Miss Shouse My 5th Grade Teacher

The first female I had a crush on was laid to rest yesterday. Miss Alberta Shouse Kinney was my 5th grade teacher. I wasn't the only boy in class that watched every move she made. I think there were about five or six or us, and it was very secret - we didn't even tell each other we belonged to a secrete Worship Miss Shouse Club.

One time in class she asked me would I like to have a pet pigeon. “Would I ever!” I said something of that effect.

After school that day I walked with her to her apartment. We went down Waterman Street to Atlanta Street, up Atlanta Street, through the downtown area, and after we passed North Park Square the street named changed to Cherokee Street. About four or five blocks down we turned on to Forest Avenue, where her apartment was. Her apartment was in an old two story house, I think that specialized in renting to teachers.

I felt proud walking with the pretty perk lady by all the old and drunk men that seemed to always be in hanging out front of the courthouse.

The night before, somehow she rescued the poor pigeon from being drowned in a downpour rain. She had the bird in a cardboard box with little holes punched in it.

I carried the box with the pigeon home, which was probably close to a two mile walk. We lived in an older house on Manget Street, across from Larry Bell Park, with my grandfather. There was a little bathroom on one end of the back porch. It was the first bathroom before the house was upscale to a inside bathroom. Since no one used the back porch bathroom any longer, I considered it my den.

I put the pigeon in the old bathroom with some bread pieces and closed the door for the night. The next morning I rushed in to feed and water it again and there was only a bunch of feathers. Either a rat or my grandfather’s cat managed somehow to get in and ate it or maybe it escaped.

That morning in class Miss Shouse asked me how the pigeon was doing. I told her the pigeon was doing good (if you consider the pigeon no longer with us as “good”). I felt if I told her the real fate of the bird she would think less of me.

Thinking back I think Miss Shouse reminded me Jane Russell. She was graceful, glamorous, and dark headed, just like Jane the Goddess. Maybe that had something to do with my thoughts.

Either before the pigeon or after it that year, at recess the late Van Calloway shoved me against the fire escape.

When my forehead hit the metal rail or something of the fire escape blood gushed. The impact cut a gash in my forehead. Miss Shouse helped me walk to the second floor to the teacher’s lounge. There she had me lie on a cot and she had some kind of towel on my cut and applied pressure. She sat holding it until my daddy could come and carry me to the old hospital. If I remember correctly, Doctor Haygood closed the wound with five or six stitches. After the bandages were removed my forehead looked something like the Frankenstein Monster, which wasn’t bad for an attention-getter.

With me getting the full concerned attention of my teacher made my pain go away. I knew when daddy came in quickly the pleasure was over.

At the time Daddy was the Chief of the Marietta Police. The Marietta Daily (except Sunday) Journal had young male reporter by the name of Bill Kinney. Daddy took Bill with him on the biggest moonshine raid ever in Cobb County. The still was about where Wal-Mart, just north of Windy Hill Road, is now. I heard rumors that Bill got tipsy by the smell of the shine. Bill Kinney was courting Miss Shouse and she soon became Mrs. Kinney.

Not long ago, I emailed Bill Kinney and told him about the pigeon episode and confessed his wife thought the pigeon was well cared for and I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise. He understood.

Class at Waterman Street School

This is a class at Waterman street School. My father, he & his 8 brothers and sister were students at Waterman Street in the 20s and 30s. One of them might be in the picture, maybe not.

Waterman Street School Ruins

I spent my first 6 years of a formal education of my formative years on these grounds. This is also where I tuned in on my social skills of having crushes on girls and how to talk by way out of a fight. My father and all his brothers went here also. The same Mrs. Whitehead that taught my dad and my uncles was the principal when I was there. I don't think she thought it was much of a pleasure knowing the Hunter boys, including me.

After Waterman Street School ran its course of 70 or so years it closed down as a public school and the private school J.T. Walker Schhool used it for a while before moving to the old Sprayberry High School. The old shcoolhouse was torn down and alumnus got a brick if one wanted one. Now the grounds belong to the Red Cross.

As I walked over the grounds taking the below pictures I could almost hear the giggling of a bunch of girls routinely chasing Jerry Flowers because they thought he was so good looking and just feet away I could here the tormented cry of a weakling kid being picked on by bulllies. Memories!


Green grass on what use to be a sandy playground. Note the Marietta skyline and Kennesaw Mountain in the bacground.



Cement steps leading up to Waterman Street School



Cement steps leading down the hill to Waterman Street.


