Monroe City High School (Thursday)

Today I got to spend most of the day with my bestie Barbara Seitzinger Holscher.  I told Barbara one time that I have known her longer than any other person still alive.  (Actually, I told her she was the oldest person I knew, but that wasn't what I meant -- although she is quick to remind me, and tell other people, that is what I said!).  It was a little rainy here but Barbara said it poured in town as she was heading out.  Our agenda today was the Monroe City High School, which has been converted into a museum of that school as well as some of the surrounding feeder schools that eventually became South Knox.  I had brought with me from Arizona my high school class jacket from Decker and a framed photo of my sister's (Lana Joy Meuser Sullivan Clark) high school senior trip from Decker Chapel to donate to the museum.  Barbara had never been over here so we spent a great couple of hours looking through mementos from our past.

We looked in the gym first, which has been nicely renovated.  They have banners hanging from all the surrounding schools, so I got a picture of Barbara standing beneath our Decker Chapel banner.

I really like that they have done something with this old school.  All of us old Decker Chapel/Decker students wish we still had our old schools to visit.  They have made several of the classrooms at this Monroe City school into different areas of interest.  The best one is the Holiday Room, where they have individual tables of decorations for Christmas, Easter, Valentine's and Halloween (everything in here was donated and is for sale). 

Among other things, they also have a children's thrift store, an adult thrift store, a lending library, and a Country Store.

It thundered and lightninged (is that a word) while we were in the school, but we missed the worst of it by being inside this huge old building.  We finally headed back to town for lunch, then we stopped by to visit Max and Kay Steckler, my dad's employer when we lived at Decker Chapel.  We didn't see Max, and Kay was not having a very good day (we found her in a nursing home, but they have both been living in an assisted living facility where we stopped first.  She had been transferred over to the nursing home for rehab), so we didn't stay very long.  We stopped by Barbara's house for a while, then she took me back out to the country.  We still have many things on our agenda to do together, so I'm hoping this was just the first of several days I get to spend with her.

We had spaghetti for dinner and, of course we finished the night playing cards, staying up way too late.