The only thing that makes more profit than coffee at a fast food place is booze at a sports bar. The guy who sold coffee, hot dogs, and popcorn was a genius and probably could have become a multi-millionaire if he didn't have to shut down. It's not so difficult to beat the prices Starbucks charges, but I am certain their coffee beans are custom grown just for them. Some people love Starbucks, but to me it's pond scum. When I do visit their stores I never get their straight coffee. It's always a latte or cappuccino with lots of cream and sugar to overwhelm the disgusting flavor of the coffee they use to make it all. There is nothing very special about Starbucks, other than the branding, and people go there for the snob appeal. The same amount of coffee can be had for half the price, or 2/3rds cheaper, just about anywhere else. Starbucks gets away with what they do for the same reasons people pay 2 or 3 times the value of an Apple iPhone. Well, more power to them if they can get away with it. There are a couple places here that sell hotdogs, and some claim to be Chicago style. Hah. I know better. If they actually were what is produced up in Chicago, the lines in the store would be twice as long as they are.
One of the biggest disappointments I have with Missouri has to do with the "friendliness" of the neighbors. I've talked about it here a few times and can't say much has changed during the 5+ years we've lived here. Everybody passing by gives a wave if they see you, except the guy to the east of me. We lived next to each other all the time I've been here and he's said Hi once that I can recall. Some of the other neighbors actually reached out to help shovel snow, which I thought was very kind of them considering I don't really need help. But that's it. There is no social interaction between me and any of the neighbors. One family across the street are the only people I've ever seen entertaining folks. I have a tremendous view of all the back yards of my neighbors and rarely see any kids out there playing. And they never ever play with kids outside their family on those occasions in which they do come out of hiding. It's a very strange community here. We all get along beautifully, but we are as different as, say, blue and red.
We had one hot dog place here that served both the cheap normal hot dogs, the more expensive larger hot dogs, and Eusingers hot dogs which is like the kind of hot dogs I grew up on. The prices are like 1.50, 2.50, and 4.00 respectively.
Then we go down the street a way, and another guy has Ball Park Franks for only a buck.
But none of them have the fancy sesame buns we used when I worked at an ice-cream shop as a cook.
I don't drink coffee of any kind.
One of my neighbors, don't know which one, brought my trash can back up from the road for me and the frau.
I'm thinking it was the older guy who moved across the street last year. We talk, but not often.
We are not enemies with any of our neighbors, but our lives just don't run in the same circles.
Not like my dad's era where everyone always got together when they could.
I'm afraid it is a different world out there now Yogi!
I'm afraid it is a different world out there now Yogi!
An understatement if I ever read one.
The times have changed and people probably don't trust each other as they did when we were kids growing up. That's a given social phenomena seen with each new generation of offspring. Since I didn't grow up here in Missouri, I don't know what the good old days were like in O'Fallon. It definitely was less populated, but that's about all I can say with certainty. It certainly was more rural, but today it's like not the big city from which I came. I lived 72 years amid 13 million people. O'Fallon peaked out at 84k, which I don't think is the right number anymore. I'm living in a small town compared to the place i migrated from, and I've been told all my life that the country folks are way more friendly and take care of each other more so than us city folks. I've even had a few southern friends visit me in Chicago over the years and they noted within a day or two how "unfriendly" we are compared to back home. Living in the neighborhood for so many years, of course, I didn't see it the way my visiting friends did. But I often wondered exactly what it is they are talking about.
There is a huge contrast between my current neighborhood verses the one I came from. It's that contrast that I am having a hard dime rationalizing. Why do the folks here need a management company and an HOA, with 38 pages of encumbrances, to bless the lifestyle I am now part of? Plus I must pay these people to admonish me for leaving my trash can at the curb too long or allow them to define which and how many vehicles I can park on the street AND ON MY OWN PRIVATE DRIVEWAY. It is fascinating to me that I must pay them $400 a year while those people in the row houses in back of me hand over $130/month. This is all done, in theory, to maintain the value of the houses. That is an incredibly huge load of BS that I've never had a need to be exposed to in the past. The assumption is that if I paint my deck a different shade of brown than all the neighbors, the entire community will fall into a ghetto class zoning and people will start committing suicide because they can't sell their house whcih is in the same neighborhood as somebody who doesn't like the color brown. You would think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. That is exactly the logic used in the e-mails sent out by the management company who feels it's necessary to admonish me for not falling in line with the rest of the herd. Well, not me personally, but the e-mail sounded like it came from a second grade teacher with an unruly class.
