Through out elementary and high school, every classroom had a wooden speaker in it. It was located on the inside wall just below the ceiling. They were used to broadcast important announcements to each student. The announcements, that seemed to be every morning, always started out by blowing in the microphone. I guess that was to get our attention, which was very difficult, if not impossible for any of us. Until I was in high school, I always thought it sounded like scratching and I could never figure out why they “scratched” before making any announcements.  The announcements were made by the Executive Head of the school until we were in high school, then they were made by our high school principal Mr. Garland “BO BO”.  If there were no announcements that morning, then it was probably the result of the teacher giving each of us a note to take home to our parents. These notes were printed with “Ditto Ink”. WOW, talk about something that smelled good! All of us kids would repeatedly smell the “Dittoed” announcement and “get high”. This could partially explain my behavior all through school.  This was probably the first instance of “getting high” in school in those days before it became SOP these days. Talking about good smells, just a very few of my favorites were and are, in no particular order, the following: latex, fresh cut hay, bread baking, DITTO fluid, new vinyl, silage, new book ink (it doesn’t smell nearly as good as it used to because they use soy ink these days and not the petroleum based that they used to use), new comic books, gasoline, skunks (Just wanted to see if you were paying attention to this story J), “Ambush” perfume (on women when they wear it. No I’ve never worn it and I’m not a cross-dresser. I’ve never dressed a cross), horse hide (especially when sweaty), movie theatre popcorn popping, ear corn right after it’s picked (see pic below), cedar wood, play dough, etc., etc.

The equipment for the announcements was located in the Executive Head’s office. Whenever I would go past it, I would look into the office and see the big silver microphone they used for the announcements. I also noticed a record turntable. I thought that was odd since in all my 12 years (almost 13 or 14!), I never heard them ever play any records or heard music on it.

When the teacher would leave the classroom, after a short while, we heard a “click” over the announcement speaker, which was probably imaginary and caused by group hysteria (Or was it???). Someone would point to the speaker and make an unspoken, silent gesture of a “SHSSSS” with their finger over their lips. That resulted in all of us instantly falling silent. Even a morgue would have been a whole lot noisier than we were! We were all convinced that the teacher was eavesdropping on us to see who talked while she was out of the classroom. We also were all convinced that they did this purposely to listen to us. Of course kids are going to talk while the teacher isn’t there! Didn’t they know that? Did they take down the names of every kid who talked and keep a secret list in the principal’s office to put on our “permanent school records”? With this stigma attached, it would no doubt sabotage any job we wanted to get after we graduated. As a result, when a potental employer would get our “permanent school records” they would refuse to hire us. The reason would have been, “talked in class while the teacher was gone”! We were convinced that it was a “two way” speaker and that they could hear every word. We never knew for sure whether or not it was “two way”, but none of us took any chances! The teachers must have thought that we were all so well behaved when they weren’t in the classroom, and hopefully never put “talked in class while the teacher was gone” entries in our “permanent school records”.

My sister works at the same school, so I’m going to ask her to “finally come clean” and tell me if the speakers are indeed “two way”. Hopefully she hasn’t taken a solemn oath under penalty of death never to reveal this hidden knowledge. If they are it will answer a life long question. If that turns out to be the case, at my next class reunion, I’m going to run around and yell, “It’s true, we were right, the speakers WERE two way!!! That will give all of us a lot of relief knowing that after hearing the “click”, all of our silence when the teacher was out of the room paid off since all of us got jobs after we graduated even after all of our employers got a copy of our “permanent school records”!