Growing Up and School - Chapter One

Post two in an ongoing blog

Chapter One: Going to School

*NOTE: All names are pseudonyms

I wonder why in the world she is calling me? That was the first thought that started me on this wild ride that has taken me to the highest mountaintop and the lowest trench. I have whirled up and down and all around ever since that phone call, like one of those dryer balls that’s supposed to soften clothes.

But first let me back up to explain how I even got to the point of the phone call. As has been most of my life, ambiguities abound in my upbringing and in all the events leading up to the last five years. I grew up in a large city, Atlanta, but close to relatives. Sometimes we all lived in the same house. My parents, as well as the aunts, cousins, uncles, and grandparents who acted as my extended family, were mostly from rural backgrounds. Although there had been one or two educated ancestors ( a great great grandfather was the first mayor of Gainesville, Georgia), nobody in recent history in our family had education beyond high school, and some not even that much.

I suppose you could say I was third of five children, but I stuck out in the birth order like a sore thumb – my mother said she actually thought she had the flu. The next sibling up the line a brother eight years older, and the younger sibling a brother down the line five years younger. Tangling the birth order even more was the fact that my living older sister was eleven years older, and my father had not even seen her until she almost two years old due to being in the army during WWII. I say living older sister because there had been a baby girl who was born dead along in there somewhere. It was never discussed much and I’m not sure exactly in the order where she came, but it was far away from me. The oldest sibling was actually a stepbrother who sometimes lived with my grandparents and sometimes with us. He was my mother’s first child. I was a surprise baby. My mother was thirty, having had her first child at age 15. My younger brother, five years younger, was an even bigger surprise. Another piece of kindling to throw into this firey mix I didn’t learn about until I was about grown, was that I actually had a stepsister also, a child of my father’s, that was never a part of our family. I don’t know how the birth order experts would interpret all of this, but I do know that from my very beginning, I was unexpected, and didn’t exactly fit in any exact pigeonhole. From my perspective I have remained this way my entire life.

Until I was in second grade we lived in West End. Nowadays it’s called “The West End” of Atlanta. At that time it was a wonderful place. Perhaps the people who live there now also think that, but in the 1950s it was a different place and a different time and world than it is now. I was born in 1953, so that part of my life was all before the civil revolution of the 1960s. There’s another whole book in me about my growing up years. I’ll just put the parts in here that I feel where major influences on my educational experiences. Although my sister tells me now that we were poor, before I even started school I had valuable experiences. Playing with sticks and dirt, games like Mother May I and Redlight, going fishing with aunts and uncles, having doting grandparents right upstairs (and a diabetic great aunt who always gave me raisins), walking to stores, a man living behind us that had chickens, riding those buses that ran on electrical wires downtown, older siblings and cousins always doing something. An aunt who lived in the “country” I would visit every summer, and another aunt who worked in a drugstore and would bring home a Little Golden book every day. Whether they were bought or just brought I don’t know, but I had a stack about two feet high of those books. I firmly believe that’s where my love of reading began.

A couple of early school experiences stand out in my mind. I went to Lee Street School on Lee Street in West End. In those days, only big towns like Atlanta had kindergarten. The cut off birth date was not until December 31, so by having an October birthday I started kindergarten at age four. My first official teacher I’ll call Miss Gray. About all I remember about kindergarten was playing with blocks and having graham crackers and milk. It was only half-day kindergarten. My report card at the end of kindergarten said, “Janet is a fine student but talks too much.” That hasn’t changed yet in 50 plus years. Then in first grade I had Ms. Johnson. I remember her as being nice. I distinctly remember reading *** and Jane, and doing very well.

