Chapter 12 - Music in the Swiss Chalet

1950 - 1957

     Our music classes were held upstairs in the gray stone building called the Swiss Chalet, and it seemed to me that we spent nearly the entire hour learning the words to songs, mostly hymns. While leafing through some of the old Heralds, I found a reference to Mr. Ford’s pride in the fact that the students knew all the old hymns by heart and sang them during the daily chapel services without any need to use hymnals. Aha – suddenly it clicked – now I knew why we spent most of our music classes memorizing the words to hymns. Many of Mr. Ford’s wishes were kept going long after his death in 1947, and here was a perfect example of one of them.

     I enjoyed our music classes, though. I particularly remember my pleasure in learning the music and words to “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor” (words on the Statue of Liberty and music by Irving Berlin), and thinking how much I loved the word “free.” I even remember where I was sitting when I thought about that word. It brought out everything noble in my young and passionate nature.

     The second scene is a generic one – I remember Mrs. Needham holding several sheets of paper and reading off the names of those who had to perform a recitation at a future chapel service. Imagine an ancient Roman reading off the names of those who would be next to fight a lion barefoot and weaponless and the anxiety of the prisoners as they awaited their fate. I think she did this on Fridays, and after reading our names, she handed us our assignment, either a reading (one could survive a reading) or the memorization of a poem (I must have had a mental block). Although my name was only called two or three times a year, I worried about it every week. I’m so glad I don’t have to do that any more.

     Fifth-graders spent several months preparing to see a performance of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra – I think it was called the Youth Concert. It was my only experience in music appreciation, and I really enjoyed it. I know that one of the pieces from “Swan Lake” was included, because I remember learning in music class that swans are supposed to only sing as they die, which is quite a dramatic tidbit, and thus memorable.

     On the day of the concert, we rode our bus downtown to the Masonic Temple, and felt quite lost in the amazing crowd. I’ve never seen the concert hall as full as it was that day – there were fifth-graders from all over the City of Detroit and the suburbs, too. The logistics must have been a nightmare. We were even allowed to buy a soft drink during the intermission, but there was only one choice in those days – orange soda pop. Some child must have been overly excited because on the way back to our seats after intermission, the hallways reeked of orange pop. I have never wanted orange pop since that day fifty years ago.

The Swiss Chalet in 2014

Chapter 13 - Lunch at the Clinton Inn

1950 - 1951

The Eagle Tavern in 2014

     You wouldn't have wanted to sit at my table in the lunchroom during my years at Greenfield Village. It worked like this: We were assigned seats at tables of varying sizes, seating perhaps six or eight students, for a week at a time. The teachers sat at a separate table in the corner right next to the door.

     After arriving at our assigned tables, an older student would tap each table that sat quietly hands folded in our laps to join the single-file lunch line. Until your table was “ready,” the student wasn’t allowed to tap that table. As you can imagine some children had a hard time being quiet waiting for the tap, which made them rather unpopular as lunch companions, though not as unpopular as I.

     Going through the lunch line was probably a happy occasion for most children but for me it was a cause for great anxiety. It took a true dedication of spirit to perfect the role of Fussy-Eater and I had developed it to a new art form. My scent-hound keenly-honed nose could catch a whiff of an Excruciating Entrée, Soppy Side Dish or Disgusting Dessert from twenty paces and I would happily have skipped the meal altogether on such a day -- not an option.

     We weren’t given a choice; just forced to take whatever lumps we were given. My mother’s repertoire at home was limited to meat-and-canned vegetables so any form of casserole or anything ground-up other than hamburger was suspect. If it smelled like fish (my mother never cooked fish in her life), I wouldn’t touch it. If the vegetables were foreign like Brussels sprouts or domestic like spinach, broccoli and asparagus, they were cut up and left on the plate. I remember tapioca pudding with horror. Oh, and corn fritters, sticky with oozing maple syrup, aieee…I still shudder. (Andy says that’s why she doesn’t like syrup to this day; and Lucy’s mouth still waters when she thinks of them and she says “Weren’t they great!”)

