The town where I grew up was filled with Displaced Persons. Long before I was born, a basic strain of Anglo-Saxon Americans had dominated the town's undistinguished landscape, and to them it owed its imposing public library, its several large stone Protestant churches, and its active chapter of the D.A.R. But in the years following the Great Depression, Italian, Swedish, and Irish farmers moved a few miles into the town to take shift jobs in the factories. And in the decade or so after World War II, Eastern European people displaced by war, starvation, and the reapportioning of borders and of governments flowed like a steady grey river into the rundown neighborhoods around the factories. There, under the scrutiny of my father (who was a farmer and a tool-and-dye maker), sunken-eyed men in thick work pants took their places on the assembly line.
The years that saw this migration also saw the famous postwar baby boom, into the midst of which I was born. Every house on our street had five or seven or nine children. Kids spilled out onto the porches of triple deckers to play jacks, kids rode scooters on sidewalks, kids jumped rope and flipped baseball cards, kids ran between lines of laundry, between rows and rows of freshly boiled diapers.
I spent the next two years in baby boom chaos, crowding every morning onto a yellow school bus that reeked of balogna sandwiches and wet wool, and then bumping along for what seemed an eternity in the bedlam of the bus--sneakers and pencil boxes and whatnot flying through the riotous air. School itself lasted exactly one-and-a-half hours. Sixty children squeezed into public schoolrooms meant for twenty-five. Every single day, in first grade, we colored in circles and squares until it was time to get back into the belly of the yellow bus. That kind of schedule was called "split sessions"--five shifts of children used each classroom each day.
And then, when I was seven, a miracle occurred. Lots of new school buildings went up. On the first day of second grade, I walked into a brand-new classroom, fresh and gleaming, with huge windows and blond wood furniture.
There were sixteen children in Miss Josephine Murphy's second grade, and on the very first day of school she invited me to come and sit beside her at her desk, where she immediately taught me how to read. "This," she said, choosing letters from a small movable alphabet, "spells horse. And if you change this letter, it spells house." By the next day, I could read a whole book, about a girl named Susan who had a pet rabbit.
Miss Murphy wore dark grey serge suits and dark grey hair pulled back into a bun. By the end of each day her hair would be hanging in strands about her shoulders and her cheeks would be bright pink. She would personally excuse the whole class from gym so that we could go into the woods behind the school and run in the autumn leaves.
Miss Murphy taught us everything. She taught us which foods we should eat, and how we should sit, and how we should be in bed each night by 7:30. She taught us how to tell time, and how to walk like a flock of ducks and how to recite "Tell me not in mournful numbers/Life is but an empty dream." She sang to us arias from Italian operas, and composed a special song just for our class, to be performed by us for the whole school and even for some policemen at a safety day assembly. I can still sing that song, thirty-seven years later--its theme was the importance of looking both ways before crossing the street.
Two days before Christmas, Miss Murphy's classroom was paid a special visit by Santa Claus. Santa walked among our desks, giving each of us a candy cane and a popcom ball tied up with red or green cellophane. To the whole class Santa presented a large wrapped box. Who would be chosen to come forward and open it? My heart pounded with yearning. Oh please, please let it be me ! Miss Murphy' s knuckle tapped me smartly on the head--"Miss Peggy to the front and open the present that Santa brought to the whole class !" I so wanted to be, I just had to be, and now I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was, Miss Murphy' s favorite. I tore the paper from the gift. It was a wooden ice cream maker with a hand crank.
As the class was filing to the coat room, popcorn balls crinkling, to put on their snowsuits for the long trek home toward Christmas eve, Miss Murphy beckoned me to her desk, the desk where I had learned to read a few months before. She handed me a small, slim package in silver wrapping. "Go ahead, open it," she said. I opened the present: it was an orange mechanical pencil. "I hope you'll use it to write your first book," she said.
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The years that saw this migration also saw the famous postwar baby boom, into the midst of which I was born. Every house on our street had five or seven or nine children. Kids spilled out onto the porches of triple deckers to play jacks, kids rode scooters on sidewalks, kids jumped rope and flipped baseball cards, kids ran between lines of laundry, between rows and rows of freshly boiled diapers.
I spent the next two years in baby boom chaos, crowding every morning onto a yellow school bus that reeked of balogna sandwiches and wet wool, and then bumping along for what seemed an eternity in the bedlam of the bus--sneakers and pencil boxes and whatnot flying through the riotous air. School itself lasted exactly one-and-a-half hours. Sixty children squeezed into public schoolrooms meant for twenty-five. Every single day, in first grade, we colored in circles and squares until it was time to get back into the belly of the yellow bus. That kind of schedule was called "split sessions"--five shifts of children used each classroom each day.
And then, when I was seven, a miracle occurred. Lots of new school buildings went up. On the first day of second grade, I walked into a brand-new classroom, fresh and gleaming, with huge windows and blond wood furniture.
There were sixteen children in Miss Josephine Murphy's second grade, and on the very first day of school she invited me to come and sit beside her at her desk, where she immediately taught me how to read. "This," she said, choosing letters from a small movable alphabet, "spells horse. And if you change this letter, it spells house." By the next day, I could read a whole book, about a girl named Susan who had a pet rabbit.
Miss Murphy wore dark grey serge suits and dark grey hair pulled back into a bun. By the end of each day her hair would be hanging in strands about her shoulders and her cheeks would be bright pink. She would personally excuse the whole class from gym so that we could go into the woods behind the school and run in the autumn leaves.
Miss Murphy taught us everything. She taught us which foods we should eat, and how we should sit, and how we should be in bed each night by 7:30. She taught us how to tell time, and how to walk like a flock of ducks and how to recite "Tell me not in mournful numbers/Life is but an empty dream." She sang to us arias from Italian operas, and composed a special song just for our class, to be performed by us for the whole school and even for some policemen at a safety day assembly. I can still sing that song, thirty-seven years later--its theme was the importance of looking both ways before crossing the street.
Two days before Christmas, Miss Murphy's classroom was paid a special visit by Santa Claus. Santa walked among our desks, giving each of us a candy cane and a popcom ball tied up with red or green cellophane. To the whole class Santa presented a large wrapped box. Who would be chosen to come forward and open it? My heart pounded with yearning. Oh please, please let it be me ! Miss Murphy' s knuckle tapped me smartly on the head--"Miss Peggy to the front and open the present that Santa brought to the whole class !" I so wanted to be, I just had to be, and now I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was, Miss Murphy' s favorite. I tore the paper from the gift. It was a wooden ice cream maker with a hand crank.
As the class was filing to the coat room, popcorn balls crinkling, to put on their snowsuits for the long trek home toward Christmas eve, Miss Murphy beckoned me to her desk, the desk where I had learned to read a few months before. She handed me a small, slim package in silver wrapping. "Go ahead, open it," she said. I opened the present: it was an orange mechanical pencil. "I hope you'll use it to write your first book," she said.
Continue Reading...