First Grade
The Source
I wanted the school day to last forever and that alone made me unique among my first grade classmates in Perry Grade School, 1954. I didn’t like school that much, but I was terrified of walking home with two vicious black spaniels on my route. I could have easily crossed to the other side of the road or taken the back alley but Dad had said to stay on the sidewalk and when you’re five years old you take orders. He was the same guy who told me that if I stuck three sticks of gum in my mouth at one time I’d blow up. How can you doubt an expert like that? We all have memories of our first weeks in school and every August many of us relive those early days as we watch the kids cruise by on the school bus. I was born in the pre pre-school days and we didn’t even have the benefit of kindergarten in Pike County. I wonder how we ever made it without the advantage of today’s kids who are jerked out of the maternity ward straight into American Public Education? My teacher was Mrs. Walker. She was 212 years old and stood a bit over 12 feet tall. (I’m just going on memory here.) On the first day she taught us how to avoid tornados, floods, earthquakes and Nikita Khrushchev dropping a bomb on top of Perry. It was simple. Get under your desk. 200 mph winds streaking across the Illinois landscape with the air full of flying witches, Auntie Em and an obnoxious dog? Get under your desk. I miss that desk. It offered a world of protection. And Mrs. Walker was my hero because she would never get under hers, instead standing watch to make sure no burr cut head popped out to see the effects of the Russian nuclear program. It never occurred to me that at 212 and twelve-feet high, she probably couldn’t have gotten to her knees, much less crawled under a desk. And the beans. We learned biology by each planting a bean in a plastic drinking cup then waiting for it to sprout. The beans were kept in a windowsill and we were instructed to gently water it only once a day. No bean drowning. Whenever Mrs. Walker left the room I’d run to my bean to see if it had sprouted in the last five minutes. In fact, I was the most ardent bean-tester in class. Other kids gave their legume an occasional daily glance but I was a constant checker. When the class’s beans finally came up, mine didn’t. I suspect my buddy Gary of peeing on my bean during recess, but have no proof of this and since he’s now a respected businessman in Rushville I’ll let the matter rest. When you are in first grade everything is alphabetical. You sit alphabetically, you go to lunch according to your last name (Merle Waters nearly starved), and you tinkled according to the name your ancient ancestors took as their own. I became fast friends with Billy Curry and Bonnie Garrett simply because there were no A’, D’s, E’s, or F’s. This was done we were told, to teach us the alphabet. It did teach us to hate everyone with an earlier initial. Music was the highlight of my week. Mrs. Smith, the traveling music teacher, would come into our classroom with her assortment of tiny cymbals, castanets, triangles, and kazoos, then try vainly to get us to clang and bang out “Yankee Doodle” together. Our sound was less than patriotic, but it did instill in me a life-long love of music… it was the thing that for 30 minutes got me out of math and science. And of course what student from any time period doesn’t count lunch as one of real joys of the educational day? We marched (alphabetically) through the basement of the high school building (terrifying) to that little garden of gastronomy we called the lunchroom. Grabbing our plastic trays we slobbered with anticipation as the school cooks laded on piles of mashed potatoes (actually peeled on site), fried chicken (cooked in lard), fresh-made dinner rolls (from scratch), and butter (genuine, full-fat). According to the nutritional guidelines given to today’s schools I expect to be dead by 4 o’clock tomorrow. (Oh yeah. We were too poor in Perry to afford refrigerated delivery trucks, I think. We had to settle for cobbler made on the spot and still warm from the ovens.) P.E. was a bit angst-filled for a round little first grade boy since we followed that still-used and still-horrific “choosing teams” method. Besides, in first grade there’s a good chance that the girls can hit the ball further than the boys and both Margaret and Roberta were chosen before any of us “men.” .. especially the little round ones. Then the day would end and I’d find I’d not heard a thing said all afternoon. Instead, I’d been planning on how to get by the two terriers. Sometimes I’d wait until Mrs. Walker would go home and I’d ask her for a ride. Other times I’d pick up a handful of rocks to defend myself from the little ankle-nippers, but as soon as I’d see them coming at me I’d drop the rocks, scream and take off running. I assume that only the details have changed in the ensuing 45 years, but as I see the new patterns in American education I think a lot about my bean. I think I may have tested it to death.