Grade School - Our House

Shortly after I started in Grade School , my dad started expanding our house.


First came a new bedroom for Raymond and me on the North side. It had a separate bathroom and was plenty for the two of us. The connecting Breezway became extra storage and the refigerator was moved there from the kitchen.

Then a sleeping pourch was added on the East side. It was screened in and had jalosies for protection against the wind.

The back bedroom was enlarged for Mom and Dad.

Virginia got the Front bedroom.

Finally a two car garage was added and a driveway down the side of the house.

As a testament to the construction the house still stands.

Grade school

This morning I woke up at 4 AM needing to go to the Bathroom. I had been dreaming about something, and the words "The Baltimore Catechism" was stuck in my consciousness. I think it was a reminder to get back on this project.

I was in one of the first classes to start in kindergarten and graduate from St Vincent dePaul School. I did Kindergarten fresh from childhood. When I arrived, I did not Read or do Math like preschoolers do today. I do remember that my mother read to me a lot. And she got me to memorize a lot of songs and poems. That made me semi-literate I guess.

The school was small and the Sisters of the Incarnate Word taught two grades in the each classroom except for Kindergarten. They kept adding classrooms every year or so. I had the same teacher, Sister Joseph, for grades 2 through 5, she moved up with our class. She was a very nice teacher and had a reputation of being fair. Because I picked up Reading and Math quickly I got skipped from First Grade to Third Grade. This made my parents proud but made me miserable.. I was the youngest and smallest in my class forever more.

During the first few years I rode the school bus. There was a stop about two blocks away and, since it was only the second stop, there was always a choice seat. By fifth grade, I had a bike and usually rode it to school. It was only 1.5 miles to the school and it was much faster than taking the bus.

For sixth through eighth grades I had Sister Perpetua. She was tough and very demanding. Under her tutelage I learned to Diagram sentences with subordinate clauses. I also got smacked with a yard stick for cutting up in class. By this time we no longer had two grades per classroom, and Grades 7 and 8 were housed in Temporary buildings out by the playground... I remember these Classrooms were very cold in the winter.

We had about 20 in our class and I had the seat at the back row in the first column. That meant I had a job of adjusting the window behind my desk. The window was attached to the frame by a pair of hinges at the top and was held open by a 3 foot long 1 x 2 . It had two positions Open and Closed. There were no screens on the windows. With no Air Conditioning this was the best seat in the classroom