I still have
Waterman Street School on the brain after the picture the Marietta Daily
Journal ran yesterday morning.
It brought
back memories.
Like for
instance:
When my
first grade teacher Mrs. Oliver shook me in class for something, I don't remember what. Mrs Oliver lived in Calhoun, Ga. and took the bus there often. She had to walk right by our apartment in the
Clay Homes. I remember a couple times
she invited herself in and told my mother the latest no-good acts I did in
class.
I remember
in the second grade in Mrs. Killenbek's class in the lunch room one time Mickey
Wilbur and I got into a scuffle. Mickey
smeared a little pack of honey in my hair.
In the 3rd
grade Mrs. Jessie McCollum was our teacher, the wife or fiancé of future
Commissioner Herbert McCollum. I
remember one time I was playing with a moth-ball, I liked the smell. I sucked in the smell through my nose so hard
the moth-ball went into the cavity of my nose.
I was so embarrassed I went hid the fact a moth ball was inside my
nose. I slipped out of the classroom
into the coat room and with a pencil pried it out.
Mrs.
McCollum had me sit in the hall often for cutting up in class. I think the ideal was to sit there and when
the principal made her rounds she would talk to you and get to the bottom of
it. I found out early to hide when I
heard her (Mrs. Whiteheads's) high heels click down the hall. The 3rd grade class was right beside the
stairs going down into the basement to the boys bathroom, an off limits place
for Mrs. Whitehead.
On one of
our talks in the hall she let me know she was on to me... she said she taught
my father and his brothers and stayed on to them and she would me too.... she
was true to her word.
The 4th
grade was first Ms. Rakestraw and she left, probably got married and Mrs. Pool took over her class. Ms. Rakestraw was pretty and pleasant. Mrs Pool was like a ugly hateful witch. I told Mama that Mrs; Pool picked on me, not
knowing she would call Mrs. Whitehead.
Mrs. Whitehead and Mrs. Pool glared at me the rest of the year.
The 5th
grade our teacher was Mrs. Miller. I don't remember getting into trouble with her or anything. but one time I
remember. The Duncan Yoyo man came on
campus at recess time to show off his yoyo tricks. and I messed up his act and somebody told on
me and Mrs. Miller scolded me.
Oh me!
The 6th
grade was Miss Shouse. Elberta Shouse,
before the year was out she became Mrs. Bill Kinney, Marietta Journal
reporter. One time Van Callaway pushed
me against the fire escape during recess and it put a big gash in my
forehead. Elberta took me to the teacher
lounge and she had me put my head on her lap, her soft thighs, while she held ice onto my forehead and a a
cloth to keep it from bleeding. It was
my first contact with the female body, and although I was in pain and bleeding
I enjoyed every minute of it. Daddy came
in his police car and carried me to the Old Hospital to have Doctor Haygood put
stitches to sew up the head split. Looking like Frankenstein for several months
to a year was another good thing to come out of that.
One time
Miss Shouse, or Elberta had me to walk to her boarding house for a pigeon that somehow she saved for a storm. She gave it to me for a pet. I carried it home and put it locked in a
little empty chicken coop we had in the backyard. The next working there were nothing but
feathers; The bird was probably consumed by our cat. I didn't have
the heart to tell Miss Shouse that our cat ate probably ate that nice pigeon. I lied the couple of times she asked me but
then I told her it got loose and we didn't see it anymore.
That was
also the year I think that us boys had pissing contests in the boy's
bathroom. Nobody could piss higher than
Archie Richardson. He could arch his
back back and hold and aim his penis upward and urine would go up the wall and
then to where the ceiling meets the wall.
We were all envious.
It was also
the year that James the Janitor left and went to work for the Red Cross on
South Avenue and his replacement was Cliff.
One time our little gang slipped into Cliff's work space in the
basement, a dark room with a big furnace and a plain straight back chair. Hidden in the shadow was a box full of
comics. We wondered if they belonged to James or Cliff. He must have confiscated them while cleaning
up after everybody went home. Again, we
don't know who "He" was, James or Cliff.
Sometime
between the 5th and 7th grades two refuge families moved to Marietta into the
Waterman Street District. I think they
both were from Poland. They lived just down Atlanta Street from one another. One lived on the corner of Atlanta and Goss
Streets, and the other lived a a few houses south of Crain Garage. The kids of the family that lived south of
Crain Garage quit coming to school. One
cold and rainy day Mrs. Whitehead got me out of class. She wanted me to walk (in the rain) to the
refuge family's house south of Crain's and ask them why haven't they been
coming to school. I don't know why she
chose me for this errand. Maybe it was
because I was about the most unattached unofficial of Waterman Street School
she could find. I did as she asked, and
no one came to the door. I think they
moved out. I walked back and made my
report, verbally, of course.
In the 7th
grade Mrs. King was our teacher. She was
freshly married and good looking. All us
boys had a low grade crush on her. She
was always smiling and always making school fun, not a drudgery. Once we had to do some creative writing as
homework. . I put it off and put it off.. Then one evening we visited my grandmother,
aunt, and cousin who lived in the Clay
Homes. Archie Richardson lived next door
to them. I visited Archie. He had a new comicbook I had never seen
before. It was MAD Comic book. It made fun of things. It was a laugh a panel. I focused in on a story illustrated by
Wallace Wood, called SUPERDUPERMAN. It
had all the SUPERMAN icons and looks, but it was making SUPERMAN look like a
farce. I was immediately addicted to
MAD. But I wasn't above plagiarizing
their material. I was so impressed with
the SUPERDUPERMAN I remembered every line and punch line and sat down and wrote
it down on paper. The next day we had to
read the stories aloud in class. With my
story I had Mrs. King and the students rolling in the aisles with
laughter. Archie's face turned red, he
knew the real inspiration. Mrs. King told me I was going to make a
great writer someday. I beamed with
pride.
One time at
night I caught a bat that was diving for bugs in front of our house below a
street light. I planned it pretty
good. I would throw a rock and the bat
would dive at it. Then, I figured if I
threw a rock across the road as a car approached there was a good chance the car would hit the bat. I did and after several attempts a bat got
hit by a car. I thought it was
dead. I put it in a netted orange bag
and carried it to school the next morning to show to Mrs. King. The next morning I was standing with some other kids in front of the door of
our classroom waiting for the morning bell when somebody looked down and saw
the bat. The bat was prying open the net
and squeezing out... and out he flew.
Suddenly the
whole school panicked. The bat flew
crazily up near the ceiling of the wide hall and kids were screaming, and Mrs.
Whitehead and Cliff was chasing it with brooms swinging at it. After it was brought down Mrs. Whitehead with
a red face and trembling bent over and chewed me out good and asked hatefully
was I going to tell my parents what a foolish thing I did like when I told on Mrs. Pool (3 years
ago) - she wasn't the type to forget and forgive.
It got where
after school several school a few of us would walk downtown and hangout. We wanted to be teenagers badly. We were teenager wannabes. We went to the T.A.C. above the fire station
and City Hall a lot and got ran off a lot.
And we played across the street a lot in the front yard of a a female co-student
named Donna LeVann. Dona lived across the
street from Mrs. Whitehead's boarding house.
One day Mrs. Whitehead walked over and said someone had just called her
and said somebody left the paper drive house opened, would we go down, make
sure everything is OK, and if not call the police. She even gave us keys to the paper drive
house. We did, I think somebody just
forgot to shut the door and they left.
But it made me feel good to know I was in Mrs. Whitehead's trust again.
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