Gin
The School on the Hill
My first view of North Junior High was when I was seven years-old. At the time my family consisted of my mother, father, my 12 year-old brother and me. We were living on Stanley Avenue just off Springside in Pittsfield.
Most Sundays we would take a walk. Often we would end up at Springside Park. To get there, we would walk down Stanley Avenue to Springside Avenue entering the park through the woods where Springside Avenue dead-ended. This was in the fifties before the park was reduced in area to make Springside Avenue continuous from North Street up to Benedict Road. When my family walked there, Springside was landscaped but parts of it were wild especially to me. Areas of woods crisscrossed with foot paths. These areas were left to grow as naturally as possible.
We would walk along a particular path in the woods to what I considered a favorite spot The woods were full of large boulders. My father told me, “These were left by the glaciers.” Quite near where we entered the park there were several large rocks we could climb. One had a surface that made it appear to be two rows of seats, one behind the other. I always called it a taxi. Sometimes my good-natured parents would sit in the back part and I would sit in the front pretending to drive. I’m sure my teenaged brother David didn’t find this as much fun as I did. It was the first thing we did each time we went to the park.
Continuing on the footpath through the woods we’d eventually come to the park proper, an expansive area of grassy hills. There was a gurgling stream just as you walked out of the woods. I always stopped to toss in sticks and leaves watching them float down toward Pine Street. Further up the stream, there was a dam behind which was a small pond. It was a natural area full of frogs, tadpoles, pollywogs and algae. Not very deep. Probably up to my knees if I waded into it. Not a pond for swimming. In the winter, though, it was large enough for ice-skating. On this summer day, just the croak of a few frogs. After I had lingered at the stream, we continued walking.
The next stop was the playground area. There were swings, a slide, jungle gym, and a spinning platform. I'd swing. Then climb. Then slide. Maybe I’d try to talk my brother into doing the seesaw, a mismatch since he was much bigger than I was. I'm trying to imagine what my brother would do at a playground designed for younger kids. Toss a ball with my father? Walk around on his own? He was too old for swings or the jungle gym. Some days my parents would bring a blanket for a picnic lunch. It was fun sitting there in the sun munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
One Sunday, instead of heading back home the way we had come, we continued to walk to an area I was not familiar with, the other side of the playground. It was exciting to me because there was no clearly marked trail. We were just walking between trees. I felt like we were in the wilderness. On the top of a small hill, we stopped. Pointing his finger, my father said, “Look over there.” Through the trees we could see a construction site high on another nearby hill. Metal beams. Lots of trucks and equipment. A partially built rectangular structure that was only two stories high but ran extensively lengthwise.
I realized this view had been my father's intent for this trek. He turned to my brother. ”That's the new junior high being built. When it’s finished in a year or so, you’ll be going there for ninth grade. The very first year it’s open." And he did.
My first day at North Junior High came four years later in 1956. We were now living on Plunkett, just off Tyler Street, with plans to move to Montgomery Avenue in the middle of October. For the first six weeks I rode the school bus to North. Once we moved I walked.
Although the walk from Montgomery appeared short, it was annoyingly inconvenient. In those days, Montgomery came to dead end at a grassy area which separated it from Pontoosuc Street. There was a well-worn footpath through the meadow. Once you reached Pontoosuc Street, it was only few steps to get to North Street. Directly across North was a grassy hill atop of which was the school. It would have been a straight shot to walk from Pontoosuc except for the lack of crosswalk. Neither was there a sidewalk along the other side of North Street. And no path leading to the school. So there was the school right in front of me but no safe way to get to it.
Instead I had to continue up North Street, walking well past the school to get to the crosswalk leading to it. The walk continued along a curving road that eventually reached the school. Not so bad in fall and spring, but a pain when it was windy, cold, raining or snowy because I kept thinking the walk was longer than it needed to be.
North Junior High was so much bigger than any of the elementary schools I had attended. Most of those were rectangular brick buildings of two stories with about eight classrooms. They had been schools forever. A classroom for each grade K-6 and a couple of extras when a particular grade had a larger number of kids than usual. The total number of students in each elementary school was a little over a hundred. Since each school served a neighborhood, brothers and sisters went to the same school. It seemed like a family. While I only got to know well the other kids in my room, I realized that most of the kids I didn't know were often brothers or sisters of those I did.
Each school was named for some famous city figure: Crane, Plunkett, Pomeroy, Tucker. If someone wanted to they could uncover the history of Pittsfield by researching the names of the schools. However, in the early 50s Pittsfield built two Junior Highs, one in the north side of the city and one in the south constructed with similar architectural plans. Appropriately enough, when they opened, they were named North and South Junior High. Both have since been renamed after important figures in Pittsfield’s more recent history. North is now John T. Reid Middle School and South is Theodore Herberg Middle School.
Since all the elementary schools on the north side of the city fed into North Junior High, it had many more kids than I was used to. In seventh grade alone, there were thirteen homerooms each with some 25 students. I assume eighth and ninth grade were about the same size. That added up to about a thousand kids. A thousand kids pouring into the main corridors each morning; some from the lines of busses, others like me on foot. However, the group I interacted with, because of the core curriculum, were the twenty or so kids in my homeroom.
The Core Curriculum
For seventh and eighth grade, my parents had enrolled in me in a special program called the Core Curriculum. Unlike other students in seventh and eight grades who moved throughout the day from class to class, we stayed together in our homeroom with our homeroom teacher for all our morning classes. We didn't have lockers in which to store things; our homeroom desks held our books and lunches.
The description of my 7th and 8th grade classes is based partly on my memories but also informed by notes I took recently at the Pittsfield Public Library. The library has reports prepared for the school building committee describing both the two new junior high buildings and also the kind of curriculum being created by a group of educators from Harvard. They had been engaged to design an innovative program of studies to match the modern buildings.
You can tell by reading the reports the city fathers who were behind this effort were proud to be a part of something new. They wanted schools, both buildings and programs, to prepare young people to live in the new world reflecting the enthusiasm of the times. The war is over, TV is here, there are labor-saving appliances for every housewife, telephones in every home. What will they think of next? That kind of enthusiasm. How would that be reflected in education?
The school buildings would be modern with a cafeteria, an auditorium, up-to-date shop and home economics facilities, language laboratories, and classrooms with large windows and the newest glare-preventing green boards. The ideas laid out for the curriculum were also progressive, student-centered, and in line with the philosophy of influential innovator John Dewey. The report outlining the new curriculum was clear. Classes for young teens shouldn't be cut into individual hour-longtime blocks, one for math, one for science, one for social studies, one for English. The report advocated content should be integrated, motivated by students' interest and curiosity.
