Elementary

Elementary
Yeah, yeah, you have heard the stories. “I walked 5 miles to school through blinding blizzards, in the dark, uphill, both ways! Had to chop the wood and start the fire. Had to go chip ice to thaw on the stove for drinking and get the oil for the lamps. The one room schoolhouse was a no nonsense place. Some of that is true but not for me. For my parents it was. Well, not the uphill both ways part! I mean come on! There were some flats!

No, I entered the school system around 1954. The future had arrived. I went to school flying my own personal jet pack as promised by Popular Mechanix. Upon arriving at the crystalline structure a moving conveyor sorted the arriving little Einstein’s by IQ’s and moved them with precision into their various rooms of study of which there were hundreds. We would sit in our knowledge chairs donning the learning helmets and the real wealth of modern society was injected directly into our little sponge brains. In the words of a number of musical artists over time “Ah, what a wonderful world it would be!”.

Reality bites!

For real I rode the big yellow bus filled with strangers and a real mean woman (I think woman) driving it to my modern school. On day one the driver laid down the law to you. “You will not lollygaggle! Get on the bus, find a seat, sit down and shut up. You will not leave your seat for any reason whatsoever. When we arrive at the school you will wait until the bus stops and I tell you to proceed before you get up. The front rows will go first and then the second rows will follow until the bus is empty. No pushing, no shoving and no talking. Once you are off the bus you are on your own and someone else’s problem! Got it?!!” Boy Howdy!

She had a great big mirror overhead to watch us as she drove and I think she had independent sight in each eye because it sure seemed like she was ALWAYS watching us. It wasn’t long…maybe a day or two before a kid decided to test her. Suddenly the bus slowed AND CAME TO A STOP! She was out of her seat in a flash and was lifting the kid straight off the seat by his ear. I think spittle was flying off her lips as she screamed at the kid. Slowly her anger abated and she let the kid settle back down into the seat, obviously traumatized, scared for life by the bus driving ghoul. But the point was well made and silence was achieved and we were all little angels. That is until the day it happened.

I grew up on a farm with my grandfather who was no nonsense. His stance was you do something at school to get in trouble and you’ll be in double trouble at home. I tried to stay well away from trouble. So it was with horror that I watched as the bus I was going home on went right by the farm where I was to get off. Now I was a little late getting on the bus and as so I was towards the back of the bus and I guess the magic eye of the bus driver missed me. I was certainly not going to break the code of silence that kept the lunatic driver in her seat and her ear tearing claws off my useful and highly regarded ears, so I sat in silence. Slowly the miles piled up and the bus emptied but as it did darkness fell and by the time the last other kid got off, the bus was dark. It was then that she turned on the lights and spotted me sitting all alone in the back of the bus. I could see the eye open wide, much wider than I had ever seen it get ever before. I just got chills just remembering it.

She slammed the bus to a stop and was up out of her throne and down the isle in an instant. “Why! Why are you still here?” she yelled. “Why didn’t you peak up? You dumb or something?”. At this point I had decided that she was in as much trouble as me and Grandpa would throw her in the pig pen along with me so I thought “Who is the dumb one here?” but I said. “Get me home!”. Well, by the time she drove the cold rattletrap of a bus back to the farm my parents had got home and they and my grandparents had called the school and the bus driver’s home. My grandfather had a few confidential words with the bus driver and she and I were both lucky we didn’t end up in a slop pail. But in the end I think everyone was relieved. I was never really scared of the bus driver after that and I think I even remember her smiling once or twice. And I was NEVER EVER forgotten again.

I still had her as a bus driver once I got to the sixth grade and I had put on some height and weight. I was riding home one day and a group of kids were telling this red haired kid they were “gonna pound him” when they got off the bus. They all lived in this kind of lake platt where the bus couldn’t turn around so they all got dropped off at once and had to walk in. I told them to leave him alone because he was smaller and his father worked on my family’s cars and was a good man. They made the mistake of telling me to mind my own business. So as they got off I went with them but the bus driver stopped me. I told her what was going to happen and that she was not going to stop me. By this time they were shoving the red haired boy around outside. She stepped aside and I launched off the bus and mopped up the 5 or 6 kids who were by then pummeling him. I set those kids off running and I know more than one had a bloody nose. She held the bus there until it was over and I got back on. She never said a word. The red haired kid never had any more trouble with the punks and I got to know him pretty good. His father died of cancer a few years later. He sure had a lot of friends. Then about 20 years later I ran into the red haired kid and let me tell you, no one was going to pick a fight with him then. He had turned into a wall of muscle. It was good to see him again. He had become a top mechanic and was still a good guy just like his father.

The school itself was a marvel of technology; it was a brick structure with 8 class rooms complete with steam heat in both cold and hot weather. I remember the echo in the main hall. If you were walking it alone it sounded like your feet were a half mile away. Floors in the classrooms were hardwood with a thousand creaks per room. The teacher knew these creaks by heart. They could avoid them altogether to sneak up on someone not paying attention or use a creak for punctuation when trying to make a point. One teacher would rock back and fourth when she read out loud and used a creak for a metronome.

