From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

Remember that frightening first day of school? Only five years old, I was the only kid crying to go home on that monumental first day of school, Sept. 5, 1950.

Patty’s heart-wrenching cries for Momma must have embarrassed Mom. Relief finally came when Mom spotted my friend Martha, a little neighbor pal, who sat at a desk near the back, her pigtails askew. No ribbons decorated her tomboy garb of jeans and a shirt handed down from her brother. 

I wanted to be just like Martha. She could out run, out climb and shoot marbles on the playground better than most of the boys. Martha combed her own hair: Martha was very self-sufficient.   

Twenty-six pupils stiffly sat in attached-to-the-floor desks with hard wooden seats mounted on black wrought iron brackets. First graders’ writing desks opened wide to store crayons in the yellow and green box, #2 pencils and papers from the teacher, with red pencil marks. I sat crying, my round face flushed with frustration, fear and discomfort. My naturally curly hair sprung ringlets around my sweaty, red face. Mom had twisted my thick head of hair into tall pipe curls with white rags the night before. A humongous satin bow of grosgrain ribbon crowned my chubby head. The glamorous Miss Gullander smiled at me from her third grade classroom, her harlequin glasses were rimmed with rhinestones which sparkled in the sunlight from the big windows.

Give me a break on the crying! I was only five, not quite six like most of my seat mates. My birthday often coincided with the first day of school. My Mom would bake a tall white angel food cake frosted with whipped peaks of seven minute frosting and twisted birthday candles for me and my friends.

School days, rule days…we had to line up at the drinking fountain in the school hallway, littlest kids first; bigger kids last. At mid-morning milk time, we lined up for white or chocolate, tiny, waxed cartons of milk from the metal grid carrying cases. Single file, we got in line to go to the bathrooms, to the lunchroom and outdoors for recess, my favorite subject. The playground had teeter-totters and a merry-go-round, a metal slide that burned my bottom when it was hot, a hand-over-hands and tall swings hung on fat metal poles. Kids pushed each other: we pumped our legs, back and forth, swinging high into the heavens, with tummies hoping yet fearing that we’d swing so high we might go over the poles in a full somersault! What hopes we had, to actually flip on the poles. Our stomachs flipped into our throats in anticipation!

The monkey bars tested my skills and stubborn nature for hanging on to those cold steel bars. Feet dangling, I swung my toes up to touch the bars, my foot grabbing a bar so I could hoist myself up and sit on top of the monkey bars. Though my hands blistered from swinging on the bars, I felt powerful and strong. 

But my favorite spot was the teeter-totter. We’d piggy-back on the seats, to make one side heavier on the bottom than the opposite seat, high above the ground. When a kid would jump off her seat; the opposite seat would topple, then kerplunk to the ground, causing a partner to yelp with surprise and a bit of pain on her bumpa. I’d giggle and laugh with abandon at her discomfort. Of course, in a few turns, she’d give me the same kerplunking treatment.

After school snacks meant Mom’s home-made chocolate chip cookies and a tall glass of Oak Grove Dairy white whole milk. If it was hot, I’d grab an orange from the fridge, cut a small square in the top, insert a molded sugar cube, from Mom’s sugar bowl, and suck juice through the sugar cube. If Mom’s pocketbook was slim that month and we couldn’t afford fresh oranges from Harry’s Grocery Store, I’d settle for Kool-Aid powder on tongue-moistened finger tips. 

No Twinkies for me…homemade sugar treats were the best reward after a long day in the school room where kids rigidly sat in their seats, longingly dreaming of summer next year.