Chestnut Street Jr High School

I was not there during the 54- 55 school year but the
school was the same in 63 -65 when I was there.

Finally made it to Junior High School. 7th grade was a whole new adventure. For one thing Chestnut Jr High was at least 2 miles further from our home on Mercer Avenue. Forest Hills had been about a 2 mile walk but Chestnut was closer to 5 miles. My cousin lived the next street over and was what we called "in the county" so she could ride the bus though it was still a half mile walk to the bus stop for her. I lived in the city limits so I wasn't allowed to ride the bus. These days the kids can’t have the bus stops more than a block a part and even then the bus has to wait on some of them to come out of the house. The bus drivers back when I was growing up left you behind if you were not at the bus stop, no waiting. Maybe that is why this country has got so fat and soft. That’s another blog though. In any case if I got out of school and started to run straight home I could beat the bus because they had to wait for it to get there from another school and I did like running back then. Besides there were lots of things to do on the way home. First there was Pappy Gay’s grill for the best hot dogs in town, then on down Market Street there was Beaumont Grill and Mr Brocks Store and the park on Wayne Drive and on really cold days we could stop at the Carolina Motor Inn to get hot chocolate out of the vending machine. There were also several service stations we could stop by and watch the mechanic work on cars, two of these old buildings are still standing and there was always Burnt Mill Creek to play in on warm days just depended which way you took home and how fast you wanted to get there.

Student
Telephone Directory

Each school had sports teams and mascots, Chestnut was the Bears and the school colors were red and white. There were 5 Junior High School in the school system and we played our teams against each other. Many of the kids from these teams made it on to pro sports. Football was played at Legion Stadium  and if my memory is correct it was always a double header.  Each school had a baseball diamond and gym for basketball, so we mainly had 3 sports later when I was in the 9th grade they added track and field.

Each year there was a student telephone directory issued for a small fee. I wonder if anyone still has the same telephone number?

Chestnut had a special place the 9th graders could go that the other students were not allowed. If you were in the 9th grade you could cross the creek at lunch. If you tried that and you were not a 9th grader there was a good chance you might "fall" in the creek. Don't know if any other Jr. Highs had anything like that.

The Junior High system was a great system, you could make life long friends and you did a lot of growing up before you were thrown into high school. It was kind of like a farm team for growing up.