Elementary years at Wilshire

I attended Wilshire Elementary on Cascade Drive, a few blocks east of Harry Wurzbach Highway.   The school was built in 1957, just in time to educate all of the children flowing into the northeast part of the city.  It served my neighborhood, Terrell Terrace, Wilshire Terrace, and part of Terrell Hills.  Wilshire was a middle class to working class school with less status than nearby Northwood Elementary which was definitely a step up with its higher tax base.  Both schools were almost twins with the pink brick exteriors and Nile green cinder block walls.  Floors were stone or ceramic, making them sturdy little buildings which are still in service today.  With the growing population out Nacogdoches Road, Oak Grove Elementary soon appeared and was overcrowded from almost the very first.  Oak Grove classes had in excess of 30 students and temporary buildings were part of the landscape from almost the very beginning.  Oak Grove had a sticker-filled and dirt playground, full of rocks and flint.  Wilshire at least had softer grass on the playground.

I actually met my first grade teacher Miss Neff before school even began.  She came by our house to sell us a set of Compton’s Golden Encyclopedia.  In those days, teacher salaries were not that great, and they probably didn’t even get paid during the summer.  So, to our door she came with her sales pitch of how much better we would do in school even we had our own set of golden encyclopedias.  My mother bought them and it was a good decision.  We used them all the way through high school for school reports and general information.  On quiet evenings, I often read them for recreation (which lets me answer a lot of questions on Jeopardy!)

Today it is hard to believe that each grade level at Wilshire had only TWO classes.  Wilshire still has only about 400 students.  We girls wore starched cotton dresses to school every day, with little anklet socks and dress shoes, often patent leather.  Even in the coldest weather, we still had to wear dresses.  If it was below freezing, we were allowed to wear a pair of trousers under our skirts, which made a lovely sight.  We often wore petticoats to hold out those starched skirts.  Many dresses had sashes and our mothers would tie huge bows in our backs.  We looked like Shirley Temple.  

Our hair was set, either with pin curls or spoolies.  It was combed flat on top, clipped down, and then frizzed out on the sides and back where it had been curled.  My mother often gave me those wretched Toni home permanents, an operation that took the better part of the afternoon.  First came the chicken bone sized perm rods with which she wrapped my hair using end papers.  To get a good wave, you had to use around 50 rods, a time consuming process.  Next came the cotton balls soaked with ammonia based waving solution to be meticulously squeezed onto each and every rod.  The rolled hair was saturated with this foul liquid which ran down into the ears and eyes.  Mom did her best to dab and catch the drippings, but it was an impossible task.  The waving process was tricky.  You had to leave it on long enough to wave, but not too long as the solution would fry your hair and you would come out looking like a brillo pad.  Every five minutes of so she would carefully unroll a rod and push the hair up with her fingers to see if it had formed the desirable "s" pattern.  When you were "cooked", the waving solution was swiftly rinsed out of your hair, a great relief.  Then came drippy mess #2:  the neutralizer which set your curl and did a chemical shut-down of the toxic waving solution.  This only had to soak in for about five minutes to do its work.  What a a relief it was for the rods to be taken out!  How we admired our freshly curled hair which now hung in ringlets all over the head.  It was best not to wash freshly permed hair for several days to make sure the perm had taken well, so we went about smelling vaguely of ammonia until that first wash.  Multiple rinsings never completely removed all of the waving solution.  My poor mother was on a constant quest to try to improve the looks of my hair.  Fine and thin, it would never "fluff" up like she wanted.  Unknown to both of us, my hair was full of cowlicks which made it difficult to cut even by a professional.  Mine was the kind of hair that should have just been cut short and simple, then left alone.  Poor Mom never gave up on the permanents, brush rollers and spoolies.  It would be many years before we let our hair go the way it wanted to, whether it be stick straight like me, or curly and wavy.  

