Before I Can No Longer Remember: 2 - My K-5 Schools

I often remember and think about the many schools I attended as an itinerant kid who wasn't much interested in what other kids were interested in. Fads always seemed completely stupid to me and I avoided a lot of stuff simply because it was popular. So much happened in those schools, so many choices, so much boredom, so many challenges being the new kid over and over again. Let's see...(counting on my fingers)...'off-hand', I count sixteen campuses during my lifetime. Some years come in more clearly than others. I'm hoping that more of the past will come into focus as I work through this. My blogs are improvised.

1964 – Kindergarten @ East End Firehall, Poughkeepsie, New York.
While the new elementary school was being built, kids were farmed-out to other locations. The left side of this building was a single large classroom run by an old lady named Mrs. Donato who would hit you on the hand with a ruler if you misbehaved. The right side of the building was a functioning firehouse with fire trucks, siren, a dog, the whole deal. Yesterday, I contacted a couple of people in the Wappingers Falls and Poughkeepsie Public School systems to try and get a photograph of the place, if it still stands. I remember a few occasions when the fire siren would sound and the whole class would exit the room to the large field behind for an unexpected extra recess. We weren't supposed to go into the woods. There was an adjacent house with raspberries growing in its backyard. We could get at them through the chain-link fence. There was also a big apple tree back there, but the apples were always buggy and blemished. Mrs. Donato would sometimes fall asleep at her desk when we were quietly engaged in desk-activities. One time, while she was dozing - resulting in my first spanking - I sneaked into the bathroom with my friend Janet and did face-painting with her – unfortunately for me, with permanent markers.

1965 - 1st Grade @ Sheafe Road School, Wappingers Falls, New York
While looking up info, I read that the approximate median home value this school now serves is $319,200! I don't remember being upper middle class back then. This was a tiny, 20-classroom, one-level elementary school on a low hill that had been built the year before, the one we had been displaced to a firehouse from. It had athletic fields behind, but I don't remember spending a moment on them during that year. For reasons which I will not go into here, I have very little recollection of 1st and 2nd Grade. At some point, I did something that warranted a paddling, and remember my father having to come to the Principal's Office to retrieve me. I can't remember my 1st grade teacher's name.

I had just one friend during our two years in Wappingers Falls, a girl named Janet Taylor. Her parents lived in the closest thing to The Munsters' or Addams Family's house I have ever seen. The huge 19th century Gothic mansion sat atop a tall, wooded hill accessible only by a twisting and rutted road, once paved. My dominant memory there is of shade and moisture. It must have once belonged to a wealthy individual. The ruins of an in-ground swimming pool were used as a pen for their Great Dane dogs and the large surrounding property was private, grassy, and covered with tall old-growth trees. The house was gigantic and had many rooms. Janet and her sister's bedroom was easily 25' long with a sun room along one side and had a “secret staircase”, only about 2' wide, that led steeply down to the kitchen. I remember them having lots of musical instruments and a piano in the dining room, a winding staircase in the main room, and fireplaces that I could stand upright in. Her house was a great place to play and Janet's father was building a canoe by hand in the cobwebby basement, the only part of the house that gave me the creeps enough not to explore. Near the end of 2nd Grade, while we were playing on the wrap-around porch. Janet walked out with a new board game called 'Mystery Date'. UH-oh.

1966-1968 2nd & 3rd Grade @ Brookside Elementary School, Indianapolis, Indiana
Mostly a blur, the school that I walked to in Indiana was a flat, X-shaped, recently-built complex with a tall cafeteria and dying grass nearly all around. The Art Teacher would come to classroom with a rolling cart full of paper, scissors, and paint. My recess was usually spent on the swings, competition for the best of which often led to fights. A bully named 'Hank' was a frequent opponent. On the way to lunch one time, a kid tripped and drove the point of the pencil he was carrying into my knee. I can still see the mark. My two teachers were Mrs. Klopfenstein (2nd) and Mrs. Shook (3rd), neither memorable. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what we kids called Mrs. Klopfenstein behind her back. I was sent to the office a few times those years, usually because I had defended myself from someone “too much”.

