Hanging Out With Grandpat in First Grade

Lattimore Elementary School in 1943 ( Copy of line drawing by Wilson Brooks). 

I've started writing letters to my grandchildren during this Covid 19 lockdown, and I find that I am actually enjoying looking back at my life.  I am writing somewhat chronologically, but if I think of something that's out of sequence that I simply must share I go ahead and write about it. This is the letter I sent them about my first grade.  Photographs of me at that age, I don't have here in Raleigh.

Patsy Goes to School

We lived out in the country, on Route 4, Shelby, NC to be exact.  Since most families in these parts were cotton farmers, school was a six weeks summer session to make up for the six weeks that school was out in October during the cotton-picking season where children provided much of the labor for gathering the cotton crop.  (More about picking cotton in a later letter.)

For some reason, Daddy had the task of taking me for orientation at the Lattimore Elementary School. Mama was probably home caring for my baby sister.  Lattimore was a village about six miles from our house whose school served a radius of several miles around the village including Route 4.   At the orientation,  I vaguely remember being in a room with other children (I was only five at the time, I would have been six the last of August and this was probably June.) and teachers were calling children up to the front for some purpose, maybe getting vaccinations.  According to Daddy, the teacher called out “Patricia”, and I just sat there.  I had never in my life been called Patricia, my nickname was Patsy and that was all I had ever been called. Daddy said he nudged me and said, “That’s you, Patsy.”  Daddy used to laugh and tell me that one of the teachers said, “Oh my goodness, there is one child that doesn’t even know her name.” 

I might not have known my name, but I knew a lot of things, as the teacher would soon learn. Our reading books were the Dick and Jane series.  Our teacher, Miss Dedmond, would flip over a large chart in the front of the room printed with big black letters “Dick” and then one that said “Jane”, “Sally”, “Spot”, “Puff” “See” “Run” ad finitum.  Then we would get little Dick and Jane books.  “See Dick.” next page “See Jane.” next page “See Dick Run” “See Jane run.” And eventually, there would be a short paragraph “Look Spot. Oh, look, look Spot. Look and see. Oh, see!” This was not the “look and see” method but “the look and say” method for learning to read back in the day, and I was bored. I apparently went through all the books she had so she sent me over to the right side of the room where I was to help some of my classmates who were having difficulty reading. (Guess I was destined to be a teacher from first grade.) 

Once I remember Miss Dedmond gave me a page out of a newspaper and I was to circle every word that I knew.  I was circling almost every word, and to show off, I walked up to the teacher and circled the word “agriculture” and asked, “Is this word agriculture?” We took two daily papers, The Shelby Daily Star and The Charlotte Observer, so I knew how to read newspapers.

Once my teacher loaned me a book that I could take home and read.  It was about a duck who gathered corn and who swam, and I was very proud of the opportunity to take the book home.  I read it to my parents, and then I remember running up to Grandpa Greene’s and reading him the book.  I adored my Grandpa Greene and I was so pleased to be able to read that book to him.

 At some point, each child was required to stand before the class and count to one hundred.  Of course, I knew how to count to one hundred, but I liked getting up before the class so when it would be my turn, I would count up to maybe forty-something and then deliberately miss, so I could get up the next day and count again.  Next day “fifty-six, fifty-eight?”  Sit back down. I did this for quite some time, but then I didn’t want to be the last one to accomplish this so one day I got up and rattled off the numbers just like I could have done all those times I missed.  I remember the prize for counting to a hundred without missing was a multicolored pencil.  One that looked as if it had been swirled around in a can of different color paints.

The lunchroom was on the basement floor of our three-story school.  I don’t remember eating in the lunchroom in the first grade, but I do remember taking my lunch in a metal lunch box with a thermos bottle for my drink.  My favorite sandwich was a tomato sandwich on white bread (the only kind we had) with mayonnaise and by lunch, it would be a bit soggy with that earthy aroma that only a soggy tomato sandwich gives off.  To this day, a soggy tomato sandwich still reminds me of first grade. In cold weather, Mama would mix sweetened coffee with milk about half and a half in my thermos, and I loved it. Guess that was my first latte.  But strangely enough, I never became a coffee drinker to this day.  (Beer, on the other hand, is a different story and a different letter.)

Before Christmas, Miss Dedmond challenged us to memorize the Bible verses Luke 2:8-14. “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch…..” The first student to master this would be given a Bible storybook.  I went home and told Mama and started practicing.  For days I would repeat the verses with Mama’s help and finally one day I went to school and told the teacher I had memorized the selection.  So I got up and said the whole thing with perhaps just a few mistakes.  I don’t remember any other student even trying.  I proudly went home with the Bible storybook.

At the arrival of cold weather, I got new shoes, brown oxford lace-ups with hard leather soles, especially the heel.  When I wore them to school and walked on the wooden floor of the classroom it sounded to me like the sound of my teacher’s or my mother’s high heel shoes.  I became very self-conscious about the sound of my shoes---I thought my classmates would think I was wearing high heeled shoes---so I learned to walk very carefully and softly so that my shoes would not make a clicking noise.  One day Mama picked me up from school before school was dismissed, and when I walked to the door to go out with her, I was walking as I usually did softly.  When we got out the door Mama asked, “Patsy what’s wrong with your legs or your feet?”  She later told me she thought I had developed a serious problem of some sort.  “Nothing,” I said.  “But you were walking funny*.” Then I told her I thought my shoes sounded like high heels.  She assured me that nobody would think I was wearing high heels.  After that, I stopped walking “funny.”

*walking funny:   someone who is walking in a way they normally don’t walk.

Actually, I remember first grade fondly, and I was especially fond of my teacher, Miss Dedmon. And that became the beginning of my life- long love of learning.