Fortunate One — Chapter 6 — Ellis Brett Part 1

The following is an excerpt from my memoir Fortunate One, with some content from the chapters on my elementary school Ellis Brett. The book is on sale at Amazon here, or contact me directly for an autographed copy.

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Chapter 6 — Ellis Brett, Part 1

I’m sure the wooden, two-story Ellis Brett elementary school had been a state-of-the-art educational facility back in 1895, but when I started first grade in 1960 it was an anachronism, consisting of twelve airy classrooms. In the middle of each floor was a wide-open, all-purpose area that functioned as performance space, temporary nursing station, or visiting library as needed. Each classroom had a high ceiling, lots of windows, and an exterior door leading out to an iron fire escape. Although we never sheltered under our desks to prepare for a nuclear attack, we did regularly scamper outside for fire drills — and a good thing too because the building, dry as a pile of Arizona mesquite, might have burst into flames at the drop of a match.

I lived half a mile away, so I walked myself to school. Every morning I stopped at the Perdikis house to pick up Jimmy, after which we continued on together. No one thought it strange to see two six-year-olds strolling down Pleasant Street (aka Route 27), which, with its whizzing cars and lumbering trucks, was one of Brockton’s major thoroughfares. There were no flashing lights to warn drivers about school crossing either. Why bother?  When we got to Belair Street, we met our school custodian and crossing guard Mr. Kundis, who made sure we got to the other side of the street without being flattened. No problem!

The second day of school turned out to be one of the most crucial days of my life. Recognizing an unbalance between the two new first-grade classes (mine had 42 students and the other had 38), our principal entered the classroom to announce that since Freddie Tedesco and I were the last two students to register we were being moved to the other first grade class. That was the domain of Miss Marsha Lindsay, a pretty young woman in her mid-twenties. This is where I met my two best friends, who would shape and influence me and remain the center of my social life through high school and beyond. 

Miss Lindsay’s room was set up with about twenty little two-person desks, one of which I was assigned to share with Philip Tasho, a black-haired Albanian-American who served as the best man at my wedding three decades later. We didn’t get off to the greatest start, though. One day he scribbled on my side of the desk and tried to blame me. Not made for a life of crime, he cracked under close questioning by Miss Lindsay, confessed to the whole thing, and ended up weeping during lunch break as he erased all traces of his transgression.

He had his revenge mid-year, though, when we changed desk partners and he was assigned to sit with the class’s six-year-old heart-throb Jaye Jantamaso, who in a room of Debbies, Susans, Marys, and Kathys, was adorable in the way that baby chipmunks are adorable. On the walk home that bitter day, it was my turn to weep at the essential unfairness of the universe, which would allow the undeserving Philip Tasho to sit next to Jaye Jantamaso. 

The Jantamaso fiasco aside, I generally liked first grade, and not just because I could freebase the white paste that Miss Lindsay handed out for craft projects. I liked almost everything about my six years at Ellis Brett, as decrepit as the physical structure was. I was reasonably bright and eager to please and teachers took to me. The school provided old-fashioned 3-Rs education, with kids arranged in neat rows and teachers standing in front of blackboards. This kind of instruction suited me, but there were a few kids, mostly over-energized boys, who couldn’t really adapt. They ran around when they should have been sitting still. We considered them naughty. In second grade our teacher’s frustration with one kid named Douglas boiled over and she tied him to his chair. Somehow she wasn’t fired or sued, but this was a never-to-be-repeated punishment. Deemed to have behavioral problems stemming from his parents’ divorce, he emerged in a rage from a vexing one-on-one session with a visiting school psychologist one day, sputtering that the “asshole” asked too many questions about his mother, and vowing to “kick him in the nuts” if he ever did that again. I didn’t exactly know what that meant but by this time I’d learned not to repeat expressions said in that tone of voice.