Students would learn spelling and grammar as they wrote reports exploring topics they cared about. Math and science ideas would be encountered as they engaged in projects focused on questions of interest to the students. These projects were to be based on their own real world experience. The programs should be flexible to meet the needs and skills of each student. Examples were offered. A student who was musically inclined should have an extra hour a day devoted to music; another might use that hour playing chess; yet another drawing or painting. Much was made of a teacher's commitment to understand the skills, abilities and interests of each student so that an individual plan for that child could be developed.
Students would also work together to learn content that was common rather than individual. Students worked in small groups called committees that would gather around common interests. Each project would be enhanced by the different skills and abilities of the mix. The artistic student would create covers for the reports. Those better at writing would generate the narrative portion of the report. Those with a bent toward math or science would conduct experiments, gather data, and analyze the information. The result of this collective work would then be shared with the rest of the class so that students would gain experience in making oral presentations. The report called this "teaching democratic values." It was designed to prepare us to be contributing citizens.
Teachers would listen to what the students were trying to figure out and would offer new concepts as the students needed them. For instance, a committee of students doing a project on the school cafeteria might be examining how much of each kind of food the cafeteria should order. The teacher would offer support be developing a lesson on ratio and proportion for the committee. As the students shared their report with the rest of the class, the ideas of ratio and proportion would be taken up by the whole group.
It was quite an ambitious undertaking for the 1950s. As it turned out, the theory didn’t match the practice at least in my 7th and 8th grade experience. I often wonder if the plan was ever fully implemented. What kind of training did the teachers receive? Most importantly, did they ever really support the Core Curriculum? Did it end up being some pie-in-the-sky vision offered by educators at Harvard and never actually adopted by the feet-on-the ground school committee members and school administrators?
By the time I attended the junior high, the majority of seventh and eighth grade classes were traditional. Students attended hour-long classes each devoted to a separate subject. The core curriculum concept survived as an elective that parents could opt for. Among the thirteen homerooms in my seventh grade, two were core and the remaining eleven were traditional. But even the core classes I experienced were a far cry from what had been envisioned in the report.
We did have long block times with our core homeroom teacher in both seventh and eight grades. We were in "core" the first four hours of each day. However, both my seventh and my eight grade teachers broke up the time into more traditional periods for English, spelling, writing, geography, and history using the same texts as the traditional classes. We had the same teacher for all of these, but the content was not as integrated as what had been advocated in the original concept.
Some aspects of the Core Curriculum were enacted. For instance, there was an emphasis on personal responsibility. Teachers worked to create a sense of the classroom as a community in which each person was to do their best and contribute to the whole. This was explained to us as parallel to the way a democracy worked, citizens gathering together united by a common interest, a shared vision of ways to make life better, each contributing according to their ability or skill.
Each Friday we were to reflect on the way we worked that week by
completing a self-assessment. Among the questions:
Do you spend your time in worthwhile ways during homeroom period?
Do you have something to do if the teacher isn't ready to start class yet?
Have you contributed your best to class discussion?
Do you bring in news to share at meeting time?
Have you worked faithfully on class committees?
Do you wander around aimlessly and talk to whomever will listen?
Who is responsible for your behavior?
The first few times I filled this out it was intense. I thought hard about how to rate myself. I did contribute to the class discussion, but was it my best? Is it worthwhile to do the crossword puzzle from the Weekly Reader during homeroom? I brought in a news clipping once this week. Was that enough to get the highest rating? What does working faithfully mean? I knew to answer "I am responsible for my own behavior.” at the end, but I did actually wander aimlessly a lot and talk to whomever would listen to me. Was that okay or should I mark myself lower for that? What if we were talking about the news clipping? Did that make it okay? I had a lot of dilemmas as I worked to fill this out each week as honestly as possible.
However, since I had completed every assignment on time, read more than the required amount of pages, had not been absent or tardy, eventually I began to worry there was little room for improvement. As the weeks progressed, I found myself trying to come up with something, anything, new to say. I reached a point where I hoped I had a missing or late assignment so I could put a lower rating and then be happy the next week when I could show improvement.
I knew I wasn't completing this form with the right spirit, but there wasn't any room for improvement if you already met all of the stated standards. I could always mark myself lower on talking when I was supposed to be quiet, but that was about it. Eventually I developed a distaste for completing the form.
I began to wonder how seriously my classmates took it. If they weren't already doing the assignments, would they say that at the end of the week and then vow to be better the next week? Would they change their behavior and begin to do the work consistently because of this form? Or was this an exercise that we all did without any expectation that it would make a difference? Did the teacher even read them? Once we completed the forms each Friday afternoon we turned them in. I don't recall ever seeing them again until the next Friday when we picked up the folder with our past evaluations so we could add that week's assessment. Maybe at the end of year we would to look them over to reflect on our progress since the beginning of school.
After I became friends with another classmate, Carole, (See the blog Carole for the full story of our relationship.) I remember asking her, "What did you put down?" She told me, "I always rate myself the highest." Surprised, I replied, “Really?" "Yup. Every time." I said, "But you didn't do one of the activities. Remember, you were out that afternoon and never made it up." She said, " So what. I'm not going to mark myself anything but the best. Why would I?" I never could argue with Carole's logic but I could never adapt it either.
Another element of the Core Curriculum that was actually carried out was the concept of projects. They were not as student generated as the report had envisioned, but we were allowed to choose from a list the teacher gave us. From the list, I just chose whatever topic Carole chose did so we could be on the same committee.
The one I recall from seventh grade was about pioneer life. Some of the kids worked on building a replica of a typical pioneer settlement out of Lincoln Logs. Others wrote brief papers on different aspects of pioneer life. Making butter. Taking care of livestock. Making candles which I believe is the topic Carole chose. At the end each kid would do an oral report in front of the whole class on their particular topic complete with a model to illustrate what they were talking about.
My topic was about making soap. Down the cellar at Montgomery my father had wood of different shapes and sizes used to start the coal furnace. I used some of these to fashion a model of a hopper for the soap making process. I found pieces of wood the right shape to glue together. The information on how to make soap came from encyclopedias from the school library. We were allotted time every week as library time to work on various assignments. I was relieved I was not making a working model, not that I could anyway. I doubted I'd be able to pull off making soap out of ash and fat as the pioneers did.
Even though we had one teacher every morning as part of the Core Curriculum, individual subjects like English were taught more traditionally, one hour periods from standard books with class lectures and practice activities.