Boys often wore jeans with the cuffs folded up about six inches to accommodate annual growth.  There were a lot of high top keds (black only), but I don’t think they were very cool back then like they are now.  They were probably cheap.  Girls never wore keds.  We wore mary janes or saddle oxfords.

Our schools were not air conditioned.  Classrooms were provided with large pedestal fans to run on hot afternoons.  The fans pointed most of the time at the teacher's desk.  Lucky students placed in the front rows got a little of the breeze.  Plenty of windows could be cranked out to catch the fresh air.  No one seemed to particularly mind.  Many of us lived without air conditioning at home as well, and we were accustomed. 

First grade was frightening for me as I was a Kindergarten dropout.  It would be the first real classroom experience for me.  I had to stay this time.  It was THE LAW and there was no way out.  My father had offered me a quarter if I would not cry and try to climb up my mother’s leg the first day of school, as I had done in kindergarten.  Thinking of what all I could buy with that quarter, I made it.  This was better than future classmate Steve, who climbed and sat high in a tree in his yard on the first day of school.  He was finally coaxed down and into the doors of first grade.  It was not until 1971 that I even realized that I was indeed a kinder dropout.  Debby and I were riding home from Austin for the weekend (yes, we were still in touch as freshmen at the University of Texas) and I happened to mention casually that I had never finished kindergarten.  She was showing me the kinder itsy-bitsy spider, which I did happen to remember.  Shrieking with laughter, she announced "YOU were a kindergarten drop-out!"  I was labeled for life ...

After the first couple of weeks, I must have been pretty bored.  I learned everything out of the gate so all I looked forward to was milk break, lunch, recess and art.  Morning milk break was a welcome relief.  We reported to the cafeteria around 9:00 or 10:00 for a mid morning snack of chocolate or white milk, which cost a couple of pennies or a nickel.  We made our own decisions on which flavor.  No mothers to snatch the sugary chocolate milk from our grasping fingers.  Our teachers could not have cared less.  Milk break went quickly and we returned out little bottles to the crates to be shipped off for refill before we returned to the classroom to anticipate lunch! 

I marveled at our first grade workbooks with pictures of balloons, crayons, and numbers to be matched with the correct number.  Were they serious?  If everything was this easy, school would be a cinch.  They also sent first graders home 30 minutes before the rest of the school, so I soon mastered telling time and became an avid clock watcher for that magic hour of 2:30 p.m.  After recess, we were required to lay our heads down on our desks and rest.  Some first graders slept.  I was still no napper and amused myself by playing with my crayons, sorting and resorting them, and running my fingers up and down the hard metal surface of the inside of my desk, enjoying the echoing sound until Miss Neff yelled at me.

It was always great entertainment when some hapless student leaned too far back in their chair and went crashing over backwards.  Our teacher would glare out over the class and mutter, “THAT was not necessary.”  She wouldn’t even help the poor kid up or ask if their head was hurt.  After several months of hearing that, the WHOLE CLASS would chant together, “THAT was not necessary,” whenever anyone went over backwards, which we could count on happening regularly.  My teacher was a grouchy old biddy and she soon singled me out as “strange”.  And she was right.  She called my mother and told her she needed to take me to a doctor to be checked out.  There was something wrong with me.  My mother dutifully took me.  The doctor examined me and pronounced that there was indeed something wrong:  it was the grouchy teacher who was making me nervous.  As soon as I was out of her class and in second grade, I would be fine.  And I was.

In first grade we learned our letters and sounds, numbers, basic addition facts and beginning reading.  We had GIGANTIC crayolas almost as thick as our fingers and these were used to form groups and do those first simple math facts.  From there we graduated to arithmetic flash cards which the teacher would clip up over the blackboard.  We would have to solve them all quickly.  For reading, we were called up in groups (dragging and clanking our little chairs) to sit with our teacher and work.  I was an early fluent reader, but noticed that those who faltered and stumbled got a lot of the teacher’s attention.  I thought I would try the same thing and purposely mess up.  It was a no go.  That woman just didn’t like me and only glared.  She knew I was faking it. 

