Chapter 2 The Note in the Oven - Kindergarten

1950 - 1951


     My educational career at Greenfield Village began with a pre-school tea on the day before school started. I know this because there were two photos of it in the Herald…and a pretty fancy tea it must have been. Look at the boys in jackets, the floral centerpiece, the glass and china. Finding these photos sparked a vague memory of being nervous about such a gathering, attending and making a friend named Lucy. Andy, another classmate, says she actually remembers the event, which is mightily impressive. Here are Andy’s words: “I remember a sit-down with paper and crayons and we could draw. My mother was there. I drew a house that was all black, no other color, and my mother commented on it being all black. I told her that it was the only crayon I could get my hands on.”

  Ann Arbor House was home to both kindergarten and first grade for a few years in the early 1950’s. The pretty little white house sat on top of a hill and the children entered from opposite ends of the building. First-graders entered through the front door which faced the street. On the back of the house was the door to the kindergarten basement classroom, cut into the side of the hill. Today that door is covered up with sod. Both grades shared a playground and athletic field for recess.

  The shared recess time is important because I have vivid memories of pretending to be a first-grader. When their bell rang ending playtime, they were trained to run up the hill to the front door and file inside. For reasons that today are obscure and undoubtedly flawed, that same bell also galvanized me to call out to my classmates “I’m in first grade!” and run up the hill after them. I would then pass right by their door and run back down the other side. It’s embarrassing to think how much I enjoyed this exercise.

  My absolutely favorite activity, though, was the sand table. If you were particularly short, you climbed up on a stool to reach the finely filtered, beautiful white sand complete with enthralling sandbox toys. I remember vying with the other Betsy in my class for space to play. Once in great frustration I simply climbed into the center of the table so I could reach enough sand. That’s what I wrote in 2008. A few months later, I unearthed what I had written about this same episode when I was in sixth grade: “I was quite small so whenever we were playing in the sandbox, I jumped in the middle and stole all the sand.” Memory is a funny thing – I’m not sure which story is correct. But I was the smallest kid in the class. And I did like the sand.

  In one corner of the room were twenty small chairs and a blackboard which I will forever associate with the first song we were taught. The tune and the words were neither pretty nor instructive but I can still sing them today: “Apple tree, apple tree, send a big one down for me.”

     Weaving on real looms was a special pleasure. There were enough looms for each child and they were stored on shelves in one corner of the room and brought out weekly. Greenfield Village was positively obsessed with weaving and I have devoted an entire chapter to the subject later in my memoir.

  Our teacher was young and kind – Miss Turner. One day she asked me to take a written message upstairs to the first-grade teacher. I had noticed that other children had been asked to perform this important task and I was honored to have been chosen on this particular day. But as soon as I was handed the envelope, I panicked. Suddenly the old steps, worn down by thousands of footsteps before me, loomed large and foreboding in front of me.

     I thought about what I’d have to do. I’d have to mount the steps – alone. At the top of the steps, I’d have to open the door to the kitchen – alone. I would wend my way through the house to reach the first-grade rooms. In my imagination, I would confidently sail into their classroom ignoring the twenty pairs of older eyes all staring at me, and politely hand the teacher the note. The more I imagined all those people looking at me, the more I realized that I had to avoid that nightmare scenario. I made it as far as the antique kitchen when my eyes spotted a black iron oven built into the brick wall. Its heavy door opened easily. I simply left the note in the oven. Whether or not the envelope was important and whether or not its non-delivery caused any repercussions between the two teachers I’ll never know. I do know that I still feel guilty about the note in the oven.

I took this photo through the window in 2011. Today a phone is in the oven and the iron door is gone.

We spent all day at school and perhaps most five-year-olds still napped. My mother told me I gave up napping at age two. Nonetheless we were all herded up two flights of stairs for naptime. The first flight led to the kitchen; the second set of steps was tiny and ended in the small darkened second floor of this house. Here I had to endure a torturous hour of lying still on a cot. It might have been 40 minutes; it felt like two hours. I remember staring at the wall, window and ceiling and hating every second. It amazed me then and still does that some children actually fell asleep.

