people look at me with disbelief when I tell this story. They equate it with liking
liver!) Pop, in an unexpected gesture, wrote this note: “Greetings on this your 16th
birthday and wishing you many, many more. Mom & Pop." I felt that I had reached
an important milestone. Now I could come and go a little more independently. I was
somehow more mature. My voice seemed to have completed its change.
Miss Eleanor Henderson’s Biology class that year was an experience to
remember. In one report after another I received an A, with first ranking in that
totally new subject matter. Did I do so well because I spent hours memorizing lists
of flora and fauna, anatomical inventories, etc. thereby “aceing" on quizzes. Or was
it because I seemed to have a knack for compiling creative, colorfully illustrated
project books. Certainly it wasn’t because Miss Henderson particularly liked me - at
times she nitpicked and belittled me. Whatever the reason, my track record had to be
an anomaly. It was clearly not predictive of a continuing interest in biology.
Miss Henderson made it clear, with poorly concealed displeasure, that she
was not allowed to teach human reproduction as part of her biology course. She
got around that school board policy to some degree by having us read silently in
class a pertinent chapter from a book she owned, H. G. Wells' The Science of
Life. We were not required to take notes - just read the text and study the
illustrations. To speed up the process, two students at a time read together. Miss
Henderson paired me with Ann Hausman! Could a boy of sixteen, in those days,
be any more embarrassed. Could I concentrate. One thing is certain: I didn’t
learn anything about the facts of life that day!
Had the Sophomore social whirl caught up with me. The unprecedented
array of A’s and B’s for the first semester suffered a disturbing degradation by year’s
end. Or had my behavior affected my studies - my deportment grades were lower
than ever. Was I doing too much unauthorized talking in class. In those days students
were expected to speak only when called upon. Whatever the explanation, I was
again dissatisfied with my performance for the year and was happy when June came
and I could lay aside the scholastic grind for the next two and a half months.
A large part of my summer, when not occupied with chores, was spent more
or less loafing with my neighborhood buddies. By now we felt the lot across the
street from my house was ours. No one had ever questioned our ball-playing there or
our catching crawfish in the shallow run that ran along one side of it. This summer
we were bolder than before, breaking into the empty garage that stood on a corner of
the lot and taking it over for our clandestine conversations. One day when five of us
were playing in the run, a graying lady appeared from the direction of the big house
at the top of the hill above the field. She called us to her and said she was Mrs.
Henderson and asked our names and where we lived. When I gave her my name and
pointed to my house, she exclaimed, “You’re a Wallace. Oh MY, I remember those
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