Kindergarten and First Grade in the early 1950s

My educational career began in kindergarten at Riley School, in Glen Park, one of the suburbs of Gary, Indiana.  Keith was three years older than me, and we rode a city bus to school.  This was not a school bus, so we had to put a few pennies (I think it was three) in the change and ticket box beside the bus driver every morning.  This box had glass sides so you could see what had been dropped into it.  It also had a two-piece bottom that opened to empty the contents into a container below.

My memories of kindergarten are few, but I do remember how it seemed strange to have a sliding board inside the classroom.  I also remember my favorite time around the piano.  Miss Boone taught us to click our fingers when we sang “Up on the Housetop Reindeer Pause.”  Only I thought it was reindeer paws until my older and wiser brother explained it to me.  Reindeer had hooves, not paws.  But he never explained why we still sang about reindeer paws.  The word “pause” had no meaning to me until years later.

I went to the brand new Pitman Square Elementary School in the first grade.  It had been built at the end of my block and diagonally across the street.  Because it was so close to home, Keith and I walked to and from school, and we even walked home for lunch every day.

I liked school and usually did well, though I had a grade of “N” (for needs improvement) on the first page of my first reading workbook.  If I had listened more carefully, I would have gotten it right, but…  We were to color Dick, Jane and Sally out of a drawing of several children.  I was probably daydreaming and hadn’t heard the names “Dick, Jane and Sally,” but I did hear Miss Carter remind us that we should color one boy and two girls, which I did.  But I colored the wrong boy and girls, and had to look at that “N” on the first page every time I opened the workbook. 

One day close to Halloween the teacher handed out our workbooks but for some unknown reason I didn’t get mine.  She then began the lesson so I put my head down and cried.  I told her I wanted to go home and make paper bats like my mama had taught me to make.  I guess somehow she figured out that the real problem was that I didn’t have my workbook, so when she handed it to me all was well with the world again.

It was apparently an election year, as one day school was closed for “boating at the poles.”  At least that is what I thought they were saying.  I thought they were going to flood the schools so people could ride boats from one pole to another.  I’m not sure how long it was before I understood what “voting at the polls” meant.

I also remember a day when the teacher told us that there was a “tomato warning” and I imagined a huge tomato coming through the sky to splatter all over everything.  I eventually was able to grasp the concept of a tornado, but as with the “boating,” it didn’t come to me all at once.

One day we did finger painting.  Miss Carter encouraged us to use more than our fingertips.  We were to use our whole hand and even our arms if we wanted.  Daddy had recently taught me how to make a fish by making two curved lines that crossed close to the tail end of the fish and then making the mouth, eyes, gill and closing in the tail.  So I took the plan and used my arms to make the top and bottom curved lines.  Then I used my fingers and hands to finish it off.  My teacher loved my fish and hung it on the classroom door until the end of the school year.

Pitman Square School is where students, with parents’ permission, were given vaccinations for polio and smallpox.  It was also where I was given my one and only tattoo.  Students were given blood tests to determine their blood type, and then the blood type was tattooed onto their left sides.  My blood type is O positive.  Keith was type A if I remember correctly.  It hurt.  I still have my blood type card in my pocketbook, though in this day and time, I’m sure it would never be looked for or needed.  And when a doctor sees the strange blue marking on my side he usually becomes concerned about skin cancer until I tell him about my tattoo.

We moved to Rochester, Indiana in the summer before I started second grade.  A year or two later, we went back to Gary for a visit. I went to school with my former neighbor and friend Linda Mummery for a day.  She took me to see Miss Carter, but I couldn’t remember what she looked like.  When I saw her I felt really bewildered because she didn’t look anything like I expected.

© 2002, 2009 by Janice D. Green