College Summers

Colonel: They have changed the college times over the years – semesters to the quarters and so on. What is this?

Trish: We’re semesters, so we go August to December. So we just have fall semester and spring semester.

Colonel: We were on semesters but we start until Labor Day. And we concluded the first semester at the end of January. And then we ran January through June.

Michelle: Did you have off for the holidays?

Colonel: Yes. Briefly, but yes we did.

Michelle: Did you ever take summer classes?

Colonel: I had to go to school in the summer for academic reasons. In other words between my freshmen and sophomore year, I had forestry classes at Mont Alto. Wait, I had those mixes up… Between my sophomore and junior year I had forestry classes all summer. Between my junior and senior year I had military. I went to an Army base in the summer. I worked one summer at a spring water plant. Bottling water. I remember the day I cracked up a 5-gallon bottle of water. Water all over everywhere! The owner wasn’t very happy with me. The water bottles would come out of the washer and be filled and they were wet and the label was thrust onto the side of this wet bottle of water. That was the way it stuck.

Michelle: It was glass?

Colonel: Oh yeah! It had an adhesive so when you slapped it onto the bottle of water, it stuck!

Michelle: So you return the bottles and wash them? Like milk was circulated?

Colonel: Oh yeah! They all came back. They were 5 gallon bottles. They all came back. The drivers of the trucks would deliver the water and pick up the empties. They washed them one day a week. Washing those bottles was a big undertaking. They had a big machine. Scalding hot water was forced into the bottles, that were upside-down.