School days

Today is the first day of school in Miami-Dade County. The private schools started last week.

The reason I bring that up is because I started going through things in my old room at my parents house and I came upon so many things I had forgotten I had like these school newspapers.

For many years, I had a company that printed school newspapers among so many other things. I found all the newspapers I had saved that we printed – years and years worth of papers. I plan on giving them to the schools – a time capsule from the 1980s through the early 2000s.

I used to celebrate the start of school – I used to go to the beach on the first day – the beach was dead due to it being the first day of school – and I had the place to myself.

I was celebrating because business picked up again. My business was dead all summer. There were no school newspapers or other things to print since most of the work I did was seasonal. So I worked for nine months, but for those three summer months, there was no money or business coming in. But starting in the fall and particularly, the first day of school, business picked up again for the year.

It’s interesting going through the newspapers because most have the news of the world, not just school news. There are a lot of movie reviews from new movies of the time – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back to the Future and things like that. The kids loved the movies, by the way. There is national news that the kids were interested in and it’s interesting to see their take on all that and how it played out at the time. Lots of pop culture made it into the newspapers – music, movies, tv – Madonna!

I loved those days. The work was easy and I was in schools around the county almost daily. I would go by to pick up the work and then deliver it after it was printed. I not only handled the newspapers, but we printed year book supplements, literary magazines, sports journals and so many other things. I loved being part of that as it kept me young being in the high schools and junior high schools which became middle schools some time in the middle of all that.

I taught the newspaper classes sometimes – meeting up with classes and explaining the process. I was friendly with most of the teachers and office staff.

The black and white newspapers started experimenting with full color and computers took over the schools and rather than my company doing the typesetting and paste-up, the kids did it all and handed the job in ready to print. So I was there at that interesting time of all the tech changes.

I drive by so many of the schools these days and it brings back so many memories as I drive by. It all comes flooding back.

Back then I had my run of the schools. Toward the end of my doing the newspapers after doing it for so many years, something sad happened. Metal detectors started appearing at the front doors and many of the entrances. I had to show my ID to enter and it was the end of those innocent time.

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