Fourth and Out

Bill

New Day 

At the end of that first summer in Hyde Park, I started fourth grade at the Fairmount School.  It was September, 1953

Fourth grade is not even the middle of a kid’s public education. That would be sixth grade. Those were the kids I thought to be my superiors in every way until I tried to imagine what it would be like in high school. I had nothing to compare that too so it quickly became a long-away fantasy.  Sixth grade became the more attainable goal. 

Still, fourth grade is better than starting at the bottom.  My brother started first grade at the Fairmount that same fall.  With the addition of extra classrooms he remained at the Fairmount right through sixth grade. Because of the lack of those extra classrooms I was there just the one year, not long enough to get a sense of the place, or the feeling that I was moving forward. It was a bit like being in limbo.

Unlike the Ellis Mendell School in Jamaica Plain, just on the other side of my back yard, the Fairmount School was down on Williams Avenue, about a 15 minute walk from the house on Prospect Street.  If I dawdled, and I’m sure I did, it would take a lot longer.

There were a couple of different routes I could take to my new school. I could walk down Prospect and then along Williams Avenue. Or I could walk along Fairmount Avenue. (Given the school’s name I wondered why the school hadn’t been built on this street.) Then I'd take a left down Summit. The school was at the bottom of this hill.  It’s likely I took the Summit route to get to school and the Williams route to get home.  The walk up Summit was very steep; the walk along Williams and up Prospect was more gentle, but it took longer.

More significant than the distance from my new house to the school was the fact that my fourth grade teacher was a man, Mr. Cronin.  I’d never had a male teacher before.  All my previous teachers had been unmarried women.  How did a little kid know whether his teachers were married or not?  Well, in Boston, as in many areas across the country, married women were not allowed to be teachers, and if they did marry during their time as teachers, they would have to quit. However, this rule did not apply to men.  I call it the breadwinner exemption.

This rule came with consequences, many unintended.  It allowed for people unfamiliar with the reality of children to supervise them in a position second only to parents.  It seems absurd.  “So you wish to be an elementary teacher?”  “Yes.”  “What qualifications and experiences do you have pertaining to this position?”  “Well, first and foremost, I do not have children myself so I’m a blank slate in that department.  Their process of development from infants to toddlers into children is unknown to me.  I expect a group of them to be similar to small adults, sitting still, listening, learning, obeying.  I never plan to marry so my ignorance in these matters will remain throughout my teaching career. At least that is the plan.”  “Excellent.  You have the position.”

I know, a bit of an exaggeration.  Back then, though, we all had teachers who remained in the system too long disrupting many lives along the way for one reason or another.  Those were a few who seemed genuinely to dislike kids. A married teacher with children might have had additional insight into us little monsters to make their jobs more rewarding and our school days more fulfilling.

I didn’t know if Mr. Cronin was married or not.  I did know he was a good teacher.  He wasn’t an easy teacher, a bit of a taskmaster actually, but he didn’t yell at you, make you feel uncomfortable. The best thing was he made jokes!  That was new to me.  That’s most likely the reason I considered him a good teacher. 

The Fairmount School was new the year I arrived to begin fourth grade.   Whether the paint was still drying or it had been built the year before, it was light years away from the massive Mendell School.  Most schools in Boston were like the Mendell, large foreboding buildings configured of heavy granite, ringed with iron fences.  More like prisons than schools.  Many kids actually did compare schools to prisons. “Where are you off to?” “Prison.”  “You mean school?”  “No, prison.”  Kids would say that on the way to school. “Another day in prison.”  Sort of sad.

The Fairmount did not have that prison-like atmosphere from the outside.  It was red brick, human scale, two stories, and bounded by chain link, a fence you could climb over without risk of impalement. The windows consisted of glass block over regular panes which you could open.  No heavy shades to prevent sunlight from coming in, or whatever light was available during a grey November afternoon. State of the art.