Miss Neff was forced to recognize my active imagination though.  Around Halloween, she passed out manila paper and we were instructed to produce a Halloween picture.  There were no guidelines.  While my classmates produced the typical pumpkins and dumb looking rear view black cats made with two circles (big and small on top), two ears and a tail, I got after it and produced a work worthy of the Brothers Grimm:  drawing green-faced witches cooking children in a huge pot, and more witches on their way, flying through the sky dragging tables, chairs, and dishes attached to their broomsticks so they could sit a proper table while feasting on the children.  The teacher called me up to explain my bizarre creation, which I did.  My pictures were completely Freudian (teacher = witch) but she never caught on and I of course was totally unaware of the symbolism of what I had just drawn.  She then placed me in a group that went to Terrell Plaza Shopping Center on a Saturday and painted up the store windows for Halloween.  I gleefully duplicated my gruesome scene in huge full color on the windows of White’s Department store.

First grade brought that first school play: Mother Goose with children acting out, singing and dancing to all the beloved rhymes.    Talk about excited, even though I was relegated to the risers on the back of the stage as part of the “chorus.”  They put all of the attractive and talented children in the leads.  Tall  and skinny (and strange according to Miss Neff), I certainly did not have the look, especially with my fresh Toni perm.  We had it all:  music and songs, costumes, and a nice backdrop.  Mother Goose came bursting out of a paper arch at the end of the play.  She was played by Jackie, the prettiest little girl in first grade with her stunning platinum blond hair.    The little boys were mad for her.  We all enjoyed doing the play, though, even if we did not have leads.  It got us out of the classroom to rehearse for many afternoons.

Many children were memorable.  We had of course Jackie, the platinum blonde class beauty who revelled in her status.  Debby, with her long dark ponytail, would become my friend around third grade.  She was always the smartest and most capable girl in class and could run faster than anyone else, including the boys.  We were always impressed with that.  Debby, like many others, was an army brat.  Vicki was a very tall girl and we called her the jolly green giant.  One day, she had entered the classroom in her green girl scout uniform.  Neal, a smart aleck, took one look and shrieked, “Look, everyone!  It’s the jolly green giant!”  The name stuck until Vicki graduated high school.  Mitchell was the class clown and a Tom Sawyer dead ringer, and even played Tom Sawyer in a school play.  He had straw-like blonde hair, freckles and an ever mischievous look in his eye. In sixth grade, he was caught with a copy of Playboy magazine, and booted out of the class play lead.   In high school, he became a drum major.  Layne was the class brain and knew the answer to everything.  I considered him the cutest boy and chased him relentlessly on the playground.  Robbie was the son of an air force rocket scientist.  He wore coke bottle glasses which enlarged his brown eyes by at least 30 percent and had some of the worst breath I had ever smelled.  His father would come with his toy rockets to school and awe us in the library.  Penny was the daughter of a commercial artist and could draw the best horse pictures at Wilshire.  Her family led the pack in buying things new and shiny and it was fun to go home with her and play at her house.  Penny was also related to Pocahontas.

In First grade, we got to see a real traveling stage called: Moshi, Moshi, Moshi: greetings from Japan.  I was just fascinated.  The cast was really Japanese and the whole show was about Japanese culture.  You had to pay money to see the play.  How important we felt as we left the classroom gripping our valuable tickets, leaving a few of our sad-faced classmates behind who had forgotten to pay in advance.  Thinking back on it, it was probably pure public relations trying to amend hard feelings between our two countries since we had dropped an atomic bomb on them only about 15 years in the past.  Before we bought any toy, we turned it over and if it read “made in Japan,” we tossed it back.  We sang, "Moshi, moshi, moshi!  Greetings from Japan!"  Moshi moshi meant hello in Japanese.  If we ever would need to answer a phone in Japan, we were prepared.