  “Sometimes after lunch we fed the fish at the covered bridge. Only a few of us went at a time.” I wrote these words about my kindergarten experience when I was 12, but I still remember the fun of the fish rushing to eat the bread crumbs. I wonder if the fish have returned to the ponds under the bridge…

Chapter 7 - The Big Fall -- Fourth Grade

1954 - 1955

     Our fourth grade began upstairs in the Clinton Inn and switched to the basement of Ann Arbor House for the rest of the year. I don’t know why. Shall we show another photo of Ann Arbor House? This will account for the half-year of the two and a half years spent in the little house, if you’re counting.

Robert Frost House in 2014

(We had half of 4th grade in the basement)

     My good friend Andy remembers that fourth grade began in Ann Arbor House and ended in the Clinton Inn, so perhaps that is the correct order. I’m sure it doesn’t matter and we agree that we spent the school year split between the two buildings and we don’t know why.

The Eagle Tavern in 2014

(We had half of 4th grade upstairs)

     We must have begun the school year by learning to add the words “under God” to our Pledge of Allegiance. The bill to amend was signed into law in June of 1954, so in September when school began this must have been one of our assignments. I don’t remember that it was fourth grade when this happened but I do remember the awkwardness of learning to add the two words to the Pledge of Allegiance.

     I was often sick with low-grade virus infections and missed school. The doctor wanted to take out my tonsils but said I was too anemic for the operation. He recommended that my parents take me to a warm climate to get healthy. The concept must have agreed with other family needs at the time because we took our first trip to Florida and met up with my grandparents. My grandfather was very ill and was recovering in the warm weather. It was the first airplane ride for my brother and me, and I remember being reassured by the cardboard poster in front of every seat. It showed hundreds of cartoon people and said “Millions have flown safely. You can too.” I kept my eyes on it every time the propeller airplane air-stream-bumped. Though there was a lot of homework, I could do it on the sunny beach and the whole Florida experience was very exciting. I collected lots of seashells and brought home a shark’s tooth for every classmate.

     Fourth grade was the year of my Big Fall off the ladder in the playground. I acquired a scar just below my lower lip and another inside my cheek but you can’t see that one. The playground behind Ann Arbor House included a ladder-type monkey bar. One of my routine moves was to climb on top of it, grab a rung with both hands and swing myself through to hang under the ladder. One day I began my routine move but forgot to use my hands, thus diving head-first into the dirt below. My child-memory was that I was put in a chair in Ann Arbor House basement with pints of dirt-covered blood pouring from my mouth while my teacher and the school principal calmly observed and discussed whether or not to call my mother. Believing my life blood was rapidly flowing out of my body, I distinctly remember thinking “Are you nuts?! CALL HOME!” But I couldn't talk because of the blood. Eventually, Principal Stroebel himself drove me home and I remember that his car became bloody which I’m sorry to report gave me some minor satisfaction since he had taken so long to make a decision. I’m embarrassed to report that when my mother took me to Dr. Runge’s office, I made such a fuss over his plan to put in a few stitches that both the doctor and my mother finally backed down. I was allowed to have the lifetime pleasure of a scar inside my cheek and below my outer lip rather than suffer the brief agony of stitches. In retrospect I think I made a fine decision.

      The sum total of my fourth grade academic memory is learning the times tables.

     The biggest surprise took place at the end-of-the-year picnic which was a lot of fun. Our parents came, and we played all kinds of racing games which I loved, including the three-legged race and a race jumping in a brown cloth potato sack. Miss Rodgers smiled while talking to my parents and made a positive comment about me. I didn’t know she could smile nor harbor a kind thought. (She was my least-favorite teacher.)