Waterman Street School Wall by street

3-B Class at Waterman St School c1949

Right to Left

4th row: ?, ?, ?, Alice Tibbetts, Donna LeVann, Janice Belmore, Elizabeth Hawthorne, Gresham Howren.

3rd row: ?, ?, Jo Ann Mitchell, Pat Rainwater (I think), ?, ?, Betty Edwards, Janice Benson

2nd row: Robert Martin, ?, Frankie Holder, Van Calloway, - Brown, Sam Carsley, Larry Southern, Jerry Flowers.

1st row: Marvin Grant, me, ?, Tony Partain, ?, ?, Walker Gaines, Archie Richarfson.

In the very back is our teacher. Her first name was Jesse and I don’t remember her last name at the time. She was single. A young man would come visit and stand outside the classroom and woo her. His name was Herbert McCollum. In a short time she became Mrs. Herbert McCollum. Herbert McCollum became commissioner and was more or less the main force behind Cobb County becoming modern to keep up with the times. He also was responsible for doing away with the old Courthouse. Boo!

As I said about the 2nd grade class photo, if you see any errors or can identify any of the question marks please let me know.

My 2nd Grade Class at Waterman Street School

Waterman Street School, 2B, about 1948
Left to right:
3rd row: ? , ?, Tony Hester, Frankie Holder, ?, ?.?, ?, Mrs. Killenbec.
2nd row: Sam Carsley, Elizabeth Hawthorn, Janice Belmore, ?, Jerry Flowers, ? Alice Tibbits, ?, Marvin Grant, Archie Richardson.
1st row: Gresham Howren, ? ,Robert Martin, Tony Partain, Me, Janice Benson, Walker Gaines, ?,?,?,?

If you see a name I didn't recognize or made a mistake on a name,please let me know.

I'm ashamed of myself for not remembering the names of some of my classmates. I'm sure it is likewise.

1956 OLYMPIAN - Ads

My scanner is not working at the moment. I am slowing down output until I can get it fixed. Otherwise, I might catch up with myself.

At Waterman Street School one time I got hurt and my Daddy picked me up. I think it is the time I got something in my eye and Daddy, with his home remedy know-how, got it out.

Then before he carried me home he went into Frank Pendley's Restaurant, just down the street from the Police Station and got me a hamburger. It was juicy, uniquely had baked or BBQ beans in it, and a big long hair. It caught in my teeth and I never wanted to eat food from Frank Pendley's again.

What If?

Watching the Grammy Award Show on tonight brought back memories of Waterman Street School and our music lessons. Mrs. Ogdon traveled from school to school tying to teach us little ingrates about the music beat.

At Waterman Street Grammar School she combined several classes. The only room for all us in one room was down in the basement.

She handed out little round dowel looking sticks about a foot long and about an inch in diameter. She gave each person two sticks. If I remember correctly, one was red and one was green. She would get on the piano and teach us to hit the sticks against each other and sing. She taught us such songs as “Oh My Darling Clementine”, “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes”, and “Going To Alabama With a Banjo on My knee”.

Us boys would poke each other with our sticks, use the sticks for phallic symbols and things like that, all behind Mrs. Ogdon’s back.

I was thinking during the Grammy Awards what if I paid attention and because really got the hang of beating sticks together and became a famous stick soloist?

What if I got a contract with Columbia Records and came out on stage with a glittering sports jacket and everybody cheered and I would play my sticks and for kicks throw them up in the air and catch them between beats. Then after I finish bow and everybody would go wild applauding? I would leave. Then they would rise and stomp their feet until I return to the stage and give them one more stick beating tune?

And on Grammy Night I might raise my Grammy and say, “Thank you Mrs. Ogdon, wherever you are?”

The Clay Homes - nevermore

(click for bigness)

The Clay Homes, the low rental projects that I spent from about my first 6 months to 7 years old are gone. Recently, they were bulldozed away to make way for a new office park.

I guess it is common business sense. Which will be less costly in many ways, poor families or businesses in an office park?

A friend of mine who grew up in Marietta but moved away about 20 years or so ago recently asked me in an email were The Clay Homes still standing.

Here is my reply:

Date: Tuesday, June 3, 2008, 2:04 PM
Richard,

You asked about the Clay Homes.

Well, here they are, or here they an't.

I took this picture today in what used to be the playground of Waterman Street School, now the parking lot of the Salvation Army. The ground The Clay Homes were on looks like a barren wasteland doesn’t it?

You can see the recognizable Cobb County Government buildings on the horizon. They are in the places that used to be the old Courthouse and the old Sheriff’s office and jail.

