1970: Collecting Rocks vs. Singing in Chorus

By Corinne H. Smith

1970:  I turned thirteen years old.  I was in eighth grade at Centerville Junior High School, where Mr. Simpson was my homeroom teacher.  Daddy was 41, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was beginning to work as a nurse for a local clinic.  We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 most popular song on the radio on my thirteenth birthday was “I Think I Love You” by The Partridge Family.  Mom snapped this photograph. (Obviously we were a little late with the November birthday photo this year.  You can see the edge of our Christmas tree on the right-hand side.)

     When we were in junior high school, our class schedules included a club meeting period on Wednesdays at the end of the day.  Ninth period.  Picking a club was a way to avoid a 44-minute sentence of sitting in homeroom for a study hall instead.  As a result, most students were in clubs.

     Our options were printed in our trusty student handbooks.  Here’s the list.

from Handbook, 1969-1970, Centerville Junior High School, pp. 25-26

     I chose to join Rock and Mineral Club.  I’d been picking up pebbles and rocks for years, especially while I was riding my bicycle around our neighborhood.  Daddy encouraged me, since he was a scientist and liked rocks, too.  Pieces of common ordinary white quartz were my favorites.  Where we lived, it was easy to find.  So was limestone.  So I littered our basement with favorite chunks of quartz and limestone.  Half of the gravel in our alleyway probably ended up in our house.

     I thought that it could be fun to talk about rocks with other people.  I found it amazing that enough students were interested in rocks that an entire junior high club was dedicated to the subject.  Basically, the meetings were just okay.  I always sat in the background with another girl – I can’t remember who she was -- while some of the guys – yes, the membership was almost entirely male – chattered with our advisor Mr. Eckert about breaking into local abandoned quarries and finding trilobites, little bits of fossils.  And geodes!  Where in the world did they find crystal-filled geodes around here?  Why didn’t these goodies land in my bicycle path?  Still, it was an interesting experience.  It was certainly better than sitting in homeroom, doing homework at the end of the school day.

     But deciding in favor of rocks had a consequence that involved music.  I played flute and piccolo in the junior high school band.  Our band rehearsals were worked into our schedules.  I believe that the regular girls’ and boys’ choruses met at the same time, and that you couldn’t be in both band and chorus in junior high.  But I'm pretty sure that at least one choral group met during the Wednesday club period.  If you wanted to sing in this group, you couldn’t be in a club at the same time.  By saying Yes to rocks, I was saying No to chorus.

     This probably doesn’t sound like a big deal.  But our school district had a terrific reputation when it came to music.  One of the jewels in its crown was the high school’s spring musical, put on by the Hempfield Singers, the esteemed chorus for 11th and 12th graders.  If you were in this group, you’d at least be in the chorus for the musical.  You’d be on stage.  You would also get to perform at school concerts and for private singing appearances around the area.  You would wear a choral robe of the school colors.  You would have prestige.

     And if this was your goal, then you and your parents would already be planning ahead when you were in junior high.  So on the page following the list of clubs, the school authorities conveniently outlined a process for reaching it.

  

from Handbook, 1969-1970, Centerville Junior High School, p. 27

     The choral track was clear.  Start singing in junior high and audition for the Intermediate Singers (for 9th and 10th graders) at the end of 8th grade.  Or join one of the lesser choruses in 9th grade, and audition for Intermediate Singers at the end of the year.  Then you would be in line to seamlessly advance to Hempfield Singers in 11th grade.

     Armed with this information, I reassured my parents – probably primarily my mother, who would have been concerned, expectant, and insistent – that I had a way of reaching Hempfield Singers in 11th grade even though I chose to meet with Rock and Mineral Club in junior high.

    And that’s what I did.  I sang alto with the Singing Ladies in 9th grade.  At the end of the year, I auditioned for Intermediate Singers.  One of our try-out songs was “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady.  Having perfect pitch gave me an advantage during the audition … but that’s a story for another day.  I succeeded.  I made it.  I was in Intermediate Singers in 10th grade, and in Hempfield Singers for 11th and 12th.  I was in the chorus (and also on the scenery painting committee) for Annie Get Your Gun and Half a Sixpence.  I got to wear the red robe, much to my mother’s delight.

     I can sing if I have to, though it’s been more than 20 years since I sang in any sort of organized group.  But I still collect rocks, just about anywhere I go.  I have jars of them.  Many jars of them.  Quartz is still my favorite.  I’ve even found a few fossils along the way.  No geodes, though.  And I still believe I made the right decision in junior high:  Rocks over Chorus.  It was once a nonconformist’s route to the stage.  Now picking up rocks is one of my favorite things to do, while traveling around the countryside.  I'm sure I'll do it for the rest of my life.

a small portion of my rock collection