By Neena Strichart
This week we are running a feature story about the new middle school that is being built in Signal Hill on Cherry Avenue. I’ve wanted to run an article about the school for weeks, as I was curious about the details of the project. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Growing up near that school site, my peers and I were assigned to attend what was then Jefferson Junior High School, before it was called a middle school. Because the school was located clear down on 7th Street near Redondo Avenue (there was no junior high closer), some of my neighboring classmates and I were lucky that my wonderful mother drove us to school every day on her way to work. Having no school district buses that ran from Signal Hill to Jefferson, other kids also had to rely on their parents or face riding the city bus, with many of them needing to transfer to a second bus. I think classes started at 8:20am, but I’m not sure.
Getting home after school was another matter. Some of us took a bus or two, others had parents or grandparents to pick them up, and yet others of us actually walked home. On cold or rainy days I took the bus westbound on 7th Street and then transferred to the northbound bus on Cherry Avenue. My public transportation dropped me about three blocks from home. Believe me, three blocks was a short hop compared to the two-mile trek usually made when I walked from campus to home.
Although it was a long route, it was fun, especially if we walked with a boy or two. My pals Becky Johnson and Teresa Osterhoudt usually walked with me. We routinely strolled down residential streets and made a stop at Thrifty (now Rite-Aid) at the corner of Redondo Avenue and Anaheim Street for triple-dipped ice cream cones. Just 15 cents back then — YUM! Teresa would then travel home via Redondo Avenue, and Becky and I would cut across Obispo Avenue and walk down the railroad tracks until we were near Junipero Avenue at Pacific Coast Highway. From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump to our “home, sweet homes.”
Having two working parents meant that I was on my own for figuring out how to get home from school each day. I’m not saying that it was a bad thing. It wasn’t. It taught me to be self-reliant. BUT it sure also gave me lots of excuses for showing up late when I was really somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be or doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. “Oh, I missed the bus,” was my standard alibi.
With our local kids now having a neighborhood middle school, I think they will be a lot safer and it will probably mean that they will be less likely to get into mischief on the way home from school. It may be no fun for them, but it will be a relief for lots of parents!
