My grandson and I drove at first and then walked for his first three and one half years of school.  This year, his fourth grade year, his grandmother walks him down the block to meet friends and off they go.  He sees me at the corner as a crossing guard before he goes down to school and never is out of eye shot of his grandmother or me.  That is certainly different from my early years.  In kindergarten, I walked across a field to the little school house.  In first through fourth grade, I walked to school.  It was about eight or nine blocks and I covered the distance with a friend.  He lived just down the block and I had met him over the summer.  He became my best friend during my Lincoln, Nebraska years.  Mom or Dad followed us a few times for practice before school started.  Mom had my younger brother, who was still in diapers, to care for, and I can’t imagine how she could drive us after school started. 

We had only one car which Dad took to work at the University so I only remember being driven a few times when it rained pretty hard.  I wore a yellow rain coat with a separate hat with a brim.  The brim kept the rain out of my face and the hat hung down to my shoulders to keep the rain off my neck.  We were met at the school grounds by the big kids who patrolled the corners as crossing guards.  You don’t see too many kids today as crossing guards.  It’s mostly teachers and mothers, dads, and grandparents who are the crossing guards.  We carry signs and walk into the street to stop the traffic.  When you see kids on patrol at the corners they never walk into the streets but signal when it’s safe to cross.  In my day the patrol kids carried a large bamboo pole.  I seem to remember a yellow flag attached to the pole which they held out to stop traffic so the kids could cross.  They wore a reflective belt around their waist that was sewn onto a strap that ran over their shoulder.  On the strap they pinned a badge that identified them as safety patrol.  Their whole aura bespoke authority and I longed for the day when I would be old enough to be on the safety patrol.

As I said, I only saw the safety patrol on rainy mornings because most days, when I walked with my friend, we cut across the playground behind school and came to the school from the back.  The playground was huge, at least to my young eyes.  It covered a large area behind the school.  There were swings, merry go rounds, teeter totters, a Jungle gym and behind them, was a large field.  We played on the equipment some but mostly chased each other, the girls or the girls chased us.   A loud bell sounded the time to line up and go into school.

One time my best friend and I went to see the principal.  We were summoned from our class to her office.  She was an older lady, short, and chubby with white hair.  She was probably in her forties but she looked really old to us as a person in their sixties or seventies would look.  A boy had accused us of bringing a dart to school.  He was the neighborhood bully.  He put some sugar in the gas tank of a caterpillar digging out a basement in a new house across the street from his house.  He was sent to the reformatory.  Before that, he bullied us all the time.  Once, to get back at him and probably scare him away, my friend and I put a dart behind us.  We changed it back and forth between our hands behind our backs to give the impression that there were several darts and we wouldn’t hesitate to use them if he didn’t go home.  He left. 

The dart was made of wood and had a long metal point on one end.  The other end would have had feathers but they had worn off during the days it had been used by people, older than we were, to throw at a target.  The episode played out just as we had hoped when he went home.  However it backfired because he accused us of bringing the dart to school.  According to him we threatened him with it on the playground.  Of course we hadn’t brought it to school and with a tearful retelling of the story the principal believed us.  It helped that he probably had been brought to the principal’s office many times for things no amount of tearful explaining could justify.  She sent us back to our room with a stern warning which apparently worked because that was the only time I ever went to her office.

One time my friend and I were walking back from school.  We walked down the tree lined boulevard and turned toward home.  We walked past a girl’s house we both liked and suddenly a car appeared.  His mom was driving it and my mom was sitting on the passenger’s side.  They both looked worried and told us to get in the car.  We did and we went to our respective homes.  That’s all I knew at the time but my dad answered the phone that night and told a joke.  He was apparently talking to my Doc Pop, Mom’s Dad.  He said we were having some pretty stark weather in Lincoln that day in response to a question on the other end.  Later I learned that Charles Starkweather had begun his murderous rampage that morning in Lincoln.  He had killed his 14 year old girlfriend’s parents and left with her in the family car.  My Mom could not have known where he was when we got out of school but feared he might be still in Lincoln.   Her kids walking home from school were in danger.  Her fear wasn’t unfounded because Starkweather had been our garbage man, also something I found out later.  The days passed and he was stopped in a gun battle out west. 

His girlfriend was sentenced to prison and that’s the last I heard of them until many years later.  I had moved from Lincoln to Mankato, Minnesota and then to Cedar Falls, Iowa.  I went to college at Morningside in Sioux City, Iowa where I met my wife.  I graduated in 1970.  We were married and after a time we lived in Denver, Colorado.  My wife volunteered at Denver General Hospital as a rape counselor.  That’s something she trained there for.  I was never comfortable with the hours on weekends that she worked but that’s when the rapes occurred.  One time she came home from work at the hospital and told me in hushed tones that she may be working with Charles Starkweather’s girlfriend.  She had overheard a few nurses at the hospital talking about a woman who was training there to be a nurse.  They said she was Carol Fugate but she used a different name and had recently gotten out of prison.  Changing her name didn’t stop gossip and apparently her training at Denver General became common knowledge.  Although my wife talked to the women several times she never asked her who she really was and the women never offered any information about the past but she would have been the right age.  She probably was who they all thought she was.  My wife said she was distant and had a stare that you find in prison.

Her boyfriend Charles Starkweather was long dead at that time but I have often wondered about her since those fateful days when our lives touched once again in Denver.

