The Rest of Elementary School

Image by clarkstown67 via Flickr

Elementary School years were pretty good. The curriculum wasn't all that tough and we were all friends - though we fought sometimes and argued a lot too. Fourth, fifth and sixth grade years are pretty much of a blur. We figured out that life was going to be: get up, get dressed, go somewhere you don't want to go, come home, do chores, go to bed.

Mrs. Gussie Sligh ran the fourth grade with an iron fist. She really tried to get us interested and she really tried to get me to do homework. When Mr Stewart was introduced into the equation I relented for a while, half did homework for a while longer, copied other people's homework on the bus sometimes and sometimes just didn't worry about it at all. I think she gave up on me towards the end and I still passed on to the next grade. The thing that I remember most about her class is both visual and olfactory imagery. We did a science experiment that involved Red Cabbage and Ink. I will never forget the smell and I added red cabbage to my list of things that I will not eat.

I''m sitting here trying to think of my fifth grade teacher's name. She had red hair and was rather old. I suspect she was in her fifties. Anyway she and I had a rough time of it. She decided that I was going to do homework and I dug in my heels. The system finally brought in my parents and homework became a supervised afternoon chore for a while. I would come home, do my other chores and then sit at the kitchen table with my books doing homework. I didn't have a clue how I was going to escape this one and finally found that I could "fake" homework to Mamma's satisfaction.

Sixth grade was Mrs. Ruth Sproles Carroll. A portly matron with cotton white hair. I don't remember much about sixth grade except that we were very "social" that year. My best friend was Gail Griffith who went to school at Northside. We took dancing lessons together, rode bicycles all over, took piano lessons together and just had a great time. Gail was a year older, so she found out about other boys and pretty soon I was on my own again. I remember that she thought that Elvis was really great. Sixth grade was to be the beginning of the end of my childhood.