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.

Celebrations

Gin

When I was in seventh grade in Pittsfield I was given a book titled Every Day is a Holiday.  The holidays described were unlike present day commemorations fabricated by various commercial organizations like “National Cupcake Day.” (You can celebrate that on October 18.) There were no holidays in my book designed to generate excuses to buy greeting cards like National Aunt and Uncle Day. (You can enjoy that day on July 26.)  My book was a compendium of celebrations, big and small, religious and secular, well-known and obscure, from countries all over the world.

Each holiday was described in a one-page essay.  I still have this book, one of the few things I have from my childhood.  It’s small, perhaps 5 by 8 inches, with a worn green cloth cover and a gold binding on which is printed the name of the book, the authors, and the publisher, Harper.  Written in my handwriting, in pencil, is a large 3 followed by a smaller 1 raised and to the right in the superscript position. Libraries may have had the Dewey Decimal System but I had my shelving system which determined the holiday book belonged on the third shelf of my bookcase, the first book in from the left.  I don’t recall on what basis I positioned my books, but I do like the idea there was some order to the way I kept them. Clearly I wanted them to be put back exactly where they had been.

I really enjoyed the whole concept of this book.  When I first got the book I’d compulsively read each day’s entry in the morning. It was part of the way I started my day.  I’d read a bit of it to my younger sister, sometimes paraphrasing the academic tone.   On weekends, I would sometimes cheat, looking ahead to family birthdays to see what other people would be celebrating that day. My sister’s birthday, January 3, fell on a festival honoring the  patron saint of Paris, Genevieve.  My birthday, March 30, was a celebration called The Silver Bell of Stuttgart. This was a story of romance and murder between a mother and daughter in love with the same man and a bell that mysteriously rang out year after year on March 30, the day the mother had suddenly disappeared. This plot line was far removed from my everyday life, more worthy of a tragic opera.

I took this book with me when I went away to college. In the early days of my relationship with Bill as college sophomores, I would regale him with the tale of that day’s holiday.  As is the case with a blossoming relationship, he kept to himself that he might not be particularly interested in this information.  I don’t know how many weeks it took me to realize he didn’t really want to know that February 23 had been celebrated in Rome as Terminalia, a day to honor the god Terminus by walking along the perimeter of your property while tossing garlands of flowers and offering up cakes of fruit and grain at various altars.  Or that March 3 was the Doll Festival in Japan. It was kind of fun though to share that March 5, his birthday, was also a day to celebrate the Festival of Flowers in Greece.

While the City of Pittsfield didn’t celebrate every holiday in the book, or any, it did honor most of the traditional American holidays with celebrations.  My favorite was the Fourth of July.  That meant the carnival would be in town. 

On the Fourth of July my family went to the carnival in the early evening in order to be there when the fireworks were shot off just after dark.  It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I found out the carnival actually opened on July 1.  July 4 was its final night. Fourth of July was a big deal in Pittsfield.  There was a parade in the morning, fireworks at night and a carnival in between.  Once we moved to Montgomery Avenue, with the carnival at nearby Waconah Park, it became an annual family event.

To me the carnival was all about the rides.  I never wasted money on any of the games of skill. I never wandered along the midway.  I came for the rides. This was a big deal to me.  It only happened once a year. There was a Ferris wheel, the swings, a tilt-a-whirl, and for the daring young men of Pittsfield, the rocket ride.  Amusement parks were few and far between, especially for families like mine that didn’t always have a car.  As a teen, I learned about Mountain Park in Holyoke and Riverside Park in Springfield, both large amusement parks, but as a child the only opportunity I had for such rides was on the Fourth of July at the local fair.  That made it special. I wonder if kids today who can spend any day they please at an amusement park still get as excited as I did.

My favorite ride was the swings.  Each rider had their own wooden seat with wooden slats for the back.  There was a safety chain in front. Each swing was suspended from the structure at the top.  As the swing rotated faster and faster, you would whiz around and around feet dangling free.   I always tried to get an outside swing which would swing wider as you went faster.  It was just so much fun.  Unlike the Ferris wheel, you couldn’t see anything.  The scenery was just a blur.  The sensation was contradictory, being loose and free with feet floating unconnected to anything while feeling very secure with your body pushed against the back of the swing seat.