We lived in a small ranch house on a concrete slab, no basement. This always struck me as stupid because tornadoes were frequent. I witnessed one up close when I was eight. It sent aluminum sheds tumbling over fences and sucked picnic table umbrellas straight into the sky while we watched from the bathroom window. The next day on TV, a reporter showed a tree trunk that had a McDonald's drinking straw sticking all the way through it. YIKES! Some neighbors at the “rich kid end of the street” had concrete storm shelters in their yards, like in the Wizard of Oz. Whenever I got to look or go inside one of them, it was a special thing to see all of the "survival stuff".

There were two apple trees in our backyard, also bearing buggy and blemished fruit; but good for climbing. I got my first bicycle, a Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat, the first summer. I taught myself how to “pop wheelies”, “do skids”, and ride pretty well with no hands. I had three friends in the neighborhood, although I felt as though I was always the one who had to set up playing with them. Back then, kids could buy firecrackers all year long in the local drug store: from tiny 'Black Cats' to big cherry bombs and 'M-80's' that could take a finger off, sparklers, smoke bombs and "snakes". A really mean big kid lived across the street. I remember his name – Jim Dent. The property was littered with debris, beer bottles, and broken cars. He would kick my ass every chance he got. He was chasing me once and cornered me at the gate to our backyard before I could open it. In the midst of the beating, I remember my mom magically appearing, clobbering him, and rescuing me. I kept pet mice in a covered terrarium in my bedroom. My little sister Liz convinced me to let her hold one once. She accidentally squeezed it like a toy and its eyes popped out. Oops.

There was a cute girl, two or three years older than me, who lived two doors from the Dents. Sometimes I would go over to her house to look at the fish in the big aquarium in their living room. Occasionally, she babysat me and my sister when our folks went out. I can clearly remember the time she brought over a colorful record album that opened up and had really neat pictures called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I made her play the songs 'Fixing a Hole' and “A Day in the Life” again and again for me while I examined the album cover. My entrance into Rock and Roll.

Parents were not hung-up and terrified about kidnapping and child-molestation back then. My folks allowed me enough freedom to explore and enjoy the areas we lived in. There was a dusty city park just a bike ride away. One day while we were playing at the park, a kid stepped on a board with a long rusty nail in it that went all the way through his sneaker and foot. I ran and got a grocery cart from the strip mall next door and we pushed him home in it. We thought he needed to go to the hospital, but his dad simply yanked the thing off and said, “Stay here. I'll get some iodine.”

1969 - 4th Grade @ John T. Roberts Elementary School, Syracuse, New York
Dad was transferred back to New York State the summer before 4th Grade and we moved into the top floor of an old 3-decker on Colvin Avenue in an older residential area in the city. Directly behind our house and its surrounding 12' high chain-link fence was stately old Onondaga Park, with tennis courts, tall trees and trails, swings, merry-go-rounds, and see-saws, concrete water fountains, unkempt garden areas with their strange lichen-covered statues and algae and moss-overrun reflecting pools, places to fly kites, carp-fishing, and summer swimming in, and winter skating on, the Hiawatha Lake Pool. I spent most of my free time in that park and knew it like the back of my hand. There was an old brick firehouse at the top of Summit Avenue, with a shiny brass pole and a real dalmatian dog. The firemen would teach us kids how to play cards and give us free sodas from the machine (they had a key to open it).

Roberts Elementary was an old, 2-story, brick edifice, still in operation all these 42 years since! Our house was only about six blocks away, so I was a “walker”. 5th Graders were chosen to be crossing guards at intersections and wore orange fluorescent vests with a little stamped metal badge on them. My 4th Grade teacher's name was Mrs. Nolan.

In 1968, you didn't get out of your seat without permission. That would be “asking for trouble”, something I was already good at. I remember the day that a riot broke out in Corcoran High School behind Roberts. It was before lunch. Our class was on the second-floor and we had been able to hear fire trucks and police cars zooming down the access road directly below our window to the high school campus behind. I was wondering what was going on, when the Principal came over the school intercom and made this announcement. I remember it like it happened this morning. “Students, At this time, if you ride the bus to school, please go quickly to your bus at this time. If you walk to school, run home now.” When we were excused to leave, I got up, looked out the window, and saw smoke coming from the windows of the high school. A couple of cars in the parking lot were burning and I saw someone get pushed out an upstairs window of the school. You bet I ran home.

