I started kindergarten in September of 1939. School was not an entirely new experience for me. When it was necessary for my mother to go there, she took us younger children along rather than find a babysitter. In fact, she took us just about everywhere, as was common during the Depression, unless there was a close relative, or very good friend who wouldn’t expect to be paid. I’d spent one afternoon visiting my older sister’s classroom to familiarize me with the building, routines, sitting quietly at a desk and seeing how students were expected to behave. I liked the music class with the pretty music teacher who resembled the movie actress and singer Katherine Grayson. I enjoyed recess, except for the fact that it didn’t last long enough.
I knew about lessons and assignments. Flash cards and quizzes were familiar as well, because my older sister had taught me many of the things she had learned in school, long before I would encounter them myself. By the first day of kindergarten, I could count to one hundred, recite the alphabet, read at near the first-grade level and write my name in cursive. She had drilled me until I could add and subtract numbers up into the twenties, identify all the colors in the box of sixteen crayons, and spell several dozen words up to six letters long. I could stay inside the lines in my coloring books, sing “I’m a Little Teapot” with appropriate gestures, tie my shoelaces and rattle off our address and phone number. I was ready for school. The teacher, Miss Simon, said that it had not been a good idea for me to learn so many things the “wrong” way and that I would have difficulties un-learning them before I could progress properly. Her dire prediction never came true.
The kindergarten classroom was in the basement of the schoolhouse and we were seated at tables of six to eight students. Kindergarten met for only half days, and I was assigned to the afternoon class. I shared a table with Charles, Rosemary, Robert, Betty, Tom, Jack and Norma Jo. I met Norma Jo while walking to school on the first afternoon. She was strolling along with her mother who held an umbrella to shield them from the hot midday sun because Norma Jo had a heart murmur and was in delicate health. Her house was only one street over from mine, and I expected that we would soon be walking to and from school together every day, but that was not to be. Norma Jo missed many days of school and was often taken to and from school in her father’s car.
Within the first few days, I discovered that both Betty and Charles headed off in the same direction as I did after school, and we soon fell into a routine of walking together. Betty lived only a couple blocks from school, so Charles and I covered the remaining distance together until we went our separate ways a block from his house and I headed off in a different direction to mine. The whole distance to my house from the school was about six or seven blocks and it should have taken us only fifteen minutes to get home, but we strolled along so slowly that the trip often lasted for forty-five minutes or more. We talked continuously, about everything in our lives, from our favorite foods to our bossy big sisters, from family vacations to secret fears, pets and pet peeves. Charles became my best friend. He was a sunny little boy with freckles and a creative streak that would later throw us together working on projects at school.
The classes then were large; after kindergarten, the first grade was divided into two classes of over thirty children each. This was done alphabetically and we were fortunate to remain in the same classroom until the end of third grade when Charles moved with his parents and sisters to a different part of town and attended a different school until we met again in junior high. Then, classes were divided alphabetically into thirds and we never shared classes again until high school.
In fourth grade, I soon found a new best friend — Eleanor. You’ll meet her next week.