The days and years at Ellis Brett were full of rhythms and rituals. In the mornings we arrived at the school a few minutes early and ran around in the expansive playground. When the bell rang, we formed lines by class and gender before being escorted to our classrooms — the boys through the boys’ bathroom in the basement and the girls through their own bathrooms. Once ensconced in our classroom, the first thing on the agenda was the Pledge of Allegiance, guided by one honored child who would lead the class as we stood to face the flag with our hands over our hearts. We then sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” This was followed by an opening prayer. In deference to the many Jewish students in our school, we recited a passage from the Old Testament, which is how I came to memorize both the 23rd and 100th Psalms. This practice lasted until 1963, when school prayer was outlawed by the Supreme Court. All the adults seemed to agree that it was a damn shame that some atheist crank could deny the rest of us this moment of grace. 

My third grade teacher, Miss Hazel Bond, was particularly incensed. She’d been teaching elementary school since Calvin Coolidge was president and could have given my grandmother lessons in how to dress like an old lady. I am now half a decade older than she was then but with that prune face she seemed so ancient I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that she’d had a pterodactyl as a pet. Politically, she might as well have been a member of the John Birch Society, based on the running commentary she provided about contemporary society. She railed against the Court and asserted that we would continue to pray in defiance of the entire federal government. That didn’t last long. 

At lunchtime, those of us who walked to school returned home, once again braving the dangers of the Pleasant Street traffic. Fully nourished, we returned an hour later for ANOTHER death-defying walk to school. The unfortunate kids who took the bus to school ate their lunch at their desks. When it snowed and was deemed too dangerous to walk to and from school twice in one day, the entire class brought lunch and ate at their desks. Those were always fun days, despite the classroom’s lingering sour-milk and damp-wool smell. Crucially, I got to use my barn-themed lunchbox, which carried a thermos of chocolate milk where the hayloft would have been. 

The sorting among the “smart” and “slow” kids started immediately. For reading, math and music, we were divided into four different groups according to ability. Not having been to kindergarten and lacking instruction in any academic subject, I was assigned to the second reading group. Within a month, I had learned so quickly that I was moved in with the smarter kids in the first group. Reading came easily and I quickly learned its value. One day at home, I picked up a TV Guide and a lightbulb went off: I knew so many of the words that I could figure out what would be on TV!

Our report cards covered over a dozen areas, ranging from social development to academic performance. There were three grades: G, for “good,” AV for “average,” and U for “unsatisfactory.”  Each subject had three to six sub-categories of achievement, where the teacher could mark an N for “needs improvement.”  My grades were decent but when I found my old report cards stashed away in my mother’s desk a few years ago, I discovered they weren’t as good as I remembered. I didn’t get any U’s, to be sure, but I never swept the board with G’s as my memory had led me to believe.

I always got G’s in deportment and was reprimanded only once, in the third grade, by Miss Bond, who terrorized all the boys in our class. She had a habit of calling malefactors to the front of the room, grabbing their chins in her bony fingers and berating them for their many sins. If she was really annoyed she’d use her knuckles to hit up, up, up from beneath the chin, slamming her victim’s teeth together. Usually she directed her ire at the usual group of overactive misbehavers who have been making trouble since first grade, but one day I entered her line of fire. She was a demon about school property and I had dropped one of my books on the ground and scuffed the cover. There was also a slightly torn page. She seized my chin in her pincers and accused me of being careless and negligent.

As someone whose life-long ambition is never to be reprimanded for anything, I arrived home for lunch agitated and distraught, nearly weeping when I recounted the injustice to my mother. To be manhandled in front of the entire class and for what? Some very minor wear and tear to a book that had resulted from an honest accident?  

Back at school after lunch, I was summoned to the principal’s office and told to bring my book. To my astonishment there sat my mother, who had apparently marched down to the school to find out what the heck was happening in that classroom. The principal, Mrs. Evelyn McCarthy, a very professional fifty-something educator with eyeglasses that hung from her neck in a beaded string, asked to see the damaged item in question and then used about an inch of scotch tape to repair the slightly torn page. She gently explained to me, although not in these exact words: look, you have to understand, Miss Bond is, well, OLD and you can’t take everything she says seriously. OK? Oh, OK. I was glad to know that even adults realized Miss Bond was an old bat, but my most important takeaway from this incident was that my mother had my back. She would never take my side if I was in the wrong but knowing that you have that kind of unspoken support from a parent when you are in the right is crucial for any child.

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For more on my adventures at Ellis Brett buy the book here.