Assessments

 

Miss Nowotny’s Notes on Me (2^nd Grade 1971-1972):

10-9-70: Bryan needs to learn to give and take when the class plays at recess. If and when things don’t go as he thinks they should he immediately cries.

5-31-71: I can see a tremendous improvement in Bryan – especially in the areas of sports and play period. He likes the monkey bars now (at first he was hysterical when I tried to get him to hang from them). He is a good kickball player. He has started to join in play with the other children.

 

Mrs. Bratton’s Notes on Me (4^th Grade 1973-1974)

3/5/73: Bryan has been very careless with his work this six weeks. Some assignments were not completed at all. He has refused to memorize all the multiplication facts. Certainly he is capable of making excellent grades. I am free for a conference at your convenience.

4/16/73: Bryan has improved a great deal this past six weeks in all areas.

It is indeed true that I had a keen sense of justice. It took me a long time to learn how to bend over and take injustice with stoicism. And even today I am reluctant to risk dropping half my body length to the ground. I got behind on the 'multiplication facts' when I had the measles, and it has blighted my mathematics ever since. I'm still pretty shaky on the nine times. But nowadays with all these new-fangledy computers even on teleophones, who needs 'em? 

McQueeney Memories

 

I Know a Story: The Straw Ox

 

I Know a Story (1958 Edition, Row, Peterson and Company) was one of my first readers back in 1969 when I was in First Grade.  It contains seven traditional fairy tales, retold by Miriam Blanton Huber, Frank Seely Salisbury, and Mabel O’Donnell, and illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes. I was able (only fairly recently) to track it down and identify it, ordered it, and now I’ve read it again for the first time in 52 years.

I was most interested in the story “The Straw Ox”, a retelling of an old Ukrainian fairy tale. It was indeed by this story I was able to track the book down at last; it is not very widely disseminated. In it a poor old couple cannot afford any livestock, but at the old woman’s direction the old man (who is a pitch-burner) builds a Straw Ox and covers it with tar. They set the Ox out in the field to ‘graze’; passing animals (a bear, a wolf, a fox, and a hare – in this Reader’s retelling the hare is replaced with a dog) ask to take some of the Ox’s tar for various reasons. He agrees and they end up stuck to him (a la the Tar Baby). The old man throws the animals into the barn and only releases them when they promise to bring him livestock in return. The old couple get so rich from the proceeds that they need nothing more, and in the original ending (not used in the Reader) the Straw Ox, no longer being necessary, “stood in the sun until it fell to pieces.”

What interested me about the story (besides its rarity – it was no ‘Red Riding Hood’ or ‘Goldilocks’) was of course the Straw Ox itself. At six years old I already had an attachment to “The Wizard of Oz” and “Pinocchio”, with their stories of inanimate simulacra coming to life. The Ox seemed to me to be in this tradition and worthy to be added to the list. I clung compulsively onto its memory for half a century.

What strikes me now at this distance in time are things I never thought of at six. Was the old woman who came up with the idea of the Straw Ox merely wanting a sort of substitute or ersatz symbol of prosperity, or did she really have a plan to trap the animals? Where did the wild animals get the cow, sheep, and barnyard fowl to pay their ransom? They must have taken them from somewhere, and the old couple were receivers of stolen goods! The Straw Ox disappears halfway through the story, his task accomplished, and is given no follow-up. Perhaps the writers thought it was just too depressing to conclude “it fell to pieces.”

The other stories are 'The Gingerbread boy' 'The Three Bears', Billy Goats Gruff', 'Mr. Vinegar', 'Little Red Riding Hood', and 'The Boy Who Went to the North Wind'. The book itself is in very good condition for a school reader of its age. Besides the usual school property stamps there is only the name ‘Jamie’ (in a bold, sure, cursive hand) on the inside cover and the inside front page. Inscribed by a grown-up to a child named Jamie, I’m guessing. What was surely a memory for him has become my memory now. And so the Continuum … er … continues.  

A Few Things That Remind Me of McQueeney

 

My First Grade Teacher

[Mrs. Edith Roberts]

They say that almost everyone hates their First Grade teacher. I have to say that although I was not particulary fond of her, I don't harbor any major resentments against the woman, at least not from the days I spent in her classroom. I was pathetically eager to please and had a compunction to learn, or to at least excel my classmates. I think I can say she wasn't particularly fond of me, either; she had her pets and favorites among the "richies" of the lakeside resort area. We were firmly poor, but not exactly of the redneck community, and so rather hard to pigeonhole. I was fairly intelligent but emotionally more immature than my classmates. I'm sure most educators of the day weren't happy with hard to categorize cases like myself. 

