Barbara Jackson (Hoffman)

Barbara Jackson (Hoffman)
  • TEACHERS:
    • I remember Mr. Lundy, the French teacher with the Scottish accent.

    • Mr. Taylor the Chemistry teacher. Word had it that he had more than just cough syrup in the bottle he kept in his desk.

    • I remember the day the Auto Safety class went outside to learn how to change a tire. The teacher couldn’t get the lug nuts loose. That’s why I belong to AAA.
  • SCHOOL:
    • I came to Ridge in my sophomore year. I was extremely shy and quite an introvert. In class I was petrified that I would be called on and wouldn’t know the answer and I never raised my hand for fear I was wrong. By the end of nursing school I had found my voice, it took until the ‘80’s for me to be comfortable leading meetings, etc. Now I don’t hesitate to speak my mind.

    • The class I disliked the most was Friday language lab. You were in a cubicle with earphones doing the lesson and you never knew when the teacher was listening.

    • I remember 11th and 12th grade English where there were certain subjects like philosophy from which several books were chosen and each book was given to a group of 3 or 4. Each person read a part of the book and typed that part of the report. Then someone cranked the report out on the mimeograph machine. Then you had to proof read it to write in all the letters that didn’t print. There was an oral report for each book and everyone got a copy.

    • My favorite memories are being in “Pirates of Penzance” and the “King and I.” Unfortunately I didn’t get to wear the pretty dresses or the hoop skirts because in the “Pirates of Penzance” I was a pirate because I sang 2nd Alto and in the “King and I.” I was the Amazon guard because I was tall. I still had a great time.
  • BASKING RIDGE:
    • I remember the Old Mill Inn. I remember the small store on the way out of town. Half the store sold appliances and the other half sold 45rpm records. There was an older lady in charge and she knew all about the newest songs. I went to the store frequently and ended up with a large collection of records.

    • Then there were the long line of tall Poplar trees lining the road into the Lyons VA hospital and the Quonset huts where some of the employees lived.

    • A short ways down the road was the development were my family moved in, in Aug. 1962. There was our house and the one across the road and a dairy farm on the side. In a few years the farm was replaced with houses and when my family moved away in 1968 there were houses behind us and talk of building a school.

    • It was nice to see, when I was there in 2010, that the Main Street looked about the way I remembered it.