The only ride my mother liked was the Ferris wheel. She didn’t like the spinning rides. They made her dizzy.  When you think about it, most carnival rides spin in circles. The Ferris wheel also made a circle but on the vertical with a gentle motion that she enjoyed. The two of us would wait in line for our turn and then slide into the still rocking seat.  We’d sit back and wait for the carnival worker to slam and secure the bar. I liked to lean against the bar in the front, but my mother always wanted me to sit so I was pressed against the seat. I loved being able to see out over the whole carnival as we  traveled higher and higher up around the wheel.   Sometimes I wished it wouldn’t go so fast. I wanted to spot people I knew below or recognize stores on the streets that bordered Waconah Park.

Usually my older brother disappeared to be with his friends once we got to the carnival. Occasionally he’d join me on the Ferris wheel.  He wasn't my mother.  He’d start to rock back and forth. “I'm going to make it tip over,” he’d say gleefully trying to get me scared.  But I’m thinking, if it tips over he’s going to get hurt too, so he wouldn’t do that. Still I was a bit nervous, so I just smiled.  Best was when the ride was nearly over.  If you were among the last to get off, you would get an entire revolution in slow motion. The wheel would stop to empty a seat of one set of riders and replace them with new ones then rotate just enough so the next seat was at the bottom. If you were in the right seat this whole process could last longer than the ride itself. I loved that.

One year my brother told us he wasn’t going to do the Ferris wheel. "I'm too old for that. I’m going to ride the Rocket." Sometimes we called this ride the dive bomber.  I was too scared to ride it.  It consisted of a tall metal pole with two rocket-shaped contraptions at each end, each fully enclosed. There was room for four in each car, two facing one way and two facing the other.  When the ride was operating the pole rotated with each rocket car also spinning around. Teenage boys would dare each other to get on the thing.  Every dare must have been accepted even if reluctantly because the ride was always full.

My mother and I are on the Ferris wheel enjoying the view of the carnival laid out underneath us.  Suddenly we were startled, then scared.  Looking over to the rocket ride we saw the pole was bent over.  Both sets of rocket cars were still attached but the one affixed to the bent part of the pole was hanging just above the ground.  The other car was still intact on its end of the pole. We were still on the Ferris wheel when we heard sirens and saw the crowd being pushed away so that firemen, police and ambulances could get close. We felt trapped remembering David’s words, “I’m going to ride the Rocket.”  

“What about David,” I yelled!  I was pretty upset.  My mother seemed calm, but probably wasn’t.  “Maybe he wasn’t on it,” she said.  She didn’t sound very convinced.  I realized she was worried too. Then our ride started again.  The fun was gone as we just wanted to get off and see what was happening.  We wanted to look for my brother.  When we finally did get off the ride, my father and brother were both there to meet us.  “I was in line when it happened,” my brother explained.  We all went over to watch the rescue.  A fire truck ladder was raised up to remove the scared occupants.   As it turned out, no one was badly hurt.  While the city likely initiated some kind of investigation regarding safety procedures, for some of the kids the possibility of such breakdowns only added to the excitement.  “Do you think your brother will go on the Rocket ride this year?” became a familiar refrain as the next year’s carnival approached.  From then on the Rocket ride became the daredevil ride. 

As it grew darker everyone began to anticipate the fireworks display.  We are somewhat jaded about fireworks as I write this in 2015.  Now we require fireworks be synchronized with music and fill the sky with multiple rockets for at least 30 minutes. The fireworks I experienced as a child often did last 30 minutes, but with long breaks in between, a one-at-a time deal, each rocket bursting into colored stars which faded as they fell to the ground.  Without computerized synching, there were full minutes of empty time between the rockets as the technicians slowly moved from one launch pipe to the next.  