Yes, I'm biased against HOA's and people telling me how to live my life, but few if any of my neighbors share my view. They all want to be dictated to and have a secret police force ensuring we all stay in line. And I am not kidding. There is a secret citizens patrol the cruises the neighborhoods taking notes of anybody violating any one of those thousand encumbrances. These are the people who advocate taking care of us older folks properly and protest when a land developer is not making assisted living condos for people who don't need them or want them. These are the people who rally around my driveway and want to help me clear the snow, but never hear from them again all year long. They project a caring and concerned attitude, but aside from the food pantry and handing out turkey sandwiches at Thanksgiving, I see no action to back up that attitude. In the final analysis it all looks fake. The people I have said more than hello to seem normal and genuine. As far as I can tell, however, it's all a facade. We all get along here, and maybe it's due to nobody interacting with any of their neighbors. Maybe. It just wasn't like that in the cold heartless city I left behind.
We were both raised in a time when we had few worries.
The only difference I suppose was you were raised in a major city, and I was raised in a rural area that kept growing over the years.
I kid you not when I say, we didn't have to lock up anything, my parents left their keys in their cars and their houses unlocked.
As kids, we could go out and play all day, and not worry about coming home until it started to get dark.
At the greenhouses, we had a huge 3-tone whistle that was blown every night at 5:30 pm, and all the kids in the area used it as a warning to get home fast before all the area workers hit the road to go home for dinner.
5:30 was quitting time for about 95% of our employees too.
We all tried to be home before the 5:45 whistle blew at manufacturing plant to our south.
And at 6 pm the Catholic Church bells would ring.
In the winter months, while our steam boilers were running, we had an outside steam whistle they would toot one time 1/2 hour before sunset. It's only purpose was to let kids know to head to their homes. Or mainly it was time to leave our property, since many kids played on the hills there, especially in winter after it snowed, or ice skating on our pond. That whistle meant get off the property for the night.
We also had a bell behind the backstop of our baseball field. My grandma used to go out on her front porch and ring that bell whenever she wanted the ball field cleared. But not usually if a valid game was being played, hi hi.
I was a teen when some major changes began taking place in our little city.
Two things I remember that were new to us, and that was both the hardware store and the grocery store installed locks on their doors. There was no more going in and grabbing what you needed and leaving a note for them to add it to you bill.
It was still like five more years after that when we added simple door locks to all of our greenhouse doors.
But you can laugh, at least eight customers who shopped early before we were open, were given keys to the front greenhouse side door so they could get in, hi hi. Two of them were doctors I knew!
Now dad always locked the two front entrance doors to the cut flower shop ever since the day it was built.
No lock on the back door or side doors for about ten more years, then only the front side door got a lock.
The big back doors never had a single lock on them until after 1980.
But realize also that we had night watchmen on the grounds, and night firemen during the night to run the boilers. They too patrolled the grounds in the winter months.
There were several back opening greenhouse doors that never ever were locked in all the years we were in business.
Also starting around 1970 or '72, the truck drivers had to hang the truck keys on a board inside the offices.
But ironically, not one of the cars or trucks parked in the back barns or stables was missing any keys, hi hi.
And none were ever stolen either. Well, except by family members who wanted one, like the '46 Ford I cobbed to work on.
Uncle Louis got the old Moon automobile and took it someplace to be restored. He used it in a couple of parades, and then sold it for big bucks.