During my second grade year, my mother had to go back to work, a disgrace in 1960.  Most wives stayed at home raising the kids and running the house.  My father worked 12 hours a day in his barber shop, but business was just not that good and after paying the employees and the rental space, there was just not enough money left to get ahead.  My mother fell back on her excellent clerical and typing skills and got herself a job just down the road at Fort Sam Houston and she could reach her job in about seven minutes, door to door.  Grumbling aside, it was nice to have that extra income, but no longer were we children that were dropped off and picked up at Wilshire by our mother each day.  Since my father’s barber shop was only about four blocks from school, we left for work every morning with him and were far from bored.  There was a TV in the barber shop and tall stacks of comics he kept for the children customers.  There was also a huge sucker jar he kept filled all the time.  As the boss’s kids, we had unlimited access to that.  We could also pump ourselves up and down in the hydraulic barber chairs and whirl ourselves silly as long as there were no customers around.  With a running start, you could get the chair going pretty fast.  Around 8:00 a.m. we left to walk to school to play on the playground until the bell rang at 8:30.  In the afternoons we walked back to the barber shop and waited for our mother to pick us up in about an hour.  We often prowled the shopping center stores or played with empty boxes in the back.  There was a great little bakery just a few doors down and I took the nickel which my father gave me every day and bought brownies.  I had a difficult decision on a daily basis.  Should I buy a nice fresh single brownie with that nickel, or should I take two of the day-old ones?  I usually took the two.  They tasted almost as good and I got twice as much brownie volume.  Near the end of the shopping center was a Rexall drug store where we studied the racks of coloring, sticker and puzzle books for children.  I would pick what I wanted, note the price, return to the barber shop and try to squeeze my father for the money.  Most of the time, he would open his cash register and oblige.  Shockingly, I also bought his cigarettes for him at the same store.  I knew just what to ask for:  Salem, menthol please.  The clerk handed them right over to the seven year old, 42 cents a pack.

At the Souder’s hardware store and Threadgills five and dime there were aisles of toys to be studied and longed for:  Breyer horses, plastic witches and ghosts for Halloween, toy Christmas trees, glass piggy banks.  We never tired of looking.  Mr. Threadgill did not care for me at all, as I was always nosing around his store, rarely buying anything, and had a tendency to handle and break the merchandise.  One Halloween, he carried an assortment of green faced wax witches, about four inches tall.  I simply could not keep my hands off them, and broke one.  I turned and saw Mr.Threadgill himself, a retired army colonel, glaring down on me as only retired military officers can.  He let me go after a few choice threats, especially that he would walk up to my father’s shop and turn me in.  But I was back the next day, handling the witches again.  When I saw Mr. Threadgill bearing down on me, I ran for it and did not return to his store for a long, long time.  I lived in horror that he would come stamping into my father’s barber shop and berate both of us.

Many afternoons I spent at the small desk in the rear of my father’s shop where I read, or did homework.  It was here I first read the Classics Illustrated comics.  I had no idea what I was reading until I encountered the real classics in high school.  What a minute ...I've read this before in those comics piled under my father's cash register!  I later learned that many high school students read the Classics Illustrated comics rather than the real book and were able to write papers on them the next day at school.  They were exceptionally good quality.  But being a purist, I always read the damned book.

Inevitably, some of my boy classmates from Wilshire walked in for a haircut and saw me there.  We would usually just stare at one another.  I knew why they were there, for their $1.00 boy’s haircut special.  But they had no idea why I was there.  They saw a door leading to the back storage room and concluded that I lived in the back of the barber shop.  That was my home.  It was hard to convince them otherwise however much I insisted that we owned a conventional home just like everyone else.  We did not sleep in the back of a barber shop.  But that was the rumor that circulated around Wilshire for many years.

