The Good Old Days/ 1949

(by Judy Decker)

Wesleyville School was a one building school district with kindergarten through twelfth grade located in a red brick, two story building of moderate size. The superintendent/principal's office was housed in the building with the thirteen teachers who taught each different level. All of the elementary was made up of self contained class rooms. The junior and senior high school was departmentalized into core subjects of math, science, reading, English, history and Latin. Talk about equal opportunity, everyone got exactly the same curriculum taught by the same teacher.

My brother, five years older than I, was obligated to walk me to and from school every day. We lived exactly one mile from school, all down hill going and all up hill coming home. That walk was akin to a death march for the tiny, frail little girl that I once was. "Hurry up slow poke." My brother prodded me kindly to encourage me, but each step that I took on the way home was a symbol of iron willed determination which pushed me to the limit of physical endurance. I was a taciturn child who napped for two hours in the afternoon right up to my first day of first grade which I started at the age of five years and one month. That I could read automatically separated me out of kindergarten and away from my own age group.

What an ordeal first grade was, a shock to a painfully shy child. Two little wooden desks were attached to a double sized bench, an economical use of space which allowed forty plus students to pack the undersized room, sitting two by two. My seat mate was not quite potty trained and, the first time that she had an accident I leaped from my desk in shock at the hot wetness soaking through my dress. The teacher judged that I was a rude child and slapped a ruler twelve times across my knuckles. Both my seat mate and I were united in our mortification. No attempt was made to address our wet and increasingly smelly condition.

My brother was sympathetic to my bedraggled appearance and fostered my failing confidence with his ten year old version of rage against the bureaucratic machine. He has always been protective of me. We decided against telling my parents, and by the time I got home from school, the hot September air had dried my dress. Feeling guilty for not telling my mother the whole tale, I threw my dress in the clothes hamper. My mother must have assumed that I had had the accident and thoughtfully avoided asking any questions.

I was a silent and worried little thing, keeping an eye out for any sign of anger from the teacher. I wanted to avoid her disapproval at any cost. Discipline in the room was demonstrated in silent industriousness from every student. While Mrs. A. drilled skills in reading circle, little turquoise painted, spindle backed chairs in a semi circle around a huge sized Dick and Jane reader, the teacher pointed to each huge word with her wooden stick while Bluebirds or Robins read dutifully along with her. The rest of the class colored red apples and red balls and red tomatoes. We colored five blue buckets for the number five, and three yellow suns for the number three. Seat work took most of us minutes, but we were expected to work on our seat work for nearly an hour while the reading groups drilled. We sat diligently coloring and recoloring each item, carefully staying within the lines and never looking up from the task at hand.

I don't recall any effort being made to "socialize" us or if anyone enjoyed school, I don't think there was an expectation that school would be fun. But there were good times. Recess under the watchful eye of Mrs. A. was highly organized with each group of little girls getting a jump rope. We jumped to wonderful, memorable rhythms:

My mother and your mother were out hanging up clothes.
My mother punched your mother right in the nose.
What color was the blood??

The turners increased the speed at which they turned until the rope slapped against the cement pad. Girls screamed out colors: 'Red. Yellow. Green. Sky blue pink." Around the excited circle went the demand for a new color until either the jumper missed or the group ran out of colors.

Another favorite rhythm frozen in time:

Down in the valley where the green grass grows.
There say (Janie) as sweet as a rose.
She sang. She sang. She sang so sweet.
Along came (Billy) and kissed her on the cheek.
How many kisses did she receive?

The groups of girls screamed out, " One. Two. Three." On and on until the jumper, skirt flouncing, skinny legs with white socks and Buster Brown tie shoes flying, failed to time her jump to the increasing speed of the rope.

Mrs. A., stern and expressionless, arms folded across her ample bosom, stood nearer to where the boys played team dodge ball, the better to supervise them. Girls and boys remained separated on the playground for as long as I attended that school.

After recess we hung our wraps neatly in the cloak room at the back of the class. The cloak room was outfitted with metal hooks in a row for coats and scarves, a little shelf above the hooks for hats and gloves and wooden doors vertically louvered which closed the smell of wet wool from the hot, dusty, chalky smell of the classroom. Then came my favorite time of the day; from her desk top book shelf containing a black leather covered bible which was read for opening exercises, and our classroom textbooks, Mrs. A. selected her oral reader. She was a wonderful, dramatic reader who changed her voice for every character. She read the entire Boxcar Children series to us, as we listened dreamily to the adventures, some little heads resting on their desk. Then she arose from her seat behind her desk, her silky dress rustling smoothly and proceeded to the upright piano by the wall of large windows. She smoothed the seat of her dress before gracefully sliding onto the piano stool and instructed us to sing along with her from an ever increasing repertoire of songs
memorized by repetition:

Oh beautiful for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountains majesty
Above the fruited plain
America
America
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good
With brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

We sang this song daily until every voice rejoiced in the singing, then moved on to learning seasonal songs:

Over the river and through the woods
To Grandmother's house we go
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh
As over the fields we go, oh.

Time passed slowly for that little girl. The reader must be gentle if my memory isn't as precise as it should be, and kindly forgive any unintentional errors made in recalling that year, 1949.

(correlates: CatchAndRelease, DeptOfRedundancyDept, KnowNot, ...)