I am familiar with the "open door" lifestyle you describe. Certain homes right here on my street leave their garage doors open almost all year long. Actually, against the warnings from the police department, I used to do something similar up north during the warm months. The police stopped by a few times to check out the house just because my garage door was open. They said it's a sign of a home that was burglarized. The crooks are too lazy to close the doors. Around here the police only come by when the phase of the moon is right and one of the patrol officers lost his way on route to the donut shop. Apparently they aren't needed as much as they were back home. The point of keeping the garage door open has to do with the fact that there is an entry into the house from the garage; the back door, so to speak. These open garage door people have the idea that their front door is superfluous and only exists for aesthetic purposes. Nobody but the FedEx guy even recognizes the front door. I believe I mentioned once in these forums that one day in the summer I happened to have left my garage door open. Wife and I were having lunch and there was a short rap on the entry door to the garage after which a strange old lady walked in as if she knew us well and possibly lived in our basement. We greeted each other without fan fare and she announced that she was here to pick up ... Niaomi, or some such kid. We gave her a blank stare and then she realized Niaomi wasn't among us. We all laughed and she recognized that she was in the wrong house. Well yeah, but the fact that she just walked in casually, through the back door, and was very nonchalant told me something. This lady lives or had lived on a farm most of her life. She did what is perfectly normal out in the country.
Then there is this neighborhood newsletter; something that did not exist back home in our Chicago suburb. It covers quite a few neighborhoods in fact and ours is among them. More often than I'd expect I read about somebody complaining that their car was stolen right off their driveway. Everybody was in bed sleeping and the crook was very silent. Well, of course. The crook did not have to make any noise. The keys to the car were in the ignition and all he had to do was drive off in silence. This story didn't appear just once. It's guaranteed to be in that newsletter at least twice a year. Many folks around here think nothing of leaving their keys in the ignition, and apparently not only when they are home. They do it while shopping at WalMart too. I was totally amazed to read these comments at first. How could people be so freaking stupid? They are not stupid, of course. They were all just doing what they were brought up to do. That is, not to be bothered locking things up. These are ex-farmers or people with heavy rural connections.
Then there are the pickup trucks. Seems like at least 80% of my neighbors have one. Back home only people with businesses had pickup trucks. Down here they are the Sunday Go To Church vehicle. I've seen it. People leave their SUV parked on the driveway and get into the Silverado all dressed up for church. The come back a couple hours later and take the SUV to visit aunt Tammy down the road a piece. There is nothing wrong with all that. It's just something I've not seen in all my years, but here I am living in the middle of it. Talk about square pegs in round holes ...
All I can say is: It is amazing how much our cities and towns have changed in the years we were growing up.
On my last visit back home to St. Louis County to see my son. I got lost twice in an area I spent half of my life making deliveries in and knew every street and pot hole, hi hi.
Where there was a long row of houses for miles, now there are no houses, but shopping malls and strip malls, and the road now weaves around through them.
I wanted to drive by a couple of places on Manchester Road and it had changed so much, it doesn't even follow the same path anymore.
And I had only been gone for like 16 years at that time. I wonder what it looks like now 20 years later?
I went over to St. Charles to see my brother while there also. I didn't even recognize the area he was in either. It too had changed considerably since the last time I was there. And the apartment complex my ex-wife lived in 40 years ago now, is completely gone, and a factory of some sorts is there along with like an industrial area now.
It is hard for things to change much in the big cities, they just seem to get more cramped, old houses torn down and new houses built in the same places. It is rare to see two lots become one lot for a larger house, but it does happen.
As is the case in nature, big cities abhor a vacuum - or a vacant lot. One common factor shared by both city and rural areas is that the population continues to grow. Very few, if any, municipalities shrink in size and revert back to agriculture; although there was talk of Detroit doing just that several years ago. Thus the landscape has no option but to change and fill up the vacancies. People need a place to live and all this growth in demographics is quite predictable. That's not what fascinates me about where I'm living these days. It's the culture and the attitude of the residents that somehow are causing trauma in my pattern recognition brain storage. Logically I knew life here was going to be different well before we decided to move in. But that was theory. I'm now in the midst of the practice. It so happens I'm a very tolerant person. While I do have some fixed ideas, I am very liberal minded when it comes to interacting with people of varied cultural backgrounds. I love the fact that there is a convenience store in back of the gas station on the corner, and in that store is a deli counter that will make sandwiches to order. There also is a very small eating counter and about five small tables for the locals to congregate and discuss if there will be enough rain for the crops this season. They all smile and acknowledge me being there. But, you know ... I ain't one of them. Obviously.