In most respects, Wilshire was a good and secure experience.  We were very homogeneous and solid middle class:  strictly white, and a lot of the families were military, either active duty or retired.   San Antonio was a mecca for military people, offering opportunities for the ex-military who needed new careers.  Many of them worked in civil service at the bases around the city.   In fourth grade, we did have Helen, a pretty little half Cuban girl who spoke fluent Spanish and English and she was quite a sensation.  Helen had great liquid brown eyes and wore her long dark hair in a tight bun each day.  Our fourth grade teacher was bilingual (the first bilingual teacher we had ever encountered) and she and Helen would often exchange pleasantries in Spanish while we listened closely to our first foreign language.   We were extremely segregated from San Antonio's huge Spanish speaking population and it was truly our first exposure to it.

Wilshire was almost a zero mobility school.  If someone left, or we had a new student, it was HUGE.   The student leaving got a party with cupcakes and stood in the door and waved at us like the Queen Mother for a long time before the final exit.   When a new student came in the door (which rarely happened) the whole room went silent as we took them in.  For days, we would stare at them like they had two heads.  It took a couple of weeks to warm up to them.  We were tightly controlled.  Teachers held absolute authority and had our respect (and fear) at all times.  We were programmed to come into the classroom and learn and work, and that is exactly what we did.  It was a puritanical system.  Acting out never happened.  Teachers ate lunch with us and kept their eye on us every day.  Only once did I see a boy threatened with a trip to the principal's office.  He cried like Niagara Falls and got off.

Every morning a group of students would report to the principal’s office and go through the pledge of allegiance and the morning devotional.  We would actually PRAY or listen to a scripture out of the bible.  Madeline Murray O'Hare was still on the horizon.  The 23^rd psalm was especially popular and was usually read at least twice a week.  We knew that one by heart.  They passed the duty from class to class on a weekly basis so we all got our chance to get on that microphone and have our voice go out to all the school like mini radio announcers.  It was kind of exciting.  One morning it was my duty and I was so excited that a huge fart escaped me as I walked out of the Mr. Coor’s office.  And that was right in front of Jackie, the platinum blonde, and Mike, a boy who was convinced I lived behind the barber shop.   Jackie took pity on me and hugged me to ease my embarassment.  I am sure the entire classroom knew about it before recess had ended.

Mr. Henry Coors was a great principal.  He had a habit of walking in the door and making surprise visits to our classrooms and prowling up and down the orderly rows of desks looking at our work.  But we didn’t mind it!  If we were doing math, his hand would shoot out and point at our mistakes!  We were simply amazed!  How could anyone be so smart? 

He was an unfailingly kind and helpful man.  We respected him greatly, but did not fear him.  One day I had slid in the playground gravel, and had to limp into sick bay with a torn and bloody knee.  There was no nurse, and no secretary, so I had to limp on through in search of Mr. Coors who was the only adult around.  But he cleaned up my knee and bandaged it for me. When my mother used alcohol on my cuts, she always blew on it to ease the pain.  I screeched for Mr. Coors to do the same when he dabbed on the alcohol.  He looked surprised for a moment, and then blew.

At Wilshire, we worked hard during school hours.  Then at recess we played harder.  We would gobble our lunch and race outside.  We got at least 30 minutes of recess every day, often more, and we deserved every minute of it.  They let us loose on the playground like a troop of caged monkeys and we hit the swings (dangerously high), seesaws, jump ropes, and monkey bars or just  careened all over the playground expending our energy.  We drank water out of a huge concrete fountain with at least six spigots. It resembled a cattle trough.

Seesaw torture:  you had to be picky about your seesaw partner.  If they didn't really care for you and you were on the upswing, they would simply step away and let you crash about four feet to the ground with that heavy wooden plank right under your rear end.  It was not a pleasant experience.

We girls often played that we were herds of horses, and the boys were the cowboys trying to round us up.  We indulged in that classic tradition of the little boys chasing shrieking little girls, loving every minute of it.  I, though, had a very bad habit of chasing Layne all over the playground and trying to grab the back of his shirt, usually popping off several buttons.  His mother hated me.    At least one year she was our room mother and would glare at me throughout our parties.  She probably gave me the smallest cupcake.  (“That’s her, Mom!  That’s her!”)  One day, Layne finally got enough and broke me of the habit for all time by whipping off his now buttonless shirt and hitting me across the face with it, which HURT.  