     Early in my Fussy-Eater career, I learned that no amount of wheedling, whining, cajoling or threatening behavior could move the hearts of the lunch ladies to withhold the horror(s)-of-the-day. Thus with trays full of whatever we were doled out, we obediently made our ways back to our assigned seats and enjoyed or suffered through our meals, depending on your point of view. How I loved the rare good day when every item on the tray was edible! O Happy Day!

     Up to this point the system worked pretty well. At the end of the meal those older students were once again assigned to tap the tables, this time signifying that the meals were eaten, that the students could take their trays to the kitchen and walk (not run) to the outside to play using their free time to enjoy all kinds of fun activities until their respective hand bells were rung indicating school was back in session.

     How the free time was enjoyed between table-tapping and bell-ringing is pure speculation on my part since I remained at my table inside Clinton Inn. Here’s how it worked: the table-tapping student would walk by and all the students at my table except me would be finished with their food, quietly sitting with their hands neatly folded in their laps. The student table-tapper would see that I wasn’t done so they would move along to the next table, tap them and those children would happily depart. All the students at my table would, in varying degrees and in sometimes creative ways, urge me to eat up so that they could play. Soon our table would be the only table left in the entire dining room except for the teachers’ table.

     Then a teacher would feel sorry for the table-tapper and my tablemates and excuse everyone but me. I would sit there, bored and lonely, wishing I were outside and watching the teachers file out except for the last one who then with a great sigh of exasperation would release me just in time to hear my teacher’s bell signifying the end of free time. Yes, it took true dedication to stick to the Path-of-Most-Resistance but I was a true Fussy-Eater. When on a particularly bad day I would weaken to the point of tasting a tiny tidbit of the “horror-of-the-day”, I’d gag or even vomit a little, which still didn’t get me excused.

     No, you wouldn’t have wanted to sit at my table in the lunchroom during my years at Greenfield Village.

     I shouldn’t leave this section without mentioning the 4-5 month-long respite from this ordeal which occurred during one of our early elementary years. The lunch ladies went on strike (YOU GO, GIRLS!) and my mother was forced to make box lunches. That was a wonderful time. Best of all, we carried tin Lone Ranger or Howdy Doody lunchboxes although they became pretty disgusting with rust over time. It didn’t matter. The only item we were required to add to our lunch at the Clinton Inn was a milk carton. I liked milk. Yes, that was a really great period of time in the annals of my Lunchroom Log.

     By the way, I don’t think I was directly responsible for the strike (it needs to be said). Although my father was a labor negotiator at the time, I believe he was prevented from involvement in that particular union-management conflict by home biases -- my mother wanted the strike settled so she wouldn’t have to continue making her children’s lunches; I wanted the strike to continue for obvious reasons.

     I have two other memories of lunch in the Clinton Inn, both of me approaching the teachers’ table and having gained the attention of all those adult listeners, being laughed at. One time I remember telling them that I thought Mrs. Tennant, about age 30 at the time, had to be older than Mrs. Doremus, over age 50, because she was so much taller. I can’t imagine why I felt the need to share that piece of wisdom.

The second time was when I felt sick and said “I think it’s Bladder.” Until that particular day at the teachers’ table I thought the name of this disorder was simply “Bladder.”

Chapter 14 - Art and pottery

1950-1957

Grimm's Jewelry Story in 2014

     Art and pottery were among the greatest pleasures of attending Greenfield Village Schools, and I imagine much of the credit goes to Mrs. McAllister, who I remember as a very nice person who introduced us to many forms of the arts and crafts.

     Each art day I remember racing to Grimm’s Jewelry Store, running up the steep staircase to the huge second story room filled with natural light in which our art classes were held. The outside front door on the left side opened to the staircase. I couldn’t wait to climb those tall stairs, hang up my coat and find out what the new “project of the day” would be. I wish I could find a photo that does justice to the art room of my childhood memory. I’d like to share how large the windows were and what a pleasure it was simply to sit in that upstairs room, with all the natural light pouring in. I’m trying really hard to remember some of the art projects, but only one comes to mind. One year we learned “primary” and “tertiary” colors, and could draw anything we wanted to illustrate our grasp of the subject. I drew horses, my favorite animal and subject.
 

