School Days, School Days...

Kindergarten was to be my only public school experience until I got to high school, and my memories of kindergarten are still fresh enough to be recalled.  Old Field School was within walking distance; Mom would walk me across the street in front of our house and send me on my way, milk money clutched in a handkerchief.  There was only one session of kindergarten at the time, I believe, and that was the morning session.  It may have only been three or four hours, but it sure seemed like an eternity to a little mind.  We painted (always wearing smocks) and we played and we were read to and we napped and we snacked and were sent on our way around noon time.  As Mom and Dad were both working full time, my afternoons were supervised by Margaret Rawson, who lived across the street from us in a rambling, dilapidated four-story house which looked perpetually haunted.  Her kitchen was in the basement, and the support beams were entire tree trunks, which I would peel whenever she wasn't looking.  There was a tremendous wood-and-coal-fired cook stove in the corner, a deep double tub porcelain sink, a wringer washer and a round oak table with lion's paws clutching balls for feet, tipped in brass.  The room always smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, as Margaret's brother Joe and niece Catherine were both chain smokers; they would light their next cigarette with the butt on the one they had just finished.  I would play outside, or color at the table, or play the occasional game of "Go Fish" with Margaret until Mom or Dad came over to pick me up.

Mary and Paul at the Beardsley Zoo, Fall 1968

I don't recall any family vacations; my mother always referred to my father as a "Stick in the Mud" but since 'family vacations' were really not universal at this time, we had to settle for "Sunday Drives".  The great thing about the Sunday Drives were not knowing where you would wind up.  Sunday mornings were devoted to church, of course, and Sunday dinner was served around 2:00 p.m.  But after dinner and dishes, we got in the old Buick station wagon and off we went for a drive 'in the country', which was basically Monroe, Easton or Newtown.  Sometimes Dad bagged the 'country' part of the drive and we headed into the 'big city' of Bridgeport - Seaside Park featured large, as did Beardsley Park and the zoo.  Sometimes Mom and I would travel to Long Island and the grandparents homestead in Huntington and these were special occasions; Dad would drop us off at the Port Jefferson ferry pier in Bridgeport, and we'd climb aboard the "Martha's Vineyard" ferry (that was the name, not the destination) for the trip across the Long Island Sound.  Grandpa Denton's car always smelled of Borkum-Riff pipe tobacco but the house smelled of butter and coffee and good things baking.  Grandpa Denton's second wife was from Sweden and Grandma Denton was a baker of all things delicious.  They kept White Rock soda (fruit punch!  lemon-lime!  grape!  black cherry!) in their basement fridge, and a stock of toys in the closet of the spare bedroom.  And coloring books and crayons and (gasp!) plain white pads of drawing paper,  a luxury unheard of in my experience.  We would settle in, watch a slide-show of their latest travels (during which I would fall asleep as it was pretty boring to me) and then enjoy visits from cousins and neighbors with funny Swedish names like "Astrid" or "Asa".

Mary at Aunt Madeline's house in upstate New York. Note the length of the pants; these were supposed to be long pants but I guess Grandma hadn't seen me in a while and I had a growth spurt.  But they were from Bermuda and I loved them regardless of the fact they didn't fit.  Can you make out my PF Flyers?  They made me run faster and jump higher.

Grandpa's sisters lived together in another part of Long Island, and Aunts Madeline, Marie and Anna were booming, boisterous and larger than life.  Aunt Madeline married well and had a summer home in the Adironack mountains, complete with a full-size gymnasium, a babbling brook running by the side of the house, a huge screen porch and acres of property.  Dad never joined us on these trips, as I recall, but cousins sometimes did and we had a field day exploring, teasing the cows from the dairy farm across the street, hunting for crayfish and playing hide-and-seek.

First grade at St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic School; my first bout of separation anxiety, as my best friend Debbie was in the other class.  The one with the nice, young, pretty nun named "Sister Laura".  I had the "Old Crow" nun, whom I believe was Sister Mary Something.  Almost ALL of the nuns were Sister Mary Something or Sister Something Mary:  Sister Mary Robert, Sister Jean Marie, Sister Ignatia Marie.  Nuns in real life were nothing like nuns as portrayed in "The Sound of Music" or "The Flying Nun" or "The Singing Nun".  Nuns in real life, with few exceptions, were mean.  Most nuns didn't like children very much, if at all.  Children were full of the devil, and had to be exorcised by all and any means, including physical means, if necessary.  And most of the nuns were misandristic;  they were boy-hating fiends who were free with the corporal punishment as it applied to boys.  Granted, the boys could be unruly and unmanageable but I don't ever recall a girl being hit with a ruler or a pointer; the boys were hit on a daily basis.  And threatened with eternal damnation.  The visions of hell these warped women conveyed to us were terrifyingly real, seared into our burgeoning brains with an efficacy well-honed and oft used.  Repent, lest ye suffer the fires of Hades.... 


By second grade, Debbie had moved back to Old Field School but I was stuck at St. T's like a fly in amber.  With an early January birthday, I was the oldest kid in the class and was therefore taller and bigger than most of my classmates.  And due largely to being oldest, I made up 25% of the 'smart kids'.  The ones the teachers always called on for the answers, no matter where we sat in the room.  The other 'smart kids' also had January birthdays:  Peggy Rawley on 1/9 and Maggie Hyde on 1/17 and Mary Power, too.  I don't think this is coincidental; if you have an extra year of reading, Sesame Street and experience under your school uniform, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that you will get the positive reinforcement of usually have the correct answer.  And therefore you strive to maintain that 'smart kid' moniker.

Mrs. McMahon was the sole teacher of second grade; in the larger world, enrollment in the parochial schools was declining faster than January temperatures, and our class of 24 was soon swelled in ranks as St. Anthony's Catholic School (largely Polish) and St. Pius Catholic School closed their doors.  Until this time, St. T's was a neighborhood school and everybody walked to school; those who lived very far out were driven by their parents but those kids were few and far between.  But now we had buses for our new recruits, and our class size was around 36 for a while.  By and large, society in the early 1970s was not as mobile as it is today and although we had a few new faces who didn't last long, and old faces whose parents let them change schools (there were cases of pedophile priests), we had a core class of 32 and though it seemed like it was mostly boys, by my count it was 18 boys to 14 girls. With surnames of "Sullivan", "Neary", "Morrisey", "Boland", "O'Brien", "O'Neil", "Walsh", "Philbin" and a couple of Italian names (Romano, Francoletti) thrown in for good measure.  We were a class with a unique dynamic; more on the "Class of 1976 Sweathogs" tomorrow.