Chapter 4
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
1927-1933
“Up in the morning and out to school
The teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule."
School Days - Chuck Berry
i - 1927-1929
Union Street School, Grades 1 and 2
School inevitably caught up with me. It didn’t matter that Pershing and Allan
were already in school - anticipation of the mysterious unknown was scary.
The trauma had begun a month or so before when I was taken to Dr. Koon for
my smallpox vaccination. Maybe I remembered the ordeal of my cut wrist. Whatever
caused my fear, I let it be shown. I pulled back my arm, went to the floor, kicked,
squealed. Eventually the doctor and my captors got the job done, and of course I
hadn’t felt a thing.
Like most kids in those days, I went straight into the first grade without
benefit of nursery school or kindergarten. Probably because it was close to home, it
was the public Union Street School in which I was enrolled in September 1927 rather
than the more distant Catholic school.
Union Street was a square, unadorned red-brick building two blocks from
Cumberland’s main business street. It was only a ten-minute walk from home, but
because it required crossing the railroad tracks that intersected Baltimore Street,
Mother walked me each morning until I was well-trained in safety. There was a
subway under the tracks that I had to use when unaccompanied. Its odor is
u
n
f
o
rgettable: on good days, damp-smelling; on bad days, reeking of urine.
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