Grimm's Jewelry Store in 2011.  Can you see the door on the left

with  the zigzag line?  That's the one that leads upstairs.

     In sixth grade, Mrs. McAllister taught us how to create oil paintings on canvas. Mine was the head of a blue mule with yellow ears. It began as a horse, but I made the ears too big, and then decided I liked the look. I had serious trouble with finding a background color, and Mrs. McAllister was nice enough to help me with it. The background colors she showed to me seemed a bit “muddy” and I thought the effect quite ugly but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her. Now I really appreciate the background coloring. I named my work “That’s a Mule?” Although painted in art class in a different building, all our oils were hung around the room in Scotch Settlement School on the last day of school so that our parents could see our work. I still remember where mine was hung. Many were really quite good. My daughter Karen asked for my oil and she hung it in one of her children’s bedrooms.

     In fifth and sixth grades, we had pottery in place of weaving, and I loved it, especially when we used the pottery wheel. My big project toward the end of fifth grade was to hand-pot a large horse head. I put a lot of labor into that horse, and learned I had to hollow-it out enough so that when it was fired, it wouldn’t crack. I petted its forehead so much that it was smooth as glass. I used black glazing. I really put my heart into that horse head. We couldn’t take our large projects home at the end of the year, because Mrs. McAllister had to fire them in the kiln over the summer.

     When I returned in the fall, Mrs. McAllister had to break the sad news to me – my horse head was stolen over the summer. I was devastated. She really wanted me to make another one, but I didn’t have the will. Eventually with her well-intentioned help, I put together another horse head, although I didn’t pet the forehead smooth. It was fired and taken home early in the year and stayed in my parents’ house until it was perhaps broken – I really don’t quite remember what happened to it. It always reminded me of the one that got away.

     Pottery classes were held in a stone building with a water wheel hidden from the public in a corner of the Suwanee River. A past president of the Museum, Harold Skramstead and his wife, lived in the building for a time in the 1970’s.

One of my classmates painted a picture of the Stone Mill where our pottery classes were held. 1957

Chapter 15 - The Obsessive-Compulsive Art of Weaving (not mine)

1950 - 1955

This man, the Village Master Weaver when I took this photo, was kind enough to

 trudge upstairs in the Weaver's Studio to bring down one of the looms used by students like me.

     An appreciation for the role of crafts in early American life was an important part of the Village curriculum; weaving in particular. Mr. Ford must have believed that no student should spend a week in school without an opportunity to weave on a loom. So weave we did.

     We began to weave in kindergarten and I think I quite enjoyed it in the early years. We wove on our little looms weekly until we graduated to a larger loom in fourth grade. There were enough looms for each student.

     Our finished products became finer with age but I remember my creations as being pretty ugly. We chose our own wool and apparently I wasn’t very good at color schemes. I distinctly remember one third grade experience. I finished a band of purple and selected a similar shade of brown for my next band of color. It was so disconcertingly unpleasant to the eye that I tried to compensate with bands of yellow, orange and pink. I then ascribed the resulting discord to color-blindness inherited from my father.

     Despite the mixed results, my parents found little tables all around our living room and elsewhere to display our work. A lamp or an ashtray only partially covered up the finished weavings – at least mine. My brother was probably more productive and certainly had a better sense of color.

     As the years passed, the only pleasure I remember in the process was being told that I was done. This was followed by a brief respite from weaving while the teacher somehow wound the weaving off the loom and made it ready for the next project. Then I began again, endlessly picking the wrong wools. I think once I might have been allowed to make a bookmark, which went faster and was thus more rewarding.

     Learning the warp from the woof was not enough training in the weaving arts; we were trotted over to the Cotswold Cottage to watch the shearing of the sheep each spring; we went to the Plymouth Carding Mill to be taught the carding, dying and spinning processes. Watching the sheep being sheared was fun if the animals weren’t too unhappy, but the dirty, unprocessed wool at the mill was gross, and hand-carding is only enjoyable for about three minutes. Watching others card, dye and spin the wool wasn’t interesting at all.

