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Picture Credits:
Upon graduation, along with the diploma, mortarboard and gown, we all received our Autograph Albums. These were leather bound books 6" x 4 1/2" with a zipper. (See figure above). Inside were over a hundred pages of various colored pages, white, pink, light blue, yellow. On these pages friends and relatives would write their best wishes for the future. Luckily I still have my album! Here are some of the corny sayings that my classmates, relatives and friends wrote:
Go little album far and near
To all my friends I love so dear
So each of you may write a page
So I can read in my old age.
When you get old and your wife has twins,
Don't come to me for safety pins.
- Tony Popeye (the local bookie)
May your future be as bright
As Edison's electric light!
- Cousin Civita
Roses are red, violets are blue,
I killed my dog 'cause he looked like you!
-Your true friend, Philip S.
One page was folded in half, written on the flap was
"For blind people only."
When you lifted the flap up and opened the page it read,
"Take Tea and See," with a crude drawing of a teapot.
(This was a popular TV commercial at the time)
Andy Pandy, Mother Goose
I was born, what's your excuse?
-Love and kisses, Marie
Then she wrote at the corners of the page:
"4-get met not."
"Yours till Niagara falls."
On this page of Holy White
I write my name just for spite.
- Your pal Joey.
(A white page was reserved for religious sayings.)
Goodbye said the fly with one eye
To the flea with the dislocated knee.
- Olga
(She drew musical notes around the saying, since it was a cute jingle everyone knew.)
8 years gone, maybe 8 more coming
With all that learning
You'll probably wind up in plumbing!
- Good luck, Elaine
y y u r
y y u b
i c u r
y y 4 me
- Hughie
(Translation: Too wise you are
Too wise you be
I see you are
Too wise for me.)
Now I lay me down to slumber
I pray the Lord I hit the number.
If I should die before I wake,
Put a dime on 408.
- Robert S.
Gregory had a car and it was red
And everywhere the car went
The cops picked up the dead!
- Kelly
Across the sea
On a Rock
Are three words
"Forget-Me-Not."
- Love Lenora
Dated till bacon Stripes!
2 young
+ 2 go
_______
4 girls
There were dozens of other sayings, some just as silly, a lot just wishing me good luck. Some had elaborate stencils penciled on the pages. There was a section for personal photos, a page to list teachers and classmates and other features. It is a precious memento of my years in grammar school.
This autograph album is really the only physical link to the past for me, with the exception of a few faded black and white snap shots, and a couple of color photos, (like the one atop Chapter 3). Some of the graduates went on to the same High School with me (that would be Salesian - a College Prep in new Rochelle, NY). Others went their separate ways. I kept in touch for a while, but like the passage of time, we slipped away from each other.
The memories of my school days began with a whisper, a subtle remembrance, then to a sudden rush, a burst of light. All the names and faces return - Bobby, Dinky, Clifford, Annette, Rafaela and Claudia, Richie and Hector. It's the sound of the church bell ringing, of laughter and chatter suddenly going silent as we lined up and marched to our classrooms. It's the memories of those ridiculous and pointless air raid drills and the unrelenting lessons drummed into our thick heads.
Where are all these familiar faces now? All are gone. Will I ever see them again after all these years? And will I recognize them? Perhaps the Fates will have a surprise for me, but, for now, I must rely on memories:
"How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."
_______________________________________________________
~~~~ THE END ~~~~
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