Guest speakers from several different decades shared anecdotes at the jubilee assembly on Saturday, which was attended by about 250 people.
Allan Johnston, of Alexandra, attended the school from 1941 to 1947, and explained the three levels of discipline during his school days. The ''lightest'' was the class missing out on sports because a classmate had been naughty. The next was the strap, and the top level for the most serious misbehaviour was a caning.
''Sometimes the cane would come out and sections had been cut up so then a sucker from one of the plum trees out the front of the buildings was used instead.
''We used to listen for the 'thwack' and count how many - six was the maximum,'' he said. Pupils took the train to Alexandra for technology classes, woodwork for boys and sewing and cooking for girls.
''We'd get money to buy lunch those days and you could get a pie and have enough left over for a packet of cigarettes, and we'd go under the Alexandra bridge and smoke them.''
He also recalled that only one of the teachers had a car and she parked it near some Douglas fir trees. The pupils shoved fir cones up the exhaust pipe of the car and the teacher had to call the garage because the car would not start. International forestry consultant Jim Carle started school at Clyde in 1956, shifting from Scotland to Central Otago.
''We were a little different from the other families.
''I remember the first time we went to Sunday school, we arrived in our kilts. We must've looked like aliens from another planet.
''It didn't take long before the Clyde people took us under their wing and showed us how to dress and speak the right way.''
The theme for the event: ''Celebrating Success'' was appropriate, Central Otago Mayor Tony Lepper said. School staff, pupils and their families had built businesses, supported and shaped Clyde into what it was today, he said. The weekend festivities included a dance on Saturday night and picnic and market day yesterday.