The activity was healthy, and when it was over we were ready to get back to our books and learn.

There was no busing into Wilshire, except in the first grade.  It was the responsibility of our parents to get us there, or we walked or bicycled.  When I walked I had to cross four lanes of Harry Wurzbach Highway which I managed to negotiate without becoming street pizza.  But for some reason in first grade, the school district swung a deal with the San Antonio bus system for us to ride the city bus, which brought us directly to school.  It was pleasant, especially since the buses were air conditioned with green tinted windows.  We cruised like a tour bus through green fog for about 30 minutes all through Terrell Hills picking everyone up.  Occasionally, the driver would stop and pick up someone’s “help” in her maid’s uniform.  Would we stare!!!  What was SHE doing on OUR bus???  The maid would stop in her tracks and stare back at us.

I got into my first and only fight on one of those city buses.  A second grade girl decided to bully me and block my exit off the bus one afternoon.  And she was a bus patrol too!!  I missed my stop and was hysterical when I finally got home.  My mother’s solution was simple:  if she tried it again, deck her.   That’s right, deck her.  My gentle and sweet mother had spent her childhood having to defend herself from her older bully of a sister, so she was an expert brawler and no stranger to the noble necessity of having to use her fists for self defense.   So ……when the bully tried to block me the next day, I plowed into her like a fullback, stepped over her and marched off the bus.   That was the end of bullying for all time.  In today’s times, we would have both been run into the principal’s office, had our color changed to red, parents called, and probably counseled about mutual respect for each other.

But in 1959, she hit the floor of the bus and the problem was instantly and forever solved.  The bus driver just watched her get hers.  Heck, he was just there to drive us around, not break up fights, especially between little girls.  For all I know he was cheering for me.  To this day, I wonder why she chose me (the strange one) to pick on.  I was every bit as big as she was, and not frail looking.  I can only imagine that she just wanted to see how much she could get away with.  I walked away from the experience feeling empowered. 

For tornado drills, we streamed out in the halls and sat with our backs to the wall, knees up and heads down, with our hands clasped over our necks.  Since we wore no shorts under our dresses, the boys sitting across the hall from us got a pretty embarrassing view.   After the Cuban military crisis of 1963, we did a nuclear bomb drill.    The mothers lined their cars up all around the perimeter of the school and practiced loading us up 5-6 kids per car so that they could have tried to get us out of the city limits in case Fidel was launching a nuclear missile in our direction.  We never left the property.  Just got into the car, closed the door and then got back out.  I have no idea what they would have done with us afterwards in the event of an actual nuclear  threat , but the intent was noble. 

Christmas food drives for the custodians:  We did this every year.  The custodians would pile up all the cans and boxes in their custodial closet and one afternoon before Christmas Break we would all file by and see the cache of food and goodies that they got to take home.  The custodians would stand by the pile and smile and wave at us.  It was all a bit patronizing, but I am sure they appreciated it.  No one has a worse job than a school custodian.  No one.  Well, maybe the bus drivers come close …

We only got to do P.E. a couple of times a week.  We enjoyed it despite the sadistic tendencies of Coach Dvorczak.  He loved to exercise us half to death with jumping jacks and squat thrusts until our muscles ached, or someone threw up.  But we always ended by doing some type of enjoyable sport and how we loved to play. 

In 5th grade, we were most disgusted when our teachers decided that all of our recess "free play" was surely pointless, and organized us into daily softball games.  How we hated it!  We were hit in the heads with wooden baseball bats and jammed our fingers back trying to catch the wretched softballs.  Penny was quite a little athlete and would actually slide it into home.  The rest of us were totally above THAT.  As for myself, I could not catch a baseball even from about two feet away.  I feared those flying spheres!  I will never forget the look of disgust in classmate Charlie's face when I was first baseman and he was the short stop.  He intercepted the ball and turned to me with a beseeching expression and let it go in a gentle arc.  Surely I could manage to catch that!  But I missed.  Needless to say, when teams were chosen up, I was always the last picked.  