The biggest change from the Mendell were the moveable desks and chairs.  Nothing was bolted to the floor.  The irony was that most of the time they were configured in similar fashion to their bolted cousins at the Mendell, six or seven rows in straight lines from front to back.  We sat in alphabetical order.  I was a “B” so I was in the row closest to the windows.  Yes, lots more glass, including shards of heavy glass block, when and if the Russians paid a visit.  But lots of light too.  And a place to look out of when daydreaming.

    

Subject Matter

It was in fourth grade I began to separate out the subjects.  I knew math had little in common with history but now, taught as a separate subject, geography was becoming distinct from history even though I later recognized geography often determines history.

I liked geography.  I even liked the absurdity of summing up a country by the list of products it produced. Canada: wheat. Holland: tulips and wooden shoes. Switzerland: watches and cheese. Maybe watches made out of cheese? Stereotypes were reinforced on a daily basis in fourth grade.

History was different.  It was about time.  I didn’t yet have a concept of time.  For me time was now, not then.  Fourth grade was the beginning of running out of time when we studied American History.  Year after year, right up through high school, we’d start with the Pilgrims, the revolution, get into the War of 1812, Louisiana Purchase, make it to the Civil War.  But year after year we’d run out of time before we reached the 20th century.  Most of what I know from 1900 on I learned on my own.

English instruction was not about the way we kids spoke our language.  It had to do with the rules of that language.  There are rules for how I say things?  It wasn’t too long before I discovered I loved having the rules.  Probably because unlike the rules of math I got the rules of English.  The whole relationship of nouns to verbs.  Great.  Even better were the descriptive words, adjectives, that seemed to come out of nowhere to partner up with nouns.  A car is one thing but a speeding car, a bright red car, a crashing car, much, much better.  The rules allowed me to add drama and imagery when I spoke.  Not that I could articulate that then but somehow I sensed it.  

I also began to grasp the differences among speaking English, writing English and reading English. Very few people speak like they write, and the printed page seemed a whole new universe.  I began to see how you could say so much more in written English than spoken. Nuance, connotation, description.  Didn’t know what any of those were but again I had a sense of all of it when I read. My reading comprehension was better than my speaking expressivity. 

To succeed, we are told, do what you like to do.  Looking back at my fourth grade report card, I see all As in reading and all As in geography.  Interestingly, my favorite books to read as the years went by were, and are, travel literature.

Report cards saved over the years are both mysterious and instructive.  In fourth grade the marking periods were two months apart.  Report card day was a big deal as the teacher passed them out instructing us to bring them home to get them signed by a parent.  Most kids, girls in particular, would pull them out of the envelope to check if they made the honor roll.  I never made the honor roll.  For the five marking periods I see a string of Cs beside penmanship.  The same Cs next to art.  And more of them linked to manual training.  Is it possible I had some sort of small motor control issues?  No, nothing like that.

My father signed off on the first marking period, my mother all the rest.  They didn’t like the Cs but the As and Bs in all the other subjects made up for them.  At the bottom of the May/June report card, Mr Cronin had written, “Promoted”.

In fourth grade the realization struck me that for many, many months I would have to come to this place and sit in this seat for five or six hours a day while someone taught me something I could or could not readily comprehend and that would or would not be relevant to my life.  I wasn’t able to discern the relative value of what was being taught until years later.  All I could do was sit, listen, try to understand. 

I spent a lot of time in my chair, in my row.  Finishing my work early, I’d look around the room, listen to pencils on paper, watch kids with heads bent over their desks, concentrating, struggling. I’d follow many of these new kids, and they with me, all the way through high school, all the way through time to 1962.  In the fall of 1953 that seemed a long way away. I’d get to know some of my traveling companions well over the years but most would be no more than familiar faces as 4th became 5th became 8th became 12th.  We’d all grow up during this transition, physically at least.  But those qualities of personality in 4th grade would also be there in 12th grade.  Older faces with the same look.

