Remember When From the Past--Old Payson Junior High School

Remember When
Thursday, June 12,  2008
Kenna Holm  


OLD PAYSON JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

    I keep thinking about the old Payson Jr High/Middle School and them tearing it down to make way for a new church building and I keep remembering all the fun times we had there way back when.
    To me, it will always be the old Jr. High. The first time I went there, I was in the 5th Grade and they put two 5th grades in the north end of the building. Apparently there was not room at the Taylor School for us. I don’t remember the reason. But we did stay in our part of the building and was not allowed to go up in the other area where the mighty Jr. High students were.
    Then when we got to be 7th graders, boy we thought we were something now. We were old enough to have several teachers and change classes every hour. That was a big change for us, after staying in one class with one teacher all day in grade school.
    I remember my first home room teacher was Dean Simmons. Our Principal was Reed Jones. Helen Scott was the secretary of the school. (but that was before she was married)
    In the school was the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. We had a nice library and Miss Page was the librarian. The teachers I recall were: Dean Simmons, Huish Moore, Heber Curtis, Crista Olson Amos, Howard Holladay, Miss Jewell (who taught homemaking I believe) Miss Taylor (who taught P.E. and Health), Vernon Finch, John Olson, Myrl Lindsay Anderson and probably more I can’t recall.
    There weren’t too many class rooms like there are today in the schools. We did not have seminary like they do now in junior high. We had a rather small gymnasium with a balcony all around three sides. We had the Wilson Theater in the north end of the upstairs where we put on plays and had some activities.
    Miss Jewell taught Homemaking and our first object we made was always an apron. Whoopee!  Then later on we ventured to other things. As I recall we had a Mother/Daughter Tea and fashion show. And of course there was the famous Candle and Carol Services at Christmas time. Those just seemed to set the mood for the Christmas Holiday. It s to bad they stopped having those. They were very memorable.

   We didn’t have a lunchroom in the school. We had to go over to the other building to the south of the school. That was the old, old, Central School. The band room was in the upstairs where those who took band went and the down stairs was the lunch room. In those days, every kid took hot lunch. But in those days, it was homemade food, not this frozen and sent in things they have now. I remember the wonderful hot rolls and cakes and all the good things they had. My favorite was probably chile because my mom never made it and I loved it.
    We had those beautiful (?) green one piece gym suits. They were so ugly and never fit decent. We would pull the legs down and tuck them under so theywould at least look like we had some kind of shape.
    In those days, we never had field trips like they do today. We played games outside on the grass and down the hill. There was a staircase outside the gym room we would run down and out onto the field.
    Everyone used to laugh at Mr. Curtis because he would go to sleep in class. Miss Olson (Crista Amos) would hum and skip around the room. She was a hoot. I took art from her and I loved her. Miss Taylor taught gym and she was so pretty. She got engaged while she taught there.
I’m sad to think of them tearing that building down but it s fun to remember when...