It was only after we moved to Montgomery Avenue when I was 12 that we saw the fireworks from Waconah Park where they originated.  Without a car it was often too far from where we lived to walk to the launching site. Instead, my parents would determine a high point near to our house from which we could see the fireworks. This was fun because since they began after dark I was young enough to be excited to stay up past my usual bedtime to be outside at night. The four of us, my mother, father, David and me, would troop out carrying blankets, both for sitting and for warmth.  Fourth of July weather would vary a lot in Pittsfield, the evenings could be chilly even though it was summer.  We'd find a spot to spread out our blanket with a clear look into the sky to enjoy the show. We even got used to the pauses between rockets. The slow pace made the finale when a number of rockets were shot up at the same time even more fun.

Years later, when I was a teenager, I would go to the fireworks with a friend. We got up real close so they exploded just above us. That was when I discovered the ground fireworks.  I realized during the time we were waiting on that hill near our house for the next sky burst, people at the venue were watching these ground fireworks.  No wonder there was such a time lag. The ground displays, wooden frames with fireworks attached, were very different than the sky rockets. One would spin with white sparks flying all over the place. Another was a fiery sputtering American flag.  There was always a pair of ships meant to emulate the fight between British and American ships that inspired the Star Spangled Banner. Small rockets would pass between them until the British ship would fell over to the cheers of the crowd. 

Before the carnival and the fireworks, there was the parade. The tradition of a Fourth of July parade in Pittsfield started in 1824.  At that time the procession consisted of Revolutionary War veterans and politicians riding in horse-drawn carriages. The parade was held on and off until 1947 when the organization was taken over by the city’s firemen’s association. Actually, the entire Fourth of July celebration was managed by the local firefighters. It became known as the Firemen’s Muster.  

The parade had bands, floats, and the usual convertibles full of politicians. Fire companies from all over western Massachusetts who were participating in the muster that afternoon filled the streets with their trucks, equipment and rows and rows of firemen. I remember the sounds of shrieking sirens and blaring horns, the shouts of vendors selling cotton candy and the drums of the Pittsfield High Marching Band. Vendors walked along the packed sidewalks selling balloons, popcorn, and all kinds of souvenirs. Quite a festive atmosphere. 

When I was in eighth grade, my friend and I decided to see what this Firemen’s Muster was all about.  We followed the parade down to Waconah Park, not to go to the carnival, that was for night time, but for the muster. It took place in the afternoon just after the parade. The muster was a competition among the different fire companies racing against the clock to spotlight the skills of each company as they accomplished tasks required in a real fire situation. Some were outdated.  A long line of firemen filling up a tank using a bucket brigade. Others were more realistic.  Firemen climbing up and down a ladder, working with hoses, getting them off the truck, unfurling and connecting them to a water source.  Those with the best times were declared the winners.  Not only was it fun to watch but now I knew what a muster was. 

The competition seemed like something that had its roots in an earlier century but remained spirited and good natured. I was glad I saw it at least once.  My friend Carole, however, was bored thinking more of getting cotton candy than firemen running around carrying buckets of water. Within the next few years a drum and bugle corps competition replaced the muster.  Since each band in that competition also marched in the parade, their involvement made the parade more entertaining.  I liked it when they stopped near you to perform one of their maneuvers, rows of players interweaving, crisscrossing, ending up in their original marching formation just as the music ended. Now that I think of it, to most of us watching the parade, these drummers and buglers were more interesting than fire company after fire company pulling old fire wagons down North Street.

Fourth of July marked the beginning of the summer for me.  By the time the Fourth came, I was out of the going-to-school routine. The less-structured summer routine was starting.   While people in other communities might need to wait until fall with its harvest festivals,   summer in Pittsfield meant the Mardi Gras.  Pittsfield public parks and recreation had no problem co-opting this name and applying it to a uniquely Pittsfield event. 

In an earlier blog, Neighborhoods, I wrote about the joys of the Pittsfield parks program. Each local playground and there were many, close to twenty at the peak, had college students as counselors. While the parks were open all the time, the specific programs ran all day into the evening with breaks for lunch and supper.  Parents signed a card with the names of their participating children along with their own name, address and phone number just in case they needed to be contacted. That was it. You were registered.  Parents felt secure in those days. We were free to wander around, take part in the organized activities, or just play on the equipment.  We came and went as we pleased.