The TALK:  one afternoon in sixth grade we girls were all sent home with sealed brown envelopes that we were NOT to open until we saw our parents.  We had no idea what was inside but the boys were all snickering.  You guessed it.  It was that little booklet explaining all about how we were about to become “young ladies” and pay welcome to the little general or the rag or whatever else we all called it.  The booklet just fascinated me.  I read it at least ten times, and then had my mother explain everything to me over and over again.  I actually looked forward to my coming womanhood, that is until it actually arrived ….That envelope also contained the permission form for us to watch THE FILM.  All we girls left the boys behind and gathered smugly in the cafeteria.   We watched the animated egg bursting out of the ovary and making its way down the fallopian tube and how that happened each and every month.  The animation was repeated at least three times to make sure we got it.  The fact that something could happen to interrupt that cycle and cause that little egg to implant was then covered with LIGHTNING speed before we could ask any questions or get any ideas about THAT.   We learned all about sanitary belts, kotex, cramps, bloating, PMS and the coming need for a good fitting bra.  A few of my classmates soon revealed that they already knew everything and in fact had been putting up with all this since the 4^th grade.  Poor souls.  The schools are still educating young girls today, but the poor school nurse can’t legally cover birth control…

In sixth grade, we were still housed in the elementary school, which was probably a mistake.  Hormones were most definitely setting in and most of us did not realize what was going on other than girls were noticing the boys and they were noticing us back.  Platinum blonde Jackie was still the reigning beauty queen and boys lined up three deep to square dance with her during music class.  And then, Cary arrived.

Cary turned our sixth grade world upside down.  The girl dripped sex appeal and the boys began walking into walls.  They didn’t really know what was going on, but there was definitely something different.  Cary was no beauty, but she was alluring, much like Lauren Bacall.  She left Jackie in her dust.  She was blonde, quiet and tawny.  She already had confidence in her obvious attractions.  When most of us girls were still flat chested, Cary was as developed as a 16 year old.  She wore dresses that were form fitting on top to accentuate her assets.

Our fun community games playing Addams Family on the playground immediately discontinued, while most of the boys clustered around her, drawn like catnip.  The rest of us could only watch in bewilderment.  No one really became her friend, though she was rarely alone anywhere.  We all hoped she would leave real soon!  But she followed us on into middle and high school, never losing her appeal.  In high school, Cary had the "walk."  She would exit the school bus and the boys would salivate as she ambled down the street, swishing her hips.  One day, a boy could not resist bellowing out the window:  'Swing it, girlie!!!"  Cary obliged.

We had an amazing music teacher, Mrs. Windon, a tough, demanding little number.  The woman could stand up and play the piano one-handed, and wave her other hand directing our singing at the same time.  This was multi-tasking at its finest.   In fourth grade she demanded that we learn to play little children’s five hole flutes, which I detested.  I never practiced and tried to watch the kid’s fingers in front of me so I would know what notes to play.  I got nailed more than once.   She ran an excellent choir.  You had to try out for that, and she only selected the best. 

Many of us had a habit of turning up on the school playground early, before school.  We would play HARD even before school began.  We used all of the playground equipment, and got up games of tether ball and four-square.  I had to play four-square against kids 3-4 years older than me and spent most of my time getting creamed and then back to the end of the line.  Tether ball could be rough.  There was no adult supervision out there and a sixth grader thought nothing of knocking that ball right into your face.  Things could get pretty vicious and it was survival of the fittest.  These were good life lessons in that everyone did not win all the time and you often had to struggle to achieve anything.  There was no coddling.