There are too many “What-used-be” places in Marietta.

Times, they are a-changing.

Eddie

2nd Grade - Waterman Street School

Mrs. Killenbeck was the teacher. The only thing I remember about Mrs. Killenbeck was a framed picture of Harry Truman hanging in her classroom. Years later after she retired she lived behind a friend that I carpooled with when I worked at the Post Office in Atlanta. When I was in car waiting on him every so often I could hear her laughing insanely, or like a maniac.

3rd Grade - Waterman Street School

My teacher was Mrs. McCollum - well, her name changed to Mrs. McCollum after she got married that year. She married Herbert McCollum who would become the County's Commissioner. He did some very crooked things to get Cobb progressed to the times, which included a new courthosue, which everybody regretted getting rid of the old one. Herbert McCollum and my fathet were political enemies.

4th Grade - Waterman Street School

Miss Rakestraw was the teacher. She was such a doll. Half way through the year she got married and resigned. I didn't get along with the new teacher, Mrs. Poole, the witch.

Waterman Street School - Side View

Wait! I haven't moved on yet.

This is the east side of Waterman Street School. See the front entrance to the right? Actually, there were two twin front entrances. This one is the one nearer to the eastern side. On those steps leading up to the front doors I remember discussing the life's mysteries, such as how to make an egg's shell soften to feel like a thin membrane and to make it look like a hog's ball (soak it overnight in vinegar). I was fooled. Somebody, I don't remember who showed me the soft-shell egg and told me it was a hog's ball.

On those steps one time Larry S. pulled out a condom and showed me, and I was impressed with the little white O-ring around the opening of it. Which I had a very scientific observation that went something like this: "so that is a rubber? Where do you buy them at?"

About 12 or 13 years later again Larry would take a condom out of his pocket. This time it was on the back row of the Hill Street Baptist Church. I wasn’t along with Larry and my other friends that Sunday night but I got several first hand accounts. They heard that on Sunday nights at Hill Street Baptist Church some loose teenage girls went there and they were easy to pick up. So, the boys went to check it out. During the sermon Larry got bored and pulled out a condom and started playing with it. It wasn’t long until he blew it up and tied a little knot in the O-ring thing. His cousin, also one of us, reached over and flipped the balloon shape rubber. Larry wasn’t expecting it and it got loose from him and landed in the aisle. There was a big fan at the near the back pews that kept the air circulating and brought in air from the outside. The inflated rubber was yanked into action by the fan’s wind current. It floated and gently bounced down the aisle like it had a soul of its own and wanted it saved by coming down to the preacher’s inspiring sermon. Larry and the others quickly left.

Many years later, Larry's younger brother became the preacher of Hill Street Baptist Church.

In the picture see the fire escape ladder coming from the two class rooms on the second floor? One time a boy named Van rammed my head into the fire escape at ground level and it took about 8 stitches to sew me up. It was right in the center of my head, I looked kind of like Frankenstein's Monster for several years until the scar finally went away. If I look closely, I can still see a hint of it.

Van died about ten years ago. He was a diabetic. He died because he went to the hospital to have a leg amputated and they removed the wrong leg which caused complications.

His brother died last month at age 78 because he got fed up with all the medications he was taking and threw them all out.

Once, when I was in about the 3rd or 4th grade a boy and girl from Poland came in the middle of the year and were enrolled. The spoke with a strong accent. They just were different from us. Not different bad, just different. If most of the kids wore denim or corduroy, they wore what looked like dressed pants. This was not long after World War II, so I would think they were refugees. They were in school over a year and one day they just quit coming.

Mrs. Whitehead, the principal, called me out of class and asked me if I knew where the Polish boy and girl lived. I said I did. I was pretty much all over the area. She asked, or told, me to go to their house and see why they haven't been at school. Which I did. The house was empty. They vamoosed. I remember it was pouring down raining. And what is even more strangely, their house, by the railroad tracks were only about three blocks from the rooming house Mrs. Whitehead lived in. Why send an 8 year old to do a job of a grown up, when it was just down the street form where she lived? One of my puzzles.

When Van rammed me against the fire escape Miss S carried me to the teacher's lounge and padded and kept a towel on my head. She had my head in her lap. I found out how nice and soft unrelated women can be. We stayed in that position until my Daddy could get there in his police chief's car to rush me to the hospital.

Darn! I was enjoying using her thighs as a pillow.

