School Days - by Dad

 Dear Melissa,

Ok, I led a sheltered childhood compared to Mom’s story about being persecuted in a catholic school. It will be boring by comparison, but here goes.

I started kindergarten and first through 6^th grade at he Heber North School. In Heber, everyone went to public school. I didn’t know there was any other kind. I don’t remember my kindergarten teacher, but my first grade teacher was Mrs. Walton, who was the nicest teacher ever. She let me bring World Book encyclopedia from home and read it in class. She thought I was the smartest little boy she had ever known. I’m sure there were other smart little boys, but she let me think I was the smartest. I think we still took little naps after drinking a carton of milk on a nap mat sometime in the mid morning. I can’t remember if that was first grade or kindergarten. I also remember I was the slowest eater in school. The teacher that was assigned to monitor the lunch room would start nagging me to eat faster as soon as I got my tray, because I was always the last one done. Interestingly, as a teen and adult I became a very fast eater which has always driven your mom crazy.

Recess was a really big thing throughout elementary school. I remember many different fads, things like playing marbles (having the prettiest marble, one with a defective flower in the middle, or a “steelie” was a big deal) , hop skotch (you had to have a really good taw), spinning tops, ice sliding during the winter, building snow forts, ball and jacks (mainly for girls) and avoiding the killer icicles were some of the main activities. Later we got some outdoor swings and “tricky bars” which were quite challenging. Jumping out of the swing at the peak of its ark was popular with the tough guys. I was never that tough.

The North school was a red sandstone brick building 3 stories high with a basement which house the coal furnace and the boiler which I never saw. There were radiators in the classrooms, which sometimes got so hot we would have to open the windows even in the winter. Attached to the 3 story building was an “annex” which housed the two first grade classrooms and one second grade classroom and the lunch room. You had to walk down a big ramp from the big building to get to the lunch room and annex and we would line up on that ramp for school lunch, which pretty much everyone ate school lunch. I remember the cost being a dollar a week initially and later 1.25 a week. The old school had ancient wood floors which the custodian polished every week and swept every day. The newer annex had linoleum over cement. Even when I went to school there were grooves worn in the wood floors from so many little feet passing over them every day. No elevators, just big wide wooden stairs going up to the second and third floor. The higher the floors got the 5^th and 6^th grade, the lower grades got the first and second floor. You could actually open the windows and potentially hang out of them. Of course, we never did because it was forbidden. On the third floor you could see the “killer icicles” if the janitor hadn’t made it all the way around the building with a long pole he used to knock them down every winter morning. They would create a little mound around the outside of the building just under the edge of the 3 foot eaves.

I would walk to school most days as it was 3 blocks from home. I think my mother walked with me some days when I was in the first grade. Bullies were always a risk for little kids like me and I was always worried about some bigger tougher kids chasing me down and beating on me. I don’t think anything serious ever happened, except maybe Barry Reynolds threw a rock at me that hit right above the right eye. I still have the scar, I think I was about 9. The only other bully incident I remember was Steven Walker in 7^th grade language arts class smashed an orange in my loose leaf which made a terrible mess of all my assignments and papers. He was not my friend, but I guess I have to forgive him now. 7^th graders are the most awkward people in the world, thinking that playing practical jokes on each other and on the teacher is cool. I caught it from the Science teacher, Mr Craig, by raising my hand in class and telling him his fly was down (it was). He called us “little bounders”, and I was one of them.

I learned to play the harmonica, the recorder, and a little metal flute in elementary. I envy mom, who learned the mandolin when she was in school. I became pretty competent at the harmonica, though. Mr Pace, my 6th grade teacher, was a master harmonica player. In 7^th grade I learned the clarinet which we bought from a guy in Salt Lake my granddad knew who sold clarinets. The coolest thing was, and I think the reason my dad bought the clarinet from him, he had an antique steam engine car in the back of his shop.

I went to school with most of the same kids all through elementary, junior high, and high school, with a few kids coming and going. I could still name ¾ of the kids I went to first and second grade with. There were only two elementary schools in Heber, the North and Central school. A few times a year we would have dances with the other school, and it opened up opportunities to look at all the cute girls from the Central school. Of course, you would never talk to them unless you somehow knew them from before, but once in a while you would get to dance with them in a square dance, or learning ballroom dancing.

Well, I was a pretty good speller too, like mom. I was usually one of the last 3 up in the spelling bee, but I don’t remember it being as dramatic as mom. My favorite subjects were math and reading and science and music. I also really liked the german we got to learn a little of in the 5^th and 6^th grade. My dad had a college German text and had taken it in college and was able to teach me a little. He was more interested, though, in the Saturday Evening Post German spoof cartoons. Anyway, learning was fun in elementary school and I liked everything.

Love, Dad