There was something else new in fourth grade.  Homework.  Who came up with this?  I don’t recall homework at the Mendell.  Maybe my multiplication tables. Check out the blog entry School Days to see how that worked out.

I’m bringing books home now.  A math book to practice rows and rows of multiplication and division problems.  A history book to read a few pages before answering questions about what I’ve read. An English book to copy out lists of sentences underlining nouns or verbs. Then there was spelling.

Mr. Cronin would write the spelling words on the blackboard which we’d copy on a sheet of paper.  I’d tuck the sheet inside the front of another book to bring it home.  The next day there’d be the test. Mr. Cronin, in front of the class, saying a word, slowly repeating it.  “Pumpkin.  Pump…kin. How do you spell pumpkin?”  I’d think about for a second.  Try to remember what the word looked like. Sound it out.  Then take my best shot as I wrote it down.  Some kids would be scrunched over their papers laboriously writing for what seemed like minutes.     

Some words were pretty easy.  “Muffin.”  “Hours.”  Some more difficult, at least to me.  “Thief.”  “Character.”  I do remember that word, “character”.  It plagued me right through seventh grade.  I’d always put an “or” on the end.  A day or two after the test Mr Cronin passed them back.  (Imagine spending time each night correcting little kids’ spelling tests!) This was the beginning of checks and “X”s.  Hated those “X”s.  Somehow, even though I remember struggling with spelling, I must’ve figured out how to cope with such words as “neutral” and “fountain” and “except”.  More checks than “X”s, and “A”s next to the subject line spelling on the report card.

Mr. Cronin would usually pass out test papers by leaving a stack on the first desk in each row.  After picking out their paper, that kid would pass them back. Some kids would just reach their hand over their heads to pass them to the kid behind; others would turn all the way around; a few would slide them across the desk of the kid behind hoping they might scatter on the floor. What I didn’t like about this method, especially if you were at the end of the row, was that everyone in front of you knew how you did on that particular test.  

I liked it better the few times Mr. Cronin would walk up and down each row dropping our papers on our individual desks.  Personal delivery service.  It meant you got a bit of a head nod, good work, or a hint of a scowl, try harder

Depending on the accumulation of checks or “X”s, letter grades would be sprawled across the top of the paper.  “A”s or “B”s were fine with me.  Sometimes they were further enhanced or degraded by a plus or a minus.  Just one more or one less misspelled word made the difference between a B- or a C+.  I never got “D”s or, the worst, an E.  There were no “F”s then. E, which translated to very poor, was rock bottom. Too many of them and you might be held back.  The prospect frightened me.  I could think of little worse than having to do this all over again with a new set of kids.  Not being promoted, even though I was never in any danger of that, was a prime motivator in doing homework I had no interest in doing.

The Contest 

Mr. Cronin did like to push us. Every few months our homework load would triple, but only for one group of us.  The reason? A boys vs girls in-class scholastic competition.  The winner had no homework over that weekend, the losers essentially brought home every book in their desks.

We all moved into other kids’ seats so that boys were on one side of the room, girls on the other.  Then Mr. Cronin would pepper each group with a variety of questions, things we might have discussed recently, or what we gleaned from homework.  Sometimes individual kids would be asked something, “Name a river in South America.” Other times a question could be answered by anyone. “Name the adverb in this sentence.”  It was at times a sort of confused free-for-all.  But a free-for-all with consequences.

I didn’t like it.  I didn’t like being on the spot if asked a question I couldn’t answer. I felt I let my side down. I certainly did not like all the extra homework.   And the boys lost that first time.

So while the girls clapped and cheered, we boys contemplated extra addition and subtraction problems, more questions to answer at the end of a history chapter. “Be sure your answers are in complete sentences.” Once there was a poem to memorize. What! How could I possibly get all this done? Most of the girls were happy to have  a weekend free of homework, or they just liked beating the boys.  I think a couple of them, and you know who you are, felt a bit lost at the prospect of such freedom.