                It’s the start of school.  We lucked out because our grandson went to camp in early August so he was pretty well stocked up on new clothes.  With his clothes he got a new pair of shoes which he lost at camp.  When we went shopping for the new school year, in addition to another pair of shoes, he got all of his papers, pencils, a back pack, folders, Kleenex and so on.  His scissors and ruler from last year worked just fine.

                When I started school my new purchases also began in the summer.  I stayed for several weeks with my Grandfather and Grandmother or Grammie and Grampie as we called them.  As we got older that changed to Gram and Gramp but I could always count on new shoes, a suit and a white shirt from them.  The suite was always black or dark blue.  We looked pretty similar on Sunday mornings as Gramp preached to his congregation.

                I began my school years in tiny Arthur, Nebraska which is about fifty miles north of Ogallala.   We used to say there were about 700 people in Arthur County 100 of whom lived in Arthur.  Not much has changed.  My first school was a two room school house.  I’m not sure of the breakdown of classes but they were probably kindergarten through fourth grade on one side of the wall and fifth through eighth grade on the other side of the wall.  The high school age kids, grades nine through twelve, went to the new high school on the hill.

                There were one or two other kids sitting in my row of desks who were also in Kindergarten.  I remember having to fill out some work books and listen very closely as the teacher taught the higher grades.  I’m not sure if the teacher told us listen and learn when the other kids were learning but that’s what we did.  In fact, that was one of the advantages of the one and two room school houses.  The younger kids were exposed to what the older kids learned which led to my being a year ahead when I went to another school the following year. 

                In the school in Arthur, we had to raise our hands if we had to use the facilities and signify one finger or two depending on what we had to do.  That wasn’t unusual.  I had to do that at other schools too but I’ve thought over the years why was it the teachers business what we had to do.  Was it only to gage the time we’d be gone depending on the fingers we raised or was there a more sinister reason which escapes me now.

                We had outside plumbing at that school in Arthur which meant we went to one of two outhouses behind the school.  One was for the boys and one for the girls.  Since our duplex was not far away, I usually went home and used the inside plumbing.  We lived across a field about half way between the high school and the grade school.  Dad worked at the high school while my sister and I went to the grade school.  It was convenient.

                Recess was a big time for us and we played on the equipment next to the building.  We had swings which were hung by chains from a large pipe supported by two other pipes on either ends.  I remember the wooden seats on the swings allowed us to go pretty high and were very easy to bail out from when we jumped from the swing.  I’m sure there have been plenty of accidents to cause the replacement of the wooden seats with straps.  I notice I can’t swing as high or jump out as easily with the leather or rubber straps but it could have something to do with my age.  My grandson does just fine.

                We had a large Merry Go Round that allowed you to climb as it went around.  It was kind of a combination Jungle Gym and Merry Go Round and was exhilarating to climb to the top as it whizzed in circles.  I suppose a little kid must have fallen while the contraption was moving so those kinds of Merry Go Rounds were removed from most locations.  Several years ago I took my son to Arthur while we were videotaping scenes in communities in Western Nebraska.  There, sitting next to the same two room school house I had gone too, was the same Jungle Gym/Merry Go Round I had used as a child.  Both were still in use. 

              We moved to Lincoln for my first grade year.  Dad took classes and worked at the University.  I went to College View Elementary School.  One of my first memories was a boy stuck to a bar on the playground.  He had apparently been trying to lick the frozen sheen from a Jungle Gym or something when he got stuck.  Years later I spoke with someone who was a grade behind me at the same school and said she saw the same thing. 

                Most of all, I remember the games of chase we played with the girls.  I was so proud that I was never caught and kissed.  I now know the other boys allowed themselves to be caught.  A concept I had trouble with at the time apparently.  I’ve tried to tell me grandson how the game works but he won’t listen.  Maybe its genetics but he hasn’t been caught yet.

                I was in second grade when I sat in a long row next to the windows at College View.  There were two events that I remember from that year.  One was of a boy who sat behind me.  He tried to make it too the lavatories to throw up.  He didn’t make it and was promptly excused.  The teacher went on teaching.  Soon a janitor showed up with a bucket of saw dust and he cleaned up the mess while the teacher kept on teaching.  As an aside I remember how excited I was to learn the school had lavatories.  I had visions of test tubes and beakers.  It wasn’t long before I found out how important a “b” and “v” can be.

                The other event I remember occurred on a cloudy day in the fall.  It was 1956.  We were told that we were going to have a drill.  When a specific siren went off we were told to climb under our desks and not to peek.  Those of us next to the windows were told again we were specifically not to look outside.  I, however, did take a peek.  I heard an explosion and saw a large white cloud of smoke rising into the air.  We stayed under our desks for five or ten minutes.  When we were finally told we could come out and sit at our desks, the teacher started to teach again.  Latter, we learned that we at gone through an Atomic Bomb drill because we lived close to the Strategic Air Command headquarters or SAC as they have since been called.  I don’t see what the drill proved but at least we did something.  I’m not sure anything would have saved us but hiding under our desks gave us a sense of purpose and probably made those in charge feel a little better.  It was the threat of the Atomic Bomb or the Hydrogen bomb in the fifties, sixties and seventies that shaped my life.  I remember watching the wall come down in Germany and I realized the threat was gone.  I told my kids to watch and remember but in truth it was me who needed to watch as all of the memories came flooding back.