     With the larger looms of the fourth grade, we were given finer materials. I think I spent all year making something yellow and brown, and which I actually hated by the time I’d finished. At least it ended my weaving career, and today when I visit the crafts area in Greenfield Village, I pretend not to wince when required to see the weaving area. I was quite excited when the Benson Ford Archives indicated an interest in donations of the actual homework and artwork of the former students. I quite happily gave every weaving I found in my “historical” fabrics pile – one of them was yellow and brown.

Chapter 16 - Gym, Swimming and Squaredancing

1950 - 1957

GYM   The gymnasium and swimming pool were all the way up in the Recreation Building, or the “Rec.” These facilities were in the buildings attached to Lovett Hall adjacent to the Henry Ford Museum. With the exception of Miller School our classroom buildings were quite a long ways from the Rec, and now I wonder how long we were given for travel time. The teachers didn't accompany us, and I can remember playing with the sheep herd that ran freely all over the village or dillydallying one way or another along the pathways. My friend Janet reminded me that we occasionally jumped on the back steps of the carriages that drove visitors on tours around the Village. On snowy days, putting on our leggings and boots and taking them off again must have been time-consuming.

     As for gym class, as Andy says it was entertaining but not instructional. I really enjoyed playing a team sport with a gigantic ball, which we kicked around with our feet while sitting back on our hands on the gym floor (kickball?). We played dodge ball and climbed a ladder on the gym wall. Andy thinks we played musical chairs once in a while. I know we played softball during recess in the upper elementary grades, but I don’t remember that it was ever played during gym. I would imagine we played soccer and basketball, but maybe not.

     In the winter, we sometimes went sledding down the hill near the Suwanee River and other times we ice-skated on the Suwanee. These were very fun times unless the snow caked onto my scarf, mittens and face or my ankles ached. It was not pure undiluted joy but it was a great break from routine.

     We called our teacher “Coachie,” and on the last day of school in sixth grade, he asked us to call him “Marc,” which quite surprised me. Gym class was fine.

SWIMMING      It was a totally different story in swimming. I spent the entire class playing around in the shallow end and talking to the other non-swimmers. As the years went by, the number of non-swimmers dwindled to a determined two, Sue and me. At the end of each class Coachie would ask us non-swimmers to dip our heads under the water. We responded by pinching our noses closed with our right hands and clamping our eyelids shut with our left hands, then sinking under the water for all of a second or maybe two. I don’t remember the coach attempting to teach me how to swim nor doing or saying anything that would upset me. But I know I fixated on him as the reason I didn't swim, so I wonder what my problem was.

     The rule was that in order to swim in the deep end, the student had to swim a full length of the pool doing the Australian crawl. Each time a classmate made the swim, everyone applauded. I never made that swim until the last day of swimming class, when the coach let Sue and me swim the length doing the dog-paddle. Everyone applauded which really surprised me. I thought it was really nice of them.

Aftermath      The summer after I “graduated” from sixth grade, I went to a camp in northern Wisconsin where I learned to swim well in three weeks. I even learned to dive off the diving board in good form. Soon after we started to school that fall in our new junior high schools, our class was invited back to the village for a reunion night, which included an hour or more of free time swimming. Imagine my pleasure in swimming the length of the pool in several different strokes and diving off the board, thinking “Look at me now, Coachie, I’m a good swimmer!”

     My mother told me years later that she could never understand my problem with swimming -- that I had learned to swim the summer before kindergarten but stopped as soon as I started swim class at Greenfield Village. I know I was a rather stubborn child, but I really do wonder what turned Coachie into my swimming nemesis. I'm beginning to think I'll never know the answer to that one...