The conclusion to be drawn is that the landscape must changed out of necessity. The people populating said landscape tend to retain whatever cultural traits were handed down to them in their genetic framework. Being a student of human psychology I thrive on observing all that. It's just that their tolerance for me seems to be superficial. Back home in the crowd of 13 million neighbors there seldom was a doubt about how you stood with any given neighbor, or stranger for that matter. If they didn't like you, they didn't wave and smile and tell you to have a nice day. They simply ignored you. To be honest we didn't have block parties or poker nights or super bowl parties. But, during my first week in the new house the people across the street did bring over a loaf of homemade bread as a welcome gift.
When I first moved south, although I was raised on a farm, to the folks down here, I was a city slicker, hi hi.
And these southerners don't cotton to no Yankee HIppies. Even though they were part of the Union Army, hi hi
Most know Missouri was on their side, but that don't matter, cause you is a damn Yankee anyhow, hi hi.
Now let's conjugate the verb old:
You iz olde.
I iz olde.
We iz all Olde, hi hi.
If I got the story correct, both Missouri and Tennessee were/are SOUTH of the Mason Dixon Line, the de facto demarcation between North and South. Well, they would be south if the line came this far west. I believe Tennessee is purely redneck but Missouri did indeed fight with the Union soldiers. That wasn't the case across all of Missouri, however. Those folks on the south end were itching to be part of the confederacy while us more northern folks were not. Thus Missouri was considered a border state and even today many political pundits consider it to be purple, not blue nor red. Be that all as it may, it would certainly give those Good Ol' Boys reason to be suspicious of anybody from St Louis.
The thing about it is your point of origin isn't in your face obvious, unless perhaps you are missing a few front teeth. When I first landed here I didn't have a sign around my neck saying where I came from. Then again, perhaps the license plates on my cars gave it away. I had to wait a few days to change that.
Before I forget.
Happy New Year Yogi! It's a beautiful 76 degrees here right now!
Well, us folks from the mid-west sound a lot different from the folks down south here.
Plus we have a much larger vocabulary as well.
Part of Tennessee was Union and part was Confederate.
So there were a lot of battles that took place here between the two sides.
But even the Union side of the state still consider themselves southerners and in a way confederates too.
They have tons of reenactments down here, and all the old military stuff from both sides to go with it.
Many are still held on the actual battlefields too.
It took me forever to grasp what some of the folks down here were talking about, since they use the same words to describe tons of different items. It gets very confusing, hi hi.
I know I mentioned before that I'm not much of a history buff. Some of it is very interesting and explains a few things that are going on in this century. But, as we both have observed, nobody seems to learn from the mistakes made in historical times. That has to do with human nature itself. We have to experience something first hand in order for it to sink in. That, plus our vision tends to be very narrow and disregards any future effects our decisions might produce. It's all about the here and now. My knowledge of the Civil War in this country is all hearsay. I Google things once in a while but never studied history to the same degree you have. Perhaps that is why I'm surprised to learn there were any Yankee sympathizers in the state of Tennessee, ever. Perhaps they are not considered the Deep South, but they are right there on the border.
You are not the first person to mention the apparently limited vocabulary in certain areas. I know a gal that is proud to claim herself as being a hillbilly. She is pretty smart in fact, but never finished high school and is obviously short on her English language skills. We never met in person but I picture her running around WalMart in her Daisy Dukes and bare footed. I'm plagued with the stereotype image of hillbillies, but I can't help noting that she fits the picture quite well. I would say she is an aberration, but she lives in a community with like minded people. I do have to be careful what I say to her because some words are just over her head. I admire her spelling, however. She is terrible at it but seems to have good skills in phonics. It's pretty challenging to read some of her writing at times. It's just hard to believe so many other folks are just like her. I guess I've lead a sheltered life.
I'm honestly not a big history buff myself either, but do love to read about some events that took place.
I'm more into ancient history and follow a lot of that, but never remember any of it to pass it along.
It basically goes in my eyes, passes through the brain in ROM, then disappears, hi hi.
I think I gave this example before, but here goes again.
Back home in the mid-west, we have all kinds of vehicles, both powered and unpowered.
Looking at only the unpowered vehicles, we have shopping carts, shopping wagons, 2-wheeled hand-trucks, 4-wheeled hand trucks, walkers, strollers, and baby carriages. Kids have tricycles, bicycles, and pedal cars of all types of designs.
Makes it very easy to know what someone is talking about when they mention any of the above items.