Living in the city had its downside. We were quite close to some of the most violent parts of the city. "South Ave...where ya cud get yer throat cut for a dime", was just a few blocks down below Colvin. I had some near-calls with gangs of knuckleheads in the park on occasion, and the house we lived in, frankly, sucked. My bedroom was half of the attic, separated only by a door that would not stay shut. Not pleasant on windy nights. Once, I was playing a glow-in-the-dark board game called 'Green Ghost' in my bedroom closet and the doorknob came off in my hand when I tried to exit. My mom was three floors below in the basement doing laundry and it seemed like an eternity of beating on the door and drywall, after the flashlight battery died, before she was able to hear me and let me out of there. It was my first glimpse into the claustrophobia of many of Edgar Allen Poe's horror stories and something I share with my 7th Graders before we read Poe "to make it personal".

1970 - 5th Grade @ Craven Crawford Elementary School, Liverpool, New York
The summer before 5th Grade, our family bought a split-level ranch in the Bayberry Community a few miles down Route 57 from Liverpool, about 12 miles out of Syracuse. During my first week in the neighborhood, I was riding my bike around and a kid sped by a few times on his. He said, “I know you.” and sped off again. I raced after him and after a short talk realized that this kid named Jim Falk, who lived a few doors away where Finch and Gull Paths met, had also lived in the Valley Court Apartments (“the projects” in Syracuse) as we had in 1963-64. We had known each other and looked for critters in the same stream six years before! Cool. Bayberry in the 1970's was a paradise if you enjoyed playing in the woods and outdoor activities. The developers had incorporated “green areas” into the community, where there was lots of room to play, ride mini-bikes, fly kites, and so forth. It was excellent.

Craven Crawford Elementary was another one-level school, maybe ten years old, serving a suburb that was bursting with kids my age. My 5th Grade teacher, Mrs. Winifred Hurst, and I were in frequent conflict, as any classmate would attest. It was at “Craven” that we realized that my Math abilities were below grade level, this owing to having spent two years in Indiana where standards were a year behind New York State. The foundational stuff I needed to succeed in Math, I had never been taught. As such, my folks consented to having me receive math remediation "in the Resource Room", which I hated. This led me to make dopey choices and I often found myself on the receiving end of Mrs. Hurst's wrath. One time, she picked me right up out of my seat by one of my ears. No lie.

The first teacher that ever made a difference in my life – a 20-something groovy guy named Stuart Lisson who drove a rusty blue Ford Bronco – taught Art there. Art was something I was good at and Lisson told Hurst, “If Hart gives you any trouble, send him down to the Art Room to cool-down.” When I was sent down, I would collate and organize supplies, load and operate the ceramic kiln, sweep and empty trash, and then be allowed to "do art" after the chores were done. When things got boring upstairs, I would provoke a quarantine to be able to go to the Art Room and hang out with Mr. Lisson.

Near the end of the school year, Lisson encouraged me to enter one of my drawings in the annual Mutual of New York Student Art Competition. He helped me matte it and fill-out the paperwork, and off it went. A few weeks later I was informed that I was one of eight 5th Graders from the Syracuse-metropolitan area who had won. The prize? A summer of Studio Art 101 with the college kids at Syracuse University...wow! The winners were enrolled right along with the big kids and got the same instruction for 90 minutes on Monday and Wednesday mornings at 9.

It was fantastic. The classroom was big and old and very cool to me. It had a complete cow skeleton in it, a soda machine (!), and a darkroom. The college girls in the class had me sit at their table and always bought me an Orange Crush at the start of class. They were really nice, liked the things I was making, and made it even more fun to be there. Every session taught me something new, fun, and mysterious, really opening my head to what art could be. This early college experience was the catalyst that placed me firmly on the path to making and creating things for the rest of my life.

I've tried to track Stuart Lisson down to express my appreciation for his mentoring at that lonely and confused time of my life, but have yet to find him.
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