Ashland Speaks

By Lula Anderson

When I first started writing this column many, many years ago, I would take paper and pen, and actually write down my thoughts, then drive to Windham and drop it off on the desk of the editor. Now, we have E-MAIL which makes life so much easier, until : dun, dun,dun Computer crash. Yes, Judy's hard drive crashed last week. Writing texts on the phone is one thing, but not an entire column. Thanks to internet buying and free shipping, we are back in business. There are still some kinks to iron out, like why has everything just disappeared three times. I'll get it.

What a storm last Friday! Judy lost half of her peach tree, which was minimal compared to all those who were without electricity for a couple of days. Hopefully you didn't lose much food in your fridge and freezer. Thankfully, the rain came in spurts so there was minimal flooding of cellars.

The Car Show in Ashland for Cancer was very well attended with aboul 204 cars.

The WAJ Alumni dinner was not so well attended. Sorry you missed a great talk by Barbara Tolley who was celebrating 80 years, and Fred (Ferdinand or Sonny) LeBrun who, I think, graduated in 1959 along with Arlene Pousant MacDonald and Joan Oliver Mead.

Many who attended the internment of Al Anderson Jr. were reminiscing about their old teachers at WAJ and the tempers of Mr Bob Ferris and Mr Stanley Christman. I have met several who still can't talk to Bob without cringing. I find him to be a very nice person.

The members of the Jewett Fire Department wish to thank all who attended the chicken barbeque. The weather cooperated and it was dry until everyone got home. Next year it will be on August 16, so plan ahead.

Don't forget to support the Greek Fest this weekend. Judy just loves the Gyros and lamb shank.

AS I REMEMBER IT

Since I had no electricity for an extended period of time, I had nothing else to do but think. I have been watching the Olympics, so got to thinking about them. Did you know that the five rings are each associated with each continent. The blue represents Oceania, green represents Europe, black is Africa, red-American and the yellow - Asia. They also represent the nations around the world, as every country has at least one of these five colors in its flag.

I got to thinking about when I went to school and we had a huge sports field where the parking lot now is. We had the big baseball field, a smaller one (where the girls played), a huge soccer field in the back and in the far corner, a high jump pit. The distance around the field was just shy of 1 mile, so we could do a mile run to warm up.

In June, there was Field Day when we competed, grade against grade in age-appropriate activities.

We played a lot of baseball, softball, archery (not my forte), indoors we had gymnastics, and outdoors we had "track and field", shot put, discus throw and high jump. We had an awards ceremony before moving up exercises where we received sports awards, and the biggest achievement was our WAJ patch for our letter sweater.

I, personally, was not so great at sports, but I did play soccer. I was always goalie.