Half of my grade school experience started at Eugene Field Elementary School, named after the writer known as “The Children’s Poet.” I can’t find a picture of Eugene Field School (EF), but it was one of those massive, monolithic brick schools of early 20th Century middle America. The school was situated on Cornbread Road, known for a reference made in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Cornbread Road begins in Yorktown, goes east until Hoyt Avenue.
Dick Greene, an erstwhile Muncie journalist/historian wrote, “At one time there was a grist mill at Hoyt Avenue and Buck Creek . . . folks for miles around took their corn to the mill to have it ground into meal, and eventually the way they traveled came to be known as the Cornbread Road.”
Anyway. There were no aliens at my school. Unless you count that one teacher we’ll discuss later.
But I must begin with kindergarten.
I spent my kindergarten year at Lincoln Elementary on Memorial Drive (also called 12th Street) and was then bussed waaaaay over to Cornbread Road for reasons I’m still not sure. So aside from kindergarten, I spent from 1st grade to half of 4th grade at EF.
I met several friends in kindergarten with whom I would go to school until we graduated in 1981. My main memories of kindergarten are the taste test days, when we had stinky foods cooked in our classroom and I tried cauliflower for the first time, how Edsel Blevens took somebody’s black crayon and people were crying over this, how my friend Marsha cried every day, my pink towel over my blue and green plastic mat for naptime, and the one time I wasn’t allowed to retrieve the contents of my cubby during the goodbye song. That’s about the sum of kindergarten, no warm fuzzies.
On to Eugene Field. Continuing in my David Copperfield theme of pathos and struggle, I’ll just say it was sad. There was a large tree at the front of the playground, close to Cornbread Rd. I would stand under it because it made me feel closer to home, which was resolutely where I wanted to be. I was homesick a lot because my teachers were gruff and Marsha still cried every day, so I carried the weight of her sorrow, too. But that tree–I loved the way the giant roots were partially covered in the softest brown dirt, fine as powder, cool and comforting. I remember studying the patterns of those fascinating roots, drawing and dragging my finger in the dirt. That’s right; I played in the dirt, and I was sad. There you have my EF experienced in a nutshell. Oh, wait . . . Did I mention the school backed up to a gravel pit and that when they would use dynamite to blast DURING THE SCHOOL DAY, our windows would shake and it would sound like thunder? Because that’s a great learning environment when you’re a sad first grader.
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Dittmar, pictured below, whom I impressed one day when I correctly spelled her name for her. (I never said I wasn’t smart. It’s what saved me.) She became Mrs. Cook during the school year. How she found a spouse near her age of 175 years was a mystery to me. She was harsh, yelled at us, humiliated at least one kid in front of the whole class, I believe because he stuttered.
Besides being forlorn under the tree, I remember one boy, Tim (bottom row, second from left) chasing the girls at recess with some kind of cardboard glasses which gave him x-ray vision. He could see under our clothes!
Over the years, I liked when we stayed in for recess because we could choose our own activities. (Usually, at outside recess, I only enjoyed swinging.) I would go to the back of the room and get lined paper stacked on the window sill and begin creative writing. I still remember the feel of that newsprint paper, the faint guidelines, the rows delineated by solid lines, the midline dotted. There were penmanship expectations for print and cursive. We learned cursive in 3rd grade, I think.
In gym, I could gallop faster than anybody. But gym class was in the cafeteria, which was kind of restrictive. I did a lot of fast galloping in small circles.
EF had a major staircase inside the front doors. Would you believe that was my first staircase experience? Remember how small your world is at seven. I lived in a ranch style house and went to a one story, 20th Century built church. My grandparents had one story homes. There was a store or two downtown which had an escalator or stairs, but I rarely went downtown. The school stairs were intimidating for me at first.
In 2nd grade, I had Mrs. Jost for a teacher, which was pronounced, “Yost,” so that was probably my first experience with the unpredictability of phonics. She was nicer than Mrs. Dittmar but bland. I have zero memories of interaction with her or details of her face.
