A Miracle...and school at last.

September of 1940 was soooo cool. I had turned six in June and could finally go to school with my sisters....AND a baby brother was born into my family. I have to explain why that was so special. Mother had been told that she should not, under any circumstances, have another baby because her weak and enlarged heart was not able to go through the riggers of childbirth without seriously jeopardizing her life. She had accepted the doctor's counsel until she had a dream in which she saw a baby boy that she knew was to be part of our family. She could even describe him. You have to know that my mother was a very spiritual person whose faith had kept her alive time and time again when the doctors said she wouldn't make it. She so wanted to live long enough to see her children raised, and that was ten years longer than the doctors had given her. She talked to my dad and together they decided that if a son was meant to be part of the family, that God would see to it that all went well. And it did. My brother John Duane (J.D. as we called him) arrived on September 16, the first sibling born in a hospital. The rest of us were born at home. It was so much fun to have a baby in the house especially since we girls had so much a part of his care.

My school, Sherman Elementary, might be described as an old country school. It had a small footprint but was three stories high. The bottom floor, which was really a half basement, housed the kindergarten and first grades. Second, third and fourth grades were on the second floor, and fifth and sixth grades on the top. It was cool to be way up there because you got to exit via the fire scape on the outside of the building. The playground seemed quite large to me, but the best part of it was the grove of scrub oak that occupied one corner of the grounds. Paths had been worn all through the grove so it was like a maze in which to get "lost". We loved playing in the "Oaks" as we called them. There was also a tennis court at the rear of the playground which I'm sure was not built for the school, but we were allowed to play on it. The playground had the usual swings and slides, but my favorite was the "giants". I'm sure that since my time they have been declared unsafe...probably down right dangerous...because I have never seen them on modern playgrounds. So I'll try to describe them and how they worked.
A tall metal pole was secured in the ground. At the top of the pole was a rotating wheel to which was attached six to eight long chains that reached down to about five feet above the ground. At the end of the chain was a bar, actually two bars to accommodate children of different heights. Children would hold on to the bar with one hand and begin running, all in the same direction, until they were going fast enough to be able to grab the bar with both hands and keep moving without leg power. To make it go around faster we would kick our legs in a circular motion as we flew in the air. We could go pretty high and pretty fast! THEN if you wanted to go really, really, high and fast, you would cross your chain and handle over the chain of the person behind you. That way you would not only have your own leg power to get going, but you would have an extra pull from the one in front of you. We could soar ten to fifteen feet off the ground. Did anyone ever slip off and fall? Oh yeah! Did they get hurt? Oh yeah! But that didn't stop us and interestingly enough it didn't stop the principal from letting us continue to play on it. I never fell, but I had constant blisters on my hands from holding on so tight.

This was my first school which I attended up to the sixth grade. Yes, we did more than just play on that neat playground. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the classrooms, what we learned, and how we were taught. My first memorable spiritual experience occurred here at school during my first year. That will come tomorrow, too. So "tune in".