50 years on... I was 8-years-old. I had been eight for six days. It was Friday. Friday was a good day. Besides being the end of the school week, my parents went bowling on Fridays and would sometimes take us with them. We would sit in the snack bar and eat French fries from paper plates and drink fountain Cokes from paper Dixie cups while mom and dad bowled duckpins at Severna Park Bowl. I just had to get through a few more hours of Miss Masons 3rd grade class until the school bus would collect us and launch us into a weekend. Getting through Miss Masons class wouldnt be too hard. I had the kind of crush on her that only an 8-year-old bookworm can have on his pretty, blonde elementary school teacher. I was going to school in the basement of a church while our new elementary school was being built. 1963. My little neighborhood was changing. Growing. Thats why we going to school in a church basement. But I was still a small town kid growing up in an early sixties American small town. Life was an idyll for my sisters and I. We had good parents, a nice home in a safe neighborhood. We knew our neighbors and were only a few years past a party line and asking Miss Virginia if she could please hang up so we could use the phone. I knew my dad had a decent job at GM, knew that he was a union man and a Democrat and knew that my mom was always there when we got home from school. Dad worked swing shifts so sometimes he would wake us all up when he got home from work at midnight and make us bacon and eggs. Not often, especially on school nights, so it was always a treat to sit there with him, half asleep in my flannel cowboy pajamas eating breakfast in the middle of the night. We had just finished lunch in the church basement. It was a proud day for me. I was milk monitor. It was my day to pass out the cartons of warm milk and collect the two pennies it cost from each kid. The milk was cold when it was delivered every morning, but since the church had no refrigeration, it was tepid by the time it got to us at lunchtime. But it came from Cloverland, a local dairy, and it was good, creamy whole milk. The desks were still littered with brown paper bags, waxed paper, apple cores and half-eaten Wonder Bread baloney and mayonnaise sandwiches when Mr. Bob, the gruff but kind driver of Bus 309 walked a bit unsteadily into our classroom. That was weird. Bus drivers did not come inside the school. That sat inside their big yellow buses while we filed out and filed on and then drove us off in either direction. But there stood Mr. Bob, his cap in his hand, shyly whispering to Miss Mason. Then eyes of the the love of my young life flew open and then filled up with tears. She looked at us and said in a barely audible voice, Children, you are being dismissed early today. Please form a single file line and follow your driver to your bus. We were excited, but confused. It wasnt snowing, so why were we getting out early, Miss Mason? And why are you crying? Something has happened, but I believe I will let your parents explain. The bus ride home was silent except for the bus radio. Instead of Perry Como, Sinatra and the usual pop tunes that Mr. Bob listened to every day, the sonorous tones of the newsmen seemed to be on continuously during the twenty minute trip. He had it turned down low, and the old bus rattled and made it hard to hear, but words like Dallas and shot and President Kennedy drifted through the rattle. Walking up my chilly street, I saw my dads car was parked in front of the house. He was home from work early. He and mom were both in the living room watching our little black and white TV when I walked through the door. They didnt go bowling that Friday night...
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:57:24 +0000
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