This Little Life Of Mine - 3. Keppen School Thomas M Parsons

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Chapter 3. Teachers, Classrooms, and Friends

In this article, I have not used the real names of students. I have used the real names of the teachers, of the custodian and of the principal, however.

My second decade was dominated by my education, which began in September of 1947 when I started first grade at Windsor’s Marlborough School. But in the first year of the 1950's, or the second year depending on how you count it, anyway, in 1951 my parents made a major decision which I described in Windsor’s Child. They decided to buy a house in Lincoln Park, Michigan. As a result, from September 1951 to June 1959, I was a student in the public school system of Lincoln Park. That was fifth grade through twelfth grade.

Three schools in the Lincoln Park system counted me on their roles during that decade. I spent three years, fifth, sixth and seventh grades, at Keppen School, a two-story brick building just two blocks from our house on Farnham Street. In Windsor I walked about three-fourths of a block to school. In Lincoln Park I had to walk two blocks. My walk to school more than doubled. But that would not be the half of it.

In Windsor’s Child I wrote about Miss Buck, my fourth-grade teacher at Marlborough School who had a fetish for cleanliness, and who was young and attractive. I liked Miss Buck.

MRS. MANN
But my fifth-grade teacher at Keppen was not young. She was an older woman named Mrs. Hazel Mann. I also liked Mrs. Mann, but perhaps for different reasons than why I liked Miss Buck.

Mrs. Mann was an excellent teacher. That is not to say Miss Buck was not. She was. But Mrs. Mann was older, and more experienced, and she had a way about her that my young ten-year-old brain appreciated.

I am not going to use that tired and somewhat meaningless phrase she made learning fun. She didn’t. She made us work. She taught us. She seldom entertained us. But we learned.

Mrs. Mann had a brother-in-law who worked in Hollywood as a director. She would sometimes tell us about her famous relative. He worked primarily in the still new medium of television. In Windsor we did not have a television set. In Lincoln Park in 1951 we purchased our first set, a Philco. Its black and white images lit up our living room nearly every night. I remember watching the credits at the end of shows looking for the name "Mann." Once in a while I would find it there, and felt a special feeling because the lady who married the brother of the man who helped make the television show was my teacher.

Television was just coming into its own when I was a student at Keppen School. Those were the years when Desi loved Lucy, George loved Gracie, Jerry loved Dean and Tuesday night loved Uncle Miltie. They lit up our lives on the nights they were on TV, and we talked about them at school the next day. Mondays we talked about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and the zany antics they did on the Colgate Comedy Hour Sunday night. Tuesdays we talked about the crazy things Desi and Lucy did on I Love Lucy Monday night. Wednesdays we talked about the comedy gags and crazy outfits worn by Milton Berle on The Texaco Star Theater on Tuesday nights. And so the week went. And our teacher had a brother-in-law who was part of the industry that brought so much fun right into our living rooms. Mr. Mann in Hollywood gave us entertainment. Mrs. Mann in Lincoln Park gave us education. There was no necessity for either to do the other’s job.

MY WORK OF ART AT THE ART INSTITUTE: PRICELESS
I remember one time Mrs. Mann took our class to the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Children’s Museum. That must have been in 1952 or 1953. It could be either because I had Mrs. Mann for two years, for both fifth and sixth grades. The field trip came in March; I remember it was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. It was still cold in Detroit. March is usually cold in Detroit. Mother gave me a sack lunch that Auntie had prepared for me and sent me off to school in my heavy winter jacket. From Keppen, a bus transported us to downtown Detroit, first to the Children’s Museum. It was interesting, but I don’t remember as much about it as I remember about the afternoon part of the trip to the Institute of Arts.

I had made a new friend at Keppen. His name was Dave. Dave and I hung around together at school. We seldom saw each other after school, however, because our houses were several blocks apart. Anyway, Dave and I stayed together on the trip.

Mrs. Mann needed a place for us to eat lunch, and she obtained permission for us to eat on a patio of a building across the street from the Art Institute. I believe the building was then called the Maccabees Building, on Woodward Avenue, near Wayne State University. The day was warming because of a persistent sun, and we enjoyed eating outdoors and watching the traffic go by on Woodward. If I looked up I could see the tall building stretching to the sky, and the tall tower of WXYZ radio and television stations at the top.

After lunch we were herded across Woodward to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The first work of art we saw was a huge statue mounted on a pedestal in front of the building. It showed a naked man sitting, chin held firmly in his hand, the elbow of which rested on his bare knee. Dave and I noted that the statue was entitled The Thinker, and we remarked, with appropriate snickers, that he was thinking, “Now where did I leave my clothes?”

Behind the naked man a wide row of stairs led to the columned entrance to the building. We were ushered up the stairs, through the glass entrance doors and into the huge lobby that stretched up three stories. Statues, paintings and other objects filled the gallery. We were assigned a guide, and off we went through the gallery and into the museum’s many rooms filled with historic and cultural treasures. Not that all that history and culture made much of an impression on Dave and me. We found more things to make fun of than anything else. We were not obvious or vocal about it. We would not have dreamed of embarrassing Mrs. Mann or the guide for that matter. But with looks and comments whispered that only we understood, we made our little jokes.

My heavy winter jacket was hanging heavy and hot on me. No one had suggested we leave our jackets in the cloakroom. After all, who would want thirty sixth-grade jackets taking up space on hangers meant for those who really appreciated culture? As I grew warmer and warmer, I began to be more aware of Auntie’s sandwich that I had put inside me an hour or so before. Normally I was not aware of a sandwich after I ate it.

Our guide took us into the Egyptian area of the museum. Here she pointed out the art that had come from one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Pottery, pictures painted on stone walls, people wearing what looked to Del and me like diapers, sometimes with bird’s heads on their human bodies. And then we came to the mummies.