One activity I loved and everyone else detested was diagramming sentences. I enjoyed the way the structure of a sentence was revealed once you identified the subject, the verb, and, if present, the object. Those three went on the main line. Then the modifiers. Adjectives and adverbs off at an angle but attached to the nouns or verbs they modified. I had never realized before that the adjectives were attached to nouns and adverbs served the same purpose but for verbs. This parallel construction was satisfying.
Prepositional phrases? No problem. They were modifiers too, only instead of a single word they were a whole phrase. They go off at an angle attached to whatever they were modifying. If you encountered a "helping" verb, that extra "have" or "had" to clarify the tense of the verb, that went on a line coming from the verb it was helping. To me, this was just so much fun. I loved the way you could pick apart complicated sentences and reorganize them in such a structured and sensible way. It was all so obvious once you got the structure. Like a puzzle. I never knew why the rest of the class groaned when the teacher said,” We’re going to diagram sentences for the next hour”. Enjoyable as it was, I never associated diagramming with writing. It seemed to be a specific activity in and of itself. Which, as it turned out, was fine with me.
We also studied geography and history in seventh grade but not in the integrated fashion suggested by the designers of the Core Curriculum. Explorers were one topic of study. We were given a list that filled two pages. Columns of information. The names of the explorers, dates of their travels, what land they discovered, and what country sponsored them.
For me this list generated many questions. Why did all these expeditions occur about the same time and not before or after? Why were some paid for by Spain and others by England? Why did Portugal play such a big role when it seems like an unimportant country now? How did the explorers know to go to different places from each other? I don't recall ever asking any of these questions. Instead I read the list over and over so I could prepare for the test we would have.
Thinking back on this now especially in light of the report about the Core Curriculum I realize the missed opportunities. If I had a chance to pose some of these questions and investigate them in a group project, I might have developed a more coherent understanding of the way scientific discoveries, geographic divisions due to rivers, mountains and oceans, and political power intersect to develop the narrative of the past. I might actually have liked history had I seen it this way. But all of this is a recent adult understanding. My thirteen old self just read the list over and over to try to link each explorer with his dates, his country, and what he found.
There was a rare moment of satisfaction in eighth grade English class. One day our teacher, Mr. Nixon, rolled a bulky machine into the classroom. It was an opaque projector. It allowed him to put student work on a surface and project the work onto the board for all to see. To my surprise one of his positive examples was a piece of my writing. It was a single sentence, "The puffy white cloud floated in the lazy blue sky." I was excited to hear him explain why this was a particularly good sentence. He pointed out how the adjectives "puffy" and "lazy" communicated a sense of quiet and that the verb " floated" was consistent with that mood. I felt very proud. So that is all I recall of the entire opaque projector experience. If I was supposed to learn anything from his descriptions of other students' writing it was lost on me. All I remember was my one great sentence. "The puffy white cloud floated in the lazy blue sky.” Class, please diagram that sentence.
Another eighth grade writing assignment I recall with much less positivity. It was to be an opportunity for us to learn how to do a research report. There was a formal structured process we were to follow. Gathering resources. Note taking on index cards. An outline to guide the final draft. A bibliography of at least ten items from a variety of sources.
I was assigned one of the presidents, not Washington or Lincoln or one of the good ones but someone more minor whose name escapes me now. First we learned about note taking using our library time to search out encyclopedias and biographies on our topics. We weren’t supposed to use notebook paper but index cards. The front of the card would have a quote or summary of information from a particular source; on the back we’d write a citation for the bibliography. We were to write the paper from the information on the note cards. At least that was the idea.
Once I located a biography, I felt defeated. Here was a whole book already written with all the details about my topic. Why was I writing something shorter that was supposed to have the same information? Why look up other references? Lots of questions. Few answers. I continued on.
Eventually my list of resources included a few books, a bunch of encyclopedia entries, and a couple of articles from the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. I thought this guide was amazing. It became in later years my go to source for information. Who would have thought that someone would list and describe every magazine article ever printed. What a tremendous amount of effort! So even though most of the magazines were ones I had never heard of, I checked the guide religiously every time I had a report to do.
Once I found the materials to use came the next stumbling block, taking notes. My tendency was simply to copy whole chunks of the text onto the note cards. I couldn't see how to say it any differently than what was already there in the resource. If I didn't write it all down, I was afraid I would be missing something when it came time to write the paper. I ended up with a hodgepodge of notes, from whole verbatim paragraphs to fragments of sentences.
So it would count toward my ten sources, I used a variety of encyclopedias copying different facts out of each one. From the World Book, dates of birth and what college my presidential subject attended. From Encyclopedia Britannica, information on political success and election to Presidency. From Compton's, information on presidential accomplishments. Even though each encyclopedia had basically the same information, this was my way of using a variety of sources.
Once my note cards were filled out, the next step was to sort them according to topics and lay them out in the order I would use them them as I wrote the report. I could do that easily enough as I figured the only way to order them was by date. Since it was a report on a person’s life, chronological order was an easy system to follow.
Once the note cards were arranged, I was to write an outline. We had studied outlining the previous year. Like diagramming sentences, outlining had so much structure. The indents, the series of smaller and smaller letters, alternating letters with numbers, keeping topics that are at the same importance parallel to each other, placing sub-topics one step down and indented. Doing the exercises on outlining was fun. I was better at those than actually using it as a tool to support my own writing.
Creating the outline for my paper should have been easy. The early years, family life, education, politics, becoming president, his accomplishments in office, and his life after the presidency. However, as I started to write the outline, I couldn't tell if two topics were at the same level or if one was a subtopic of the other. I got worried that when I started writing, I wouldn't be able to stick to the outline, writing something in the paper I had neglected to include in the outline. Since we had to hand in the outline earlier than the paper, my strategy was to scribble out a rough draft of the report and then make the outline fit what I had written. I figured if I kept all the scribbled pages I could use them to write my finished paper. I knew it wasn't what I was supposed to do, but I did it anyway. I wonder what I wrote in my self-assessment that week?
All the preparation is over. My paper is due Monday. Saturday afternoon I take the last few scribbled pages transcribing them into a finished draft. I wish I could say that each draft was an improvement over the previous one. Mostly I was trying to write complete sentences and make the whole thing neater. I wrote the final sentence with more than a feeling of relief. Just one more task. Take these pencilled notes on yellow paper, copy them over in ink on white paper and assemble them into my final report. I’m thinking the hard part is over. The rest I can do tomorrow afternoon.
