As I write this, I am up against my deadline, trying to think what to write this week. I don’t know which came first - my tendency to procrastinate until the last minute, or the fact that I’ve always worked best under pressure, but it is a combination of both that have defined my working life over the years.
This has been a week of extremes in so many ways, and the television images of violence, tragedy and human suffering beyond comprehension have overwhelmed me, both physically and mentally.
So when I opened this morning’s paper and read about the start of a new school year, I decided to take a completely different route this week and meander down memory lane with you, sharing stories with which many of you will probably identify.
It was 1949 when I headed off to school. I don’t remember the first day although I have a cute picture of me holding my little metal lunch box, which I am sure would be worth a fortune today if I still had it.
But I do remember the following days in the one-room country school in Washington district, where Ruth Garrett was my teacher. Every morning I walked by myself through a wooded area surrounding my rural home to get to the road. I’m sure it wasn’t far, but it seemed a long ways to a little 6 year old girl who had never gone anywhere in my life except to town on Saturday mornings with my grandparents as most farmers did in those days..
My grandfather Everett Dame built a stile for me to get over the fence which surrounded our property and down onto the gravel road which eventually led to the school house.
I don’t ever remember being scared but it was a different time and place in Laclede County back then. We were not subjected to news reports of children being abducted and/or molested. There was very little traffic on that road, and not many families even owned a car, so I rarely encountered one on my walk to school.
I loved school and I loved learning, and I really loved the experience of learning to read. I’m aware that most educators now say that the Dick and Jane books which were used at Washington School did not teach phonics but mainly employed the “look-say” method of reading, but I can assure you that Ruth Garrett and my second grade teacher at Washington, Thelma Prescott, went outside the box and taught phonics even from the Dick and Jane series.
My earliest memories are sounding out words as I tried to read everything I could get my hands on. I remember picking up some kind of newspaper with the word “wasn’t” on it and how that intrigued me. It was different from what I had seen before and I took it to my mother immediately.
My mom, who is only 16 years older then me and was denied the privilege of going to school beyond the eighth grade, is a very intelligent woman even now in her 87th year, so she recognized a teachable moment when she saw it, and she explained the use of contractions to me.
Going to school also revealed another quirk in my personality, that being that I am extremely addicted to paper, whether it be notebook paper of every size, or writing tablets, or little notepads. Early on I especially loved the little 3x5 tablets bound together in stacks of different colored paper. I actually hoard paper, to the distress of my family and friends, and I have boxes of notepads to prove it just in case stores ever cease to sell them.
During Christmas of 1950, we moved into town and settled into a house at the end of Wood Street where it intersected with Apple Street, and when school started after the Christmas break, my mother walked with me to that beautiful old Adams Building which those in my generation remember so well, and enrolled me there to finish the second grade. It was the first of many long walks twice a day for her until I learned the way by myself because it would be another year before my sister would join me as she started the first grade there.
And for the rest of my school years until graduation in 1961, I eagerly awaited the beginning of each new school year as we received a “sale flyer” in the mail from the John O’Neil store on the west end of Commercial featuring all the school supplies we could want.
Other girls shopped for new school clothes each fall, but since my grandmother sewed all the clothes for my sisters and me, I concentrated on school supplies, lingering for a long while looking at Big Chief tablets, and pencils and erasers, jars of white paste (remember that smell?), pencil sharpeners and scissors, protractors and rulers, notebooks and notebook paper, and of course the special lunch bucket where the small thermos nestled in one end.
I don’t know what the rest of you ate, but my mother was obsessed with Vienna sausages. (She still is, much to my horror, but at least I don’t have to eat them now.) But occasionally I had a cold fried hotdog on a slice of white bread, and of course the old standby baloney. Not bologna and not Oscar Meyer but just plain no-name baloney.
But the real treat was the little chocolate Hostess cupcake with the fudgy frosting and signature white squiggles on top. I have since found out they don’t taste nearly as good now as they did back in the 50’s.
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