Each summer the highlight of the parks program was Mardi Gras.  This was an all day event followed by an evening parade down North Street.  During the day, groups of playground kids would be bussed to Springside Park, one of the larger parks.  Each playground was assigned a section of Springside which the counselors had decorated with certain colors to identify the group.  I think we also had badges on with our name and the name of our playground as an organizing device.  There were games, food, and competitions between the different playground kids. For example, the kickball game might be between my playground, Crane, and Allen Heights playground.  There were races, beanbag tosses, Simon Says. You would try to collect ribbons for your playground.  At the end of the day it would be announced which playground had won the most.

After a day of activity, we would be bussed back to our local playground, go home, pretend to eat supper before rushing back to prepare for the parade.  We had been hard at work over the past couple of weeks making a float. Each year there was a different theme, Mother Goose or Around the World. 

The second time I participated the theme was something like Wonders of a New England Year.  There must have been adults among us who had abilities or perhaps the college-aged counselors took the lead. I don’t recall being able to do much as a float maker but over the days, miraculously, a float took shape  Our playground chose to make a float that celebrated autumn.  We decorated with orange and brown crepe paper, made artificial corn stalks, borrowed large plastic pumpkins and built something from wire and rolls of colored paper that was supposed to be a cornucopia with fall vegetables spilling out of it. 

Best of all, I was invited to be one of the float riders.  I was extremely happy about this. I was a leaf.  My costume was made out of some sort of stiff brown material.  It was two-sided in the shape of a maple leaf almost as tall as I was.  There was room for my head to come out of the top and for my arms to extend out the sides. There were two other leaves, a pumpkin and a few apples riding on the float as well.  Our job was to wave to those watching the parade. 

I was part way through the parade when I sadly realized when you are in the parade, you can't see the parade!  All I saw was the gymnastics team walking in front of us and the car with some city politician that followed us.  No view of any of the other floats. No view of the equestrian team that sometimes stopped to do maneuvers.  No view of the bands, cheerleaders, or marchers from the high school.  Just the gymnastics group and the boring convertible with a family I didn’t know smiling and waving.  I felt a bit cheated.  Why didn’t someone tell me I would miss the parade by being in it!

I vowed never to be in another parade. I would just watch. Which is exactly what I did at Halloween.

Halloween in Pittsfield was a two-night celebration. The Pittsfield City Council would look at the calendar each fall and decree one night (usually October 30) as trick or treat night.  The real Halloween night (October 31) was reserved for the Pittsfield Halloween Parade. As a little kid, I loved the idea that the City Council voted on trick or treat night.  It made it official, somehow sanctioning you were allowed to wander the streets asking people for candy.

The neighborhoods I lived in were great for this kind of activity.   The multi-family homes meant you could hit two or four families with just one brief walk along the pathway to the house from the sidewalk.  Many of the folks who lived upstairs would come down and sit in their stairway with bowls of candy for us to choose from.  Every once in a while you would have to climb some stairs to get your treats. You could get to as many as a hundred families in just a few blocks.

We never purchased costumes.  Instead we made our own depending on what we found in our house. My older brother would usually dress as a “bum” or “hobo.”  This involved putting on some ill-fitting older jacket of my father’s and burning a cork over our stove to smudge patches of soot on his face. For me, it meant a trip to the attic where my mother had a box of older, not to be worn again, dresses.  I would find some long fancy skirt that had sequins or silver threads, add a lacy shawl and declare myself a fortune-teller.  It never occurred to me to wonder when my mother had worn these clothes new. They certainly seemed out of character in her present life.   

On trick or treat night the streets were busy. The official time to be out was six to eight. At eight o’clock. the porch lights went off. It was time to go home. Some adults walking with the little ones were also dressed up. Most houses had been decorated not with lights—that was really reserved for Christmas-- but with cutouts of witches, brooms, and pumpkins, bundles of straw, and an occasional torn sheet meant to suggest cobwebs.

