Learning about prejudice

Back in my old elementary school days, kids were treated to the wonderful sweetness of library paste. We chosen ones were allowed to take the blackboard erasers outside and pound them together amid clouds of chalk dust that would coat our hair and eyebrows and lashes. The janitors shoved the rows of student desks aside and tossed kerosene-soaked sawdust onto the hardwood floors to keep the dust down as they swept. Somehow the glass inkwells in every desk never ran dry. The magnificent wooden wall clocks with the name Regulator in gold leaf on the glass had gleaming brass pendulums that swung hypnotically as the minute hand crept ever so slowly toward recess time. School was a lot of fun and very exciting.

During recess there were games of marbles played in the dirt that surrounded the asphalt playground. Then suddenly marble season would end and it would become yo-yo season. Nobody knew why, but it should have been obvious when the Duncan Yo-Yo Company representatives showed up and dazzled everyone with their acrobatic yo-yo wizardry. They used top-of-the-line yo-yos with rhinestones embedded in their glossy sides. They cost fifty cents, an expense few of us could afford. (That’s FIVE comic books, or TEN Hershey bars for gosh sakes!) If you got tired of marbles, kickball or yo-yos, there was the janitor carting all the waste paper out to the big trash incinerator. He would tend a fire that was truly awesome, far bigger than the fires we had in our puny incinerators at home.

From the air Webster Elementary School was shaped like the capital letter E, two stories of solid brick Educational Excellence. On the ground floor in the exact center of the school building was the principal’s office. Miss Winkie was as mean as anyone I ever knew. When I was in kindergarten, she was my teacher. One day while we were slathering poster paints on big sheets of newsprint, making art, she whacked my bottom for using the wrong color for the sky; I peed my pants. From then on I never liked her, especially after she became principal. I didn’t understand how a teacher could become the principal. It was like the two disciplines belonged to distinct species. Kids passing through her part of the building were as quiet as little mice, for any noise was met with a fearsome rebuke from her.

I played trumpet in the school band, sang in the glee club (chorus), and along with my secret love, Mary, represented Webster in the annual Fresno District Fair school dance festival after we had spent weeks practicing our dance moves in the open-air corridor outside the classroom. Mary and I also sang duets on the radio during Christmas school programs. We got our pictures in the paper! She and I were in every school play. No prettier girl ever attended Webster. Life was delicious.

Then came fifth grade.

My mother started teaching in the early 1920s on an Indian reservation, then moved to Spokane Washington where she’d been hired on as the schoolmarm. When she arrived at the train station she was picked up in a buckboard wagon by her husband-to-be, Dad.

While I was happily attending Webster, she was teaching way over there on the wrong side of the tracks at Lincoln Elementary. One day I was told that I would be going to Lincoln for fifth grade. What a shock! It must have had something to do with money. I had been walking home from school at mid-day for lunch, prepared by either Mrs Seib or Mrs Cripe, our part-time housekeepers. Lincoln School had an excellent cafeteria. I guess we couldn’t afford the housekeepers that year. I could probably have figured out how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and pour a glass of milk by myself, but I probably would have left a mess, something Mom wouldn’t tolerate. My older brother and two older sisters were in high school or college themselves and weren’t available to supervise.

Every morning Dad would drive us across the tracks to Lincoln. The school’s enrollment was probably 30% black, 30% Hispanic, with the remainder making up every other ethnic group “except Eskimo,” I was told. One of the black kids, Percy, became my best friend. I was probably the whitest kid at the school; he was definitely the blackest, a stunning almost coal-black that is rarely seen outside Africa. My other friends were Chinese, Filipino, Mexican and Greek; many were the children of recent immigrants. My teacher, Mr McClelland, was terrific. Marina, a very pretty Greek girl, had a stunning smile. Nothing ever jelled between us since she didn’t sing or dance, but boy could she spell! In the school-wide spelling bee we reached the finals, just the two of us. I was nervous. She smiled at me. I misspelled anniversary. My friend Percy said he’d never forgive me for ending it with ery and letting a girl win!

The school’s principal, Mr Easterbrook, ruled with an iron fist. Every Monday morning we would all assemble on the playground as some hapless kid would be marched up onto the platform to be whipped with a big wide leather razor strop for his infraction. Almost all the offenders were Mexican. At Webster there was no such punishment, or Mexicans.

With Mom’s permission I invited some of the kids at Lincoln to my house one Saturday for a cake and ice cream party. Bus fares were ten cents, and only one transfer had to be made for the trip. Nobody showed up. It turned out that black kids just weren’t welcome in “our” part of town and they never got on the second bus. I couldn’t understand why, but after that I started to notice that there weren’t many colors in my neighborhood.

I returned to Webster for sixth grade and started to notice how monochromatic the student body and staff were. Mary and I renewed our unacknowledged love affair. For the first time I noticed that her parents were from Italy. That was good enough. Together she and I sang and danced our way through our final year of elementary school.