After church and Sunday dinner, I prepare the front porch. It’s a late spring afternoon. I set up our card table, bring out the chair from my father's desk, collect my notecards, my draft, the outline which had been returned to me after being checked off as completed, a stack of white-lined, three holed punched composition paper, and the folder I purchased to serve as my cover. I also have two blue ink ballpoint pens, and an ink eraser. I look over at my materials with satisfaction. The hard work is over. This is going to be easy. I have done the writing. All I need to do now is copy my final version on to the white-lined paper in ink.
I begin. First thing I realize is that my scribbled handwriting is so poor even I am having trouble reading it. I get through page one. Though better than the scribbles in pencil, my handwriting in ink isn’t that great either. Around the middle of the second page my hand begins to feel tight. I realize the word “done” looks like “dove”. Using the ink eraser I tear the page. Now I have to start page two over. Page three. Good. Page four. Good. This is taking longer than I thought. At this point I’m not thinking about the intellectual part of the writing; it’s the physical part that’s getting to me.
My enthusiasm for this task begins to wane. My hand is cramping. My back is tired from being hunched over the table. If I made an error near the top of a sheet, it was okay, I'd start over. If I made a mistake near the bottom, I'd sigh in agony over the idea of having to rewrite the entire page. Was White-Out around in the mid fifties? If so, why didn’t I know about it?
I need a break. I take a walk around the outside of the house and begin to feel jealous of the younger kids playing outside. They didn't have this kind of work. They had a free weekend.
It’s late in the afternoon. Finally I am done. I have a complete paper. I sit back ready to clip it into my store-bought three-hole folder. Wait. I need a bibliography. Back to the notecards. I had written the source of each note on the back. Now I need to arrange the notecards in alphabetical order by author. Do encyclopedias have authors? There are a couple of notecards without all the required information for the bibliography listing. I simply leave those notes out of the bibliography hoping no one would search for that reference.
I write out a cover sheet with my title, my name, my teacher's name, and the due date. I assemble all the pieces, cover, outline, paper, bibliography inside the purchased folder, fasten it with prongs through the three holes and then sit back, happy to be done. This good feeling doesn’t last long. Something else has occurred to me. Is it long enough? It’s supposed to be 3000 words. I start counting. Page 1. Page 2. Page 3. I am keeping a running total. Final page. Oh, no! I am thirteen words shy. Does this sound as ridiculous to you as it does to me?
If I had been smart, I would have explained this dilemma to my parents who would have assured me it was all right. That two thousand, nine hundred, eighty-seven words was close enough to three thousand words to be acceptable. But I didn't ask. I was used to solving my own problems. I hunted through my notecards to find some errant fact I had not used yet. There it was. A fact about college that I hadn't included.
I flip back through the report to see where it might fit. There on page seven is information about my subject’s college days I’ll add it there. Then with an increasing sense of dread I realize I’d have to rewrite not just that page but all of the other pages that followed I couldn't imagine doing that. It took me all afternoon to copy these pages neatly enough to hand in. I go back to page seven using a carat mark to insert an additional sentence squeezed in between two lines of already written text. It looks a bit awkward but at least I had 3002 words now!
I don't recall what grade I received on this report or if Mr. Nixon commented on that extra sentence. What lingers with me from that afternoon was the stress of writing the pages neatly enough, not the intellectual content of the writing. That research paper experience smothered all the good feelings about writing I gained from the puffy white cloud praise. Sadly, I avoided writing as much as possible throughout my remaining school years.
Patterns, Measuring Cups and Ink
Something really different in seventh grade was lunch break. In all of my previous schools, I walked home for lunch. We typically had a ninety- minute break in the middle of the day to allow time for walking home, eating, and walking back. In those days, I guess everyone assumed mothers would be home to meet and feed their kids. Crane School did have a cafeteria but I lived across the street, so home it was. The cafeteria was for those who took the school bus, not us walkers.
Beginning in seventh grade, once you arrived at school, you were there all day. Lunch was shorter. Thirty-five minutes. Lunch marked the end of the Core Curriculum classes for the day. The cafeteria was always a noisy, crowded spot. Because our core class had lunch together, the oft-expressed worry about who will sit with me at lunch didn't become an issue until ninth grade. No dilemma now; I just sat with Carole.
There was a hot lunch line with the usual school lunch fare, a typical Monday might be spaghetti and meat sauce, a scoop of corn, a dollop of applesauce, a carton of milk, and a small square of chocolate cake. All served on a tray with indentations for each item.
There was also a cold lunch line. That had pre-made sandwiches (peanut butter and jelly or egg salad), pieces of fruit, cartons of milk, the same small squares of cake, and ice cream bars. In the cold food line, each item had its own price and you paid for what you chose.
The lunch menus were printed in the Eagle the week before. I usually didn’t buy school lunch but if I saw something I liked, like macaroni and cheese, I’d bring in lunch money for that day.
I usually brought my lunch from home. My favorites were bologna with a slice of American cheese or a tuna fish sandwich. Always on white bread. At least I didn't ask my mother to cut off the crusts! There might also be some potato chips and maybe some chocolate chip cookies. Back then a few cents bought a half pint of milk.
The cafeteria furniture consisted of rows and rows of long rectangular metal tables. Probably the most modern you could buy at the time. They certainly were easy to clean. There were no chairs. Attached to the underside of the table were metal rods that swung out offering a stool-type circular seat. You could only seat yourself one way. Your legs needed to go on the side away from the supporting rail. They were very basic with very thought to comfort. It was not expected you would linger leisurely at the table. You ate, cleaned up your space, and carefully slid the seat back under the table before going to your next class.
After lunchtime, we had our non-core classes. Math, home economics for girls, shop for boys, music, gym and art. I was assigned home economics in the fall term. While I helped my mother out at home some, that was mostly playing with my younger sisters, a form of baby-sitting. I didn't have any cooking or sewing experience. My mother was the cook in our house and we didn't own a sewing machine.
There I was, a novice in seventh grade sewing class. It started off easily enough. After learning the parts of the sewing machine, the bobbin, the thread tension control, the presser foot, and the importance of ironing all materials before you did anything, it was on to our first project, a classic, something every seventh grade girl in Pittsfield did: making slippers from washcloths with rickrack for trim. It was such a commonplace experience that when I picked rickrack in a color to match the washcloths, the clerk at the Newberry's domestics counter smiled at me. ”You must be in seventh grade."
Back to class, where I dutifully ironed the washcloths, folded them according to the instructions and over a period of several days, used the sewing machine to make the seams for the toe and heel before applying the rick rack. I surprised myself. I made slippers. I even wore them a few times at home showing off my new found skills.