As I got older I realized adults looked less kindly on teenagers roaming through the streets asking for candy.  If you were tall as I was, sometimes you’d be questioned. “How old are you? Where do you live?  Who are you?”  I loved the idea of dressing up, walking around in the dark and sharing in the excitement.  I didn’t want to give that up just because I was thirteen.  Lo and behold I found a solution.  Our church youth group leaders were exhorting us to trick or treat for UNICEF.  We signed up for our own neighborhoods using a pre-made cardboard box with a slot on top for donations.   

What a great plan.  I still was able to be dressed up and spend the night knocking on friendly lit doors.  My UNICEF box prevented any questioning looks. “Trick or Treat for UNICEF,” I’d say.  In response, they’d say, “Well, aren’t you nice for doing this.  Here, have some candy as well.”  Then at eight, when trick or treat was over, I walked to one of the local churches to turn in my box of donations.  When I got there, I saw there was a party for those of us who had volunteered.  Free donuts, cider, more candy, and a certificate for being selfless, working to help others.  It all seemed embarrassing to me.  I wasn’t particularly selfless. I had found a way to keep my Halloween tradition going along with gathering plenty of candy.

Usually the night after trick or treat was the Pittsfield Halloween parade, a still continuing event. This year, 2015, marks the 71^st edition. That is interesting.  It began in 1944.  Not really a parade at that point.  It was a community event, children and adults dressing in costume and marching around the Pittsfield Commons. Maybe the powers that be thought it would be a morale booster as the war dragged on. The next year must have been jubilant with VE Day in April and VJ Day in August. That year the paper reported 20,000 revelers watching two-thousand costumed marchers.

During the years after the war, the parade took a different shape, offering floats and bands in addition to the fancy costumes.  By the 1950’s, when I started looking forward to it, the main event of the parade was a float created by the workers at the G.E. Each year a different theme. Each year an impressive creation.  Pitt the Dragon returning to reclaim his field; a haunted house with spooky half-seen creatures moving through the windows; a flying saucer, its hatch open revealing a robot with flashing lights; a Halloween Jack in the Box that sprung open dramatically tossing out popcorn balls.  Even though October 31 was frequently cold in Massachusetts, going out to the parade was a spectacle not to be missed no matter the weather. And I knew enough not to participate in the Halloween parade.

As if Halloween wasn’t exciting enough, Christmas was even better. North Street decorated with sparkly lights, England Brothers devoting the entire fourth floor to Santa’s Land with aisles of toys, every house on the block adorned with lights, candles, wreaths, and Glass Wax stencils. Then there was the Christmas party organized by union workers at the G.E. for the kids of their members. 

The party was a big deal. It seemed to me that every kid in Pittsfield went, whether their parents worked at G.E. or not. It's a Saturday morning in early December.  Every movie theatre in Pittsfield is open. You can even sit in the balconies.  You never got to sit in the balconies during regular movies. The extra seats were necessary as every theatre was packed.  There are lines outside. I’d get there as early as I could hoping for that seat in the balcony. My father had given me a ticket showing me how to write my name on the back to qualify for a raffle. When you entered, the ticket was exchanged for a bag of candy and popcorn.

I didn’t mind waiting for the show to begin. There was so much commotion.  Kids running round, cheering, a crazy level of excitement. The Christmas party wasn’t just a free movie; there were live performances.  Magicians, tap dancers, accordion players, jugglers, all kids like me. Even though I didn’t think they were particularly good, I was impressed by their willingness to go out on the stage in front of everyone and perform.  I guess this was Pittsfield’s answer to Ed Sullivan.  Amazing to think there was that much “talent” in the city to supply variety acts for all six movie theaters at the same time!  I wonder how the acts were chosen or if anyone was ever turned away from performing.  While we were not a very discerning audience, we were pumped up with sugar and wanted to have a good time, so the performers were always met with enthusiasm and raucous applause.

After the last accordion player, the movies started.  First the cartoons.  I particularly liked Casper the Friendly Ghost. The idea of people starting out being scared by strange occurrences only to discover it was all in fun I found appealing. Another favorite was Mr. Magoo. Here was a near-sighted guy somehow avoiding disaster as he bungled through his day. I remember one in particular in which Magoo stumbles into a construction site.  At one point he is about to step off a beam when, through a series of well-timed events, he is saved when another beam swings by just as he is stepping off into space. Such things continued until he was finally back on the sidewalk completely unaware how close he had come to disaster. Magoo cartoons were a bit like an animated Rube Goldberg device.  Very clever I thought. 

