Field Trips!

Who can forget their first field trip?  What an exciting concept.  We would come to school and actually do NOTHING but spend the day making a trip on a school bus, talking as much as we wanted.  There would be no school work or homework and we would get away with it!   We didn’t really care where we were going, only that it was a day of escape and fun!

 Our maiden destination in First grade was the Butterkrust Bakery on Broadway, that time honored first field trip.  On most any weekday, the San Antonio population could drive down Broadway and see the lines of school children through the plate glass windows, filing along with their little baker’s hats perched on their heads.  In Wilshire first grade, we were ready to soil ourselves with excitement as we boarded a bus and drove off for the ten minute ride.  The bakery is a huge place and we walked and walked through the facility marveling at the gigantic steel vats,  and carefully supervised by our teachers.  What a day!  We even got hot buttered bread to eat on the way back to school.

Third grade’s field trip was the Mission San Jose and her sister missions.  We ran like rodents all over the parks, exploring every nook and corner.  Our teachers did manage to get us to learn about the lovely San Jose façade on the mission church, and its quaint history.

Fourth grade found us visiting the Judson Candy Factory and the Frito Lay factory.  You can still see the old Judson Candy factory façade on South Flores.  Our teachers made this a “responsible” field trip where we had to take notes on how those fritos were made and write it up afterwards.  We were a bit bummed out.  Who gives a rip how Fritos are made?

We even visited the KLRN studios in Fifth grade and noted the cameras and cables everywhere.  We did not get to meet Senorita Barrera, unfortunately.  If we had met her, we should have apologized as a group for not paying better attention to her carefully planned lessons.

In Seventh grade at Garner, our big field trip was to Austin, Texas, and the state capitol.  Every public school within reasonable driving distance of this wonderful little burg loads up their seventh graders and takes them for the day.  We traveled as a homeroom, where I had no friends.  On the big day, we were told to partner up with someone before we boarded the Greyhound buses.  Everyone quickly paired up and only two people were left without partners:  myself and a Mexican girl, Christina, who sheepishly approached me with the offer to be my partner for the day.  Even today, I am ashamed of myself for how I treated her.  I didn’t want to be her partner but I had no choice.  She was a nice girl, but she was Mexican, and about the only Mexican girl in the whole middle school.  This was the 60s, and I was unenlightened.  I grudgingly sat beside her on the ride up to Austin and then promptly ditched her when we got off the bus.  A couple of times she tried to talk to me, “So how about we stick together, partner?”  I was horrible and ditched her again at every stop.  I had so little character, never thinking about how she was feeling, only how it looked.  How I would like to apologize to you, Christina, but I was only a seventh grader.

Despite abusing Christina, I did enjoy the trip.  Our first stop was the state cemetery, where many Texas notables are buried.  We would spot them by the size of their monuments.  The bigger the monument, the more important they were.  We raced from grave to grave, working our way down from the greatest to the least, until we had covered everyone.  Then it was back on the bus and on to the state capitol.  First stop was the amazing rotunda where we stood and craned our necks up for the incredible view.  They escorted us on into the senate and representative chambers.  I stopped in front of one of the portraits in the Senate chamber.  It was Edward Burleson, Vice-president of the Republic of Texas.  Little did I realize that we were actually distant relations.  My father’s end of the family was markedly undistinguished.  Our last stop in the capital was the office of John B. Connally, the governor.  He was not there that day, but we gathered around his desk and looked at his name plate. 

Back on the bus for a short drive to the governor’s mansion, where we were actually taken inside and got to look at the ground floor rooms.

The last stop was Zilker Park, where we sat on the hillsides and ate lunch.  Too bad there was no time for swimming so we had no idea of what a shock it would be the first time we jumped into those frigid waters.  That would all come later.

By then it was time for the hour and a half drive back to San Antonio to go home from school.  It had been exhilarating.