Chapter three
Off to School
"Electra Hawkins' late," Orlie whispered.
"It's the first day," Bud offered as a reason.
Orlie, Bud, Harriet, and I dared not peak out over the hedge in the corner of Swanson's yard. We waited as we would almost every morning during the school year until we heard the soft taping purr of the motor of her black flatbed Ford truck. Gravel crunched when rubber tires turned into the Creamery followed by the grinding squeak of brakes. Her black truck stopped beside the conveyor, a long narrow platform with metal rollers to make it easy to slide milk and cream cans into the building to be dumped. We waited a moment while she set the emergency brake for she would let the motor idle. After the truck door squeaked and slammed we all raised up to join Orlie looking at Mrs. Electra Hawkins.
She stood at least two inches over six feet in a loose fitting long black dress sweeping the ground and buttoned tight up at the neck. Her long black hair with flecks of gray was pulled up tight on top of her head in a bun. Electra had a long narrow face, a hint of a black mustache above buckteeth, a tiny chin, and dark brown almost black eyes that stared right though a student. Orlie, who did not like Electra for she was his and Bud's teacher, said, "She can eat corn on the cob through a picket fence."
The school had classes grouped by two grades: The first and second, third and fourth, fifth and sixth, and seventh and eight. Orlie and Bud were just a little over a year apart in age. They had started school together and were in the same grade. They were a handful for any teacher. Orlie was happy he would be getting away from Electra when they graduated from the second grade, but she had been promoted also. When my brothers got out of the fourth grade she was promoted again, and again until she was with them in the sixth grade. Mrs. Hawkins handled them easily for they respected her, and in their respect there was a lot more than a touch of fear.
Electra and Hewitt Hawkins milked cows south of town on the Kensington Road. Every morning Electra brought in the separated cream before school and left over milk made slop for their hogs. Electra stepped out of the truck carrying a long white towel. Her fingers untied the two cream cans from the side stakes, her long arms dragged both to the back of the truck bed, slid them out on the edge the proper distance apart, and turned the handles the way she wanted them.
Next, she draped the towel across and over her wide husky shoulders, turned her back to the cans, bent her knees slightly, reached her hands upward just passed the end of her shoulders, grabbed the handles of the both cream cans, and lifted upward with her knees. In that position carrying both cream cans Electra took two steps toward the conveyor's metal rollers, turned her back to the conveyor, and bent her knees lowering the two cans onto the conveyor. As she turned around her right hand pulled the towel from her shoulders, walked along easily pushing both cans down the conveyor with her left hand until both were against the other taller milk cans and cream cans just outside the small door. As she walked back to her truck she wiped her hands on the towel, opened the door, tossed in the towel, looked down at her black dress to see it she was respectable, and then slid into the truck and drove to school.
After her truck turned the corner, we were moving toward school too. We did not talk much, but Bud said, "She's the toughest woman in town." All of us were awed by her size, her piercing black eyes, and the ease which she handled both cream cans. Electra had never strained under the load, never even got red in the face, never even pulled one hair out of place, or even grunted.
At the school, a big square yellow brick building, Harriet left me in Mrs. Royce's room. My sister introduced me to a small round freckled faced woman that gave me a much practiced smile like the kind some people make when Dad points his Hawkeye camera at them. Mrs. Royce spoke in a high pitched voice, "Welcome Gene," and then turned to help the six other children who did not have a mother hen sister. Harriet checked to make sure I had my Red Chief tablet, lead pencil, Bull Durham sack of crayon pieces, rug roll, and my lard pail with my strawberry preserves sandwich. Before she left me for her third grade room Harriet checked my shirt pocket for the scissors. The small round ended scissors had been the one Orlie and Bud shared, before Harriet had them, and now the scissors were mine. The last thing she did was slip a penny in my shirt pocket for afternoon milk and cookie.
It was an all day kindergarten class. All of the seven children were town kids and I knew them. Some were afraid of me, I knew, because I was easily the tallest and largest boy in the class. Others were afraid of me because their brothers were afraid of my two older brothers. One good long look around the room and I also knew I would have no friends in this room, not even Mrs. Royce. She quickly was making a teacher's pet of the Adamson twins, the daughters of the banker, and Ted Garwood, the son of the Creamery owner. Yet, everything considered it was a pleasant place that morning listening to stories, coloring, cutting and pasting, counting things, and recognizing black shadow pictures on cards. We even got to go outside in the hall to get a drink of water after eating, and were given time to go to the indoor bathroom.
The trouble started in the afternoon. Mrs. Royce had us unroll our rugs on the floor, and I did not mind that. Next, she told us, "Lay down on the rug and rest. Go to sleep if you can."
I stood by my rug. Only dogs lay on a rug and sleep, and I wasn't a dog. All the other children acted like it was great fun, giggled, and staring up at me still standing.
"Lay down, Gene!"
"No Ma'am."
"Why not? Gene, aren't you tired?"
"Only dogs sleep on rugs."
"That's silly. Lay down now."
"No Ma'am."
She looked at me with an angry face that was turning red. Her hand snatched up the yardstick from the chalk tray, slammed it against her hand two or three times, and stood a moment staring at me. "Lay down," she ordered in a loud high pitched voice.
"No Ma'am."