SQUARE-DANCING taught me a lot of steps and terminology that I've not yet had reason to employ, but you never know. It was sure a lot of fun to learn in any case. A pleasure reserved for Fifth and Sixth graders, we only square-danced on Fridays, and only for a few weeks both years. The lessons were held in Lovett Hall and one of my most vivid memories is the vastness of the space. The ballroom was huge, formal, and beautiful. The teakwood floor was perfectly designed for dance and could handle maybe a hundred couples but we were only ten or twenty (very young) couples. I vividly recall feeling very small, taking up very little space among the acres (that’s how it felt) of beautiful teakwood flooring.

     I think we had to dress up for those Friday lessons – dresses for the girls, jackets and ties for the boys. We were taught as much about the polite world of attending a formal dance as we were about square-dancing.

     We were paired with dance partners, and the boys had to walk up to the girls and ask if we would care to dance, using the polite words they were taught to use for the occasion. We girls accepted our partners’ offers in a very proper way. Then we put our hands partially in their hands, and we’d walk to the dance floor. We understood that there were almost no acceptable reasons to refuse to dance, if asked. I don’t think we wore gloves, because I remember sweaty hands.

     At the end of the season, we made a special presentation in front of our parents and for that we wore our very best party dresses and suits. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience (maybe not the sweaty hands), and I remember fondly the boys’ politeness, which seemed genuine, and how fun it was to have a willing partner to dance with. There were two short girls, Marilyn and me, and two short boys, Bucky and Bernie, and we were always paired, one way or the other. I know Bernie was my partner at the final sixth grade dance performance, and I thought he looked very handsome in his navy blue jacket.

Chapter 17 - Old Movies (No Popcorn)

1950 - 1957

     I loved the old movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Two or three times a year all the students of Greenfield Village were trotted up to the theater at Henry Ford Museum to watch an old movie. I don’t know what the reasoning was – perhaps just treating everyone to a break in routine. I remember it was crowded in the seats, and we were restless until the movie started.

  Sometimes it was the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin or a few very, very old silent films; sometimes Westerns. I especially loved the Shirley Temple movies – my favorite was “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” The words to the top song in that movie really spoke to me: “If I had one wish to make, this is the wish I would choose: I’d want an old straw hat, a suit of overalls and a worn out pair of shoes…”

  My other favorites were the old horse movies, “My Friend Flicka (1943)”, and “Thunderhead, Son of Flicka” (1945). I still remember the drama of a beautiful, wild, white horse rearing its hooves on top of a hill, “The Albino!” Reading the reviews today, it looks like “Thunderhead” was inappropriate for kids with unnecessary violence (one horse killed another horse), but I was totally into the drama at the time. We also saw “Black Beauty” (1946) and “White Mane,” (A 1953 French film about a white horse of the Camargue) which tragically ends with the little boy riding his horse out to sea where they will die together rather than allow the horse to live in cruel captivity. I loved them all.

Chapter 18 - Blood and Gore and Nailed to the Floor -- History

Learning History in the 1950's 

     I love history. Is this because I attended Greenfield Village Schools? It certainly helped. Imagine attending school in an historic building and being herded down the lane to visit another historic place and told its fascinating (sometimes) history. It was fun – what a great way to learn. Of course, the parts that stayed with me must have been particularly appealing to a child – secret passages, blood and gore, an odd sounding voice recording of “Mary had a little lamb.” And there’s always that memory thing – was I really told “such-and-such”, and if so, was it fact? Such fun to figure out.

     One of my favorite memories is also one of the earliest – a visit to the Plympton House. It was tiny and cozy, and I loved the story we were read about the Plympton family and their trials in this house (none of which I recall). The best piece of furniture was a bench by the fireplace. There's a photo in one of the old Heralds. If you look carefully, you can see the hole that was cut out below the seat for the family cat. I remember being surprised and warmed by the knowledge that a pioneer family, challenged for survival, would make a snug “hidey-hole” for their kitty right there in the bench by the fire. I wish I could find that bench. There’s a similar one in the Plympton House today but no “hidey-hole”. If it weren’t for this photo, I’d think the bench with the hole for the cat was only in my imagination.

     Abraham Lincoln practiced law two or three times a year in the Logan County, Illinois court house back in the 1840’s, and it was an important part of the Greenfield Village Schools. The rocking chair in which President Lincoln was assassinated, complete with blood stained fabric, stood rotting in a glass case inside this building throughout my youth.