The first day of 3rd grade buoyed my hopes for a better experience because my teacher was young and pretty, a petite brunette with a modified beehive hairdo: Frances Nance. It didn’t take long for that name to send chills down my spine. I think she hated that job and disliked kids. She wasn’t easy to please, didn’t seem to have a nurturing bone in her body–I don’t ever remember her smiling. One day her fiance visited our classroom. She smiled that day, so that was one time she thawed. I do remember we had a live Christmas tree in the classroom that year. We made ornaments with paste. I can still smell the evergreen and paste. I’d never seen a real Christmas tree before. First stairs, then real Christmas trees–life was happening at the speed of . . . steps.
In 4th grade, the dawn broke, Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord, for sending me to Miss Deborah Keeney who later became Mrs. Shelley. Miss Debbie Keeney was young, beautiful, had long dark blonde hair parted in the middle, wore stylish clothes and had wire rimmed glasses. She was like if Mary Tyler Moore were blonde and wore glasses. And I LOVED her. She was energetic, kind, sharp, paid attention to us. She read aloud to us every day. I specifically remember “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Charlotte’s Web.” It was my favorite time of day.
Mid-year, we moved, as a school, to a brand new building closer to my home neighborhood, called Grissom Elementary. Oh, the excitement we felt as Miss Keeney prepared us for the innovative learning methods and avant garde structure that we would have access to. No walls between classrooms! Open concept! More independence! More tables than desks! Carpet up the hallway walls! A reading pit in the library! A real gym made of some space age material that literally gave a bit when you stepped on it!
It was for Miss Keeney I first baked a birthday cake, with my mom’s help, of course. Miss Keeney allowed me to bring it to school, and I took that round, pink thing on the bus. At Halloween, we visited Miss Keeney’s apartment on Wheeling Avenue. When she opened her door, her boyfriend was seated on the couch. Uh oh-things were changing.
I can’t remember if she married that year or the next. I just know I flourished in my 4th grade year and loved school so much that for years I would say, “I want to be a 4th grade teacher.”
I don’t know where she is today or even if she would want to hear from me; she probably wouldn’t remember me, but what a legacy she left–what a positive influence she had on my life. I would love to thank her for that 4th grade year, 1972-1973. Before her, I dreaded school every day. After her, I wanted to be a teacher, and I ended up getting a bachelors degree for teaching English.
In 5th grade at Grissom, I had one main teacher, like a homeroom teacher, and two adjunct teachers. My main teacher was Jacqueline Seward, and the two add-ons were Charles Wallen and Mary Ellen Frazier. My good luck carried on–I absolutely loved these teachers and after all these years, I have very vivid memories of their faces, voices, senses of humor. This was the year I discovered I also loved volleyball. They gave me the MVP trophy, and that, my friends, was the height of my athletic achievements. Thank you, Mr. Wallen, for being such a fun coach, great teacher and respectable male presence.
My 6th grade teacher was Peter Yohler. I think we also had two other teachers, but they are lost on me now. Only Mr. Yohler was memorable. He tried his best to teach me to play chess and was very patient. I never caught on. That’s still embarrassing to me. Mr. Yohler had a certain swagger, moustache and polyester clothes only the 70s could be held responsible for. He owned race horses and whistled a lot. Mr. Yohler set the stage for all future male teachers of mine: quirky but decent human beings.
Only remnants of Lincoln and Eugene Field still stand, but Grissom is going strong. In fact, I was there yesterday, serving as a volunteer in the Reading Buddies program affiliated with the YMCA. I met a new buddy, Sophia. We were walking to the library, which still has the reading pit, getting to know each other, and I said, “I used to be a student here a long, long time ago.” She said, “You did?” “Yes,” I replied. “I loved going to school here . . . .”
One Hoosier Life 