The boy’s bathroom had gang urinals along the walls and in the middle was a community hand wash station that was foot operated sending a hundred little jets of water into the big granite basin. Sort of a wash fountain if you will. I don’t know what the girls had in their retreat but a couple of boys did, by either daring them or just shoving them in to the piercing screams of the little darlings. School began at 9:00am sharp and no one walked in late. You brought lunch boxes but the school did have milk you could buy if you were rich. I had a Three Stooges lunch box at first but one of the teachers thought they were not role models and suddenly we were shopping for a more appropriate theme. I settled on a USN Nautilus submarine on one side and the USN George Washington on the other. Subs were cool!

Along that same note we were still in the cold war and at least once a week we had to crawl under the desk and shield our heads and eyes until the all clear. Just incase some red man somewhere far off tossed a nuke at Rhode Island. I figured if he did my grandfather would get him too. But it was still pretty cool to break up a math class by diving under your desk and giggling while checking out Wendy Applebee. I really don’t remember that happening, but if I knew then what I know now!

We got our Measels Vaccine and our sugar cube laced with Polio Vaccine. We were checked for lice and cooties often. Our hearing and sight was tested by diabolitical machinery with androids wordlessly twisting dials and flipping switches.

We had a snack around 10:30 to keep up our sugar levels, that was usually a piece of fruit but some brought Twinkies or such. Lucky stiffs! Quickly we were back at work until noon.

I think I was in the third grade when they put an addition on the school. Two new classrooms and a big cafeteria filled out the place nicely. Very big matronly looking ladies dished out wonderous meals out of large steaming pans filled with viddles. I remember the American Chop Suey, and the chocolate pudding with a peanut butter crumble on it was to die for. Most of the other stuff was to die from. So it was hot lunches after that. You got an hour to eat. If you finished half of your meal you could go out for recess for the rest of the hour. Jailbreak!!!

The schoolyard was another world. You could choose from Baseball, Red Rover (Dodgeball) or Army while the girls stood around giggling or playing jump rope. There were a few rules. No roughhousing, no fighting, no leaving the school grounds and never ever get wet. Maybe I better get a little specific on this one. Never get wet when Mrs. Hope the 5^th grade teacher was the recess monitor.

Now it was pretty bad in spring when the puddles were large and you were outside playing. But it was worse for the boys when the snow was piled high because that was time for snow forts and snowball fights. As we were lining up to go back in Mrs. Hope would come down the line grabbing trousers and feeling if they were wet. If they were you got pulled into another line and stood there while the others marched in to their classrooms. After they were all settled in we were led to a spare room where there were scissors and newspaper waiting. Mrs. Hope was a blur of motion AND before you knew it you were wearing a paper dress. Imagine that happening today? It was said that after wearing 4 paper dresses that you would have to wear the next one without your pants on. I wore one once and never did see anyone wear one pantsless. Let me tell you at that age and that time just the idea of having to walk back into your classroom with a dress on was enough to scar you for life! I still can’t read a newspaper front to back. Usually I read the comics and then run. Damn you Mrs. Hope! She was actually a very dedicated and very good teacher. She taught kids her whole life.

Boys will be boys and kids will be kids. Nothing but truth there, boy howdy! One of the nastiest fads was the year of the spitball. Every boy had either a straw or a Bic pen and it was the equivalent of a combat rifle. We would rip off a little piece of paper and roll it into a little ball in our mouths. Then place it into the end of one of these weapons and with a good aim and a sharp blow send this spittle encrusted wad flying into our opponents head. In every classroom was a big picture of George Washington on the wall I remember in one classroom he was subjected to a white pox. In all, about 10-15 spitballs had stuck and dried on the father of this country’s noble face.

Then we had a new kid transfer in. A kid I’ll call the engineer. I don’t know where or what he’s doing today but I can imagine him as a lead engineer in some military weapons firm. He had the nerve to take school warfare up a notch and a half. He came in one day with a spitball shooter that had a mouthpiece AND a scope. The mouthpiece enabled him to fire spitballs at unheard of velocities. They would actually snap when the hit you and while the scope was only another tube that he could look down as he fired the contraption it did seem to work. His accuracy neared 100%. He had to go on to bigger and better things. He was only there for that year but he made a big impression. I’m betting the Pentagon heard about his Super Spitball Sniper Rifle and grabbed him out of the 3rd grade and sent him straight to E-Ring or maybe hunting pojama people in some far off jungle.. Then again maybe he’s one of those crazy yahoo’s who build giant pumkin chucking guns or trebuchets that throw cars at monster truck shows.