After this initial project, next up was learning about patterns. There was a little wheel with spikes that was fun to push along special tracing paper to transfer the pattern onto the fabric. As with my experience in English class diagramming sentences and outlining, I was great at practicing each of these pattern skills when it was an exercise. Actually making something was a different story. The final weeks of sewing class were devoted to each of us doing a project of our own choice. Our grade would depend on the quality of the finished project.
Back to Newburys to look at the pattern books with an eye to choosing something I liked. It never occurred to me to consider some projects might be more difficult to make than others. I just picked something I’d like to wear choosing a pattern for a long sleeve, shirtwaist type blouse with buttons down the front and a V-neck collar. Those of you who know something about sewing are laughing right now. You know this is not a first project for a novice to even consider.
Wait, there’s more. I chose fabric that was a light purple, gingham- checkered style. Not only did the pattern have umpteen pieces, right front, left front, back, right sleeve, left sleeve, placket for the button holes, yoke to connect the back to the sides and sleeves, collar pieces to connect to the placket, but because I had picked out a checkered material, I needed to lay out the pattern on the material so the different pieces would match up with the squares of the fabric design when put together. That meant matching the left and right sides with the back and each other, the top of the sleeves with the shoulder yoke, and so on. At least it didn't have any pockets!
I worked at it each day in class making some progress. I laid out the pattern on the pieces, marked it, did the cutting, and managed to assemble parts of the blouse but in the end I was never able to actually finish. I never even got to some of the harder parts like making button holes. I wasn't the only one in the class with unfinished work. Our teacher ended up using this system for grading. If you finished your project you got an A. I think there were two As. If you were at least half way finished you got a B. If you made a good effort you got a C. I fell into the C category. As soon as the class was over, I threw away the partially completed blouse.
Reflecting back, this sewing class exemplifies much of my schooling. It’s as if teachers just expected you to know how to do things. We practiced individual skills for a time but there wasn't much effort made to help us make the connection between individual skills and combining them in some coherent way to produce something. Teachers imparted facts like the parts of the sewing machine, but didn't advise us on things we might need to know such as how to determine the difficulty level of a particular project. If one goal of the home economics classes was to inspire us to do more projects on our own, sewing class had the opposite effect on me turning me away from the domestic arts.
Cooking class, next term, was not much better. It began promisingly enough. We were divided by alphabetical order into groups of four, each group having its own L-shaped kitchen area complete with a refrigerator and stove, shelves with pots and pans, cabinets with dishes, drawers with silverware and cooking utensils, and a sink, a table and four chairs. There were no dishwashers or microwaves, of course.
I never knew there were so many procedures involving cooking and serving. We learned the rules for the proper placement of silverware for various kinds of meals, formal multi-course dinners, fancy ladies’ luncheons, and even how to set up for a buffet. None of these were meals that had ever been part of my daily life.
At my house we did have two kinds of forks. We used the little ones for dessert, often because the large ones were not yet clean! I never knew you were supposed to use a different fork for the salad than you did for the rest of the dinner. At home, even at Sunday dinners, we used the same forks for everything.
One day we did learn how to set the table for casual family dining. Even that required more silverware and types of plates than we actually owned at home. I wonder if the other girls in this class felt the same as I did. None of what we were learning seemed to match our daily lives. Using different forks and different plates at home would just mean more dishes to wash.
Even in cooking class, our tests were still paper and pencil. One test involved matching up the drawing of a kitchen utensil with its name and then describing the use for the tool. I did get to know about different kinds of spatulas, strawberry hullers, a tool that cut radishes in a pattern that made them look like flowers, two different kinds of potato peelers, which kind of potatoes you were to use with each, which shape knife was best for carrots or which was best for onions. All of this was new to me. My mother had a favorite paring knife that she used for everything!
Once we all knew what a potato peeler was, came baking. Well, not actually baking. First we needed to learn about measurements. Teaspoons and tablespoons, pints and cups, liquid and dry ounces, and how to convert from one measure to another. Our teacher stressed the importance of using the nested set of metal cups for dry ingredients and a glass measuring cup for liquids. It seemed like it was a mortal sin to measure a liquid using the individual measuring cups and equally bad to measure the dry ingredients with the glass one.
Finally came the day when we would actually be allowed to cook something. There was a catch. We couldn't choose what to make. I don't know what I had expected. I had some vague idea we would bring in recipes from home and learn to make them the way our mothers did. All the shopping for our cooking project had been done before we arrived. When we opened the refrigerator that day it was stocked with milk and cream and butter. The cabinets had cans of corn; there were potatoes on one counter. We would all make the same thing. Corn chowder! I didn't expect to like corn chowder. I had never had it, so I had already made up my mind about it.
What a let down. Even though there was a copy of the recipe in each kitchen, we didn't even get to plan out how to make the chowder as a group. The teacher read what to do step by step. Each of us was assigned a number, one through four. She'd say, "All the ones will peel the potatoes. The twos will measure the dry ingredients. Remember to use the correct measuring cup! The threes will assemble the other ingredients. All the fours will set the table for a casual lunch.”
So there I was, a four. Not even cooking. Just setting the table. Lets see. Casual lunch. We'll need a big spoon for the soup. Hmm. Do you still put a little spoon on the table as well? I am trying to recall what the casual lunch setting might look like when she reminds us, "I don't want to see any soup bowls without their matching saucers underneath. That will lower your grade."
The teacher calls out the directions. We carry them out. As if we were in a factory. In thirty minutes the soup is made. We sit four to a table in our corner kitchen with the large soup tureen (another object not at my house) with the proper ladle sitting in the middle. Before we spoon out the soup, the teacher has to check out our efforts. She looks to see if the dirty dishes are neatly stacked, the food wastes properly taken care of, and the table set correctly. She holds a clipboard as she inspects our kitchen. "Okay," she says, "You may eat.”
I am glad to see she immediately goes to another kitchen so she doesn't notice that as soon as I put some soup in my bowl, I lean to the girl next to me asking, "Do you like chowder?" She nods yes so I give her mine. I didn’t even try it. After a few minutes, we get up to clean so the next group can come in and make their chowder.
That's all I recall of cooking class!
One quarter in eighth grade I had a new option. Usually the boys went to shop class, like metal or wood shop, while we girls were in home economics. For some reason, print shop was open to girls. I was quite happy with this choice. I certainly wasn’t going to choose cooking 2. The majority of participants were boys but I didn't feel intimidated thinking they didn’t know anymore about printing than I did. Our teacher was an old fellow who seemed permanently ink-stained. He wasn’t a traditional teacher. He told us stories about working in newspaper composing rooms; for instance, rushing to put out a special edition when there was breaking news.
