Celebrations, Reunions, and Conventions

Oh me, oh my. I just got home from a Partridge High School all-students reunion. This event followed a day of other kinds of immersion in the experience of being a Partridge area resident. The annual small town celebration kicked off rather unceremoniously for us this morning when we appeared in the church basement for our pancake and sausage breakfast and were told that the pancakes were all gone. We settled for what they offered us--four small sausage patties, coffee, and orange juice. No problem.

The parade soon followed, and then the unicycle hockey game. The goals were nets on a hockey goal-like frame and the puck was a foam block perhaps five inches square and several inches thick. The "sticks" were wrapped bicycle tires used for swatting the puck while pedaling and staying perched on the unicycle seat. No one got to hit the puck unless he was on his unicycle.

Then it was time for lunch, and I got what was the best potato salad ever (at such an event) as part of my burger meal deal. Plainview served lunch.

Hilda marshalled an army of girls from our church to help the younger children with fun little games that could earn them "gold" to be used for purchasing prizes.

As always, Jay Yoder provided much of the creativity and muscle power to pull off the big Pedal Party event that has come to characterize Partridge's celebration. He buys or receives donated bikes and refurbishes them to be given away in drawings. Other drawings offer people a chance to choose among a number of different biking accessories. Judges choose people for various awards, based on bikes they have engineered or decorated for judging. Jay and his wife Lisa always join the parade riding in some innovative take on standard bicycling. This year they rode down the street in wheeled versions of metal lawn chairs. One fine lady rode in a rickshaw pedaled by her husband. Someone else rode a bike with a wheel mounted off center, so his ride had a distinct up and down rhythm to it.

Throughout the day people wandered in and out of the room where Chris Terrill and others had set up a history display, especially in commemoration of Partridge's 125th birthday. As requested, I set up a section featuring the books authored and compiled by Pilgrim students from past composition classes. Chris is very encouraging of such efforts.

I got a sense for how indignant some of the good folks of the town must have been in the late 1800s when the county seat was decided for Reno County. A certain character whose last name was Hutchinson saw that the city named after him would lose a chance at this coveted designation--to Reno Center (the first name for what is now Partridge) if he did not act to influence the decision. Hutchinson was not eligible at first because it was not located nearly enough at the center of the county. So he finagled re-drawn county borders, shifting the borders farther north and east, and then pulled strings in the state legislature in Topeka, and voila! Hutchinson was declared the county seat. He also saw to it that the new railroad that was planned to go straight to Partridge, bypassing Hutchinson, would instead go straight to Hutchinson and bypass Partridge.

Partridge people couldn't change the county seat designation but they sure enough did something about the railroad route problem. They couldn't change the route so they moved the town a mile north. Creative. The church was jacked up and logs were placed underneath. Then horses were hitched to the building, and every time the building rolled forward far enough to expose logs at the back they were dragged around to the front and the horses pulled the building forward again.

Losing the county seat race was a major blow to Partridge, but the 1923 tornado that roared down Main Street, demolishing most of the businesses, proved to be nearly fatal. People had acquired cars by then and could go to Hutchinson to do business, and Partridge businesses that took the trouble to rebuild after the tornado did not have enough ongoing business to thrive. In 2010 the official population count for Partridge was 248 and Hutchinson was 42,080.

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Park Coffey and another lady whose name I've forgotten were present at tonight's high school reunion. They graduated 72 years ago.

Also present tonight were four members of a Partridge basketball team that won the state championship one year. Danny Maxwell was among them. The championship game took place in the brand new Sports Arena in Hutchinson--the site for many years since then for the National Junior College Basketball tournament.

Partridge High School closed forever three years after I graduated in 1969. My sister Carol was in the final class. Tonight the MC read aloud the names of all the members of that class. I think Wayne Henderson was the only one present. Where were you J. Sam, Omar, and Carol?

Kent Moyer was at the reunion, coming from Florida. He came to visit his mother, who has cancer in her liver and elsewhere. She lives between us and Partridge, and has lived alone for the past number of months, ever since the son died who had lived with her. He was mildly handicapped, and needed his mother to help look out for him. He did a great deal to help her though by taking care of things on the outside of their farm home. Kent says that after Marc died, his mother lost one of her reasons for living.

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Dale Conkling was at the reunion. His mother was buried earlier today.

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Linda talked Lois and me into taking a "sisters" picture in the booth offering free photos. We were game, but were surprised to see a table piled high with funny hats and furs and tiaras and such like right outside the booth. Lois wanted to wear crazy hats. So we did. I think we were likely the only 50-ish people to do so. Lois had a flowery straw hat, I had a bright red hat with a red ribbon and rose, and Linda had a pink cowboy hat with a star in front. On the second round of pictures we took off the hats and peeked coyly from behind them for another set of pictures. Afterwards they printed and gave each of us a set of pictures. Silly us.

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Before the parade this morning an Amish man I did not recognize came up to me and told me that he was a student in my class at Elreka the year I did student teaching there under Debbie Charter. It bothered me all day that I had no specific recollections of him in that class. He must have been a trouble free student. We talked about other members of the class, noting that all the girls except for one had a name ending in "a": Regina, Starla, Brenda, Sheila, Donna, and Sheryl. (I'm probably forgetting someone.) We caught up a bit on each others' families, and I learned that their family's journey has included dealing with handicaps. He spoke well of the help that has been provided in public schools, especially now that the older daughter is in a classroom in the Buhler district.

My former student mentioned two things he really appreciates at Buhler: 1) Students in the "regular" classes can sign up to spend time voluntarily with the special needs students, and there is a waiting list for students who wish to do so. 2) Students are learning life skills like working in the kitchen, doing laundry, and other self-help skills. I love hearing about things that are going right when people in situations like this could very likely be tempted to focus on things that are not going well.

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Last week the teachers from Pilgrim attended the Associated Christian Schools International convention in Kansas City. I think we lucked out this year and found a bedbug-free motel.

Wes and I both attended several workshops on writing, and were both fired up with new inspiration for helping our students who struggle with writing. The Institute for Excellence in Writing has a system we covet.

In the motel room after the first day, we ladies rehashed our day, and on the way home after the second day we all told each other what we learned, reliving a lot of inspirational and hilarious moments in the process.

Phil Johnson and Hubert Hartzler were some of the speakers we especially enjoyed. Former ADHD kids grown up and gone good is how I peg some of these most interesting of speakers.

Being able to deliver one zinger after another with a perfectly straight face was a special talent of Johnson's. Everyone else regularly collapsed in laughter.

Hartzler told stories of his days as a school administrator, many of which made us all feel like we have a pretty tame life there at Pilgrim. Also, we think our parents get off pretty easy, with a minimum number of summons' to school for conferences with the principal. One of Hartzler's recurring themes was "Your child can come back to school after . . ." Hmm. I wonder what results we might get if we filled in that blank with some things I could think of . . .