It Was August, 1970 . . .

School starts this coming week in the community where I reside.  So, I was thinking about my first day in school, 41 years ago!

I attended Weber City Elementary School, where my two older sisters had blazed a trail for me several years earlier.  To get to the school, the bus, Number 79, had to drive past our house on the four lane, stopping at our back door, cross lanes to turn left across from the Farm Store (State Line Market), and wind around by Dracy Aesque’s house, through the Tipton settlement, turn right on the River Road, go up to the Necessary house, turn around, and follow the river road back down past the Sundown Drive-in Movie theater, then turn right on the highway and head back around to the school, across the river, in Weber City, down Jennings Street past the First Baptist Church.  The school was built in a flat bottom bounded by the street on the west, the Cozart Tobacco Warehouses on the north, Big Moccasin Creek on the east, and a drainage ditch separating it from a working farm to the south.

You went in the front of the school by the cafeteria, walked like a big man down the hall to the first classroom on the right.  Miss Mays was the teacher, an elderly lady who knew how to handle rotten young-uns.  We were assigned seats on a first-come, first-served basis, but we had to keep them throughout the year.  I took one in the back of the first row near the sink.  A lovely young lady with short, black hair sat in front of me, peering around from her perch in the metal desk with the wooden seat to see what I looked like.  I would smile as if to be friendly, but not sure I wanted to encourage anything with her, as I didn’t know her, and I noticed she seemed to have a trail of snot running down her face.  First grade.  Oh, joy.

Miss Mays cleared her throat, told all the little ladies and gentlemen to look straight ahead at her, and we soon had the big, first grade paper pads sitting on our desks, with the oversized pencils in our hands.  This was before kindergarten had ever come to our community.  We were raw from watching Romper Room, and now we were in the big leagues.  We were to copy the alphabet.  Ten times for each letter.  Work hard, go slow to get it right, and fill up our page before recess.  Away I went, believing as I had been taught at home that you needed to save paper, so I wrote my alphabet small, fitting it on each line as I saw fit in the economy of my first grade mind.  When Miss Mays came by to check my progress, she frowned.  “That’s not right!”  She had my attention, I felt every eye was on me.  She carefully explained, with a scowl, you write between the solid lines, touching the bottom and top, with the dotted line in the middle as a guide.  “Do it over!”  Oh, man!  I thought I was going to miss recess.  Ole “Snotty” just peeked around again and grinned like a big ole possum.  I hated her now with enthusiasm.

Miss Mays ordered our lives that day, telling us what we could and couldn’t do in this class of hers.  We were assigned our coat hook, our shelf, and our desk, told where we could place personal supplies, and strictly warned that we could not go to the bathroom at the back corner of the room without asking express permission.  This seemed so unfair.  I had learned to go at home when it hit me and the room wasn’t occupied.  I didn’t have to ask first, just barge in and take care of business.  I determined to hold it until I went home.  That’d fix her.

I don’t remember a paddling that day, but Miss Mays knew how to use one.  It was one of those paddles that once held a rubber string with a ball attached.  You rip the string off and you have an instrument of torture to the flesh.  We sat still when she raised it in the front of the room.  It would silence even the most talkative first grader.  She had us where she wanted us.

My favorite part of the day was recess.  We could run with glee and hit the big slide down by the warehouse, or if the bigger kids weren’t on the monkey bars, we could act like we were going to climb them, our first grader bodies too small to actually make it to the top.  “Red Rover” and “Tag” were our favorite running games.  Sometimes we’d walk around and hold important conversations about kings and castles and big, fat monsters.  We didn’t have a gym yet, so we were in charge of our own physical ed, and if anyone had a ball we could go down the paved path to the basketball court way down by the creek, or to the baseball field, so long as it wasn’t muddy.

Our class had about thirty kids in it.  We were all from Weber City or surrounding environs, including East Carter’s Valley.  We grew to know each other pretty well that year, and in subsequent years.  We mastered the alphabet, reading, spelling, and math.  We learned that the teacher meant business, and it was best not to cross her.  And we loved it when Mrs. Snodgrass came to substitute.  She was nice, and even though she would use the paddle, she didn’t seem to like it as well as Miss Mays did.

It’s been a long time since August, 1970.  But, it was foundational to the rest of my life.  Long live the Weber City Spiders!