Sometimes at the end of the year the class would go on a field trip. Most of the time this field trip would be to Greenfield Village since it was only a couple miles away from the school. The students would enjoy a day at the village and if it rained they could always go to Henry Ford Museum. While at Greenfield Village you could watch glass being blown and candles being made while you visited the homes of famous Americans like the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison and, of course, Henry Ford.
When you reached 8th grade at St. Albert’s this end of year trip was something special. This was true with the Class of ’75 as they had a plan to go to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Cedar Point was not like visiting Greenfield Village because it was nearly 2 hours away and in a different state. Money would have to be raised by the students to offset these costs. Raising money at St. Albert’s consisted primarily of two functions; the first was selling boxes of candy and the second was a paper drive.
You generally had about a month to sell your candy. You would see students selling these outside of the Church Bingo, grocery stores, and even door to door with neighbors. Sometimes when you were getting close to having all your candy sold, a parent or grandparent would flip the bill and buy the remainder to support the cause.
The paper drive was different. It would take place on a Saturday when a pickup truck would come by and the students would load up. They would go to different homes that were already predetermined and pick up large stacks of newspapers. Most of the time they were in a garage and most of the time they were heavy. After completing the predetermined run, the truck would drop off the students and then drive out to turn in the paper at a paper recycling drop point where the paper would get weighed and then a check would be sent out in that amount to the school.
Finally the big day arrived and the students (plus a group of chaperones) all met in the parking lot and awaited the most beautiful sight you can image – the bus that would take all the little friends to Cedar Point, one of the top amusement parks in the country. Once the bus arrived and the students took their seats, they were given a surprise. It seems that they had raised more money than what was needed so each student was given $5 spending money which, if adjusted for inflation at the time of this book’s printing, would be between $20 and $25 dollars in 2021.
After a full day of fun together, the bus returned back to St. Albert’s at about 9pm where the students disembarked and would make one of their last journeys home from St. Albert’s as students there.
