Old-Fashioned School Supplies Endure

When I was just a lad going to elementary school in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, there were certain things on our supplies list that parents had to get so we kids wouldn’t feel deprived during the school year.

One of these was the ubiquitous “composition book” … black marbled cover with a lot of lined pages inside that we used to do our homework and write compositions. If I do recall, we had to turn these books in to the teacher so she would read the compositions. That made for bulking piles on her desk. Or maybe I’m fantasizing about this.

I know we didn’t tear out the pages (perforated homework tablets would appear later, around the time I was in high school) because then their complementary page on the opposite side of the book would fall out, and that would be one helluva waste.

Anyway, I see that they’re still in use, 60+ years later. Only now they come in a variety of colors – green, red and blue – in addition to the original black. They’re still kind of cheap. I don’t know how much they cost back in the old days (probably a dime each), but now they’re just 89¢ each during back-to-school sales.

And that caused me to reminisce. What other school items have still survived? Pee-Chee portfolios, for one. Rulers, plastic these days, not wood. Protractors, plastic these days, not metal. Compasses, these still look the same. Number 2 pencils, for sure, maybe not Eagle Mirador, but about the same.

No fountain pens (they made us bring a Westerbrook and a bottle of royal blue ink). We used school bags, many students had homemade ones of denim, some of us had store-bought. These days, it’s all about backpacks. Little pencil sharpeners, for sure, although I think kids these days may bring mechanical pencils.

So … the more things change, the more they stay the same. No pen knives, no chewing gum, no firecrackers.