Header image header image 2  
 
 
Early School Days
 
I was six years of age when I entered the first grade at Washington Elementary School in Salem, Oregon on that crisp September morn in 1959. My first grade teacher was Mrs. Hinton. My mother remembers this woman as “very kind and sweet”, but I remember her as being heartless. She would not let a child go to the bathroom when they needed to; it was always according to “her” schedule. On one particular day she would not let me use the restroom, and I had to go really bad. I could not hold it and I wet myself, and it run onto the floor and down the aisle as a billboard for the world to see: “This kid wet his pants!”
 
Humiliatingly enough as it was, that was not my worst moment. On another day I had to do the “number two”. Again, this witch did not let me go to the restroom. I soiled my shorts and had to walk all the way home from school like a letter “A”. If a child needs to use the restroom, for God's sake, let them go, I say.
 
It was in first grade that I learned about a couple of kids named Dick and Jane. They had a dog named Spot, who they would constantly keep on the go by shouting, “Run, Spot, run”. Dick and Jane must have been best friends, because they definitely were not related. How do I know that? Because they never fought with each other. My brother, Lonnie and I constantly fought, every day that we lived at home together.
 
Going back to Mrs. Hinton ... Mrs. Hinton was a taskmaster in the worst sense. She took us outside and called the time “recess”. On this occasion, she had two girls standing at either the end of a rope. They began to twirl this rope. We were instructed to go through the rope ... without getting hit mind you. There was this one little kid, his name escapes me, though he could not escape the rope. It hit him in the feet as he went through this gauntlet. I think that Mrs. Hinton enjoyed children feeling shame and humiliation for failures and soiled pants. When it was my turn, I ran and made it through without the rope hitting me, barely. Then came Lonny. This was not my brother, Lonnie, but a little blond, blue-eyed lovely creature that made me breathe funny just watching her. Staring at her was like looking at the sun; even after closing your eyes you can still see an image. She made this rope thing, jumping stuff, ... look easy. She not only did not get hit by the rope, but she actually stopped in the middle of the crazy thing and start to jump the rope with every swing that came her way. She even began to chant some sort of little song or something as she jumped. Then she started to do a little half-spin between rope swings. She was amazing not only was she jumping to miss the rope but was turning in circles while singing, too ... man, I hated this. I loved her, though. I consider my first “crush”.
My father's parents lived about 15 or 20 miles away in a community called Aumsville, Oregon. They lived out in the country on a five-acre piece of property we referred to as, “the farm”. It seemed like forever in the car trip driving to Grandma and Grandpa's house (recall that my mother's parents were referred to as “Pop” and “Grandma Ally”). The road was windy and it took a while to arrive at Grandma and Grandpa's house. My parents probably got really sick of hearing us say, “Are we almost there?” almost every five minutes of the trip.
 
Grandpa had made a special tire swing unlike any tire swing that a person would have ever seen. The “happy little tire swings” that people see are merely a rope tied to a tire suspended from a branch sturdy enough to support the weight of the person swinging. This tire swing, like I said was different. My grandpa split the tire like slicing a bagel in two, but not all the way through. This split was only about two-thirds of the way down. Then, he took the tire and turned in inside out, so when it was tied to the rope, it was fastened to one half (so-to-speak) of the tire. The other half came down and it was like a bucket seat. It made me feel like I was in the cockpit of a spaceship, flying through the air. Because Grandpa had climbed way up high in the tree to tie the other end of the rope to, the swinging distance of this pendulum ride was utterly stupendous.
 
The “ride” (it seemed as fantastic as an “E” ticket ride at Disneyland) was even more fabulous if you climbed up to this one particular limb that was quite a ways off the ground, and then climbed into the “bucket” as it swung out from that lofty perch.
 
I tried to make a tire swing like that one for my children, but my first attempt was I had cut my “bagel” too far, I went probably three-fourths the way down on the cut (cutting a tire is not easy, you need to use a hack saw to cut through the steel threads in the tire), which made the lower portion of the “bucket seat” nearly drag on the ground.
 
This five-acre piece of property had probably about two acres of oak trees on it in a thicket fashion. We referred to this thicket as the “woods”. It was in “the woods” that one of my dad's younger brothers, Larry, had made a lean-to shelter that he used for camping out over nights. Lonnie and I checked out the lean-to. It was definitely suitable for some serious day-use activities, but at nighttime ... those “woods” were way too dark and scary for this six year-old. Larry and his younger sister, my Aunt, Joyce, are about nine months difference in their ages. Joyce is approximately three years older than me and Larry is closer to three and a half than four years older. So growing up they were quite fun to be around. It was on a weekend stay at their house when I went bean picking with the family, that Larry indoctrinated me in the various techniques of baths. I was six and Larry was approximated nine and a half when my grandma made us take a bath together. When the bathing was through Larry proceeded to educate me on productive ways of finalizing the cleansing process. I share them with you now: while the water is still draining out of the tub (you need not wait for an empty tub to exit), one foot is to be suspended above the water level, then shook to aid in the water extraction process. Of course, Larry had to emphasize that this shaking process MUST be over the tub, as not to get the bathroom floor wet (or rather, wetter than it already was). Then, after shaking off the excess water, step this foot out of the tub onto the bathroom floor. Pick up the remaining foot (still in the tub), shake it off (above the tub), and then step out of the tub onto the floor. Once both feet are safely out of the tub, a towel can be used to complete the drying process. Larry explained that if you attempted this towel-drying-process while still in the tub, there lies a risk of losing the towel which could easily fall into the water which would get way too wet for any really serious drying. I followed his advice to the letter ... after all he was a man speaking from experience.
 
Oh, by the way, the bean-picking-thing ... I hated it. The rows were way too long. The beans grew way too high. The bean-picking-day was way too long for any kid, much less one with an attention span the length of my pinky. I made a whopping $2 for the entire weekend, which back then went a lot farther ... since a soda pop was a dime and a candy bar was a nickel. Leave it to Grandma, though, she took my hard earned cash (I refer to as my blood money) and bought me a sweater with it.
 
My dad's youngest brother, Rick (back then we called him Ricky) is about three and a half years younger than me, so we played together as kids also. When Ricky was three, George Reeves was the star of the TV show, Superman. He was Ricky's idol. Grandma even had to dye some old long-johns blue and dye a pair of Grandpa's boxers, red so that when Ricky tied a red towel around his neck, he could pretend that he was Superman.
 
My brother Danny once did a Superman leap out of the hayloft of our barn in an attempt to fly once. Since Danny is about a year plus younger than Rick, he might have got this stupid notion from his “Uncle Rick”. You would have thought that the dive off the loft would have broke his spirit (and possibly body parts) enough to scare him to not try this again, but not my brother Dan, because it was not long after that that he decided to try a jump off the roof of our house with an umbrella in tow.
 
Oh, by the way, my grandmother would always sign birthday cards to us, “with love, Grandpa, Grandma, [fill in the blank here with children still living at home] and Uncle Rick”. Gees, Louise that felt weird. Afterall, Ricky was three years younger than I and about eighteen months younger than Lonnie. All I can say is, “It was weird, man.”