I look at all of the students going to school nowadays and the heavy backpacks that they carry or wheel and think back to the days when I went to school. I’d like to think that I had something to do with the backpack as means of carrying schoolbooks.
When I was in elementary school, I took the bus to school. Carrying books to school was done either using a rubber elastic strap that had interlocking hooks on each end that wrapped around the books you were carrying or in what was called a book bag. The book bag was a zippered bag, similar to a gym bag, with a flat cardboard bottom and soft plastic, leather exterior. Inside the bag could be kept assorted textbooks, gym apparel, pens, pencils and a looseleaf binder. My book bags always lasted the entire school year. For some reason my looseleaf binders never did. Binders now are made of flexible or stiff plastic. Back in the ‘50s they were made of a piece of cardboard covered with some sort of course fabric. They were always light blue in color. Inevitably within months of owning my looseleaf either the cover was ripped off or the those metal clamps within the binder that held the paper, were so out of alignment that all of the paper in it was torn at the holes which held them in. I never could figure out what it was that I was doing to wreck those binders.
When I moved on to Junior High School my mode of transportation changed. I no longer took a bus to school. In fact there was no bus from my house, I had to walk, since I lived only about a mile from the school. There was no one near where I lived to walk with, so I walked to school by myself. Carrying books to school for me became unwieldy using the preferred book bags, especially since the number of books and papers that I had to carry increased. This fact didn’t seem to bother the other students as they went to school. They proudly purchased their school designed bags and carried their books whether they walked or took the bus. Not me. I’ve never being bothered by doing something out of the ordinary and different from others, so I decided to have my mother go out and buy me a knapsack. This was not the high tech backpacks that are in existence today, but rather a Boy Scout knapsack. In fact, according to Answers.com, the backpack as a mode of transporting books and such to school did not become the urban choice until the 1990’s.
This made my life easier as I walked to school. I just placed all of my books into the knapsack, hoisted it onto my back, grabbed my bag lunch and headed off to school. Looking back at how easy it was to transport my books to school, I’m surprised that no one else thought of doing that. I guess it wasn’t cool to be so different. I don’t remember getting any criticism for using the knapsack. On a side note my looseleaf notebooks continued to last less than a year.
High school came and again the number of books needed to be carried changed. I lived about a mile and a half from school. It was not on a direct street route to the school. So for some time it was back to buses. This time it was public transportation that was used. These buses were not the free school buses that we enjoyed in our elementary days. To save on the cost of the buses we were allowed to purchase at school, bus passes (which cost 50 cents a week) that allowed us unlimited rides during school days by just showing our pass. The buses that I took to high school went in a convoluted route (almost 3 miles), having me transfer between different buses once during the trip. During those bus days, I became the sophisticated school traveler carrying my books in a hard-shelled briefcase. What I liked about the briefcases were the many compartments that I could put pens and pencils, loose papers, etc. in. Briefcases also protected my looseleaf binder better. My binder did in fact last an entire school year, once I switched to a briefcase. That added protection did come at a cost. My briefcases, never lasted the complete year.
It was during a transportation strike in 1966, while in high school that I got reintroduced to the art of walking to school. I of course chose the direct route not the bus route. Carrying a briefcase became unwieldy again, so it was time to resurrect the old knapsack as I trudged to school. The strike only lasted 12 days. In those twelve days I discovered the quiet calmness of walking again by myself. For the rest of my high school career I walked most of the days, leaving only inclement days and some cold wintry days to the buses. My choice of book carrier depended upon the mode of transportation that I was using.
I’d like to think of myself as the trendsetter and the originator of our present day backpacks, but it never caught on in my day. I was one of the only students to even consider using a backpack to carry books around in. I guess I was just born way to early for my time.