She looked at me for just a moment, her teeth clenched pushing her lips into two thin lines, and her arms swung the yard stick. It slapped hard enough to sting a little against my backside once, twice, and then a third time. Mrs. Royce had a look of an expected victory on her flushed face when she again ordered, "Gene, Lay down!"
"No Ma'am."
Her face took on an exasperated look and then she smiled. It was one of those dangerous smiles you see on the villain in the movies before they do something bad on purpose. "Okay. Stand then. After school I'll stop by the barbershop and tell your father about this."
I stood beside my rug as the other children drifted off to sleep and Mrs. Royce sat behind her desk. She closed her eyes after she set the small twist timer on her desk. The timer was like the one Mom used when she baked bread or cakes. After a time she rested too.
When the bell on the timer make a loud ping sound, the rugs were rolled up and put away. Mr. Fenwig, the janitor, came in with a galvanized pail of milk with a top from the Creamery and Mrs. Ayers, the cook, carried in plate of sugar cookies and tin cups. Everyone, except me, got a half cup of fresh cool milk and a sugar cook each day for a week for their penny. I was being punished and went without, but Mrs. Royce did not give back my penny. The rest of the afternoon Mrs. Royce did not call on me when my hand was raised to answer a question.
"I'm waiting," she whispered to Mrs. Ayers, "for his father to take the starch out of his collar."
After school Harriet came by with her friend Nellie Vinton and we walked home with our empty lard pails. Harriet always walked home with Nellie up to the top of the hill in town near the water tower, and there she stopped for a short visit. I sat out on the Vinton front porch steps and waited.
As I waited up the hill Orlie came running with Bud chasing him. It was the usual after school game of tag. The boys and some girls in the upper grades would pay tag. One would touch another and yell, "You're it!" Then, the game would start. Today Bud was it and he had tagged everyone else. Orlie was the only one left and they were racing up the hill toward the water tower.
At the wate
r tower Orlie yelled out a dare and climbed up the ladder on one of the tall metal legs. Without slowing down Bud went after him. Both climbed the tower and Mister Roper hollered up at them to come down. When they kept on climbing, Mister Roper trotted down the hill to the barbershop to tell Dad. By the time Dad got up the hill still wearing his barber apron to see Bud chasing Orlie around and around on the walkway around the water tower's round tank. Dad yelled up at them. The game of chase ended quickly and they both climbed down. When Dad yelled Harriet came out of the Vinton house. We were scolded and all four sent home.
After supper Orlie, Bud, and I followed Dad carrying his razor strap down to our small barn. Inside he ordered, "Grab 'em!" We bent over with hands on our knees, and he started down the line counting to ten the swats with the razor strap the two older boys got. I only got five for I was younger. After it was over, we were allowed to rub some feeling back into the flesh beneath our back pockets. Dad only told us, "I don't want to hear of any of you in trouble again!" Then, he left, walked to the house, and after awhile we did too.
The next day I refused again to lie down on the rug. This time she did not swat me with the yard stick, but did not call on me or return my penny for not getting any milk and a sugar cookie either. I was being punished in class, and she told Dad on me again. After supper I got five more down in the barn, and on the walk back up to the house I came to a decision. All the rest of the week and next week I would hide my penny and use it for candy. Also, I would not raise my hand ever again in her class.
Every afternoon that week I refused to lie down and she told Dad. Each night that week he gave me five swats down in the barn. After the first week of not letting me have any milk and a cookie she asked the next Monday for my penny. Trying not to talk to her I shook my head that I did not have one, and she smiled thinking my Dad was punishing me by not giving me a daily penny. I tried hard not to smile over that. I must have succeeded for she never asked again for my penny or told Dad. That second week we came to an agreement, I would sit on the floor on the rag rug mother made but I did not have to lie down and did not get afternoon refreshments.
But my weekly penny was in one of Dad's old empty Prince Albert tobacco cans down under a rock on the edge of the road across the slough from the island to Evansville. On Saturday morning I bought five penny's worth of eight for a penny root beer barrels. Every week through kindergarten I had my many beer barrels to share with my sister Harriet and Orlie and Bud. For a share she found a better old tobacco can for my pennies, dug a hole under the rock to hide it, and found a square-shaped bluish-glass quart fruit jar with a lid to hold the root beer barrel candy I bought from Mr. Crawford. Sis climbed up and set the candy jar in the barn loft on a two-by-four behind the hay.
Addscript: In April when Friday the tenth, my sixth birthday, came around the cooks forgot or were not told to make a pan cake instead of the usual cookies for kindergarten class's afternoon snack. I didn't ask, and the teacher never offered a sign that I ever had a birthday that year in Kindergarten. The other students thought I had a summer birthday.
Sometime during that year I learned a lesson in economics. I came to understand that for five days I saved my pennies, bought candy on Friday evening, and soon it was gone. One day I saw the store owner, Mister Crawford, walk up to the bank with a drawstring canvas sack. Harriet said he was taking his store's money to the bank. I knew that my candy was gone, but the store still had my pennies to put in the bank. It did not seem fair to me.
Another result was that children have short memories. They forgot why I did not hand over a penny each afternoon for milk and a sugar cookie. They thought my parents too poor to give me any money. After Christmas the school allowed families to pay by the week. When my nickel did not end up in the box the children told their parents that the Peterman's were too poor to give me a nickel a week for milk and cookies. The gossips whispered it around town and Mom and Dad were both hurt by the rumors of our poverty.
Chapter four
The War
Odd ends Page 20
