Chapter 6 - Flash Gordon Met the Cisco Kid -- 3rd grade

1953 - 1954

Town Hall in 2014

(We had 3rd grade here in the 1950's)

      The highlight of third grade at Greenfield Village was the day the boys wrestled a goat down the back steps into the basement of Town Hall, which was our school that year. " Susie" was a free-roaming goat with one horn painted red and the other one green. My memory doesn't extend to how long Susie spent in the basement, what she did there and what punishments the boys were awarded for accomplishing this feat. I only remember that it happened and I imagine that I was both aghast and amused at the time.

     One of the pleasures of leafing through the old Heralds is finding photos which call out for a certain amount of skepticism. For example, there was a happy photo of boys and girls holding hands gaily skipping down the front steps of Town Hall in 1947 which does not resemble in any way my experience of attending school in Town Hall six years later. A closer look reveals that the children are not smiling. I strongly suspect that this is an example of a 1947 “photo opportunity”. It was taken six months after Mr. Ford’s death and there may have been some uncertainty about the school’s future. Perhaps Mrs. Ford was the intended target of this idyllic picture, a demonstration of why the school must be kept in operation. Or maybe not.

      We entered Town Hall through an outside cement staircase at the back of the building. It led to the basement where we left our coats and boots, where Susie the Goat was wrestled down the stairs and where we kept the weaving looms. In warm weather we may have used the front door but the chances that we ever merrily skipped outside hand-in-hand, boy-girl, well, the chances that happened were nil.

     My only academic memories of 3^rd grade are (1) learning to count to ten in Spanish and (2) being bored out-of-my-mind by geography. I think it might have been world geography and with my love of travel today, I would have thought that my child-self would have loved it. However I only remember that we were to memorize which countries produced which products (rice, rubber, titanium?) and it meant nothing to me. Leaf-collecting, matching trees with leaves, was far more interesting. We did that quite a few years in the Village – I still remember where the chestnut trees were – but I don’t know if third grade was a leaf-collecting year.

     Recess often involved the entire class in exciting adventures recreating a TV show called “Flash Gordon” who was a spaceman. The most popular kids played the lead parts but all of us were included. I remember the playtime fondly but I also remember that I was at distinct disadvantage. I would be assigned a role to act out but I never watched the actual TV show. I tried my best by adapting plots from my TV shows to a spaceman scenario. My TV shows were the Westerns – Hop-a-Long Cassidy, Gene Autry, the Cisco Kid and my favorite, the Lone Ranger.

A note about Town Hall: Mr. Ford wanted a town hall on the village green facing the village chapel. Given only a few months to do so, Frank Cutler designed and built it in time for the 1929 dedication. It represents the early 19^th century Greek revival style of architecture and reflects an amazing amount of determination and skill.