But down south here, they have one name that fits anything with wheels on it, doesn't matter what it is, or what its purpose may be. They call everything a Buggy!
Rarely do they clarify what type of Buggy they are talking about. You have to go by the location you are at, or what exactly you are talking about before they refer to the Buggy.
For example: At the grocery store, if someone says, get me a buggy, the mean a shopping cart.
If they are at the plant store, they mean a wagon.
Talking about Christmas gifts for the kids, I got Jim a big red buggy with wood slat sides.
And if you stay down here long enough, and can keep from going buggy yourself, you eventually pick up on the few words and their multiple meanings.
Grammar is something else also. Ya All refers to a single person. Ya All gonna hang around for bit?
But if you are talking about more than one person, like a group of folks, it All Ya All's!
Which actually sounds like Awe Ya Awl's, hi hi.
Or in a restaurant. Now the restaurant may only have Pepsi, but you will be asked if you want a Coke.
If you say YES, then their next question is, what flavor of Coke you want?
Um, what flavors of Coke do you have?
We have Root Beer, Orange, Lemon-Lime, and Pepsi Cola.
I think I'll try your Root Beer flavored Coke, hi hi.
I am here chuckling at your description of the colorful language spoken down south. One of the things that surprised me about living where I live today is the use of y'all. I figured that was a generic term for everybody but your own self, but as you point out there is y'all and y'alls. The surprise is that I don't hear that used very often, or at least not as often as I expected. They are not exactly Chicago style midwest down in O'Fallon, but there is more midwest in the accents than there is southern drawl.
About the only really odd terminology I ran into early in my life here is the reference to a deli made sandwich. I walked into the local shop some time during my first weeks here and asked them to make a submarine sandwich for me. I got a blank stare in return. It's a Po' boy, not a submarine sandwich. That amazed me because down the street was a Subway Store, which got it's name from the submarine version sandwich.
I talked to a Aussie fellow on these very forums many many years ago. He told me a bit about the Māori natives down under. Apparently they have a language of their own which resembles what you tell me about the communications in your area. The Māori talk in terms of concepts. There is a word for movement, but it could be walking, running, flying, falling off a cliff, or just about anything else that moves. The context of the conversation determines the meaning of the word, and that is intentional. It's built into the Māori language. The Māori from what I understood were primitive folks that got caught up in a growing Australian society. Thus it makes sense for their language to be simplified. I don't know how to explain the phenomena in Tennessee.
Hmm that's interesting about the sandwiches. I never heard them called a Po' Boy until around the 1980's. We called them Hero Sandwiches, or Submarine Sandwiches. In my particular area, A Hero, was the common term for them. But if you got in a little closer to the city, but still in the county, you would sometimes here them called a Sub.
Although I don't know a lick of German anymore. More than 2/3 of our employees when I was very young spoke a makeshift language of their own. Sorta like a slang that was only recognized in our area and toward the southeast in the city.
They used some English words, some German words, and some words they just made up. But one thing they always did was start off with a Noun and trip over the Verb at the end, hi hi.
Now my grandpa, he could speak German, French, English, and a little Germanic Dutch.
My dad was proud of the fact that he spoke Perfect English, and he had perfect penmanship as well. His writing was often mistaken as being written by a girl, hi hi.
I think southerners didn't have access to schools for decades after it was commonplace in the mid-west.
Heck, Debi's mom had never gone to school a day in her life, and only one of her youngest sisters did get some schooling.
If you head out to the rural areas down here, where all the old small farms used to be, you almost can't understand what the older folks are saying. Best to find a younger person or kid if you need to find out something.
But this was true in Missouri also, if you were in some really rural areas.
I was dating a gal named Barbara, and she had never been on a ferry boat before.
Now the Illinois free ferry was basically normal folk, but when you went down to the Golden Eagle Ferry, a century old family operated business. You talk about hillbilly language.
We were headed on home after a long drive around the river route, and I decided to take the ferry. I knew roughly where it was, but wasn't exactly sure of a few gravel roads I was going down. Came to a Y right by a little country diner where some kids were outside playing. I asked him if we were going the right way to the ferry.
Now in the most hillbilly phrase you could ever hear, the kid said Shinny on down the wock woad to the Gowden Eagle Fawee!
Barb about split a gut as we pulled away and she got to laughing so hard she couldn't catch her breath.
