Taking a sentimental journey
Sometimes, when I reflect on my youth, I have some pretty haunting memories of the first (and last) time I gave a live “theatrical performance.”
There I was, among my fellow third-graders on stage at Park Elementary School, bouncing rubber balls to the beat of the song “Sentimental Journey.”
“Gonna take – thud, thud – a Sentimental Journey – thud, thud – Gonna set my heart at ease – thud, thud, thud” – etc., etc., and so on – and so forth.
That went on for the entire song. At the time, it seemed like 15 excruciating minutes. But Google tells me Sentimental Journey only lasts three-and-a-half.
I’d like to find the teacher or teachers who devised that particular form of torture – and give them a piece of my mind.
(They’re probably well into their 90s or 100s by now – if they’re even still alive. So, I’d go light on them)
After that “performance,” I don’t even remember my parents telling me how proud they were of me. And in those days, they were proud of everything I did. If I’d held up a bank, they may have given me a standing ovation.
For me, grade school in the 1950s was like taking my first clumsy steps toward adulthood.
For the first time, I was permitted to do something on my own.
I learned to walk to school without my mother accompanying me, sometime in first grade, or so.
I WAS FREE!
That feeling was only matched by driving a car, alone, for the very first time as an adult.
Walking to school wasn’t a huge step. I lived on Coolspring Street – about two blocks from the school.
Me, and one of my classmates, Billy Wagner, took the opportunity to discover the 450 possible routes we could find between home and Park School.
That was exhilarating (except in winter, of course).
Grade school in the ’50s meant lots of air raid drills, and fire drills, and vaccination shots, and paste.
Come on, you know somebody who decided to gobble a little paste when your teacher enticed the class to work on some art project with that brightly colored paper, don’t you?
Some kids were powerless when they caught sight of an open jar of paste.
Not because they were hungry. But because they were kids.
What was the purpose of recess?
Perhaps to give teachers a little time to take requisite sedatives. (Because they were forced to deal with a bunch of paste-eaters – or worse.)
I felt cheated during recess.
Fifteen minutes was hardly enough time to play a complete game of Four Square (or anything for that matter).
Those of us in the Preadolescent Community needed more time to play more than 15 minutes a school day. We should have gone on strike.
They sometimes showed us some movies in the Park School auditorium.
Not those great theatrical releases, like The 3 Stooges or The Little Rascals, but safety films.
We had to sit through stuff like how to safely cross the street without getting clobbered by an 18-wheeler.
Heck! Me and Billy Wagner had already been doing that dozens of times. We didn’t need a movie to teach us.
There’d be a Uniontown police officer who would introduce the flick.
I was always afraid to fall asleep while watching it. I thought the cop might place me under arrest.
We did have other “assemblies” in those days.
I can remember one, where a native American (they didn’t call him that) came and did a war dance.
It was loud. But it made me want to join him on stage. Except I’d had that terrible experience with that stupid rubber ball, so I just stayed in my seat.
I haven’t gotten around to the education I got at Park School.
It was OK.
I managed to get through it without any permanent damage – to the school – or to myself.
I learned to read, write, and count there.
And I also learned to bounce a doggone rubber ball.
The one thing I never had to learn, though, was how to hide under my desk, or in a cloakroom in fear of crazed gunmen running through the halls firing automatic weapons – while power-hungry adults fumbled ways to try to put a stop to them.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.
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