The field trips available to elementary school pupils of Slough City featured visits to Forestierie Underground Gardens and Roeding Park in Fresno, and closer to home, Fort Roosevelt, Cross Creek Dairy, and the naval air station. The underground gardens featured a house that a man had dug out of the valley floor after realizing that the hard pan wouldn?t permit him to farm on his land. Roeding Park featured a zoo?complete with an ape accomplished at the fecal toss?and an amusement park. The naval air station gave local kids a tour of the great American war machine, enough of a spectacle to spark the dreams of many a boy.
Aside from sulfurous tap water, bovine air, and Chinese escargot, Slough City?s big draw was Fort Roosevelt, a science center for kids made in the style of an old Western fort. It had been the brainchild of a school principal who?d hated school as a child. It was also a shining example of what a handful of citizens can achieve with limited resources and a measure of ingenuity and determination. The fort?s fences were made of decommissioned utility poles. Inside the fence line, the fort featured a duck pond stocked with sport fish, Slough City?s historic Santa Fe railroad depot, an animal rehab center, and a genuine log cabin that featured a hearth made with rounded rock from the Kings River. It was a phenomenal success, and an embarrassment to the town?s bored of education. 
The bored, dug in deep in its campaign against science and individual initiative, would eventually succeed in destroying the fort by means of chicanery and premeditated neglect.
After Armen experienced Fort Roosevelt, he was suddenly moved to construct a fort of his own in the walnut tree on the back lot. He dug a pair of holes near the tree and linked the holes with a miniature ditch. He fancied the two holes to be miniature ponds, and kept them filled with water much of the time. The ponds began as mud holes, but they soon cleared up and gave rise to forests of clover on their banks. These ponds gave Cindy the idea of planting crops in the moist soil around the ponds and along the ditches. I soon joined in, and in no time at all we were growing carrots, parsley, corn, melons, and pumpkin.
So it was that by the time Cindy saw Fort Roosevelt, she already had a Fort Roosevelt of her own. She spent most of the time she spent within the power poles communing with the animal residents of the fort.
When it was Cindy?s turn to visit the zoo, she became preoccupied with the apes. She stood outside the pens, watching the expressions on the faces and limbs of her distant cousins. They were quite unlike people in many ways, yet also strangely similar. She puzzled over what life must be like to be so similar and yet so different. She looked at their rounded fingers and hand-like feet, their little heads, and their protruding faces. They had big mouths and powerful lips. They had big guts. They?d probably do all right on a raw food diet. Shoot, she thought, they had all day to pound and chew. They had nothing better to do.
The apes were hairy. They probably didn?t need a fire too keep them warm on a chilly night. They swung around as easily as people walked. They didn?t need a campfire to protect them. Cindy wished she could be free of fire like them.
An ape grew annoyed with Cindy?s inquisitive stare and slung a handful of feces her way. Cindy, being attentive and quick, ducked out of the missile?s way, unlucky for a boy standing behind her.
The field trip to the dairy is always an eye-opener for kids who might otherwise not give a thought to the origins of that homogenous white fluid that was delivered to them in little cartons every day at noon, but Cindy gained much more than that from the trip. Cindy was surprised to learn how much the dairy and her school had in common, and how much the daily routine of a dairy cow resembled the daily routine of a student. Teachers weren?t such sages; they were just livestock managers. This explained a lot, and it gave Cindy a sense of perspective on school and life. Though it didn?t make her any more predisposed to the life of a dairy cow, it did give her a better understanding of the unspoken rules of the game. Now she was better equipped to play along.
Source: http://kaweah.com/2011/08/26/extracurricular-education/
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