It was the first day of school.
I was 6 1/2 years old (my birthday is in February). The school did not offer kindergarten classes and I would have been 5 1/2 years old the year before and not eligible to begin school. My mother woke me at 7 a.m. and told me to get dressed in the new dress my godmother had sewn for me. It was made from a flour sack. Back then, my mother purchased 50-pound sacks of flour when we could afford it. These sacks were printed with pretty floral designs.
I had had trouble falling asleep the night before and could hardly wait to wear the new dress. I, however, trembled at the thought of my first day of school. The carefree days of summer were over and now I had to get used to a more formal regimen.
I can’t remember what I had for breakfast but most likely it was the same thing I was going to be taking to school for my lunch. It was the Depression, and my lunchbox was not one of the pretty ones you see today. It was a metal pail with a wirelike hanger with which to carry it. Syrup had been its contents until this morning. My mother had washed it out the day before.
My sandwich would be a piece of bread spread with lard and sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon. It was all we could afford since my father was out of work and we could not afford sandwich meat. Not even jelly. But I was used to the simple fare so did not expect anything more.
I ate my breakfast with a heavy heart and dreaded going to school, although my father would accompany me as far as the school door. It was a half-mile walk to the Lutheran Parochial School, situated next to the Lutheran church. And it was not uphill both ways, as comedians liked to joke in later years. It was northwest of where we lived and, even now, I can well remember the icy wind in winter coming from that direction.
I dawdled over breakfast, not confessing my fear and trepidation to my mother. My three brothers were all older than I and had told awful stories about how mean the teacher was. Punishment was severe for the slightest infraction of the rules.
Many people complain about the nuns mistreating them when they attended Catholic school. They could not have been worse than the man with whom I spent the next eight years of my school life.
His teaching methods were medieval compared to today’s teachings. He always said, “Some day you’ll thank me.”
“Fat chance,” I would have said if I’d known that expression back then.
But he was right. I do thank him for his strictness. I learned my lessons well so I would not provoke his wrath.
Finally, my father and I set out for the walk to school. We went a half a block and then I said I had to go back home because I forgot my hankie. (On purpose, truth be known.) We young girls never left home without a hankie. At the time, I had never heard of a tissue you used once and discarded.
We returned home and I asked my mother for the hankie. Gripping the lunch pail in my little fist, I skipped up to where my father waited. I started to cry. He asked me what was wrong.
I told him, “Papa, you always said I was so smart, I’d never have to go to school when people asked when I was going to start school.”
He did not know that, foolishly, I had believed him.
I don’t remember the first day of school the following years, but I know I always hated it and could hardly wait to go on to high school.
I learned to love education despite those early years when I feared the teacher so much.
If we are to believe stories of children in school these days, very few students fear their teachers, let alone respect them.
I wonder how a teacher like I faced would handle the situations confronting teachers in today’s school environment.
