Straight From The Hart

It was just a normal school day in Lebanon.  I don’t remember the exact date but it would have been sometime in the late 1950’s.  An office aide entered the classroom and I heard the teacher call my name, asking me to come to her desk.  She had a strange look on her face as she told me to go to the principal’s office with the aide. Never in all my years of school had I ever been sent to the principal’s office.   I was too scared to even wonder what I had done wrong as the office girl walked me down the hall. Once inside Mr. Rainey’s office, I saw a couple of people standing there including a strange man dressed in a dark suit.  I remember he looked rather ominous. He asked me my name and when I told him, he handed me a post card, asking me if I had ever seen it before.  I recognized it as a card I had sent a week or so before to The Daily Worker, the newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, asking them to send me a couple of issues of their paper. I

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 follow