Monday, March 28, 2011

War of the Tripods, or how they destroyed Caldwell Elementary

Going back to my first elementary school (reference previous blog), all that was left from 34 years ago was the creek in the far side of the playground area.  The building is demolished and (probably needed) rebuilt to a very nice school.  My building, or aka "fond memories" was just as demolished as Caldwell had been.  When I told my wife some stories (hope she wasn't to bored), I was reminded of a book I read in second grade.  The White Mountains by John Christopher. The ultimate in easy reading for legendary war of the sci-fi kind. The coolest of strange, known only as a Tri-Pod. It's an easy read and I decided to download it to my Kindle (actually my Galaxy Tab w/ the Kindle app) and away I was transported to a school with large pane windows that only opened horizontally with the push of a hand and neatly columned and rowed desks that stationed heavy cardboard school boxes (similar to a cigar box)
that held all your cool things like crayons, those fat round pencils, erasers shaped like blimps, rockets, spaceships and the such alike. The heat came from the radiator that was against the wall and it worked most of the time. Teachers had students take chalk erasers out side to pound away and we had recess at least twice. Year: 1978.

Dairy Queen before they used Dennis the Menace...

Today as I ran a few miles with my iPod Touch pounding some awesome tunes, I began to connect a song from a really awesome band, R3D, titled Feed the Machine.  Somehow I made the book about the Tri-Pods connect with the idea of the song.  In my head as I ran it seemed to be a good fit.  I'm not sure if the author meant for the book to represent the mindlessness of today's society, or to quote Bob Hope describing a Zombie, "oh like Democrats". Anyway, it was a good read. 

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