Humphreys Ave School
I was so itching to go to school. That summer we drove cross-country, there was so much reading books on the road.
The first day of school, my mom annoyed me by hanging around the hallway looking at me, she was annoyed that I wasn't crying. That happened with my children on the first day of school, mothers angry that their children were not crying.
My first day of kindergarten did not live up to my expectations.
Read that story here
Much later I brought my favorite car for Show & Tell. It was a hard rubber fire engine. If you twisted the fire engine it would turn right or left in a gentle arc for a while. There wasn't that much floor space in my house to see this curve, so I was so excited to take this car to school because the floor at kindergarten was much larger than at home. I Showed and Told, and not a single person, not even the teacher, was impressed.
We were playing with clay. While making a rabbit, it occurred to me that to make a snake shape, wrap it around just below the head of the rabbit, and it would make shoulders and arms and paws. I was very impressed with this technique, and with myself. But when I showed it, nobody cared at all. That clay rabbit is still around.
In first grade my mom made my lunch every day but the other kids had the school lunch, eating at the cafeteria in school. She let me try it for a week. One of the things they served was a salad made from shaved carrots and raisins. This combination made me nauseous. So it stayed on the tray. The lunch lady told me that there was no getting up off her lunch table until everything was finished. And I said, It makes me wanna throw up. She told me that didn't matter and that I had to eat it. And I said, It'll make me throw up, and she said she didn’t care. So I had a taste and threw up my lunch on her shoes
Sitting on the first grade carpet the teacher told me to tie my shoes. The end of the lace, the aglet, was frayed and wouldn't go in the hole. Putting the lace in my mouth to give it a little spit structure seemed like a good idea. My teacher told me I was disgusting and sent me to the closet/cubby area to tie my shoes. She forgot me. Staying all through the lesson in the closet made for a nice time.
Our first grade teacher brought in a variety of breads. Rye, potato, pumpernickel, a baguette, and a few others. And Wonder Bread. She gave everyone a taste of the breads. I already knew them. Except one. I asked for a taste of Wonder Bread. Why? She asked. I've never had it, says I.
LIAR! she said.
I did make many friends and had a good time in school. They were happy days.
In second grade there were a bunch of us boys that included my lifelong friend Eddie, who was 4 days older than me, and died when he was around 65. His parents were friends with my parents since before we were born until they all died. You may find other stories of Eddie.
The teacher had us making a mural. We were making ours of our favorite cartoon characters, which is not what the teacher had in mind. Eddie, another kid, and I were doing a Felix the Cat themed section. Looking outside the window towards the mountains and looking outside the other window looking west, I could see the horizon was halfway up from the ground, so I drew a picture of Felix with the horizon halfway up behind him. After doing this my friends said, Why are you making him floating or Why are you making him in a hole. I tried to show them that if you look at the floor it wasn't only beneath your feet, that the back of the floor got higher. And outside the horizon was halfway up.
None of them could see it
We boys in second grade were very rambunctious. One day the principal came outside during recess and told our class not to come in, we stayed outside on the benches. Then we saw an ambulance arrive. Apparently, our teacher Mrs. Levine had a heart attack. For the next few days our class was divided and split up into other classes. I was sent to a third grade class where they were learning cursive writing. I've always wondered if that short exposure to cursive writing explains why my handwriting is so bad. Eventually, we got a long-term substitute teacher, Mrs. Cinnamon, and she was not nice, and not friendly. Possibly, she went in with the idea of reforming us rambunctious boys, and it worked because she intimidated us.
Some time during second grade my mom allowed me to walk home from Humphreys. I walked with Mark Stoker and other neighbor kids. Here's a story about the Stokers
On the way home there was a mom and pop grocery store run by a Chinese mom and pop. My friends got candy. I would buy pink pencil erasers that could be carved into things, mostly by erasing them into shapes. I would buy Bazooka Bubblegum, give the gum to my friend Mark, but keep the comics which had jokes and coupons, and you could send away for stuff, which I did. We would return empty bottles for the deposit to get these goods.
Years later, during senior year of high school, there was a girl named Elaine. We ran in different circles. She was one of the mean girls, I was one of the nerds. At graduation she asked me why I didn't recognize her. Of course I do. We've been in most classes together for 3 years of high school. She said we were in kindergarten, first and second together. Then she told me that she was always in the little store and sold me some of those pink erasers. I honestly never noticed her. She said they wondered what I did with the erasers.
Along the way home there were Helen and Juliet, who liked to feed me. They were two older women in sensible shoes who had lived together for years. Years later a kid who lived across the street from them told me that Helen died years before Juliet, soon after this story. The sad thing was that while they were the same age, Helen was a vegetarian 7th Day Adventist and slender and healthy, and Juliet was an overweight meat eater who baked cakes and pies and ate sweets. Juliet lived many years after Helen.
On the corner of 6th and Arizona was this beautiful garden with a sturdy cinder block wall that we would climb up on and we could balance on it the whole 50 feet. I lost my balance one day and fell into a rosebush much to the horror of my friends. There were scars on my chin and cheek for the longest time, but they faded years ago.
There was a big field behind the houses north of 6th between McConnell and Arizona Streets. Looking on Google, now the area is almost all filled with houses. In the field was often a cow and an old horse. They belonged to the ragman, The horse pulled his wagon through the neighborhood as he collected rags and recyclables. The cow chased me across the field a few times.
There was an ex-military guy who had in his garage cool army items and a cage which he would bring out onto the driveway in the afternoons that contained an angry lynx.
One day Mark, another kid, and I were walking back home and a woman, about 35, was leaning on her gate and she said if we all wanted to earn a quarter we could take these sticks and branches, bundle them up and pile them up for the trash. It took us about an hour and we were done. We wanted our quarters. The woman called us inside her house. She was on her couch masturbating. She said wouldn't it be nicer to help her there instead of getting a quarter. My two friends ran out the front door, but I lingered for maybe a few seconds. This was my first sight of an aroused vulva.
After that we walked home on the other side of the street.
When I got home an hour late my mom started hitting me with a thin belt. I thought this was greatly unfair. First, cheated out of a quarter and then this weird experience and then a beating! I grabbed the belt away from her and swung at her a couple times and told her that she was no longer going to hit me. She never beat me again with a belt, although she did still hit me with other objects and slap me, but all single blows. Progress.
A couple of blocks away there was a burnt out house in a little hollow. My friends and I went in to explore this house and we were sneaking about. Suddenly, the front door burst open and a man bellowed, What the hell are you doing in here? We started to run screaming in a panic running into each other. My friend’s foot broke through the floor and he started screaming that the monster had grabbed him and we all got scared and abandoned him.
And then of course there was the neighborhood weirdo who exposed himself to anyone who made eye contact.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players