She had a zillion friends, and that boy was all she talked about for many months when folks got together.
I studied the German language while I was at the University of Illinois. Never got any credit for the class because of some basic misunderstandings I had about grammar. By the time I figured it all out, I had to unlearn the incorrect things and relearn the right way to construct a sentence. By then the semester was over and I was still at the level of week #1 in class. The oddest grammatical feature of the language is exactly what you say about verbs. They tend to be at the end regardless of what you are saying. That wasn't my main problem, but nouns with genders is what caused me to do so poorly. I could understand what I heard, but I could not hold a conversation and definitely not meet the grammar requirements of the classes.
You make a good point about schooling not being available to many of the people who worked on plantations. It seems as if those were historical times and in this century everyone should be conversant in English. Well, I guess all the dialects we are talking about are in fact a form of the English language, but in some cases the natives might just as well be from some other country. It amazes me to no end how language changes over what seems to be short distances of land. How we manage to understand each other is a miracle. Oh wait. We don't always understand, do we?
When I started high school in the first class of a new Catholic high school just opened, a foreign language was a requirement.
I wanted to take German, but the headmaster of the school wouldn't let me, said with my family ties it wouldn't be a challenge for me, so I took French instead, which they allowed, and I didn't tell them my grandfather spoke French more often than German, unless he was talking to the employees who didn't know English.
Nevertheless, I flunked French, and since it was a required class, Bam, I was outta that school.
Which was OK, I switched to Public Schools which were more phun anyhow! And they had girls there too, hi hi.
In this day, there really is no kid who has not had the opportunity to go to school, no matter how poor they were.
In fact, it is a law that kids must go to school. This is how truant officers came to be, to make sure they went.
But sadly, the level of education being taught seems to have been going downhill now for a few decades.
Kids can graduate high school and not know how to read or do simple math. Now that is sad!
Speaking of which. Yesterday we were talking about Submarine Sandwiches, and I mentioned Hero Sandwiches. I forgot to mention down in this area they are called Hogie Sandwiches. In fact, one store we go to is called the Hogie Shop.
They've been in business under that name for probably over 60 years or longer. They've moved further down the street to larger buildings at least twice since I've lived down here.
When I was working for MRTC and was sent to the Landa gas fields, especially the Landa Wascom gas field, I couldn't understand a single word any of the locals said. Probably Cajun is why. But even if they tossed in a few English words, I still couldn't grasp what they were saying.
When I was up in Hinsdale, when someone bummed a smoke from me, they asked for a SQUIRE. hi hi.
The first time I thought they asked if I had a Square and I said No to which I got a dirty look! Then he said No a Squire! Then pointed to the pack of cigs in my pocket. I gave him a couple of them and he was happy as a lark then.
Years later I married a gal from Jewish descent, and they have 3 big books of Jewish Slang. After she passed away, I sold them on eBay, got good money for them too.
Had a good friend while I was growing up whose family was from Louisiana. They were fluent in Cajun, but of course nobody in Chicago knew that language. They would say things to me in Cajun but I never got the hang of it. Oddly enough, as I recall, my buddy didn't have a Cajun accent. I guess he was born down south but all his schooling was in the Windy City. The strangest and perhaps most amusing encounter I had was with a cab driver down in the Virgin Islands. A friend and I got off a commuter plane from Puerto Rico and hailed a cab to get to where we were going. From the instant we got in the cab it was a comedy of errors. The cabbie apparently asked us where we wanted to go, but in the local dialect which was Calypso. He knew of what we spoke but we could not understand a word of what he was saying. He laughed a lot and tried repeating things s l o w l y but that didn't seem to help. They claim it's English, but with the sing song Calypso beat. mhmmm
Since there were a lot of Italian restaurants up where I lived the traditional submarine sandwich was well known. However, I did on occasion sample a northern version of a Po' Boy, a Hero, a gyro, and a Hogie - believe me, Chicago is a very diverse place. LOL There also was a variation of the hogie which was a Philly. The Philly sandwich was a hogie steak on a long bun but had tons of white cheese added. About the only thing all these various sandwiches had in common was the length of the bun. The longer the better. No two of them had the same selection of meats.
