Thu, Dec 10, 1942: badly disgusted

"...They had a teacher's meeting at Augusta and decided to give the school just two days vacation Dec. 24 and 25.  Barbara felt pretty badly disgusted so did Louise M.  Lee Lenz said he was rather glad.  The idea was to give the boys and girls a chance to help with the spring work a week earlier than otherwise...."

--Letter from my grandmother, on the farm at Bloomington, Kans., to my father, a college sophomore at Southwestern College, Winfield, Kans., Thursday, December 10,1942.  

       The high school that my aunt Barbara, like my father before her, attended was in the town of Augusta (population 3,821 in 1940).  The high school drew students from farmlands surrounding the city, including my family’s community of Bloomington 13 miles to the southeast.  It set its schedule in part to accommodate farmwork by children.  My aunt Barbara (age 14) and her friend Louise Myers (also 14) were “pretty badly disgusted” at the idea.  For some reason, my father’s good friend, Lee Lenz, 18, was “rather glad” he’d have a short vacation and the chance to help on the farm in the spring.  (Source: 1940 census population schedule and published statistics).