year 1990

Now it seems that a person can’t watch baseball in mixed company without being embarrassed. I’m referring to the game that was in the 14th or 15th inning last Wednesday evening when I walked in over at my uncle’s house. This one player, evidently, had something bad wrong with his underwear, and he kept making adjustments, which I thought were out of place. But, at the same time the main fault lies with the camera crew that kept following him… four or five times the camera zeroed in on him in what I consider embarrassing moments. I don’t really think the player cared if millions of people were watching, because he just kept right on making adjustments. I may be old-fashioned, but I certainly wouldn’t want my children, if I had any, taking in any such performance… watching them scratch and chew and spit has been bad enough without the added attraction!

Now is the time of year to begin noticing the beautiful plants at the Harpole home at the corner of Fourth and Chestnut (Nate Hendrix place). Mrs. Harpole (Christine) has told me more than once the real name for them, but I can’t seem to remember. Poinsettia is part of the name, I think! Anyway they are tall stalks with lots of leaves and along about this time of year the leaves start turning all these beautiful colors… purple, red, orange… it is definitely worth a trip by there to see them.

Orlin Garrett, who lives at Corning Lake, was by The Courier, Monday morning, with a very interesting bottle which was uncovered near the lake bank in front of what many of us refer to as the Old Club House. Garrett said he just happened to see a part of the bottle sticking out of the mud and surprised himself when he got it cleaned up and discovered that he had found an antique. The bottle, evidently a soda pop bottle, is made just like the present-day Coca Cola bottle only it is only six inches tall and holds only two and onehalf fluid ounces. The word “Smile” is cut into the glass on each side of the bottle and printed around the bottom, also cut into the glass, says “patent, July 1922.” I don’t know if we ever had a company here that made a brand of soda called “Smile” but I intend to do some research on it. The way I have it figured it must have been a special promotion or a sample or something, because the little bottle wouldn’t hold more than one good swallow of any liquid. Now, what I can’t understand is why someone else has all the luck… I spent half of my youth loafing around down on the banks of the lake and never found anything of value, then comes Mr. Garrett along and just casually looks down and finds a “treasure”!

A new school year is right on us… hard to believe, isn’t it? It seems like only a couple weeks ago that I was taking last-of-school pictures and here it is time to start all over again. Speaking of last of school, remember the feature story about the youngsters at Park Elementary planting flowers last Spring? In just a few days they are going to see the beauty that they helped to create. I think every single one of their plants lived and bloomed.

I well remember the excitement around our house with the beginning of each new school year. Mom spent every spare minute all Summer making school clothes for us and had to hide them to keep them looking nice for school… then we came in at the end of each school day with sashes ripped off and buttons gone. We always had to change from our school clothes before starting chores each afternoon.

About a week before school started… (our dad’s last pay day before school) we got to buy our school supplies… a bottle of ink, an ink pen, a pencil box with all sorts of interesting things inside, a jar of paste, a tablet, two wooden pencils, and box of crayons. By the time the first day of school arrived I had either traded off or torn up everything.

I went to the First grade for a total of three years, but still didn’t like it. The fist two years (age four and five) I went with my brother because he couldn’t talk plain, and I was helping him get promoted by serving as his interpreter. We lived next door to the schoolhouse out at Williams School. That was great, but then when I got sent to the First grade on my own, I didn’t like it. I already knew all that A-B-C stuff and had nothing to do but get into trouble. It was a daily battle between me and the teacher until my mom finally got enough of it and right in front of me gave the teacher permission to “simply wear her out” several times every day if that is what it took. Well, I was only six years old, but I knew that the fun and games were over, and I settled down to be a good student… after I got over a case of the shingles. The two of them together giving me “thunder” all day long, day after day, made me so nervous that I had a good case of the shingles.

I remember that all the youngsters back then arrived at school dressed neatly every morning, their shoes had been polished, clothing had been starched and ironed and the boy’s hair had been watered down and combed until it stuck to their scalps until about noon. Girls wore large hair bows. Most of the youngsters had blisters on their heels from wearing new shoes and the classrooms all smelled like new bib overalls, except near the cloak room where school lunches were kept. This area smelled like a variety of foods, mostly fried eggs.

We couldn’t wait to get to school each morning to play on the horizontal bars (our only playground equipment) before the class bell would ring. Our school yard entertainment varied with the seasons, with jacks, marbles and hopscotch in the Spring and softball, wolf-ofthe- ridge, and New Orleans (all running games) in the Fall and Winter.

Teachers have so much more to do with in this day and time to make school interesting to even the most difficult students. We used to have blackboards at the front of the room, maybe a pull-down map and the use of a dictionary that was shared with other grades and that was it… no movies, notelevisions,nocomputers, no colorful bulletin boards, no educational games… but youngsters always managed to leave there with enough learning to make it in this old world, some even going pretty high up in certain fields. Like I have said for years, Corning may not have the best school in the world, but the basics are there for any student who is willing to put forth the effort. We have graduated doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, high-ranking miliary personnel, teachers, skilled mechanics, business executives, politicians, pilots, aircraft controllers, stewardesses, sales executives, chefs, military heroes, ministers… we have been doing something right through the years!