I think it was second grade that I was sick and missed most of the year. Not sure about that. Maybe, it was more like six weeks. I think that was the grading period. I don’t know the diagnosis, except I had a high fever and I must have had a very high fever because I was hospitalized. I had a room to my self becuse this was the segregated South. I remember the IV had to put in my thigh and it took some times for the punctures to heal. I remember the books that visitors from church and relatives brought. Mostly picture books if I remember correctly. I remember the nasty tasting tonic I had to take every day. I was very thin…Skinny Minny…that’s what my sister and brothers called me. I remember reading fairy tales with Mama. I guess that kept my reading skills up to par. I don’t remember doing any formal lessons. Reading fairy tales. I don’t remember any details. I don’t remember going back to school.
In the third grade, we learned cursive writing. Mrs. T had beautiful, readable handwriting. My mother had beaautiful handwriting. My father did not. I did not have beautiful or readable handwriting. Needless to say, I made C’s in handwriting. I didn’t know it then, but I was nearsighted and I could not see what I was writing…not in sharp detail. So, what looked fine to me, never looked fine to Mrs. T. I remember there was a two shelf bookcase of library books that I spent a lot of time reading. There was a biography of Charles Drew and young adult novels…fifties style… All the characters were white, but in my head, they weren’t. That’s the magic of reading. You can imagine the characters to look like you.
This was the year, I started reading my mother’s Reader’s Digest condensed books. THe first novel I remember reading was Kirkland Revels by Victoria Holt. I think most of her books were condensed by Reader’s Digest. Anyway, through time, I’ve read most of the books written under the pseudonym Victoria Holt. To this day, I enjoy mystery/detective/romance combo novels. We had Time Magazine, Jet, Good Housekeeping, the newspaper. I’m sure there were some other magazines, etc., but those are the ones I remember. We also had the full set of Funk &Wagnall’s encyclopedia. I think they were part of some promotion at the grocery store. Like when you got so many stamps per dollar purchase and we would fill the books with the green stamps or yellow stamps and redeem them for merchandise. The only grocery store I remember was the A & P. Krogers was there at some point, but we didn’t shop there or very rarely.
Don’t remember much about fourth or fifth grade. Mrs. T left and Mrs. B was my teacher in the fourth grade. One morning, on the bus, on a dirt road not wide enough for two cars, the bus and a car tried to navigate a curb at the same time. I remember the impact as the two vehicles crunched together and stopped, crunched together and neither could move. Mrs. B rode the bus from Clarksville to school and I was sitting beside her. I remember her flinging her arm out to keep me in the seat. I remember standing on the side of the road. Don’t remember actually going to school. No one was hurt.
I was never in the same room with my older brother or sister or my younger brothers. I think the gades in each room changed each year. Probably dependent on the number of students in the grades. I think, at some point, the third grade was in Mrs. Perkins’s room.
We had music classes. Mrs. W had sessions at the school every so often. She was a traveling music teacher. She was the music teacher for all the Black elementary schools in the County. I know of three, but there may have been more…Cobb, Broomfield, and Rossview.
Sixth grade is when we could work in the kitchen. Well, if you were female, you could. We weren’t given a choice. Mrs. Ahad no help. Mrs. A was a very good cook. She made the best peanut butter brownies. That was my favorite. One time, I was working in the kitchen and she made pineapple upside down cake. It was so good! I ate too much and was sick the whole night. Since then, I have never eaten pineapple upside down cake. Sometimes we ate the school lunce, but mostly(?) we brown bagged it. I don’t think there was a lot of disposable income…not with five children.
The boys got the janitorial duties. When Mrs. G was angry or frustrated with us, she would say we would only be maids and janitors. That did not turn out to be true. She was teaching future doctors, lawyers, business men/women, teachers, engineers…people who would have jobs that paid a living wage.
In the sixth grade, we got individual desks. Most were written on and carved with initials and drawings. We rarely got new books, but sometimes we did. The used books would have the names of the previous possessorors written inside the book. Sometimes the pages would be torn and there would be underlining. I don’t remember having a lot of homework. I think a lot of what we did, the teachers created it and copied it on the mimeograph machine. I remember we got new books when New Math was the rage. I think New Math was only taught for a couple of years. Must have been the third and fourth grades when we had the flash cards with the multiplication table and at some point we had to learn up to the 12’s.
Spelling was also a big deal. We would line up andhave to speel the words we had memorized. If we misspelled a word, we would get a lick with the paddle. I think the paddle was the back of a chair as it had holes in it.
Yes, the teachers could paddle us. Mostly, we toed he line so as to avoid the paddle. I liked to talk, so I got some licks for talking when I shouldn’t have.
We always had recess and, after lunch, up until sixth grade, we were encouraged to take a nap.
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved
