Eleven

If my anklometer had been put on by someone who paid attention to the directions, it would have reckoned the distance from (my) home to school as less than a mile. Instead, it registered eleven and three-tenths miles. (I could see my school from the corner of the street I lived on). That's something, considering those in charge very quickly moved me a half year ahead of my peers. Excellent judgment!

The school that I could see from my home was named for someone. In New York and in Russia, schools are named for numbers: P.S.143 or elementary school seven. They avoid icons; there are no sentimental stories about the life and times of digits. My school honored Eleanor Cope Emlen. Who was she? If I went to Catholic school I would soon know who Saint Teresa was...or Saint Vincent de Paul. But Eleanor Cope Emlen and those whose names were chisled in stone at subsequent schools that I attended remained as lifeless as old 143 or number seven. The Catholics, like Jews, got involved with heroes right from the start.

We were taught spelling and geography and painting and to read in allotted times between recess and lunchtime and fire-drills and air-raids. I came to love some of my teachers and fear others. We spent the whole day (from nine in the morning <@145>til three-thirty in the afternoon) in one classroom except for visits to the school library where we were encouraged to sniff-out books that were not on our required lists of study. We got another break if we raised our hand. "I have to go to the bathroom."

When we arrived at school in the mornings we put our overcoats and schoolbags and galoshes in the cloakroom. If children were naughty they could be sent into the cloakroom for a while to stand among the galoshes — no small embarrassment.

Our desks had inkwells bored into the upper right corner. No concession was made for southpaws.

The wastebasket got all of our trash and any chewing gum brought into class. Teachers took special courses in gum-chewing detection. Kids were always caught and were forced to march to the basket and display to teacher and classmates their prohibited gum and lose it then and there. Maybe five-minutes reflection among the galoshes would follow. Other offenses, like talking and throwing spitballs and annoying neighbors could send little miscreants there as well. Repeat offenders would have to stay after school and they might have to choke on the dust of blackboard erasers that they would have to beat clean. Bad children would be sent to the principal's office. They would have time to think about their sins because they would have to spend an indeterminable time sitting on a bench in an ante-chamber that was probably designed by Tomas Torquemada and certainly built with punishment in mind.

I spent five years at Emlen School. My first playmates, pals away from my own immediate neighborhood, were Larry Wallen, Fred Jervis and Billy Shields. Larry's mom would invite me to have lunch at their house from time to time and that saved a twenty-two and a half mile trek (according to the anklometer) down to my own house at noon. School was more than formal learning; it was a place to develop social relationships. The long course was People 101.

I'm sure that grammar schools are great crucibles in which foundations are laid for the direction of the race. Vocations aren't inspired in that early time, but other habits are, little things like communication, and manners, and response so that when the time comes to learn more difficult things and to think things out we might have a chance.

Ask anyone what they most remember about early school days. A lot of them will fall dumb. What's to say? In their formal structure the public schools of my time were notoriously bland: readin' <@145>n writin' <@145>n <@145>rithmetic without the romance of the hick'ry stick but maybe dependent somewhat on the personality of the teacher. We're impressionable as kids and if we like the teacher there's a good chance that we will produce. Produce what? Good habits, I guess, that lead to better things in later times.

If someone asks me what my favorite class subject was in that time I'll unhesitatingly say Geography. In fourth grade I made maps of Norway and Maine and the Philippines and made a few pennies selling them to other students. In the world of play I made maps of "the lots" and of sites of buried "treasures." When I grew-up I had no trouble finding places on journeys taken away from home.

There was a gang of tough girls at Emlen that intimidated younger boys and they stole everything but their underwear. I lost school bags, lunch boxes and mittens...and their replacements. Enough, already. The authorities were unable to retrieve any of the valuables that my parents bought for me so my mother made an appointment at the Henry Houston School for a transfer. Houston was overcrowded with little boys who were victimized by big-girl gangs. She made an appointment at John Storey Jenks School, several miles west in a less-populated place. I was accepted there and traded Wallen and Jervis and Shields for new playmates: Crawford and Shoemaker and Benzaco (sic) and Marcolina.

Life goes on. Jenks had the same curriculum as Emlen. But there was no lure about John Storey Jenks. Who was he? In later times I was told that he was despised but that

might have been the view of a malcontent or someone who had owed him money.

I spent a year and a half there. My parents could have left me there for another two years but they weighed the expense of travel to this school in another town against enrolling me in Junior High which was a few hundred yards from our home. At ten cents a day for trainfare for two years, a month's rent or a winter's supply of coal could be lost from their budget.

It's a shame. I was barely eleven years old and had been dislocated twice from the company of my pals. Anti-social types would say that's not important. What do they know?

The Junior Highschool was named for Teddy Roosevelt. We knew him. If I had moved to Montana all the kids would know Teddy Roosevelt, too. He dug the Panama Canal. He ran up San Juan Hill. He was an American President before our time and his cousin was now the President. If I moved to Montana no one would have known Eleanor Cope Emlen or John Storey Jenks. Grammar schools there were probably named for forgotten locals as well.

At eleven there are a lot of changes in life. All of those shocks are calculated to pre-date puberty so we won't be crushed all at once. Life in Junior high school meant new routines.

* The lunchroom replaced the walk home for mid-day meals. I had a roster. Lunch might be fourth period, or fifth, or sixth. This replaced stability, that 12 noon to 1:30 break where I would see my mom and she'd cook tomato soup and make a sandwich and pour a big glass of milk and give me a pear or a peach or an apple. Now I was with the herd in a cafeteria where concoctions planned by dietitians were served up. That was a choice. A lot of kids brown-bagged peanut butter or bologna sandwiches.

In grammar school we bought milk that was delivered in little half-pint bottles. How much? I think four cents. Now, whole menus were offered. Our lunch boxes of yore would be thrown away. The tin box with Tom Mix or Popeye or Porky Pig stamped on the lid was not quite the thing to carry to Junior High. It's like wearing a Peter Pan costume or a Fauntleroy suit to a wrestling match or motorcycle races. If we packed lunch we could still buy milk. Mom told us to save the bag. We'd fold it on its creases and take it home for the next day's lunch. Some bags may have been used for a whole year...or longer.

* We were introduced to "gym." Old photos show the primitives at Phys. Ed. A lot of little boys are doing their fitness exercises fully clothed. They're wearing ties, and vests (and shirts, pants and hob-nailed shoes, too). We were given a list of required kit: undershirt, shorts, socks (all white), sneakers. Almost everyone wore these under their street clothes. The old crowd did their push-ups and knee bends in gaberdine and tweeds. We wore cotton. I bet they stank (stunk or stinked). We covered our sweaty gym clothes with streetwear for the rest of the schoolday. The stink would take a while to get to the surface. This double period class was scheduled mercifully only once a week.

* We moved around to different rooms during the school day to be taught by specialists. They tried to fill our brains with English and History and Math and Science and Woodshop and Hygiene and Art. If we lived <@145>til ninth grade we would be introduced to Algebra and Latin and Biology. We were on a threshold. We would be making choices that hinted we were going to grow-up. Not yet. That would come after eighth grade.

* When we were in grammar school our teachers made appointments. Infatuation or annoyance might develop a profile that could secure a reputation for a while, maybe for life. Who will beat the board erasers? That could be a reward in some classes or a punishment in others. I never figured that out. Who would stand at the street on the safety patrol? Certainly these guys held great favor with teacher. Nuff said!

We had heard about democracy, and it was at hand. Each class would elect a president. Elections would be held without interference from above. That condition would change once we got into the real world. Now, in a small way, we were going to participate in democracy.

Democracy, full-blown, would be too dangerous so we were assigned limited powers. No one said that outright. If our jobs were accurately spelled out as straw bosses no one would have run for office.

Nominations were held. Here's a chance to be president. I was running against a cute girl. Boys would lean toward voting for boys. Girls will vote for their girlfriends. All that was among our friends. There was an undecided bloc of votes to be won. Who will woo the black vote? In 1945 it was the colored vote.

On the day of the election I stood at the door with a couple of boxes of candy and passed it out to the colored kids. I knew a couple of the boys in the bloc anyway and they "campaigned" for me. There were no promises. That crap is what adults do. I just had candy for the sweet-tooth. Live for the moment.

Tompkins wins by a landslide.

All of the class presidents were taken to the front of the school for a group portrait. Don't smile. Look serious.

Click!

Some people never run for office. Some people run and never win. Some people spend twenty or thirty years preparing for the presidency and missing it. I was on the planet for only eleven years...and I was the president.