As far as education in America goes, it's up to the individual states from what I understand. In Wisconsin, for example, everyone has to be educated, but they don't have to go to a school to get it. Thus home schooling is popular in some places up there. I met a few folks who were home schooled, and the education they received was not like that from a public school. That's why home schooling was invented. The emphasis is parochial. I won't get into what I think of the quality of that education here, but those folks I met and where home schooled may have been well rounded but only met the minimum requirements for being educated. I would have to disagree with you regarding the overall picture for education. Some great things are being discovered and developed these days and all those folks can do a lot more than pass a math test. There certainly is a fair share of air head kids running around, for which I blame the parents more than the kid's teachers. Over all, however, from an academic point of view it's pretty hard to beat the education system in this country.
There are a lot of Mexicans here, and although they are speaking English, it still sounds like Spanish, and often so fast you can't understand what they are saying.
A Gyro is one sandwich I cannot stand to eat at all.
We bought a 5 foot long Hogie for a party right after I moved down here.
I don't think they used a 5 foot long bun, because the sandwich came pre-sliced into 1 inch wide slices on the diagonal, and you could sorta see where they cut the ends off the bread and discarded them before assembling the thing. Even so, it was good.
In Missouri, Home Schooled kids still had to go to a public school to take their quarterly state exam.
This was to make sure they were being taught what the state wanted them to learn.
Ironically, most of the kids aced out these tests with ease. But not all of course.
I think our education system is good, but honestly, it is not as great as it should be.
One of the reasons I went to Canada for some college classes is they were not taught in the states by any college here.
They did away with things like Home Ec, and Shop Classes after I graduated.
But even then, the Shop Classes lacked many of the basic fundamentals they should have been teaching, but didn't.
Back in the 1940's and '50s kids had to learn a lot more than they did in the '60s and '70s.
And by the time my kids were in school, it was mainly reading and arithmetic, but nothing of substance.
I ended up teaching my son ten times more at home after school than he learned all day at school.
My youngest daughter is a 5th grade school teacher in a predominantly Spanish/Mexican community. It's the second largest school district in Illinois after Chicago. I must admit that when my daughter speaks Spanish it sounds like she is rambling at 120 mph. That was also the case when I was in Puerto Rico for a couple weeks on business. I don't think they are talking any faster than you or I, but they sure do sound like it. It's the language itself.
You could be right about the testing of home schooled kids being done in a classroom. My buddy who was schooling his own kids said it was a pretty strict regimen that only had a small amount of flexibility regarding what subjects had to be taught. Apparently he was more concerned about the social aspects of his children attending a public school. He didn't want his kids to pick or any bad habits, or something. From what my daughter says teaching isn't such an easy job. She is bound to the school district and state rules more than a home teacher would be, but even so you got to be pretty good at math in order to teach it to kids who never dealt with it before, as an example. I think the required courses of study are intended for the general population. You're right to say not everybody needs knowledge of all the topics being taught. But, that's the only way some organization and standard testing can be done. You can always learn more on your own, and you were an extraordinary parent to be willing to teach your son all those extras. Unless you go to a vocational school, you won't come out of school with any particular skills other than the ability to think. Figuring out how to do things is part of the how to think process. I never did like the idea of males taking home economic classes, and fortunately I didn't have to. I did pick up on all that about 60 years later, however. LOL
I took home Ec. once, simply because there was no other class to fill in during my study hall time that I wasn't already taking.
I was in Shop Class, Crafts, the Band, on the Tumbling Team, and already had Typing, and Gregg Shorthand. Things like Public Speaking, Ham Radio, Archery, etc. were all extracurricular things to do after school. S
Actually, I wasn't the only guy in Home Ec. although I was the first to sign up, one other guy wanted it too, but not by himself, hi hi.
My only stint with teaching was when I taught carpentry in Tempe, Arizona at VOTEC.
I was hoping to teach electrical installations, but they had plenty of volunteers for that.
It really challenged my memory banks on all the things to do with carpentry, measurements, and cutting.
Back then, part of getting your General Contractor license was serving two semesters as a volunteer.
I only had to states I could have gone to, Minnesota or Arizona. I knew Minnesota would be too cold for me, but never though Arizona would be like working inside a coal fired boiler, hi hi. It was almost hot enough to call it working in a Kiln, hi hi.
