A STORY WORTH TELLING
“Take care of all of your memories/For you cannot relive them.”
— Bob Dylan and The Band
Memories. I write about them often because at this age, I have a lot of them to keep up with.
Most amazing are moments remembered when I forget everything else, such as my phone, my keys, my checkbook.
It will come to me in a minute. But, while we’re waiting, let me share my first-grade school memories that I recalled with a good friend not long ago. By chance or by destiny, we arrived in Mount Pleasant at about the same time but coming from opposite directions. We talked the other day about what we remembered as new South Ward Elementary School students. And we marveled even more at what we remembered about first grade.
My first-grade year was 1954 at Crockett. The small white-frame structure my parents rented sat in the middle of an empty field next to the only nearby residence. It was two houses not far from downtown with a long, shared dirt driveway, surrounded by woods on three sides.
We didn’t have a television, nor a telephone. What we did have was the sound of rain falling on a tin roof, the smell of Mom’s morning glories covering the trellis on the front porch, and late-night crackers and milk with Dad. It was his favorite bedtime snack.
A green 1950 Studebaker provided the transportation for our one-car family until the fateful Sunday afternoon when Dad and the neighbor, Mr. Hooks, went fishing. Old timbers on a country bridge failed, sending them off into a dry creek bed below.
The crumpled car and my father in bandages are scary memories. He and Mr. Hooks were banged up and bruised, but otherwise all right.
My youngest sister, Sylvia, was born in Crockett. I remember Dad showing off our newborn sibling at the hospital’s back door, where middle sister Leslie and I waited in the car. Mom in a bathrobe was standing behind Dad, both beaming with smiles.
My father worked for the old five-and-10cent store chain, Perry Brothers. Small wooden crates in which china dishes were received at the store served many uses, from garage storage to creative kid’s activities. One pinnacle of playtime was the day I launched one in the creek behind our house to see if it would float.
It did. Basking in that delightful discovery, I G then talked Leslie into boarding it to see if it would still float.
It didn’t. Thank goodness the creek was shallow. The bungled boating caper, plus the time I talked Leslie into jumping off the roof, certain that a bed sheet was a good parachute, probably accounts for lessthan- good memories of parental punishment. Mom seldom administered any, deferring that chore to Dad. But her warnings were stern enough.
“You just wait until your father gets home!”
Dad was good to take me to town following his lunch break on summertime Saturdays. Clutching a quarter and a dime, I walked to the nearby theater where the two coins were ample funding for a doublefeature matinee plus popcorn and a Coke.
The last of 1954 summer movies signaled the beginning of first grade in the basement of an old brick school building.
The quintessential teacher, whose name I don’t remember, wore gray hair up in a bun and lace-up, highheeled shoes. We wrote 1+1=2 on black chalkboards over which hung examples of cursive writing and the obligatory portrait of George Washington (the unfinished one that renders the appearance of clouds at the bottom).
First grade was my first and last playground fight. It went down near the front steps of the old schoolhouse. I don’t remember what it was about or who won.
I do remember thinking that I didn’t particularly enjoy it and made a mental note to never get into another exchange of fisticuffs if I could help it.
First-grade classes moved into new classrooms after the Christmas break, from the basement into the modern mid-1950s structure with lots of glass and open spaces. That’s where we stood in line for the Salk polio vaccine. It’s also where a spring tornado turned the sky black, dark as night, as we huddled behind the new green chalkboards.
We left Crockett with our memories in 1955, arriving in Seymour about the same time Elvis did for an appearance at the Seymour High School gymnasium.
But that’s a different memory for a different day.
For now, I’m still trying to remember where I put my keys five minutes ago.
Contact Aldridge at [email protected]. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.
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