      I remember my surprise when visiting Washington D.C. as a child that they, too, claimed to have the rocking chair of assassination infamy. After that, I would tell visitors to Dearborn that we had one of the two chairs in which President Lincoln was assassinated right here, wrongly assuming that the true chair was in D.C. So imagine my amazement when laboratory tests in later years proved that Henry Ford had actually put his hands on the Lincoln chair. Fortunately, they realized that the poor conditions in the Logan County Courthouse were ruining the chair and moved it to a healthier home in the Henry Ford Museum. It's even been properly (I assume) restored. I also learned that the blood stains which had so fascinated my youthful self were actually a build-up of men’s hair oil. But there must have been blood stains, too, right? I suppose I really don’t have to know which is which…but it would be interesting.

     In another old photo, you can see small parts of the slave huts which had been placed behind and to the right of the Logan County Courthouse. Not historically accurate, the location made sense if you thought of Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. The slave huts stood next to the courthouse as a quiet reminder of the cruelty and tragedy of the antebellum South and in my child-mind, fit in well with the violence of the Lincoln Chair. Today the slave huts are found at the end of the block, and are a small part of a much larger grouping of buildings that help explain the reality of slavery in American History. It’s all very interesting and well-done, but I still like the way I remember them before.

      The “secret” hole for the colonists’ cat was almost as good as the secret passage in Secretary House (today it’s called the Giddings Family Home). The house was built about 1750 in New Hampshire with the most exciting feature possible – a secret passage. In the closet there is a wooden coat hook that turns to reveal a secret staircase leading to the attic (or so I remember – I haven’t seen it work in over 50 years!). I thought we were told the staircase was used to escape from the Indians, but it could have been used to store weapons during the Revolutionary War and fugitive slaves during the Underground Railroad days. In any case, I am so glad that when they relocated the building to Greenfield Village in 1929, they restored this feature – it’s a great idea. Every house should have a secret passage.

     We made annual pilgrimages to Thomas Edison's Menlo Park. I heard Edison’s voice reciting “Mary had a little lamb” many times, and remember seeing lots of dirt and oddments on display which we knew Mr. Ford had transported from New Jersey. If I learned nothing else about Thomas Edison, I learned about his early boxcar experiments when he was selling newspapers and candy on the train, and I was duly horrified by the story of the inventor’s experiment-gone-awry that ended with a fire and his deafness. There are many stories about how Mr. Edison became deaf, but the one I most remember from my childhood was that a mean railroad employee grabbed young “Tom” by the ears to throw him off the train.

     I knew that Thomas Edison epitomized “The Inventor,” and that he invented lots of things, including the light bulb and the phonograph. And I gathered from observing the laboratory’s hundreds of glass jars filled with powders of all sorts that inventing is a very strange business indeed. Who would think you could create a light bulb from powder? I did.

     When Edison recreated the light bulb invention at the Golden Jubilee in 1929 and sat back in his chair, Henry Ford had the chair nailed to the floor. Isn’t that cool? And don’t you like the pipe organ against the wall in the laboratory? Now I know that the workers enjoyed music as an early form of relaxation therapy (sounds like therapy to me), but when I was a child, I assumed that the organ was just another Edison invention.

Chapter 19 - Dancing Round the May Pole

The author and a classmate on May Day 1951

     On May 1 or so – May Day – The Village green proudly boasted six or seven tall maypoles, each with very long pastel-colored streamers neatly hanging straight down the pole and out onto the green grass. Some were shorter for the younger children. We had practiced with our teachers for a week or two in advance and were excited and ready. We understood the object was to weave the ribbons into a pretty pattern tightly down the pole. (The Greenfield Village Schools loved weaving in any form.) When complete, the pole would look rather as if it had been wrapped in an Easter basket. And we would have fun doing this. I’m sure we were offered the sanitized history of May Pole Dancing.

