Chapter 16 of Tales That I Can Remember by Elsie Swagerty Burton
The next year when I started San Jose High School, the transportation problem was solved in a different way. At age 14, I was given a special permit to drive to school. Dad tried to teach me to drive, and again, he and I couldn’t manage the teacher/student relationship. Mother did the job, and I think rather easily. I loved to drive after I got used to it. At 50 miles per hour limit was set as my maximum speed. I went 55 on many occasions and enjoyed it. Those were the only time I can remember willfully disobeying direct orders. The boys threatened to tell when they wanted something from me but they enjoyed it as much as I, so they never did.
All through this time our social life was centered in our church. We went to church services and Sunday School classes more or less regularly- not as regularly as I would have wished, for I loved it but we were considered one of the regulars. It was a large enough church that each Sunday School class was into the boys’ classes and the girls’ classes for each grade until we got into Junior High. There were at least 10 to 18 students in each class. I certainly enjoyed that arrangement; it was a relief to be in a group without the tussling boys.
As I recall there was a great deal of reading from the Bible and this is in the King James version – the only one around in use at that time. Reading being a problem to begin with and then King James on top of that, it was pretty harry, but I loved it.
I particularly remember Junior Church sponsored by the Bronsons. One attended until he started 9th grade in Junior High. That was the graduating point into the regular congregation. We had our opening exercises which consisted of hymns from the old hymnals – songs we all more or less knew, a session of remembering Bible verses, solos, duets, trios, quartets etc. by the students. Then a special guest speaker who usually told a Bible story in a new and exciting was, bringing out the moral message so clearly that youngest there could understand and apply it and of course a prayer and collection.
There were also Sunday evening gatherings, but we didn’t attend those very often unless we stayed in town all day for some reason like invited for dinner at the Bronsons or Leeds or had been at a picnic. There were two Sunday morning Sunday School classes for adults because there were too many people attending to fit into any room in the church. From that number there were always a group going somewhere for a picnic on nice weather Sundays. If I happened to stay overnight with the Bronson’s on a Wednesday, I got to go to Wednesday Night Prayer meeting.
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