There were also sing-a-long cartoons. A bouncing ball kept the crowd together by highlighting the words.  I imagine there were some of these that were Christmas carols, but what I recall were mostly old barbershop quartet songs like “Down by the Old Mill Stream” or “On a Bicycle Built for Two.” These songs weren’t part of our daily world, but like everything else that morning, we sang along with gusto.

The mainstream movie was something that had been out for a while. Nothing new. Something they could get cheap.  Maybe a pirate adventure or a western  Nothing too challenging.  Nothing really good.  Just for fun.  And free.

It still wasn’t over. After the movie they would hold a raffle with toys that had been donated by local stores.  On the way out we received a final gift.  A candy cane, a gift bag with a few small toys, coloring books, a small box of crayons, toy cars, marbles, rubber balls.

I don’t know when the G.E. Union Christmas parties started. It was always a part of my growing up. One year, when I was home from college, I took my younger sister to the event. I hadn’t been for a number of years. I swear the same acts were performing. Maybe they kept these teenage accordion players and tap dancers in suspended animation unfreezing them each year for this purpose.  My sister and I laughed and cheered along with the rest of the crowd throughout the whole show. 

During the raffle I heard them call out my name.  I looked at the stage.  The emcee was holding a huge stuffed tiger which I had won. He was staring at the crowd, repeating my name several times. There was no way I, a 17 year-old pretending to be a grownup, was going onto that stage in front of all the little kids and claim that stuffed animal.  I turned to my sister and gave her my ticket stub. “Go down there.” (Yes, we were in the balcony.) “Give them this ticket. Tell them your name is Ginny and take the stuffed tiger.” She looked at me horrified,  “I’ll get in trouble.”  I kept assuring her it would be okay. “I am going to give the tiger to you anyway.” She wouldn’t budge.  By this time the emcee had moved on to the next prize. What happened next is, well, unclear.   

Here is what I always thought happened. We waited until the show was over, the kids were piling out.  Then my sister and I walked to the stage where I had her hand over the ticket.  I was still too embarrassed to claim it even though the audience had left.  The emcee, glancing at the number, handed my sister the stuffed tiger.  She didn’t say anything.  “She’s shy,” I explained. The truth was she was scared we were doing something illegal. I recall walking home down North Street that day juggling this stuffed animal, about as big as my sister, feeling very proud I had won it.

However, recently I talked to my sister about this incident.  She didn’t recall anything about it.  She was eight at the time so I would have thought she would have remembered. Her lack of support for my version of events made me question my own memory, not hers. I don’t recall any large stuffed tiger at our house.  What was happening?  Did I fantasize about winning the tiger in the first place?  Perhaps day dreaming about winning and then playing out the possibilities mentally. Did I actually win it, but when I didn’t claim it, they gave it to someone else?  It is impossible to know at this point.

Such incidents concern me a bit. After all in this blog I am engaged in sharing my memories but every now and then the reliability of my own memory is called into question.  Are other memories as sketchy as this one?  We will never know, but here is what sustains me.  The essence of that day, the excitement of the free movie party at Christmas time, the possibility of winning gifts we would not receive otherwise, the insight into our developing personalities, me wanting to be seen as a grownup so refusing to claim the prize, my sister being worried she would get into trouble, are all true and illuminating regardless of which version of these events actually happened.

When I was in college, I recall being told in some psychology or anthropology course that every culture had about the same number of feast days or celebrations.  No matter if the society was modern or on a remote island, the number of days sanctioned as holidays--whether religious or secular --was the same.  I don't want to look at this too deeply for fear I will find out my memory of what I was told was faulty.   I want to accept this view of humanity.  I like the idea that in a city or on an island, in a jungle or high up in the mountains, because we are human, we all have the same need to celebrate. I like to think that Every Day is a Holiday worth celebrating.