     On the day of the event, we dressed up in pastel-colored dresses or boy-sized suits and stood at our assigned place at the end of each ribbon ready to do the May Pole Dance. The poles stood in readiness; the children excited. Next, each teacher told her class to pick up their ends of the large pastel ribbons holding them tightly in their hands. We were alternated boy-girl, boy-girl. The next step was to face your “partner”. The boys were all to be facing one way, and the girls facing them, opposite, all still tightly grasping their ribbons. When the music began, we skipped in and out of each other around the May pole, laughing or smiling or seriously concentrating or occasionally dropping the ribbon. When we were done I remember feeling a great sense of accomplishment, although it was rare that the ribbons around the pole were perfectly placed in a basket-weave pattern. It was great fun regardless and I absolutely loved everything about this dance.

Chapter 20 - The School Nurse

1950 - 1957

     There is a strange and amazing photo of our school nurse Mrs. Cook giving “a regular morning inspection” in one of the old Heralds. She is peering into a child's mouth, with a line of children waiting for the same attention. It was taken only two years before I started kindergarten at the village. I remember Mrs. Cook but I sure don’t remember a regular morning inspection. Nonetheless Lucy tells me that we began every day this way and that Mrs. Cook marched us right back to the bus if we were sick.

     I rather doubt that I had the experience of being sent home by the school nurse because I devoted so much energy into staying home in the first place. I feigned illness on a regular, perhaps even on a daily basis. The pleasures involved in being home sick seemed to have outweighed whatever draw there may have been to attend school. There was a goal to my being home – cherry Jello. When my brother and I were home sick, our adoring maiden aunt would bring us red Jello in those small clear glass custard cups that everyone used in those days. Carrying our treats in a hand-basket covered by a dish towel, our great aunt Clara would arrive full of love and cheer. Somewhere along with our various forms of measles, mumps and chicken pox, we developed a Jello ritual. In a contest to see who could eat the most without the Jello “roof” caving in, we carved out the red gelatin tiny spoonful by tiny spoonful with our mother’s special little silver demitasse spoons. This was also a game you could play alone.

     The only time I remember being sent home sick was not by the school nurse. It was the one day I actually felt sick but was forced to go to school anyway. Since I pretended to be sick on a routine basis, my mother’s behavior was understandable. When I threw up at school, she was called to come get me. I still remember my righteous indignation -- "I TOLD you I was sick." I also recall being told the story of “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf” too many times to count.

     I also recall walking up to the Recreation Building for polio vaccinations, both injection-style (what a fuss I made!) and oral vaccinations (loved them in place of the shots). We had blood drawn one year so that we would know what blood type we had, and we were given a little blue plastic tag with the information. I am now told it was for Civil Defense purposes, but I don’t remember ever knowing that. I do remember my brother’s tag and my tag were kept in a little drawer in my mother’s secretary. And that my brother’s blood type was more unusual than mine and seemed an infinitely more important sort. My blood was the most common kind, putting a dent in my notion that having the name of Elizabeth meant I was related to the Queen of England.

     Others born in the 1940's probably also remember having fluoride treatments. The latter were some sort of cotton balls that were stuffed in our mouths for a period of time (15 minutes?) and removed. I suppose this was before fluoride was added to our water.

Chapter 21 - The Christmas Operetta

1950 - 1957

     Harnessing the anticipation and excitement for the weeks leading up to The Christmas Play must have been a huge challenge for the teachers, the parents, and most of all, for Mrs. Needham, our music teacher. I’m guessing she was responsible for selecting the program, deciding which grades would play which parts in said program, and then choosing the soloists and other roles for the students in each grade. The Christmas Play was a major production staged in the Henry Ford Museum Theater on the last day of school before Christmas break. Costumes were handmade, either by the mothers or by seamstresses hired by the mothers who wouldn’t or couldn’t sew (my mother).

     In various years, we wore (1) tutus (mine was red with a white top); (2) Chinese pajamas for the Nutcracker’s “Chinese Dance”; (3) all-white tutus with sparkly silver stars as snowflakes in the Nutcracker; and (4) Japanese kimonos (mine was red, white and turquoise). Costumes were part of the magic. I can’t tell you the depths of my disappointment when, in our last year at the Village, we had no costume in The Christmas Play -- we dressed in navy bottoms, white tops & huge bows. We sang the words to “The Night Before Christmas” as a chorus.

