Those Places Thursday: The School Song

Those Places is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers that invites family historians to post photos and stories about places their ancestors lived. 

This is the fifth in a series based on my great-aunt Velma Davis Woodring’s scrapbook that she kept during her freshman year at Harrisonburg Teachers College (now James Madison University). 

Scattered throughout Velma’s scrapbook are funny little poems and songs.  The “School Song” perfectly captures college freshman angst.

        School Song

17 days of starvation

Then we go to the station

Back to civilization.

The train will carry us there.

Seventeen days of vacation

Then we go to the station

Back to ____ and ____

The train will carry us there.

(I wonder how the girls of HTC filled in the blanks.)

This unidentified friend of Velma might be longing for a ride to Richmond, but I’m longing to know whose fingers are hanging onto the sign and feet are dangling below. 

Velma’s friend Bill Porter (yeah, she’s a girl - the one on the right) and an unidentified friend wait at the train station on campus.  They probably did not really travel home dressed like this.  They might have been going to Massanutten Mountain for a hike.  Still, that must have been where Velma stood to catch the train to Shenandoah for 17 days of vacation in civilization.

Between train trips home, college freshmen probably wrote a lot of letters about the terrible food, the difficult tests, and unreasonable professors.

This March 26, 1925 picture is captioned "Tommy."  I don't know what's up with all these girls with boys' names.  I do not see any girl in Velma's yearbook with this name.  Maybe it's a nickname for her last name -- maybe she's Somebody Thomas or Thompson.  

The train and mailbox provided an important lifeline to those college freshmen longing for home.

©2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.