Miss S one time had me walk to her apartment with her after school. She had caught a pigeon that somehow got in her room and she wanted to give to me. She had it in a box for me and I carried it home. We lived in an older house and had a non-working bathroom on the back porch.... actually, we haven't tried using it since my parents had one built inside the house. I kind of treated the bathroom on the back porch as a secret hideout or a private den. I put the pigeon in there, had bread crumbs all over the place and water.

The next morning I rushed into where the bird was at and there was nothing but scattered feathers. I suppose a rat or a cat got ahol of it. I don't remember telling Miss S about the extinction of the pigeon.

Miss S that year married Bill Kenney, who was a young reporter for the Marietta Journal. He is now an elderly editorial writer and history writer for the same paper. I hear his wife, Alberta S Kenny doesn't even know her own name anymore.

Waterman Street School

In a recent blog I mentioned carrying a bat to school near the end of my 7th grade year.

I went there, my two sisters went there, my father, his 8 siblings, and some of my life time friends also went there.

My father was born across the street and I was born about a block away. This was home.

In the 1970s they tore it down to make way for a Salvation Army building. I don't see why they couldn't use the building already there.

But if they didn't tear it down, then they couldn't give alumni the bricks.

Netted sacks

As I mentioned on the way back we stopped at the Florida's Farmer Market and bought a sack of oranges and a sack of Vidalia Onions.

The both came in netted sacks. The Oranges came in an orange color sack, and I think the onions were more of a natural color.

Netted sacks have been around a long time. I remember dealing with one in the 7th grade.

One weekday evening after dark near the end of the month of May some friends and I were in our front yard talking, probably about women because that was on own our minds 90 percent of the time.

In front of the house at the street was a street light. One of us noticed a bat would fly out of the darkness and swoop at an angle and disappeared away from the light. Then we saw it do it again and again. We finally figured out it was diving for insects that like to hang around the street light.

Then one of us knew that a bats were almost blind so they had sort of a built-in radar system or sonar system.. When they sensed a small object going at a high rate of speed through the air they knew it was probably a juicy insect and would swoop down and snag it.

We experimented. We would throw small rocks and pebbles under the night and each time the bat would dive for it.

Cars would also go over the speed limit down the street.

With our criminal minds we tried an experiment. As a car approached a couple of us would each throw a rock in front of the incoming car. Knowing the car was going at a fast rate of speed, if we threw the rock in front of the car it would likely hit the car because the car would advance at a rapid rate.

Aw heck, it was worth a try anyway. Two of us had our rock and was stationed behind a bush and tree ready to fling that rock at full force. We reasoned we had to do it higher than the car, because of the angle the bat was diving, in a down motion there was a possibility he would dive right head on with the car.

A car was approaching. We held our rocks in our hands and was ready. When we judged it was close enough we threw. The bat did as we predicted, swooped down, but by the time he got even with the car, the car was ten or fifteen feet away, so the bat missed the vehicle. We tried a couple more times until we got it right, learning from our errors each time.

Finally, a bat swooped down to nab the rock or pebble and the windshield of the car hit him hard. A bounced on the side of the road.

We went over and studied him. He was out cold, but we were not he was dead or not.

Anyway, it was a nice trophy to carry in and get some points with our teacher Mrs. King.

I put it in an orange netted sack.

I have a tendency to be places early. I do now, I did then. I usually was the first student at school. That morning, the bat was still either dead or out cold. I walked to school carrying the sack with the bat in it. I remember a couple of kids, both girls, and I were standing by the door of our class. I had already showed the girls the bat and I think they were either impressed or mortified of the thing.

I almost forgot about the bat when one of the girls pointed down screaming. The hat was working itself out of the netted sack. It had pried the mesh apart and was squeezing through - then it was airborne.

Within a minute it was at the stop of the ceiling in the hallway flying and little kids were screaming horrified and leaving a swath, sort of like a people-wave. Behind it was Cliff the Janitor and Mrs. Whitehead the principal, both swinging brooms.

By the way, Mrs. Whitehead taught my father and my uncles and aunt at the same school.... this was no time to bring up the subject.

The kids were herded into their class rooms and you could hear Cliff and Mrs. Whitehead hollowing and "thump thump" of them running after the bat and hitting at it with brooms.

Mrs. King looked at me with a kindness like, "I wish I could help you out on this Eddie."

Not long later Mrs. Whitehead swung the door opened and called me out. Her face was red and she was shaking. She told me for me NEVER bring anything like that to school again... NEVER!!!!

I didn't think it was wise to remind her we had just a week or two left of school, then if I passed I would be in middle school. I let her shake and carry on.

I thought I was doing a good thing, like a science project or maybe a show and tell.

I tried to look guilty and sorrowful.