He took his job of setting type very seriously, calling it an important part of journalism. He taught us about type fonts and type sizes. One aspect of the work of which he was particularly proud was his ability to judge the spacing of a line of type as he was setting it. He would choose spacers that fit between words as he went along always striving for the print line to be aligned at the end of the right margin. I didn't realize what a skill that was or how long it took to develop until I tried it myself.
Setting type took place on a piece of furniture we called a bench. It was taller than a desk as you stood to do the work. The top was angled with a tray at the bottom edge to hold the platen on which you placed the type. Below were two columns of thin drawers. These drawers held trays with small partitions which held different fonts and sizes of type. Other drawers held the blanks, called ens and ems, the spacers that went between words.
After hearing a few stories about his newspaper work and examining the machine that would eventually print our prepared pages, we had the chance to try our hands at setting up a page. I worked very carefully. Choosing the letters wasn't easy as they were mirror-image reversed. It was easy to confuse a “b” a “d”. Sliding the type into the grooves of the platen was not hard, but doing it smoothly and quickly was something that required a lot of practice. Sometimes I'd mess up on the spacing. I'd notice somewhere before the end, the line wasn't going to finish neatly at the right margin. I needed to redo it. Now I was faced with a choice. Either add a bunch of spaces near the end or undo what I had done earlier changing the spacers so the line of type would like more even.
My teacher was pleased with my carefulness. He saw I appreciated a line well set, but he was also amused at the speed, well, lack of speed, with which I set a line of type. "Don't expect to work at a paper at that rate," he said laughing. I may not have been the only one in this position. We all got better at it, but one afternoon he decided to show us his way to set type. We stood there open-mouthed as his hands flew over the drawers and platen. I never saw him have to refigure the spacing. His experience allowed him to picture how to space the type as he went along the line. It was sheer fun just watching him. I was glad he didn't do this at the beginning of the quarter as I would have felt this was an impossible standard to strive for. Even though he was so proficient, he never made us feel bad at our attempts. He always commented on how we were improving. "That was better than yesterday."
As part of this class, we had a field trip to the local newspaper building, the Berkshire Eagle. This was on Eagle Street, of course, just to one side of the railroad tracks that run under North Street. Four stories tall and built of red brick, it was an interesting building to look at because the lot it was on was not a rectangle; it was tapered at the front widening toward the back. The footprint of the building formed a trapezoid, almost a triangle. The front of the building was rounded with two columns of tall skinny windows. Given that and they way it expanded on both sides, it was very different from all of the other rectangular buildings in the area.
The top three floors were offices. We walked around the second floor with its rows and rows of desks, some empty, others with people at their typewriters. We assumed they were reporters. Of course the only reporter I knew was Clark Kent. We also toured the advertisement section and had a chance to fill out a form as if we were placing a classified ad. That was fun because each letter of the text of the ad went in its own block. Sort of like setting type. Then we went down to the lowest floor where they set the type and printed the paper. Our teacher planned to end the tour with what he considered his most favorite place, the typesetting room, but I missed it.
The room with the printing presses was very loud, very hot, and smelled of machine oil. Maybe it was ink, but due to some combination of the heat, the noise and the smells, I felt faint. Carole noticed my distress and whispered to the teacher that she would take me to the girls' room. That's where we spent the rest of the tour. Once away from the printing presses I quickly recovered, but we stayed there until another classmate came to tell us it was time to get back on the bus. I would have liked to have seen the typesetters working. Our teacher had given me such a nice feeling about that aspect of the printing process.
I wonder how long he ran the print shop at North. I hope he didn't live long enough to see the day when typesetting was a bygone occupation taken over by computers. I like to think he never knew about that.
Many years later, I find myself in an old school building in St. Joseph, Missouri where, in my current life, I am leading a workshop for teachers. During a break I go for a walk to make a phone call. Still talking, I lean against an old piece of furniture in the hallway. Without thinking about it I place my arms against the angled top. That’s when I realize I am standing at a printer’s desk!
Sixty years evaporate. For a moment I am back in my junior high print shop. I slide open one of the drawers to find type pieces of various sizes. I locate my host at the school to ask him what was going to happen to the old printer's desk. He tells me they were trying to sell it but in this day and age of computers, no one really wanted it. For a moment I am thinking how great the desk would look in my house but back to reality. I settle for two pieces of type which sit on my office desk as a reminder of that great class I took so many years before.
Sports and Tableaux
Gym class was a completely novel experience. We had recess in elementary school. A time to jump rope, play hopscotch or ball games. There was nothing organized nor demanding about it. Junior high gym class was not recess. It was a class. First of all, you needed special clothes for it. We had to go to England Brother's to buy the required outfit. Girls wore bloomers, wide shorts with elastic at the thighs, a white jersey, and white socks. You also needed some kind of gym shoes. Remember this was in the days before sneakers were everyday footwear. Sneakers were for gym class, shoes were for everything else. Remember no street shoes on the gymnasium floor! You needed to carry your gym clothes to school on days you had gym. There was a girls' locker room to store your regular clothes and any books you might have but you were not able to lock them. At the end of gym they were empty for the next class.
Like the shop classes, gym class was also segregated by gender. Boys had male teachers and girls had female ones. Down the middle of the gym was a wall that could be folded out of the way when required. Boys’ gym class was on one side, the girls had the other. For me, gym class was a series of team sports. We played outside as much as weather permitted in the fall and spring. Field hockey in the fall, basketball and volleyball in the winter, and softball in the spring. I don't recall classes including any kind of exercises or personal sports like tennis or golf.
It was school after all, so besides actually playing games, we had written tests of the rules of each sport and the layout of the fields and courts. Volleyball seemed to confuse a lot of my classmates. I didn’t find rotating positions difficult nor determining the difference between scoring a point and just getting back the serve. I liked sports and enjoyed playing the games. Since we all wore the same gym uniform, one team would wear pinnies of a different color so you would know who was on your team and who was on the other. Pinnies were vest-type clothing you'd pull over your head and tie at the waist on each side.
After a winter of volleyball and basketball, it was nice in the spring to get outside again for softball. Of course, by the time we changed and got out on the field, we’d only play a few innings at most in order to have time to change back in time for the next class.
Much to our surprise, one day our teacher told us our gym class was going to be involved in something called a tableau for a school assembly. What this had to do with gym I didn’t know but she made it sound like fun as if we were chosen for something special. We would pose as if we were in a painting of a dramatic scene. Think of something like Washington Crossing the Delaware or The First Thanksgiving where people would dress up, have the appropriate props and then post silently for several minutes.