School lunches actually tasted good.  We enjoyed homemade yeast rolls most every day, with butter brushed over the top.  Many children brought their lunches in steel lunch boxes with glass lined thermoses, which easily broke into shards.  Shattered thermoses were quite the disaster and classmates would gather around to hear the glass shards rolling around inside and to comfort the unfortunate classmate who was now without their milk.  Lunches were cash only, 30 cents, and could be prepaid with a lunch card that was punched each day.  Milk came in small glass bottles with a paper top that had to be peeled off.  We sat by classes in assigned seats, and good manners were expected.  Chatterboxes did not sit with chatterboxes.

In fourth grade, I snagged a cafeteria job putting away all of the salt and pepper shakers, and wiping down the tables.  In exchange, I got a free lunch and felt proud that I was saving my parents thirty cents per day.  My classmate, Kimmy, brought her lunch every day and whispered to me that her parents could not afford the 30 cents.  I was horrified.  How could anyone not afford 30 cents for a school tray lunch?  Kimmy was from a military family, probably enlisted only, with a bunch of brothers and sisters.  They probably really could not afford it.  Title schools and free and reduced lunches were not yet in existence.  So I gave up my job to her.  I marched her into the cafeteria and told the manager that Kimmy needed my job more than I did.  So my friend got to enjoy school tray lunches for the rest of the year.  Lucky girl.

Every Friday, fish sticks were served, in respect mostly to the little Catholics.  But everyone enjoyed the fish sticks, Catholic or not.  There was one fateful Friday where the cafeteria ladies messed up and ran out of fish sticks.  The Catholics were hyperventilating.  They would surely have to march straight into Hell through the school front doors if they ate anything but fish on Friday.  Fortunately, the enterprising workers were able to whip up cheese sandwiches  and we made do with those.  Wednesday was Mexican food day, with cheese enchiladas, rice, beans and cornbread, which we relished.

The Wilshire staff considered it their duty to get a little culture into fifth graders and arranged for fifth graders to be bused to the symphony each year at the Municipal Auditorium.  We detested sitting for hours listening to music which held no interest for us, and having to dress up as well!  Mrs. Windon, our music teacher, drilled us relentlessly in symphony protocol:  you DID NOT break into applause until the conductor stopped the orchestra and turned around to face the audience.  Period.  At our first symphony, we sat round eyed with fear and dread that we would applaud at the wrong time.  We felt like sitting on our hands while our teachers put the eye on us.  Finally, the movement finished and the conductor turned around, and we could clap.

Several other schools (there were a lot of us there) did NOT know their symphony manners and embarrassed themselves by clapping at the wrong time.  We lifted our noses and looked down on them, while our teachers beamed with pride.

In almost every grade, we did oral reports.  We were expected to research an assigned topic, write it up in our own words, and then present it to class.  We were always told NOT to copy straight out of the encyclopedia, but it never failed that most students did exactly that.  We had to listen to the same two reports on Abraham Lincoln or George Washington copied verbatim from either the World Book or Encyclopedia Brittanica Junior over and over again.  My most memorable report was on the country of Argentina.  I even came draped in a gaucho cape made of cheap fabric found at the nearby Winn’s store that looked rather South American.  Dressed in my little cape, I was as smug as Lucy in the Peanuts comic strip.

A huge treat was Fiesta season when King Antonio would visit all the schools.  We would gather excitedly by the front drive.  Down the street we would see him coming, lounging in the back of a convertible Cadillac driven by his “courtiers.”  They would drive him by us slowly, so we could get a good look at his peacock uniform covered with medals, and his crown.  He never stopped, but was sure to wave and toss fiesta tokens at us, like Mardi Gras, as they drove him away and on to the next lucky school.  We cheered him on in his travels.

Every year of elementary school blended pleasantly together.  We adjusted to a new teacher (often the same one our older siblings had) but never lost our solid peer group.  We argued, made up, lost some friends, but made new ones.  They were good years.