Lots of awards going out lately.
Citizens, businesses, students, teachers, all getting much deserved recognition. They deserve it. This is a nice area, and a lot of people work hard to make it that way.
I’ve been impressed with what’s going on in the schools. Budget problems aside, teachers and students are doing a lot of neat stuff in the classrooms and community.
Crowds of second graders have been hitting downtown on their History Walks these last couple weeks. We here at The Clarkston News have been trying to keep up our part of the program, showing the kids around the historic 5 S. Main St. building.
A bit of anecdotal evidence in the school-start-time issue: kids who visited in the morning seemed peppier to me than the groups who stopped by in the afternoon (all the kids were really nice, though).
Temperatures were about 30 degrees warmer that afternoon than the day the came by earlier, which may have had something to do with it.
Still, I can see parents? point when they say kids zone out in the afternoon, so a later school day may be a bad thing. Maybe I was just zoned out myself that day.
We have some artifacts here that I haven’t been able to use in our presentations ? an old typewriter, stuff in the closet. I’ll find out about them and put something together for next time.
I like the history around here.
Working on the ‘Peeking in the Past? features facing this page, I’ve been fascinated with the Clarkston Skywatch station.
Especially with Memorial Day this week, I’m reminded that in the 1950s, with Cold War opponents facing off with intercontinental bomber fleets armed with nuclear bombs, the entire country was a potential battlefield.
Even in Clarkston, volunteers were recruited to supplement radar systems, to pass the word to anti-aircraft missile batteries if Soviet bombers flew in low over the North Pole on their way to Washington.
I’ve been off and on looking for the site of the station, a small structure with a lookout tower on top somewhere on a hill off Holcomb Road. I’m sure the building was torn down long ago ? lots of neighborhoods wind through that area now ? but I’d still like to find the spot it was on.
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Happy 30th Birthday, Star Wars!
I still have a pretty good collection of Kenner action figures, all still with their blasters, and some of the vehicles and play sets that went with them.
Many of them are from ‘Star Wars,? but most are ‘Empire Strikes Back.? The heroes in my imaginary adventures were usually very warmly dressed. None are from ‘Return of the Jedi? ? I was too old by then.