I did have several run-ins with her later when I was in other classes and she was taking her shifts as schoolyard monitor. One time one of her favorites accused me of knocking her off of the monkey bars (a charge I deny to this day, and still feel the injustice). Another time, just for fun, I closed my eyes and started walking towards the train tracks at the end of the schoolyard. I was peacefully lost in my mind when suddenly Mrs. Roberts grabbed me from behind and hauled me back in. What with the wind I had not heard her calling and blowing her whistle. It seemed to me that what she thought of as my ignoring her was what made her more upset than any danger I might have been in. She thought I was flouting her authority instead of just being lost in my stupid-ass dreams.

Well, as I say, I don't really bear any hard resentment to Mrs. Roberts. Now if you ask my brother John, he can tell you the tale of their epic conflicts and confrontations. But that is not my story.

McQueeney Easter

The signatures at the bottom are, respectively, the First, Second, and Third Grade teachers: Edith Roberts, Sandra Wunderlich (nee Nawotny, when I had her) and Mary I. Davenport.

First Grade School Books 1969

 

Now, whether this miraculously-surviving reading list dates from the last half of Mike's first year of school or from the first half of my first year of school is a moot point. It scarcely matters, because it probably hadn't changed much. McQueeney used texts from the Forties to the Sixties; big themes then were the suburban family, the cowboy/frontier legacy, and of course the ever-popular animal adventures (both tame and wild). I have fond if vague memories of the Woodland Frolics Series; there is actually a copy of "Chippy Chipmunk's Vacation", a number in the series, in the family archives.

But the story I really, really remember is "The Straw Ox", from the "I Know a Story" reader. I already loved "The Wizard of Oz" from the movie; I think I recognized a relation here in the straw ox that the old couple builds and covers with tar and sets out in the field to graze. Various wild animals attack the ox and get caught in the tar and must pay the penalty before the couple releases them. Rather like the Tar Baby, but the Straw Ox was actually alive and could speak. I learned later that it is an old Russian fairy tale.

I was surprised and pleased that I was able to find pictures of all these books.  Whether "Story Fun" is actually "Fun in Story" written in teacherly short hand is a sticky point, but "Fun in Story" is the only reader I can find close to it.

A Boy Alone

I cried my first day of school. 

Looking back, there were several reasons for that. For one thing, I had never gone to kindergarten. I suppose that is where most children get over the shock of abandonment into an unfamiliar environment. Many of the other students were old hands at this sort of thing already, and later were not slow to express their scorn at my babyish behavior.

For another thing, I was used to having a family support group, to running in a pack with my brothers, to being a follower rather than an independent unit of my own. True, Mike was in the Second Grade right next to me, but once class started he might as well have been on the moon. I was on my own.

And my teacher was an unknown quantity. I was used to hearing about Mike’s First Grade teacher, Mrs. Bilnitzer, but she had been moved to another class. Mrs. Roberts was an unknown quantity, who knew not of Babels and our ways, and we knew not hers. She was acting rather sternly, as any teacher having to wrangle little kids must be to start with, and I was taking it personally, and feeling the stress of having to learn class procedures correctly or being, for all I knew, “doomed”.

I was rescued from my emotional distress by the teacher’s aide, Mrs. Dammon, who came over to comfort me while Mrs. Roberts continued on with class instructions. Mrs. Dammon had a face as rough and kind and comforting as an oatmeal raison cookie, always smiling. She wore black cat-eye glasses, which I found funny and distracting. After a few moments I felt I had an ally in class and was able to settle down and apply myself to learning with renewed determination. But I think my behavior had been noted on my permanent record, in more ways than one.

McQueeney Elementary School: The Daily Routine

 

Down From the Door Where It Began...

Newspaper clipping from the Seguin Gazette in 1972, chronicling my first exposure to the Tolkien legendarium. I was in those elementary grades (the 3rd grade, to be exact) to which it was presented. Coming up on 49 years ago, now. Strange to think that Tolkien was still alive at the time. You might notice that 'Balin' is misspelled 'Falin'. I remember later when the Gazette announced the premiere of the Rankin/Bass Hobbit as a 'Journey to Middle East'.