School trips have changed since I was a kid. Over Thanksgiving our granddaughter flew with her high school band to California to march in parades at Disneyland and in Hollywood. A business acquaintance told me a few weeks ago his son and his high school band are scheduled to march in New Year’s parades in Florida.

We were delighted, of course, for our granddaughter and her California trip but my, my, my how school trips have changed since I was a kid.

Oh, we had school trips back in those days. (Yes, kids, we even had school buses back then.) None of our trips, however, took us anywhere near California or Florida.

The first “field trip” I can recall was when our first (or was it second?) grade class walked uptown to tour the office of the local weekly newspaper, the Ellsworth News. For me, the trip may have germinated a career. I wonder what would have happened if we had visited a lawyer’s office?

A few years later we were living in nearby Jewell when our class took a 20-mile bus ride to Webster City to tour Northwestern Bell’s new facility which brought dial telephones to the county seat. In our part of the county we were still cranking the phone to get “central” so this was major league excitement.

The tour guide showed us the new telephone equipment and let us listen to a headset from which we could hear an operator from New York. For all we kids knew, the operator could have been sitting in a room around the corner but I was impressed.

One of those years our class took a walking trip to Montgomery Memorial Library in Jewell. The most memorable part of that trip for me was browsing through the library’s bound volumes of past issues of the Jewell Record, the town’s weekly newspaper at the time.

Somewhere in that time period, a couple of busloads of us kids were taken to the Shrine Circus at Veterans’ Auditorium in Des Moines. At the time I thought Vets had to be the biggest building in the world. It’s amazing how much it has shrunk over the years.

Junior high days at Kamrar school didn’t provide any field trips though I do recall a couple occasions when a school bus took us to Webster City for an evening of roller skating at the Olympic Roller Rink. One time I arrived late — just as the bus was about to leave — and the only open seat was next to a girl.

Don’t misunderstand; I liked girls. It’s just that at that point in my life I wasn’t ready to sit next to one on a school bus. I nearly turned around and went back home but had so looked forward to roller skating I figured I could endure a 10-mile ride seated next to a girl. My seatmate didn’t seem any more excited about the situation than I.

In high school there were the usual bus trips to athletic events and other contests but only a few field trips. Our sociology class took a trip to Eldora to tour the State Training School for boys. We got the sanitized tour of the place but that was enough for me. If I had been harboring any thoughts of crime they certainly were wiped out by that trip.

One spring our high school art class spent the day in Cedar Falls attending an art fair at what was then known as the State College of Iowa. Students and instructors from the college conducted classes and workshops for the benefit of the visiting high school art students. The farm-boy rumor mill learned that nude female models were used in one of the drawing classes. My buddies and I showed up early for that session but, alas, the model was wearing a leotard.

Finally, in my senior year, our school newspaper advisor took several members of the staff to an Iowa High School Press Association seminar at Drake University in Des Moines. The highlight of my day was sitting in on a session led by Jack Shelley who I still consider central Iowa’s all-time best broadcast journalist.

Our school trips in the ’50s and ’60s pale in comparison to our granddaughter’s California experience but, boy, did we have fun. Despite sitting next to a girl on the bus!

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2024 by Huisman Communications.