The next time, when the boys’ side won, the feeling of relief was palpable. Palpable was not a spelling word or a word I even knew then but it sums up the intensity of my feelings.  I was so happy not to walk home with any books, no pressure, no apprehension.  It wasn’t so much about winning, and I’m sure I didn’t contribute much to the effort, it had more to do with the instant release of anxiety when I realized our side had won.  It was like an extra Christmas.

Games

Once or twice a day, depending on the weather, we’d all pour out a back door to the asphalt covered schoolyard for recess. It was during fourth grade recess I began a pattern of non-participation. Recess was segregated in a sense, social pressure pointing girls in one direction and boys in another.  Boys did not jump rope, girls did not play squash. 

Interestingly, while some girls jumped rope or hopscotched, even ran around in a tag game, a fair number would simply gather in groups to talk. Teachers would come by try to encourage them to get some exercise. (We didn’t have a gymnasium so this was our physical education; it was even a subject listed on our report card.) The girls would eventually drift back together again.

Boys were under more pressure to get involved in whatever game was being organized.  This was usually squash ball, a game like baseball with bases and hitting.  No bat though.  You hit the ball with your fist after it was pitched or thrown to you.  It was a large rubber ball, usually red, sized like a soccer ball, only smoother.  Hit it just right and it would take off.   In some games pitching was dispensed with. You held the ball in your hand before whacking it.  Then you took off, tried to get round the bases before the kid in the corner ran down the ball and threw it back in.  Now, unlike baseball, a kid on the opposing side could hit you with the ball when you were off a base. If you were hit, you were out.  Some kids tossed it in your direction, other kids whipped it at you with great accuracy.  It was a rubber ball so it didn’t do any lasting damage but it could sting if you got it in the face, and some kids aimed for the face.

That’s why I was reluctant to get involved.  I was offended that the weaker kids were the ones most victimized by the ball throwers.  It’s called bullying now.  There were times when a slower kid, feebly hitting the ball barely ten feet, would wobbly-run to first only to be confronted by one of these bullies.  Instead of just tapping him with the ball, he threw it at him, hard, from just a few feet a way.  

The most common lament among us less sports-minded was a cry of, “That’s not fair!”  For some those were just words, something to say to maintain a little dignity, to remind someone they are not playing by the rules, but for me they had resonance. I hated unfairness.  It took me a long time to understand accepting the innate unfairness of life would be among the most important steps one could take in growing up.

So in this passive aggressive way I entered into the games not giving my best.  Truth is I was good at sports.  I was a skinny kid, not big on strength, but I compensated with speed, agility, balance, and a certain self-confidence.  But to spite those I considered bullies, I didn’t apply my physical gifts. So as not to give a kid a chance to whip the ball at me, I’d try to get out fast by hitting the ball right to someone so they’d catch it, or by positioning myself when I ran, a ball thrown at me would hit my legs.  

Of course, being so inept, intentionally or not, led to that dreaded school boy dilemma, being picked last.  I was never picked last. Sometimes close to last, but never last.  There were always kids who were genuinely inept at competitive physical activity.  These were kids who when a ball was hit right toward them would fend it off with their hands rather than make any attempt at catching it.  Still it didn’t mean anyone had a right to laugh at them, or, when they were running to base, to whip the ball at them.  Not being picked early only hardened my resolve not to do well in the game.  Does “only hurting yourself” come to mind? That mindset was a trend in my early years, irrational behavior that you considered reasonable, a good definition of rationalization.

As the year went on the teachers scattered around the playground didn’t seem to notice, or care, if some kids played well, poorly, or not at all.  It made no difference in the grade. Beside the physical education subject on my report card there was a string of As. I guess all I had to do was show up.

Then again maybe I was graded on the game we played inside the classroom during winter or when it was raining.  I participated in this game with a degree of enthusiasm.

