Field Trip Days

I’ve always considered March to be a fickle month.

When I was a kid, the weather was neither cold enough to bless us with a snow day nor warm enough for running wild and barefoot outside. For all its uncertainty, though, March was the perfect time to begin counting down to that magical last day of school. I looked forward to cleaning out my desk and hauling my tired notebooks and eraser-less pencils home for the summer. See ya later dodge ball, long division, and cafeteria milk. I despised all three things.

But not so fast.

Each morning while eating breakfast, I stared at the Keiser Supply calendar on the kitchen wall. End-of-winter days sure passed snail-slow when waiting for spring to arrive. By St. Patrick’s Day, I imagined even the teachers were marking off school days on their Keiser Supply calendars. (Every kitchen had one.)

Yes, Keiser Elementary School saw a particular kind of madness in March, brought about by distracted young minds, at-wits-end teachers, and beckoning fair skies. And because of this, March became the month of field trips.

The best was to the Overton Park Zoo in Memphis. As we left Mississippi County and rolled toward Tennessee, we all sat a little taller in the bus seats and felt a bit special. After all, if the school district thought our grubby group of fourth graders warranted a tank of bus gas, our futures surely held at least a scrap of undiscovered greatness.

In reality, by the time the bus came to a stop near the Turrell/Twist exit on Interstate-55. The whole class was in trouble — punishment to be doled out when we returned to home base — because a group of boys had been wrestling in the back of the bus.

Who started it?

No one would point to the culprit. We were a lot of things, but we were not tattle-tales.

All for one and one for all.

We took our lunch on nearby picnic tables before being allowed through the zoo gates. Lunch was a paper sack affair of baloney sandwiches and barbecue chips that stained our fingertips orange. One of the homeroom mothers, bravely along as chaperone, brought a platter of

By Talya Tate Boerner

homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

“Just take two,” she instructed because if she didn’t, someone would snatch the whole platter and feed them to the peacocks always strutting around the park grounds.

Another March field trip was to the Hampson Museum in Wilson. For such a small building, the artifacts inside held power to blow our young minds. Pottery, rudimentary tools, and ancient bowls formed from our very own delta soil — the idea that early civilizations lived and breathed in Mississippi County all those years ago fueled many a history lesson once we returned to the schoolhouse.

One night after a recent museum field trip, Daddy pulled an arrowhead from his shirt pocket and laid it on the kitchen table. “I found another one,” he said. Over the years, Daddy had uncovered several artifacts while plowing, amassing a small collection he displayed in the den.

“Every day is a treasure hunt when you’re farming, isn’t it?” I said while Momma filled our supper plates with Daddy’s favorite salt pork and fried potatoes.

“Hardly. Come spend a day on the tractor, and let’s see what kind of a treasure hunt it is.”

I thought about my upcoming school day — a math test loomed, but Mrs. Mills had planned no field trips. “Sure, I’ll go with you tomorrow. I don’t have a field trip.” I would gladly trade word problems for an afternoon of farming.

Daddy stared at me with that look he sometimes got. Then he said something I’ll never forget. “So far, your whole life has been one long field trip. School is your treasure hunt.”

I snorted iced tea through my nose, and wondered if Daddy had come down with a fever.

The next morning, I went to school, took my math test, and probably made a good grade, although I don’t remember now. What I do recall is how my fourth-grade class endured the remainder of that school year without morning recess (our punishment for never naming those wrestling boys). Mostly, I remember how a baloney sandwich and a bus ride to the zoo provided enough magic to carry us to summer. Even with dodge ball, long division, and cafeteria milk, school truly was a field trip. •