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Washington School

 

On this day
3 years ago

Joan Milan Hart

 
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Still thinking about memories today. I've gone through my poetry portfolio to find some of the many poems and essays I have written about memories. Here's another one.
This one reaches way back to my first grade at Washington School when we lived in a house down the road. We had a long two-rut lane from the road down to the house and I remember walking with my sisters and mom up that dusty road to the mailbox. I loved the daisies growing among the weeds in the ditch and remember trying to avoid the grasshoppers jumping up on us on hot summer days hoping the wouldn't spit tobacco juice on us, as we had always been told.
I went to first grade and half of second grade in the Washington Country School, a one room school where I was introduced to learning.
Learning was and is the greatest joy of my life. Learning to read. Learning how to do arithmetic for the first time. Spelling was always my forte.
I am as much a student now as I ever was. Reading everything I can get my hands on. Remembering as much as I possibly can.
Expressing my memories and thoughts and blessings in as creative a way as I possibly can.
I learned long ago the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know and I was determined to learn all I could as long as my mind would hold out.
An interesting part of my school days was a rather long walk, or so it seemed, through the woods, a little 6 year old girl wearing a plaid dress, with a ribbon in her hair, carrying a lunchbox. When I reached the end of the woods I was stopped by a fence with a big ditch down to the gravel road bed which led to the school house. I have no idea how long that was either.
My grandfather built a stile with 3 steps up to the fence and over and down more steps to the road.
There is no way in this day and age we would send a little girl through the woods to walk alone down a country road but I don't recall ever being afraid and of course times were different then.
Here is that poem.
SNAPSHOTS IN THE MIND
Memory is such a funny thing
Those snapshots in the mind
Of smells and sounds of childhood scenes
Those days long left behind.
The dusty walk down the long, long lane
The flowers along the way
Where daisies and weeds intertwine in the ditch
And grasshoppers love to play.
The country school where I learned to read
And crayons were a good source of art
The spelling match, and arithmetic,
And poems we learned by heart.
Yes, the camera of the mind is a funny thing
Those snapshots of the past
Captured one day and locked away
Where our memory holds them fast.
Written by Joan Rowden Hart, 12.17.01
Copyright Joan Hart 2002

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