School Days-Lumpy

School is back in session, so it's time to start School Days again. 

_________________________________________________________________________________

 School Days is a reoccurring feature in which I ask people about their early memories of school. Everyone has a story to tell about this and I hope to give them a voice here. 

Here's Today's Story

Lumpy began kindergarten at age five in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He started at the neighborhood public school in 1950.

Tell me some early memories about when you started school.

I don't remember much, but I do have a story from kindergarten to tell. One day one of the boys in the class bit me. For the rest of the day he had to sit under the teacher's desk. That was his dog house because the teacher said that dogs bite, children don't.

Also, I remember that Mrs. Rinders was my teacher's name and we had mats that we laid on the floor in the afternoon for naps. Mine was blue.

What else do you remember?

We moved around while I was in elementary school. After my kindergarten year in Milwaukee, I moved to Grand Rapids. Here I went to first, second, third, fourth, and part of fifth grade. In fifth grade, we left Michigan and moved to California.

Was it hard for you to make those moves?

The hardest move was to California. They seemed to do everything differently such as eating lunch outside every day. In Michigan, I had walked home for lunch. It was hard to leave all of my friends and it took about a year to make good friends again. I was very interested in nature and I gradually found two or three other kids who had the same interests.

Did you have a favorite teacher?

Yes, her name was Miss Peel. In the beginning of fifth grade my teacher had a nervous breakdown so they brought up Miss Peel, the teacher I had had in fourth grade, to be my fifth grade teacher. She was a large, stern woman, but a very good teacher. After she taught me, she went to South Africa to be a missionary. Knowing that I like animals and such, she wrote me letters about all of the new wildlife she was seeing such as the snake that had been in her hut. We kept in touch until she died about ten years ago.

Did she write to all of the kids?

I only know of one other person she wrote to and they stopped writing after about a year. Eventually she got married and ended up living in South Carolina. I still have a table cloth she sent me from Africa for a wedding present. It has hand painted animals on it and we have it hanging up in our house.

Thanks for sharing some of your memories and I hope another time we can learn more about your school days.