CHAPTER 17
I walked out of East Ward Elementary School on Christmas Break December1947. I entered West Whiteland Elementary School (pictured left) when the holiday break ended in January 1948.
I might as well have stepped into a black hole. My mind is totally void of any memories of that school. I can’t describe what my classrooms looked like or name my teachers. I don’t know if my teachers were women or men. I don’t remember the subjects taught or who were my classmates (except one). My knowledge of being in that
building and what transpired there for two years is gone. Even the report cards I received have ceased to exist. I don’t know what my marks were, except for the mystery of my First Grade Card at Downingtown that had the periods I didn’t attend East Ward filled in and my promotion on the back.
Here is the sum total of everything I can tell related to West Whiteland School:
I learned to play soccer there, but I don’t actually remember playing.
I made one friend in my class, Robert Cuellers. I don’t recall him in class, but I remember visiting at his home at least once. He moved to Downingtown the same month we moved back and we went to East Ward together for the latter grades. It may be for this reason I even remember Bobby t all (pictured left).
My bus stop was on Route 30 at the end of our long lane. It was my first experience riding in a school bus. The only trip I actually recall was one coming home from school. We were on the Lincoln Highway not far from my lane. There was a dog struck by a car and it lay on the centerline with its hindquarters crushed, trying to get up. That is the one image connected to that school I wish I had forgot. I had nightmares about it then and have never been able to erase it from my mind.
I recall much about the house and grounds where I lived. Probably because I spent so much alone time there. I don’t know where father hauled the milk, except he kept the schedule he would follow the rest of my childhood. He would leave early on Monday morning, be home briefly on Wednesday and be gone again until Friday night.
This did not make me unhappy. I got more attention from my mother than ever before, after all, she was isolated too. My mother didn’t know how to drive. When dad left it was she and I until he next appeared. The move to Glenloch forced her to quit her job. She had no other occupation than that of housewife and mother.
She had never been in this position before except for the first year of her marriage and that was in a small apartment with no kid. All the other years of her life my grandmother had run the house and cooked the meals. Keeping house wasn’t a problem. My mother was used to work after the jobs in the mushroom plant as a teen and the two she held while dad was in the South Pacific. It was cooking that challenged her.
It wasn’t one she conquered, at least not for another forty years when her mother died.
Our meals were simple, both because we couldn’t afford a lot and because mom couldn’t cook. If it wasn’t a sandwich, it was out of a can. Lunches and suppers were quite similar. Typical meals were tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich, hot dogs and beans, just hot dogs on buns, tuna fish salad sandwiches, chicken noodle soup, beef stew, dried-beef gravy over bread or leftovers from Sunday dinner. But she didn’t cook the Sunday meals, she brought the leftovers home from her parent’s.
When my father arrived home on Friday evenings I would have my little suitcase packed and ready. It was over the hill and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we would go. I would spend Friday and Saturday nights at 424 Washington while my parents had their together time. My parents ate out somewhere on Saturdays and on Sunday the whole clan gathered at grandma’s for a big sit down Sunday dinner cooked by my grandmother.
Mom saw little need to cook a big meal for just the two of us
during the week. She was not a big eater and I was a fussy one, so why bother. She would fix what I liked. We would sit and eat our meager meals at the kitchen table. Superman was often on the radio while we ate. After eating, I would dry the few dishes as mom washed them and then we would go into the living room.
Mother would listen to her radio programs or read, while I played on the floor if it were wintertime. During the months when the days were long with sun I went outside and played to bedtime. Sometimes we played a board game. On the rare occasions when dad would be home he would choose the radio shows and I usually went up to my playroom to escape him.
Nellie died before the New Year. Using a carton left from Christmas for a coffin, Everett buried her beyond the garden where the backyard turns to tall grass. Helen cried and couldn’t watch the interment. She had grown up with the dog, but it was her daughter who grieved too deep and long.
Standing at the sink Helen stole glances toward the kitchen table where the girl sat listlessly poking a fork into chocolate cake. She wished to lift Jenny’s spirit, but knew not how. Asking for help with the dishes was hardly a cure for melancholy. She scrubbed them alone at a loss.
Except from “Ground Dog Day”
Published by Barnes & Noble Read Aloud
Published February 2003
Wilmington, DE
Ann Murphy, Editor
Collected in Currents of the Brandywine and other Creeks
(Note --The excerpt was based on when mom’s dog Nellie died. The real Nellie didn’t die until 1945, before we ever moved to Glenloch, but you bend fiction to the reality that inspired it. “Jenny”, the little girl in the story was based on me. Nellie was buried not at Glenloch, but by my grandfather in the backyard garden at 424 Washington Avenue.)
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