Ours was a shadow tableau so our group would not be seen by an audience, just our shadows projected on a translucent screen. Since we weren't visible, we didn't need to wear actual costumes, just a suggestion like a hat or a few props which would make the shadows the group cast look like whatever scene we were illustrating.
It turned out to be pretty boring for those of us in the tableau. All we did was put on a hat or hold a prop, get into a certain position and stand still for a couple of minutes. There would be ten or twelve of us in each scene, each with a certain place to stand and pose to keep. Once we were in position, a curtain would raise, a light would shine behind us and the shadows we created would be displayed. When the curtain went down, we'd prepare with our outfits and props for the next scene.
The other seventh grade classes were sitting on the bleachers in the gym, listening to the narrator relating the story we were illustrating. In our case it was about the history of the United States. The narration was brief and pretty simplistic, just long enough to introduce the next scene and give us time to pose. “The Pilgrims Land at Plymouth Rock.” "The Boston Tea Party." “Founding Fathers.” At least we had something to do. It must have been as boring to watch.
Science and Seeds
School assemblies were rare, maybe one or two a year. One was about science. It was pretty gimmicky as if they were trying to make us think science was like magic in order to make it fun. Many "experiments" ended with puffs of colored smoke. In another of these so-called demonstrations, the presenter asked for someone strong to come up onstage. "Maybe one of the football players," he suggested. Everyone started hooting and hollering, yelling out "Ray. Ray." Ray Woitkowski, a ninth grader and a member of the football team, was a big guy, but he was also shy. I could tell he wasn't that happy being on stage.
The presenter, pointing to a suitcase on the stage, asked Ray to pick it up and move it to a certain spot. Ray easily picked up the case, but he couldn't control its movement. No matter how he moved it, the suitcase pulled in a different direction. Everyone was laughing at his efforts. I felt like someone was playing a trick on him. And someone was. The suitcase contained a gyroscope. Every time Ray moved the suitcase in one direction, the force generated by the gyroscope would move the suitcase in another direction. I suppose the presenter felt this made a big impression on the students; maybe we'd all concentrate more in science class because Ray couldn't move a suitcase easily. I doubt it.
Another assembly was a yearly event. The first time this was exciting. As we filed into the auditorium, we noticed three or four rows of bleachers on stage with all kinds of toys displayed. In the middle of the stage was a shiny bicycle. Once we sat, music started. Out bounded this extremely energetic man telling us that we were all winners. "Every one of you can win!" He rushed all over the stage describing many of the toys and games on display.
All this commotion heralded the beginning of the annual school fund raiser. To win a prize, all we needed to do was sell magazines? Books? Seeds. Candy bars? Tickets to school events? No. Seeds. We were to sell seeds. That's right. Each of us who participated would get a cardboard box with packets of flower and vegetable seeds. The cardboard box was arranged with partitions so the seed packets would stand up allowing you to easily identify whether it was for Sweet William, a flower, or a vegetable seed like carrots. The prizes on the stage would go to the students who sold the most.
I actually did this in seventh grade. I didn't expect to win any prizes but I was trying to be a good citizen to help the school. But really, seeds? Everyone I knew lived in a house with a backyard but few really cultivated gardens. Those who wanted real gardens bought their seeds at a hardware store or market. They weren't waiting for some teenager to knock on their door with a handful of seed packets. With so many 7th, 8th and 9th graders in North Junior High selling seeds, if someone were going to buy school fundraiser seeds, they'd buy them from someone they knew.
Every day for the two or three weeks of the seed sale fundraiser, the morning announcement would proclaim the number of packets sold in homeroom 8-3 or by all the ninth graders so far. They would encourage us to reach our goals, to earn that shiny bicycle.
I dutifully walked around Montgomery, Weller, Lenox, and few other neighborhood streets, asking if people wanted to purchase a packet of seeds. Some people took pity on me and bought one or two. Others said, “I’m sorry. I am buying them from my son."
Naturally my parents tried to help me out with a purchase. We even planted some, but nothing ever came of it. On my father's suggestion, I brought the seed box to the Unitarian Church one Sunday. Of the teenagers at the church, only Carole and and my friend Nancy went to North. Neither of them was selling seeds, so I had a monopoly at the church. Many of those attending didn't even live in Pittsfield. A lot of people were very generous. As my homeroom teacher collected my money, he asked me if I wanted a new box of packets. I looked up incredulously. You mean some kids sell more than one box! I was done with this.
Finally the last day of the sale arrived. At the end of the school day, they announced the name of the person who won the bike. No one I knew. I assumed they distributed the rest of the prizes. Probably they posted a list of winners and how many seed packets they sold. But I had learned something. The next two years when they had seed selling fundraisers, I did not take part.
M is for Slope
Math was a separate class in the afternoon, not part of the morning Core classes. Seventh grade math class was for the most part a rehash of the arithmetic we had done in earlier grades. It was all about adding subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Decimals were added in seventh grade, percent in eighth, but the focus was on computation. Lots of practice but in class and for homework.
Then, one day late in the school year in eighth grade, my teacher, Miss Fleming, spent the last few weeks of school doing something I had never seen before. Following her examples, we used x's and y's to made graphs of equations like y = 2x + 3 or y = 5x-4. I liked making the tables of the points, plotting the points on the graph and seeing how they lined up. It was totally refreshing to do something other than computation. When we were told this is what we would be studying next year in algebra one, I was pleased.
One day while reviewing the work we had done, she wrote an equation, made a table of values and drew the graph on the front board as we watched. She explained the number in front of the x told us how steep the line was; the larger the number, the steeper the line. This was something I had noticed in the examples we had done so what she said made sense to me.
Then she told us the number at the end of the equation indicates where the graph crosses the vertical axis. "It's called the y-intercept. This works for all equations like this, so we write it this way." She wrote, "y = mx + b. The slope is m. It tells us how steep the line is. The intercept is b. It tells you where the line crosses the y axis."
I really got the points she was making about the equations and the lines, but was puzzled by the abbreviations. If the number in front of the "x" is called slope and the number at the end is called intercept, why isn't it written as y = sx + i.? Wouldn't that make more sense? While I often didn’t ask the questions I was wondering about aloud, this time I did. I raised my hand. "Miss Fleming, why do they use “m” for slope?" After all, I am thinking, not only does it not start with “m", there isn't even an "m" in it.