One day sitting in class another teacher came in and whispered to our teacher who assigned the little brown nosed girl to be in charge and then both teachers left the room in a hurry. We then heard sirens, which was no big deal cause the fire station was right across the street but the sirens were in the schoolyard. Of course we all ran to the windows but could see nothing really. After a while our teacher came back and a few students came with her and class resumed. But at recess we learned of a horror story. Seems a new teacher had dropped to the floor during class and swallowed his tongue! Now most of us had never heard of such a thing and I got to tell you when you tell a kid someone swallowed their tongue two things happen. Girls shriek and go eeuuuuuu and boys start trying to do it. None of us had ever heard of Epilepsy. I guess we were just dumb country kids but we had no real clue as what had really happened. But that day I learned. Not at school although that should have been addressed there but at home I told my grandmother about it and got a lesson. Years later a family moved across the street from my parents. They had a son Jeff who was an epileptic. A good kid. One day the state police comes up fast and two really large troopers got out and went into the house. I had a few friends over and we got interested. Turned out Jeff had taken off running down into the woods and the family was scared for him. So the troopers called us to help them find him. We were off and running. We spotted him just sitting on a big rock about 500 yards into the woods. The biggest of the troopers was out of breath but walked up to the kid put his hand on his shoulder and said “Come on son, your parents are worried.”. Jeff in one fluid motion came up over the trooper’s arm and connected with the troopers “lights out” chin button. The trooper crumbled like a straw man. I think we all stood there for a good thirty seconds with our mouths open, even the other trooper was motionless. Then Jeff calmly walked back to his house. The family soon moved away.

When I got to the 6^th grade there were a few new students to get used to. Well, they were not really new because they were in the 6^th grade last year and decided to stay they liked it so much. I think one or two were there for even more than two years. One I distinctly remember was a girl who wore makeup and styled her hair and (gulp) had breasts! Again she was a one year wonder. The 6^th grade teacher’s name was Miss. Burton. She was a old skinny hawk like lady prone to shaking fits of anger. Because of this we called her Birdie. She would blow up and start screaming and shaking. One time during desk inspection (you were required to keep a neat and tidy desk) she found a kid with a messy desk. She grabbed the desk and threw it across the room spilling the mess all over the classroom. The kid let fly with some words he had obviously heard his father use. His father must have flattened a finger with a hammer or had a cow step on his toes because it was a curse that left a blue streak in the air. Birdies face puckered up and she grabbed the kid by the hair and dragged him towards the bathroom. He jerked free and next we saw him out in the schoolyard flipping the bird at Miss Burton’s window and yelling KAW…KAW…KAW, like a demented crow….like …a Birdie. I never saw him in school again after that. I did run into him around town years later. He went to Vietnam and made it through that only to shear off a telephone pole drunk on a Harley one night years later. My father’s grave is next to his and there are always new motorcycle trinkets adorning his marker here 20+ years later.

There was also the baseball incident. We played baseball out in the corner of a gravel field. The backstop was a 4 foot high chain link fence. It was just a pickup game but it was a lot of fun. I had sort of a running feud with one of the kids. A square headed, pock marked kid whose family was noted for stirring it up. He was desperately trying to fit in so he would mouth off to me quite a lot. I kind of got a kick out of it once I realized he was just talk and he didn’t really want it to escalate. So one day I’m sitting against the fence waiting for my turn at bat and he comes over and starts hitting the top of the fence right over me with the bat. I looked up at him (a new perspective cause I usually looked down) and told him to knock it off. It was then that someone called to him to come up and bat. He was in his downswing when he turned at his name being called and he clobbered me. Sent me off to dreamland he did. Everyone headed for the hills while I gently slumbered. Recess ended and everyone went inside. I awoke to an empty schoolyard and had an egg sized lump on my larger lump. By the time I was to the door of the school the teachers were coming out to find me. I told them I had tripped and fell on one of the many rocks that were out in the yard. They put ice on it and made me follow their fingers with my eyes and gave me some juice to drink and then it was back to class, lump and all. Today it would be a trip to the hospital, multiple written reports, psychological exams, lawyers and lynch mobs of parents. Of course I didn’t tell my grandfather because I didn’t need another lump to even me off.

Old Squarehead disappeared from the educational system also. But I would run into him around town and slowly he started opening his mouth again. Mostly in the company of others who knew him to be a loud mouth. His family were in tough times and I would just let him talk and say “Come on if your coming!”. I did kind of feel extra bad for him once as I was in a local dance club with a girlfriend one night . She was the daughter of a big time city cop and a hell of a lot of fun to be with. Well, Squarehead walked in with a few local boys and sat a couple tables down from us. He spotted me and started mouthing. I told the girl to ignore him but she just couldn’t. She got up walked down to his table and lit into him. She called him everything in the book all with a tough beat cop flair. I enjoyed the show for a while and then went to retrieve her when it looked like he could take no more. When he saw me coming he about knocked over another table getting out of the way. The others in his party just sat there all quiet and sweet like. I brought my now smiling girlfriend back to our table and the Squarehead gang left the building with him in tow. He finally moved to Ohio, I think where he died a few years ago. I don’t understand people like that. I did find out where all these “kids” were disappearing to. Turns out there was a school that opened for lets say “problem kids” in an old Government Nike Missile Site that was decommissioned. Something tells me there were no Proms, Graduations or Reunions from that school. Later it turned into a State Police training academy.

My old school still stands today but it is not a school anymore. The town built better more modern structures and still no personal jet packs. They sold the old school to a group of nurses who ran it for quite a few years and today I think it is a daycare.

Kids still ride the big yellow thingies. My teachers are long gone and so is my bus driver and some friends. Things change. But you know now that I think about it ….it’s still uphill both ways. Yes it is.