It worked because our chairs and desks were moveable. Just after lunch we’d push everything to the sides of the room.  What a racket that made.  Then we kids would form a circle, girls mixed in with the boys.  In the middle was Mr. Cronin with one of the rubber squash balls.  He’d toss it randomly to one of us.  We stayed in if we caught it; we’d be out if we didn’t.  Catching it wasn’t much of an effort for most of us.  The trick was always be prepared because Mr. Cronin would never look at the person he threw it to.

Sometimes he’d have his back to you, abruptly swiveling in your direction, quickly throwing the ball. You had to be ready, have your hands up or you’d have no chance to catch it. He’d often spot an unsuspecting kid just standing there, hands at his sides, or some kid talking or poking the kid next to him.  With surprise the kid would get hit with the ball or, if quick enough, he or she would get their hands up to knock the ball away, occasionally even catching it.  “Good catch,” Mr. Cronin would say. We all liked it when some kid could outsmart Mr. Cronin by seeming inattentive but knowing exactly when the ball was coming.  It became a contest to beat the teacher at his own game.

I enjoyed this game. It had elements of surprise, skill, and pride if you could stay in a few rounds. Everyone seemed equal here.  Some of the roughest kids out on the playground dropped the ball while a couple of the more inept kids stayed in.  Of course, it could have been Mr. Cronin working the ball for that outcome.

I was very much on the alert when we played, knowing Mr. Cronin was most likely to throw to me when he was turned away from me.  Sometimes, to throw us off, he would throw the ball to the person he was looking at but more often look at you and then throw the ball to the person next to you.  It could get a bit nerve-wracking.  I never won, never was the last kid standing but sometimes I’d be among the last dozen or so.

Even when I dropped the ball and was out, I enjoyed watching the rest of the game   With all the desks and chairs in disarray I’d sit in someone else’s chair, or I’d stand under the clock or over by the door.  It was good to be away from the windows in another part of the room.

Often the game ended without a winner.  Time would run out.  “Time for arithmetic,” Mr. Cronin would say putting the ball back in the closet.  More scraping as our desks and chairs were put back in rows.  There was always a couple of them that didn’t make it back where they were.  “Hey, this isn’t my stuff,” some kid would yell out.  More scraping.  Finally we’d settle down. 

Divide and Conquer

Paper would be passed out.  The paper we did arithmetic on was different from paper we’d write on in English.  It wasn’t white, more of a tan or brownish color.  Cheaper paper really.  We did our problems with pencils.  Never did math with pens.  Pencils had large erasers on the end.  I used those erasers a lot.  So much the paper would tear. (I remember when a kid told me there were erasers for ink too.  What an invention, I thought.)  

I used the erasers a lot for something new to which I was being introduced. Division.  In addition, you added.  In subtraction, you subtracted.  In multiplication you had to know your tables.  In division, you used everything.  Not only that, you also had to estimate.  There were the easy ones.  16 divided into 1632.  Or 50 divided into 1500.  I could manage those.  But what about 16 divided into 1451?  There was multiplication just to see how close your estimation is, then subtraction, numbers added, more estimation, and then, it never ends, remainders to deal with.  No wonder that eraser was used so much.

Occasionally, in spite of myself, I’d finish the rote practice early. I’d sit, fold my hands, look up at Mr. Cronin at his desk. I’d wonder what it was like from his perspective, looking at all of us, wondering if he ever thought what his classroom was like from my perspective. When I was working, did he notice that I was having difficulty with the division, that it was clumsy with too many steps, that I was using my eraser a lot. Did he ever think of me as a person or just another kid to be taught how to divide and someone to catch off guard when he threw a ball at me.

Lunch with Friends

There was no lunchroom at the Fairmount School.  That experience began in 7th grade.  More eating lunch at our desks.  More wax table cloths. I carried my lunch to school in a lunch box, probably with the Lone Ranger and Silver emblazoned upon it.  It was metal with a clasp to open the top.  Inside was the food my mother made for me that morning.  A baloney sandwich or peanut butter and jelly, a few cookies, Fig Newtons or Oreos.  No carrot sticks.  Or vegetables of any kind.  Didn’t like them.  I don’t know where I got all my energy because I didn’t eat all that well.

