DEAR OLD GOLDEN RULE DAYS, PART 1

The bestselling record of 1907 was “School Days,” by Byron G. Harlan.  I doubt if anyone under 50 has ever heard of it, but the chorus, at least, was familiar enough when I was a kid:  “School days, school days, dear old golden rule days.  Reading and writing and ‘rithmetic, taught to the tune of the hick’ry stick.”  It seems odd to think there was a time when people asked each other, “Hey, have you heard this great new song called ‘School Days?’”  There’s a YouTube link at the end of this post, in case you’re interested in what Americans went wild for 110 years ago.  Spoiler alert, though.  It’s not very good.

And now, here’s the story of something else that happened a long time ago and wasn’t very good – my first day of school.  It happened in Wichita, Kansas, in 1952.  I was a real mama’s boy back then.  The first picture of me doesn’t even have me in it.  It was a group photo, taken around 1950, of my mom’s side of the family.  There were aunts, uncles, and at least a dozen cousins from the first wave of the post-war baby boom.  I was hiding behind my mother’s dress.

If shyness can be inherited, I got it from my father’s side of the family.  My father’s father was a man of few words.  He died when my dad was four or five, in the then-new state of Oklahoma.  My dad was born in 1910.  When his older sister, my Aunt Cleo, was born, it was still Indian Territory.  Aunt Cleo remembered only two things about my grandfather.  He was a Democrat – maybe I inherited that too – who celebrated the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 by firing his pistol into the air.  And not long after that, he died of tuberculosis.  Those two pieces of information represent the sum total of family lore about my Grandfather Mitchell.

My father wasn’t so taciturn, especially around family, but he didn’t have any close friends apart from Aunt Cleo and my mom’s largish family.  I’m a pretty quiet guy, but compared to my father and grandfather, I’m practically an extrovert.

There was no such thing as pre-school when I was young.  Wichita was a mini-boom town after the war, with a rural mentality that was slowly adjusting to the fact that its population had exceeded 100,000.  Three large aircraft factories – Boeing, Beechcraft, Cessna – collectively made up the region’s largest employers.  Before the war, it was one of the few places that offered work to Arkies and Okies (including my father) displaced by the Great Dust Bowl.

In the years after World War II, there were kids all over the place – that famous baby boom – and I could always find someone to play with.  This was completely unstructured play, always outdoors unless it was raining, with no parental supervision.  Mothers on the block were probably looking out the window occasionally, but the assumption was that we’d be OK.  And as best I can remember, we were.  I broke my collarbone a couple of times, first when I fell off my tricycle and then again when I was wrestling with a neighbor friend.  We had our share of bumps and bruises, but crime was non-existent, and our doors were never locked.

Back then, everyone born in the same year started school at the same time.  Some of my kindergarten classmates, including me, had already had their fifth birthday.  Others were still four when they started school.  Kindergarten was held in half-day shifts, and I was assigned to the afternoon shift.  My school was Ingalls Elementary, a little less than half a mile from my home.  To get there, though, I had to cross a major street, which had traffic lights and a safety patrol.

I can’t remember why I felt so strongly about it, but I dreaded having to go to school.  I literally had to be dragged, screaming and crying, into my classroom.  I don’t remember anything else about that school day, but I remember panicking when school was out, because I had no idea how to get home. 

Somehow, I had the notion that no one would help me unless we were friends, and I didn’t know any of my new classmates.  So I kept approaching bewildered kids and saying “Will you be my friend?  Great.  Can you help me find my way home?”  Of course, my mother was standing nearby, chatting with a gaggle of other moms waiting to pick up their kids.  For a guy who went on to earn a couple of masters’ degrees and put in a 35 year career in academia, it was a pretty inauspicious start to my formal education. 

One thing I particularly disliked about kindergarten was that the afternoon shift had a mandatory nap time.  We all had rolled up rag rugs, which stayed in the classroom.  A daily nap sounds pretty good these days, but back then I was a total failure at napping.  It was awful trying to lie still for what seemed an endless amount of time – probably 15-20 minutes – while most of the other kids slept. 

Ingalls was an integrated school, so I encountered black kids for the first time in my life.  I made friends with one of them in 1st or 2nd grade.  His name was Roscoe, and we’d meet up at recess and play together.  I remember one time we were at the far end of the playground and didn’t hear the bell ring, so we were late getting back to class.  When we finally noticed that we were the only ones still outside, I was terrified.  I thought sure we were in for some terrible punishment.  Roscoe was pretty blasé about it, and since I don’t remember what happened when we got back inside, I assume Roscoe was right not to sweat it.  We must have gotten off with nothing more than a mild warning. I often wonder what happened to Roscoe.

I stayed at Ingalls through 3rd grade, and then we moved across town, from the north-central area to what was then pretty far southeast.  We needed more space because my mom was pregnant with my second sister.  Race may have played some role in the decision to move, as black families were moving into our neighborhood.  I don’t know that for sure, and neither of my parents were overtly racist in any way, but our old neighborhood quickly transitioned from white to black during that period.

 We moved to 709 S. Terrace, which was only two blocks from my grandparents’ house (my mother’s parents).  Terrace was on the crest of a hill, and we could look out our back door and see my grandparent’s back yard on Belmont.  A couple of my mom’s brothers also lived within a few blocks.  The Clines were a tight knit family.      

That was in the summer of 1956, which I remember for two things.  That summer was when I first heard rock & roll, and it was also when my Grandma Mitchell died.

To be continued.  Here's the link to Byron G. Harlan's "School Days" from1907 :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Ekos0ogYs