There was a little girl who once made a picture of a fair, in tiny, precise, exquisite drawings, including a roller coaster and ferris wheel. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and decided right then and there I wanted to be an artist. My second grade teacher, and last one at Lee Street, was Ms. Harley. One day the principal, Ms. Glasser, came to the room and was speaking to her at the door. Even today, I can plainly hear her words, “ I just don’t know what happened to xxxx (my first name) – all the other xxxxx (my last name) children were so good!” I was shocked because I didn’t know that I wasn’t good! I do remember thinking Ms. Harley was mean. One time she wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom.  I had finished my work early, I was smart and usually finished quickly, and she had put me to work cleaning shelves in the cloak room. I asked several times to go to the bathroom and she wouldn’t let me. Well, I really had to go. I was in second grade and was not about to wet my pants. When I was sure nobody was coming into that cloakroom, I politely pulled down my panties and peed on the floor. I went out and told Ms. Harley I had spilled the water she had given me to clean shelves with. I don’t remember her response.

In late spring of second grade we moved away from West End. I’m not exactly sure why. We lived briefly in a rented house on Merrill Drive. My Granny (my daddy’s mother), lived about four or five miles away near the intersection of Venetion and Campbellton Roads, just across from what was then the back gate of Fort McPherson, or Fort Mac as we called it. She had what I know now was a “traditional craftsman bungalow”. It had a brick wall all around it. The lot next door had been her garden and orchard. In the past she had owned many acres around there, but had gradually sold it off. She gave this lot to us for a house, and the house was built in the during my second grade year. I finished the year at Lee Street and would be attending Arkwright Elementary when school started back.

At our new house and at Arkwright everything felt very new and different. It was a then modern day school, not three story brick like Lee Street. It was modern for those times, but did not have air conditioning. I didn’t really know anybody there, just a couple of acquaintances from Sunday School. I liked my teachers and did very well. There was one teacher who would seat us in class in order of how we did on math tests. It was always a major competition between me and three or four other students. My most memorable moments are doing projects – usually it was constructing something. I remember making a Grecian Villa once and an Antebellum home another time. I don’t know how many of those salt and flour maps I made, but I seem to remember quite a few.  I built three kinds of terrariums for a science fair. I started a class newspaper in sixth grade. I wrote a poem that won a citizenship award, got lots of “honors” ribbons, broke my arm in fourth grade, won the spelling bee spelling ‘mayonnaise’, participated in Christmas Pageants, Brownie Scouts, and Safety Patrols. I loved school, especially reading and writing and art. My favorites were the Little House Books, The Secret Garden, and Mrs. Pickering. My parents were not involved at school. My mother was one of the few “working” mothers in those days and rarely came to school events. I also “played” school at home. I had a desk with little workbooks, grades, and everything. But I still always said I wanted to be an artist – specifically an interior designer, when I grew up. I shall never forget my mother saying, at some point, “People like us don’t get to be things like that, maybe you can be a teacher or a nurse.”

High school broadened my horizons somewhat. In those days, grammar school was kindergarten through seventh grade, and high school was eighth through twelfth grade. I was zoned to attend Southwest High School several miles from where we lived. I wanted to attend Brown High School; it was in West End, my brothers and sister had gone there, my daddy worked nearer there and could take me, and more of my friends from church, West End Baptist, were going there. That church had become a major influence in my life – but that’s still another book! Anyway, I was granted permission to attend Brown.

By now it was 1966. Southwest Atlanta was changing rapidly. The cold war was very real and we were scared to death of radiation.  Desegregation had begun, as had white flight. Vietnam was mushrooming, the British music invasion was replacing Elvis, and hippies and flower children were beginning to bloom. When I entered Brown in the fall of 1966 it was about 20% black and about 80% white. I continued to do well academically. I participated in many activities, but my main social life was at church, not school. Although I was in honor clubs, editor of the school newspaper, and elected a class officer I never felt like I was one of the “in crowd.” Not like a cheerleader, anyway. I still wanted to be an artist, but I had been beaten down somewhat and just figured I’d go to school, graduate, work in a store or something, and get married. My educational influences were specific teachers. There were two who specifically encouraged me to consider college, one who supported my desires to be a designer and one who took quite a risk by allowing us to the print a controversial editorial in the school paper about another teacher in her own department. I think of these teachers often and wish I knew how to get in touch with them to let them know I understand now what an impact they had.