Green Space Challenge Stories Day 13
“I grew up on Prospect Street! My parents bought a big old, deserted house on Prospect Street when I was a toddler. They worked hard renovating the house – long before saving historical houses was a thing to do – in order to make it a home for our family of 11. In fact, that big, beautiful house in Romeo is the only home I remember. I went to the Davis School for Kindergarten, North Grade School, South Grade School (the year I broke my leg), Amanda Moore Elementary, Romeo Junior High School and Romeo Senior High School.
Romeo was much smaller then & growing up there was great! Living right in town, I walked to school every year, except when they bussed the kindergarteners to the one room schoolhouse in Davis township because North Grade school didn’t have the space for us. That year, I walked (actually we always ran – cutting through yards between Minot & Hollister) with my older sister and brother to North Grade to pick up the bus. When I was going to North Grade, I walked home for lunch every day. We didn’t have a cafeteria, so students ate in the basement hallway, I believe. You also had the option to go home for lunch, with an hour to get home and back. I usually went home for lunch & often met up with the mailman on Minot Street and chatted & walked with him for part of his route. That often put me behind so I’d have to run all the way back to school after lunch so I wouldn’t be late!
When I went to Romeo Junior High School, I was so intimidated by it all! So many more students and kids coming from other elementary schools! I had been with pretty much the same kids in elementary school, but I met so many new friends at RJHS! The other intimidating thing was figuring out where my classes were – the “old building”, the “new building” and there was that outside building where they had the chorus room and shop class. And then there were the one way stairways! Where the new building classrooms joined to the cafeteria/library section, the stairways were one-way. There would be a teacher stationed at the stairway to make sure students didn’t go the wrong way.
In 7th grade, we had to have 2 hours of English (mine was 3rd & 4th hour, Miss Fry) and my English class was in the downstairs of the new building so we didn’t have to go anywhere between those 2 classes. The school was on a hill and that winter, we had some great, icy sliding paths down the hill. As soon as the bell rang between 3rd & 4th hour, we’d run to the stairway before the teacher got there, go up the wrong way and run out the door to the sliding hill. We had less than 5 minutes to do some sliding (stand-up sliding) and then run back into the school for 4th hour. That was a fun winter!!!
We also had to have lunch in 3 different “shifts”. I don’t remember which lunch hour I had but it was about 20 minutes and I hated the stress of packing a lunch, hanging out in the lunchroom, figuring out who to sit with, etc. So I ran home for lunch every day. Our house was up on the hill, down by the LaJuliette Motel, so I only had enough time to run home, wolf down a PB&J and then run back to school. Most of all, I loved the freedom of just getting out of the school mid-day!
I won’t go into some of the out-of-school adventures my friends and I had at RJHS on Prospect Street, but suffice to say, these school yards in town were great gathering spaces to meet up with friends from school. Romeo & the surrounding area has changed so much since I lived there in the 1960’s and 1970’s. So many farms and orchards have been plowed under & replaced with subdivisions. Before the Historical Society could save them, historic houses were torn down. In fact, the mansion next to us on Prospect Street was torn down to build condominiums. I remember that sad day when they took a wrecking ball to that big old house.
I would be so sad to see new housing put up at the old RJHS site. There is so much history there & it has been a gathering place for so very long. It needs to be preserved for the public to enjoy. I hope all of you reading this will make a pledge to help save this property from private development.”
Photo credit: Shawn Rathbun