     My brother and my cousin were among those who sang solos but luckily my musical talents did not rise to the level of a starring performance. Thus my memories of The Christmas Play are of happy anticipation rather than stage fright. The two years in which we wore oriental costumes were the best. I can still hear the words “I run away as fast as day” in my head whenever “The Chinese Dance” in the Nutcracker Suite is played. We practiced our dance steps often – it was a great routine that took us all over the stage. I vividly remember on Performance Night how our carefully rehearsed dance-trot picked up speed with our excitement, and eventually we hurdled across the stage in what I’d call a run-chase scene. It was marvelous.

     The next year, we wore kimonos and it was another great year. The costumes were beautiful and so was the accentuating make-up. Yes, we were herded two-by-two into a backstage wing where our faces, lit up by bright lights, were painted with special make-up, and it was the only time I remember being readied for a stage by a make-up artist.

     We rehearsed in the theater but nothing prepared us for the frenetic excitement of Opening Night (actually it was the Only Night). For one thing, it was night; it was dark out, and we were accustomed to daylight. For another, we arrived with our families by car, not on a bus. Our parents shuffled us inside the Henry Ford Museum, which was closed by that time, and many of the lights were out, adding to the strange delight. We met up with our teacher and classmates at an assigned gathering place by the wooden benches not far from the theater. Make-up was applied to our little faces (we hadn’t practiced with make-up) and we were all very silly and scared. There was a lot of waiting around. With all our excited, adrenalin-filled, laughing, frightened little selves, there must have been trouble. We had the entire museum to ourselves and the adults were distracted and busy. I’m quite sure that’s when I learned that the wooden display horses’ tails were removable. By the way, the horses, stationed in front of display carriages and sleighs, were located on the far side of the museum, quite a long way from our assigned wooden benches.

     Our teachers must have dreaded The Christmas Play.

Chapter 22 - The Ending...

1950 - 1957

     My first day of school school was nearly sixty years ago; and my sixth grade “graduation” was 52 years ago. The vivid reality of each day spent as a Greenfield Village student has faded, but I am surprised with the feelings and memories that remain. I live in Dearborn and visit Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum frequently. Every visit brings back my childhood:

     Today I walk by “The Sounds of America Gallery” (formerly named the Stephen Foster House, where Stephen Foster never lived, but that’s another story)…and I remember the grave for “Old Dog Tray” that used to lie on the lawn. I still hold my breath when “inside” the covered bridge (for a while, anyway) …and recall that, as our school bus lumbered across the bridge’s clacking boards, our entire busload of kids held our breaths to avoid bad luck. Today I step inside one of the historical homes that used to be my school and a wave of nostalgia passes through my being. I notice the moldings and the tiny knobs on tiny doors which hide light switches; I see locked doors that lead to rooms and stairways not open to the public; and I remember the hours that these spaces, these walls, these floors were part of me.

     At the Henry Ford Museum, I see the original white tiled floor of the bathroom and spot the once-elegant toilet-flusher on the floor, a worn brass ball that we used to step on, and I think what a great idea that was and assume they lie abandoned because the maintenance was too expensive to continue. And this little-changed bathroom brings back memories of the annual Christmas pageants held in the Museum’s theater, and the excitement of waiting for our theatrical act in the staging area—which happened to be in the Henry Ford Museum, near one set of bathrooms.

     I don’t wish to return to those days, and I have plenty of bad memories of my years at Greenfield Village. I intentionally chose which memories to write down, hoping to bring pleasure to my reader and to myself in the re-telling of these tales. Spurred to record this part of my youth by my friends in the Writers Group, I know that not everything is fact, that memories are funny things, and I hope that both the reader and I will forgive me for the mistakes. As my mother once wrote in her memoirs, “After all, it was a long time ago.”

[Written by Betsy Cushman in 2010]