Miss Fleming just stared at me for what seemed to be a long time. I began to feel uncomfortable, thinking I had asked a stupid question. She was quiet a bit longer, then she brightened, "Virginia. We use 'm' for slope because in physics they use 's' for distance." I tried to absorb this explanation. Now I’m wondering why do they use 's' for distance but not “d”. Maybe it’s because distance has an “s" in it. That wasn’t much of an explanation. Still I wasn't going to ask about ‘b" for intercept. She seemed pleased she had an answer to my question. I didn’t want to push my luck with another one. I decided to go back to my habit of not asking the questions that peppered my mind.
Happily this exchange and others like did not deter me from my love of math and eventually the math teaching that would become my life's work. Algebra in ninth grade picked up my spirits and my interest. I’ll revisit ninth grade in a future blog.
The School on the Hill
My relationship with the school on the hill continued far into high school and beyond. The rolling hills on the side of the building served as good sledding. Or as my family called it, sliding. Parents felt it was safe for their kids because the hills plateaued before lifting again on the way to North Street. You would still get a good ride yet come to a stop safely away from the road in the valley between the hills.
One advantage of my spread-out-in-age family was that I could enjoy activities involving my younger sister and brother. I felt I was too old for sliding. I didn’t go with friends my own age, but I didn’t mind taking my younger siblings. Then I could slide all I wanted in the guise of being a good big sister. By that time, the traditional sleds with runners were mostly gone. Instead, they were round plastic saucers usually bright orange or red. We called them flying saucers. There was no such thing as steering. You could lean to one side hoping your weight would give you some control, but mostly the saucer would follow the track in the snow a previous kid had made. If you kept going over the same track again and again, it would get packed down, more slick, and each ride sent you further.
The walk from our house to the hill was full of excitement and anticipation. The air felt crisp and clean. The snow sparkled in the sunshine. You felt full of energy. By the time you were ready to leave, the walk home seemed much longer. Your mood was miserable. You were wet, cold, tired, and hungry. You just wanted to be home, out of wet clothes, and comfortable again.
Walking to Montgomery Avenue from the North Junior High hill after sliding meant looking forward to the best place in the house after winter activities, the grate in the floor in the archway between the living room and dining room from where heat would pour up from the furnace. After arriving home, we’d stand on the grate shedding our wet outerwear letting the warm air waft all over you. We would then sit around the grate, sometimes on it, until we all felt warm again. Later, my mother would spread out all the mittens, scarfs, heavy socks, and winter coats to dry. I suppose all that water evaporating into the house was an extra bonus. We had our own non-mechanical humidifier.
When I was seventeen, I yearned to know how to drive. I don't know why exactly. It wasn't as if we had an extra car for me to use. Most places I went to were an easy walking distance or on a city bus lines. I thought of driving as something you did as you grew up. I didn't have time in my schedule to take the high school driving course and my father thought it was a waste of money to pay for driving school. So my parents prevailed on my older brother to teach me to drive. Who thinks that was a good idea?
Of course, this was pretty much the last thing David wanted to do with his time. The family car had automatic transmission, so I didn't have to deal with a clutch. Just steering, braking, hand signals for turning, and generally getting used to managing what seemed to me to be a heavy, scary machine. Not much at all. Sundays he and I would go out to empty parking lots at shopping centers. Stores back then were not open on Sundays so the parking areas made good practice areas. I would get behind the wheel, drive around the parking lot, make a right or left turn at my brother’s direction and continue straight for a while. Then we'd stop and he'd have me back up into a space as if there were other cars parked in the adjoining slots. I was very slow and methodical through the whole lesson, never going more then 20 mph.
One Sunday, David was particularly grumpy about my lesson. "Come on," he said, heading out to the car. We didn't go to the shopping center. Instead, he drove left from Weller, up North Street,turning right into the long driveway leading up to the junior high. He drove to the back parking lot, parked and we exchanged places as usual.
I drove around the parking lots and driveways at the back of the school for a while. It was more nerve-wracking than usual. I was used to the bigger open spaces at the shopping centers. I concentrated on steering very carefully to stay in the middle of the driveway. David had me drive from the back of the building around to the front on this loop where the school busses would pull up. I drove that loop a couple of times, gradually feeling a little more comfortable, when David told me to go down the hill. I did as he said concentrating on the mechanics of driving, not actually realizing where we were headed. North Street!
"Take a right," he said.
I sputtered, "But it's a road. With cars."
"Take a right," he repeated.
I did so driving very gingerly at about 15 mph up North Street. I am thinking, at least we are heading away from downtown.
"Go faster."
I tried. I really did. I was just so scared. After a few minutes, he couldn't stand it anymore.
"Pull over in there." I drove into an empty parking lot.
He said, "You're just not ready. Move over.” He was right. Instead of being mad, I felt relief.
He drove us back to the house and that was it. I don't know what he told my parents, but we never went out again to drive. In fact my driving lessons wouldn’t resume again until a year or so after I was married. I finally learned how to drive with the car we then owned. A Volkswagen, tiny and cramped with the world’s most difficult clutch. I got my license on the first try.
Sliding in the front and driving lessons in the back were not the only experiences I had with the building that was North Junior High. Through my high school and college years, I would walk over to the back of the building to use the outside wall to hit tennis balls. On a summer afternoon the place would be empty. The wall of the auditorium was wide and tall. I'd bounce tennis balls off the wall, practicing my swing and serve. It involved a lot of running as the balls would go all over the place, but I found it a pleasant way to exercise now and then.
Occasionally an errant ball would disappear over the roofline. Oh well, one less ball to chase after. If I lost too many, I'd have to go buy more. That could get expensive especially if you wanted the good ones. One afternoon as I am hitting the balls, I am thinking about the classes, conversations, and teachers I had at North. Reminiscing at the age of nineteen. Wondering if any of the teachers I had six or seven years ago were still there. A voice startled me. It was a janitor. At first I thought he was going to tell me to leave.
"I've seen you here before," he said. "Yes. I live nearby." Wait here," he said. A few minutes later he returned with a plastic bucket full of tennis balls. "A lot of people play here. Many of the balls land up on the roof. Look at how many I have collected. I have no use for them. You take them. Keep the bucket too." I am surprised and happy. ”Wow, this is great. Thank you”.
He disappears inside the building. I wonder if he were a janitor when I was a student. Maybe he washed off those long tables in the cafeteria, swept the floor of my homeroom, or cleaned up the print shop. I didn't pay much attention to the people who worked in the school when I was a student, only my classmates and teachers. I was pleased to have those tennis balls and thankful for his generosity.
North Junior High, now Reid Middle School, is still on that hill in Pittsfield.
Kids still wish there was a quicker way to walk to it, still sit in classes wondering about the usefulness of what they are learning, still ponder unanswered questions, still make friendships that will last for years, still slide on the hill in front, and still hit tennis balls against the back walls.
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