We had milk with lunch.  Mid-morning the milk monitor would go off somewhere and bring back a case of half pint cartons of milk.  The top cartons would be covered with a thin layer of dirty crushed ice which would quickly melt during the hour or two the crate would sit in a corner of the room. By the time we got to them the milk would be warm, a bit frothy when you opened it.  Pretty awful.  The milk was okay with peanut butter and jelly but did warm milk really work with baloney on white bread? Cheap protein I guess.  Milk money, collected every week, was ten cents.

I had a bit of a relationship with the girl in front of me.  Her name was Diane and she was black. I only mention that because in 1953 it was rare that a person of color was a member of your classroom. It was one of those relationships where we would try to annoy each other.  Sad but true.

Diane always noticed what was in my lunchbox so she could comment on it, in, for us kids at least, the most disgusting way. “How do you like your worm sandwich today?  You like eating all those slimy awful tasting worms.”  In that vein.  Maybe I liked the attention, ridiculous as it was.  I just kept eating.  “I love worms,” I’d say even though at times some of the things she came up with did put me off my food.  But I’d never reveal that to her.  

When she overdid it, and she did have a gross imagination, I’d offer to share some of my lunch with her.  She liked that.  It became sort of a lunch time ritual with us.

I don’t recall her in school much after 5th or 6th grade.  In junior high a friend told me Diane and a friend of hers, a white girl, had picked up the moniker Salt and Pepper.  I learned later this racist term implied not that they were inseparable but carried the implication they had sex for money.  My first inkling of what prostitution was.  Of course, was it true, or just society’s way of denigrating a friendship between two different young women?

Assembly

One of the most exciting days of fourth grade came during an assembly.  One morning instead of recess everyone in the school walked to the auditorium.  The assembly hall was in a connected building at right angles to the classroom area of the school. After I left for the Barton Rogers this space was converted to classrooms to enable the Fairmount to offer classes for fifth and sixth graders. (My younger brother went to the Fairmount K through 6th.)

Each class sat together.  Ours was down toward the front fairly close to the stage.  We didn’t have assemblies that often and when we did it was usually to watch a poorly projected movie about traffic safety, or a droning talk by the principal.  This day we were being treated to something special, a live show.  There were people in costume on the stage, adults, actors, dancers.  It was great.  Best was the magician.  

If I were Johnny Carson this would have been the moment when I would have committed to a career in show business.  The guy on stage was impressive.  He made things disappear and then reappear. He did magic with hoops and rings and balls. He made us laugh with funny voices. I sat there transfixed. This was so interesting, so unlike what usually transpires at school.  

For the next few days the excitement resonated.  “Did you see him make that ball disappear?” “I can’t believe he unstuck all those rings.”  “I wish he was our teacher.” Slowly our spirited discussions faded until the daily ennui reasserted itself.

Fourth and Out

At the age I am now I look back at fourth grade as an educational, social, historical, philosophical melange.  Writing about it, thinking about those days, the age I am now intrudes upon the fourth grade scenes I envision. Am I sitting at that desk next to the window or is that an eight-year old kid who happens to become me? For that kid, and for me, staring out that window, not caring if he hits that squash ball or it hits him, it’s just another long day in a large room.

There’s a rustle, a barely perceptible shift. Looking over to that desk by the window, the other kids in the class wonder who that old guy is, the one sitting where Billy was just a moment ago. In front at his desk, Mr. Cronin glances up and notices too.  But he knows it will be best for everyone if he lets the intruder stay for just a few more minutes. The kids go back to their work. The only sound is the tick of the clock on the wall as it measures off another countless minute. 

I only spent a year at the Fairmount.  Fifth and sixth grades were at cloistered classrooms at the William Barton Rogers Junior High School down off the hill in Cleary Square. On a glorious day in June of 1954 I left fourth grade behind, looking forward to summer as only a nine year-old kid can do.