Winter had come again, proclaiming the halfway point in my fifth year of school. This winter was especially memorable, and not just because of the stinging below zero temperatures and daily wind blown snowfalls; winters in Northwest Indiana were rarely subtle. It was during this winter that my family had moved, and I began attending a new school with new teachers, with peers with whom I had not bonded, and with routines that were more varied and complicated than those I had experienced at my previous small, rural school.
Never again would I board the big yellow GMC, chauffeured by Henry Rankford. No longer would I settle into the front seat that I always occupied next to Lee Henry, a seat from which we watched the same faces board at the same locations on a daily basis. Now, I walked to my school, and home again, along busy streets, on fresh snow, frequently covering patches of glazed ice that sometimes brought me crashing to the ground. Eventually, accompanied by new friends and some less familiar classmates, I found other trails to and from school across frozen waterways that connected larger bodies of water which bordered my new home and my new school. The drifted snow of January usually covered the frozen lakes and connecting canals that would offer different kinds of adventure in months to come.
My new class at Riley School combined fifth and sixth graders, and we often moved from room to room for special classes such as reading, art, and music. We even had a man who came three times a week to conduct organized play. My previous school had not been nearly so sophisticated. I quickly became aware that the rural students that I had just recently left were provided a different pace of learning. As I was later to read, they “marched to a drumbeat” that was different, significantly slower. Years later, several of my classmates from my earliest school days would rejoin me at the high school I attended although a significant number had either discontinued their education or gone on to places far beyond the rustic region of our early childhood.
The first day at my new school was more traumatic than any school day I had yet experienced or would ever experience again. Immediately, I was spirited away to Principal Cook’s office and seated at a large table. I was given tasks of manipulating blocks as a means of determining my intelligence. I remember being extremely frustrated and anxious because I seldom completed a task within the time limit. I did not know the terms moron or idiot, but I did feel remarkably limited in problem solving skills, and my mind fled to the security of my former school.
Later, during language arts class, I was asked by the teacher to identify the word on the weekly spelling list that was an example of a “contraction.” Since I was unfamiliar with the word “contraction,” I assumed my hearing had failed , so I searched the spelling list until I came to the word “wheel,” which satisfied my search for a more familiar term, “contraption.” The teacher was kind in correcting my misguided assumption, but I believe that my peers were undecided as to whether I was a masterful punster or a slow witted farm boy, still stressed from failed attempts to perform manipulations with intelligence defining blocks.
Although the academic adventures of my day had been thus far discouraging, it was during the lunchtime recess that the day would reach its traumatic peak. I was to distinguish myself as a true aboriginal boy, barely civilized, and a serious threat to my new peer group – or so I was made to feel later. The snow was deep and drifted along the shoreline of Lily Lake which bordered Riley School’s playground. Chunks of snow lay about the play area, chunks that had once been snowballs, manufactured on previous days, tempered by sunshine, and now encrusted with ice. Many were spheres of ice of various sizes, but all were potentially lethal weapons, especially the ones of the greatest diameter and weight. Some appeared to have been body parts or heads of dismantled snowmen. In addition, there were fortifications carved into drifts of snow, inviting those of us who courageously braved the frigid windchill for a few moments of freedom from the stifling confinement of the classroom setting. What followed could only be described as the re-creation of historical battles from which ancient literary heroes have been divined -“heroes,” being a matter of one’s perspective.
My physical development was somewhat advanced for age twelve, probably the consequence of my life on a farm, independent of the ease of modern conveniences. Not unlike a Viking marauder, I repeatedly charged the enemy encampments while delivering decisive chunks of ice-covered snow, many of which weighed several pounds. I hurled the missiles onto the fortifications and prone forms of my enemy, often at point blank range. When my attacks had subsided, one of my adversaries lay motionless while others fled whimpering to the safe confines of the schoolhouse foyer.
No school staff had ventured onto the playground on that frigid noontime. As I reflect, I would assume that the students who ventured outside were thought to have gone home for lunch rather than to have stayed on school grounds, engaged in combat among the snowdrifts and chunks of ice. Finally, the bell rang to reconvene learning and to summon the survivors and victors to the warm confines of the school – all except one. One small body remained prone in the remnants of his fortification. He would eventually be retrieved by a member of the school staff, picked up by his mother, and taken to some undisclosed location for medical attention.
As for me, I was summoned, unceremoniously, for the second time on my first day of school to the office of Principal Cook. No blocks were placed before me on this occasion. This time I was seated in the personal office of the school’s principal where evil doers were sent to be punished in manners that expanded my imagination. The principal paced before my cowering figure, brandishing a wooden slab, an instrument that was not altogether unfamiliar to me, even in my limited school experience. It was… The Board! He spoke of appropriate behavior and of holding my peers in higher regard. He mentioned applying physical restraint while participating in playground activities, and finally, he revealed the no snowball throwing rule that I had violated on this, the first day at his school. I had violated the no snowball rule in the first degree.
I was spared a paddling on that day. As I reflect on the day and the circumstances, I suspect that I was spared either as a consequence of the results of my earlier intelligence testing performance, or perhaps because of Mr. Cook’s fear of impending litigation from the unsupervised incident on his school’s playground. In truth, I was new to the school and had not been given sufficient time to become adequately assimilated into the urban culture into which I had been placed as a result of my parents’ decision to relocate. Incidents similar to the activities of this day had been fairly common at the school from which I had just come, and were frequently accepted as primitive “rights of passage.”
There would, of course. be other days of questionable school decorum on my part, but I do not recall any so traumatic as this January day in 1950, my very first day, at my new school.