Among the many changes World War II brought to the home front was a restructuring of the Napa public school system, effective September 1942.

When the 1942-43 school year got under way, the two rural elementary schools -- Salvador (where I was a sixth-grader the year before) and Mt. George -- as well as Lincoln and Shearer schools in town, changed from having first through eighth grades to first through sixth.

Intermediate School, which housed the seventh and eighth grades, was closed. Napa Union High School dropped the ninth grade, while keeping 10th through 12th.

All of the seventh, eighth and ninth graders from all of the schools were then placed in the newly formed Napa Junior High School. Plus, that was the year that Napa Junior College (now Napa Valley College) opened.

Students from Napa Junior High, Napa Union High School and Napa Junior College all attended classes in what is now the headquarters of the Napa Valley Unified School District, at the corner of Lincoln and Jefferson streets. High school and junior college students attended classes in the morning, from 7:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m., and the junior high in the afternoon from 12:30 to 5:20 p.m. In order to fit the necessary classes into just four hours and 50 minutes, classes were shortened from the normal 50 minutes to 40 minutes. As I remember, there were seven periods in the school day.

As incoming seventh graders, my classmates and I had our first taste of changing classes throughout the school day and having different teachers for different subjects. In grammar school, one teacher taught everything, but in junior high, we had different teachers for math, science, PE and so forth.

However, unlike the high school students, who also rotated classrooms and teachers, we (in junior high school) were placed in homerooms with permanent teachers who taught such things as social studies and how to behave.

My homeroom teacher was Miss Flora Mehl, a wonderful lady who had been teaching in Napa for many years. Not only was she a good teacher, she was also very good at handling smart-aleck teenagers. She kept us in line and was very strict about making us sit up straight in our chairs. I was fortunate because several of my friends from Salvador School were in my class, so getting acquainted was a lot easier.

When the school day started we reported to our home rooms, where we would remain for first period. When the bell rang, we had to almost run to the next class because 10 minutes from bell to bell was not a lot of time.

The crunch really came before and after gym class. We had to run to the gym, remember our locker combinations, figure out how to dial them, change into our gym clothes and then get to wherever the teacher wanted us so he could call roll. Then it was play ball or do whatever the teacher had in store for us. After about 20 minutes we had to hustle back to the locker room, take a shower, get dressed in our school clothes and run to the next class.

While in junior high I had some terrific teachers. In addition to Miss Mehl, I remember teachers including Helen Blume (English), Anita Cerletti (math), Ron English (science), Señor Messier (A Frenchman with a French accent who taught Spanish), David Harms (music), Ken Johnson (gym and basketball coach) and Jean Tapie (music). Loren Critser was the principal of the junior high and the venerable Harry McPherson was the superintendent. Other wonderful and devoted teachers were also in the system, but their names escape me. Unhappily, there were no yearbooks published for those years, so I have to rely on memory.

High school sports were always of interest to those of us in junior high school. It was a big adventure to be able to go and watch the big guys play football on Coleman Field, the high school field. During half-time, the young kids used to run on the field and play touch football or just run around until it was time to start the second half.

The high school athletes were our heroes. I remember, in the fall of 1942, the joy that swept through the city of Napa when Napa High beat hated Vallejo High 3-0 on a Jimmy Dykes field goal -- in Vallejo.

In those days Napa did not beat Vallejo very often, so that game stands out as one of the greatest games ever -- to those who are still around to remember it. For what few home football games there were, I would walk from our home on St. Helena Highway to Coleman Field, watch the game and then walk back home. Distance meant nothing to a 12- or 13-year-old.

Jim Ford's Napa As It Was appears every other Monday, alternating in this space with Betty Rhodes' Senior Corner.