The Best of Times by Irene

The Best of Times

by Irene

Back in Portland Oregon in the year 1950 when I reached the ripe old age of 12, I made the grand decision that I was going to be a nurse. I was finishing the eighth grade and ready for high school.

There was one high school in the school district which had (I thought) a nursing course. That school was Girls Polytechnic High School, an all girl public high school.

Shortly after beginning my freshman year, I discovered two things. One, the school only had one class called Home Nursing and two; I didn’t really want to be a nurse anyway. However, they had many other activities, clubs and classes that I liked and I decided to stay. This school was one of two public schools in Portland which allowed students to choose and follow a major area of study. The majors included Music, Home Economics, Art, Business and Distributive Education (a.k.a department store salesgirl). I chose Home Economics with clothing construction as my specific area.
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Two highlights stand out in my high school years:
First, during my senior year, the speech and drama teacher, Miss Churchill, encouraged the speech class to go to the boy’s polytechnic high school where they were conducting auditions for disc jockey on the local school district radio station. One of my friends asked me to go with her for moral support. I went but I wasn’t allowed in unless I was auditioning so I thought, “O.K. I’ll never make it anyway.”

Well to my surprise, I was chosen. I had a 30 minute show one day each week. I could only use music from their library, and I had to write my own script which Miss Churchill required me to practice in class where she and class critiqued me. I enjoyed doing the shows but the music in their library was very outdated. There was not a recent Hit Parade song anywhere in the archives.

The next highlight was trying out and making the drill team in my sophomore year. You were ‘big time’ at Girls Poly if you made the drill team. We practiced in the gym, on the school grounds with an old record player and 78 records and also up and down the neighborhood streets with the school band. We marched at the football jamboree, Benson Poly games and three city parades.

The best of all was the annual Portland Rose Festival parade held every June the week afterschool ended. It was seven miles long but we loved every minute of it. We were a real high-stepping, skirt flipping group.

I remember that during my senior year the “powers that be” decided that we could no longer flip our skirts. It seems that that wasn’t military enough. We followed the rules for all of the football games and the two winter parades. However, all of us who were seniors decided that for the Rose Festival parade, we were going to defy the rules. After all, since we graduated the week before the parade, what could they do to us? We made it the last (skirt) fling by the senior drill team members.

We all loved Irene's story of these days gone by. We were right there with her flipping our skirts, well, maybe not the men. She made the story fun as well as infomative. And don't you love the photo? Again, I am thankful Irene is able to scan and send these great snapshots to add to her stories.
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