The museum had several authentic mummies lying motionless in glass cases. We could get up really close, the guide said, and examine the burial cases the ancient Egyptians made for their dead. We could see, she said, the painted faces on the heads of the cases. We could see how they made the case to fit the body, and then placed the body inside for burial. And here, she pointed to the toe of one such ancient Egyptian, we could see that the case had rotted away from time and exposure so that the inside of the case was visible. In fact, if we looked really close, she said, we could see the bone of the mummy’s toe. At least I think I remember her saying that.

Well, that did it. My sandwich found a new resting place, not inside me, but on the floor at my feet. I created my own work of art involving a grayish color fluid that radiated outward in great spokes from a center hub. Near the center of the hub were my shoes, now also gray in appearance and unpleasant to behold or to smell. Even Dave, my best friend in the world, shied away from me. Everyone else was quickly ushered to another room. I was led to a place where I could sit down. I assume my work of art was attended to by an employee of the museum in proper fashion.

My heavy jacket was removed and I sat there for several minutes, Mrs. Mann was concerned about my well-being. I felt better. My sandwich was gone, and I was no longer imagining I was looking at the decaying toe of an ancient Egyptian. Fortunately, we were nearing the time the bus was to return us to Keppen, so I sat out the remainder of the tour and joined my classmates on the bus. No one in particular wanted to sit near me, my shoes still gray and reeking as they were. Soon we were back at school, and I was walking the two blocks home in my nasty shoes. I had to explain to Mother what happened.

MR. HILL AND HIS 'BOARD OF EDUCATION'
My third year at Keppen was seventh grade, and my teacher was Mr. Hill, who had a board of education that he really did sometimes apply to the seat of knowledge. In those days, paddling was not considered to be a federal crime, as it seems to be now. Reasonable paddling was accepted by school boards, governments, churches and parents. Although students, especially those who occasionally got it, did not like it much, it was expected even by them when deserved.

Mr. Hill, like Mrs. Mann, was a good teacher who worked hard to educate his students. I liked him then; I appreciate him even more now. The fact that he used the paddle when necessary only made him a stronger teacher, not a weaker one.

I remember him using the paddle only once in the year I was in his classroom. He did not use it on me. I was always well-behaved in school because I didn’t like the consequences of bad behavior. Any misbehavior on my part would have resulted in discipline at school and at home. It simply was not something that was tolerated, and I had no intentions of making myself open to double punishment.

Once in Mrs. Mann’s class, a classmate, possibly Dave, threw a wadded-up piece of paper at me and it landed on the floor next to my desk. Mrs. Mann was not looking at the time, so I reached down and batted it along the floor back to him. Just then she turned. That was always the way it was. Others could get away with things; I always would get caught. She made me get up out of my seat, pick up the paper and throw it in the wastebasket. All the while, Dave smirked and chuckled behind his hand.

Mrs. Mann did not use the paddle on me for such an offence. Mr. Hill would not have used the paddle for that offence either. But George did get the paddle once during that seventh-grade year.

I don’t remember what he did. George was a good kid. He was not unruly. He didn’t pick fights or put others down. But he did have a mouth. I have no doubt it was his mouth that got him into trouble that day. At any rate, Mr. Hill told him to meet him in the hallway outside the room. Picking up his board of education he reminded us that we should behave ourselves while he and George were out in the hall. We had no intention of misbehaving, at least not too much. Besides, we wanted to hear what was going on outside our closed classroom door.

There was a pause. I am sure Mr. Hill was talking to George, explaining why his offence was punishable in such a strong manner. Then we heard it. It was loud. It was quick. It made us wince. No horse under the whip ever experienced such a crack as George did that day, or so we thought. We all looked at each other, and in each of those seventh-grade heads resided the same thought. I sure am glad it’s George out there, and not me.

Finally the door opened, and George entered the room, his face red, his hands rubbing his backside, followed by Mr. Hill with his still smoking board. At least we thought it was still smoking. George sat down, carefully, I thought, and there was no further use of the board that year. We were all convinced.

According to modern-day educational theory, Mr. Hill would be challenged after such an incident. There would be a disciplinary hearing, a reprimand, possibly a firing, and probably a lawsuit. And Geroge would become a violent person filled with hatred and vengeance over such unjust treatment. But in reality, none of those things happened. George turned out fine. He did not hate Mr. Hill; he respected him. Mr. Hill did not lose his ability to teach us, he gained new respect from all of us. He did what was fair, in response to behavior George had been warned about, and he did it with restraint and, I believe, real concern for George.

To view an index of all the chapters in this autobiography, please click on "Prologue" below.

Prologue

I remember Mr. Hill showed us movies on several occasions. Today’s young readers immediately think of video, but in the 1950's the word video referred only to television, and the only people who had video equipment were the people at the television stations, and all they had was cameras, monitors and kinescope. They did not have videotape or the machines that recorded and played videotape. These came later.

When Mr. Hill showed us a movie, he showed us a movie, a 16mm sound film. That involved getting the sound projector from its storage place at the school, threading the film through its sprocket-infested path by hand, and running the film and projecting it on a screen set up in the front of the room. The film would chatter and clatter its way through the machine, its images being thrown on the screen at the rate of twenty-four each second, and its optical sound track being amplified so as to be audible. Sometimes the film would lose a loop, and the picture would go crazy and the sound would resemble what I imagined sound sounded like under water. Then Mr. Hill would have to stop the projector, re-thread the film, and continue. Sometimes we liked the interruptions better than we liked the film. But sometimes the interruptions were annoying because we were enjoying the film.

MY FIRST CRUSH
Keppen was also the scene of my first crush on a girl. Her name was Rachel. She was petite and cute, and I liked the way she talked and laughed. Those are the things that always hook guys, after all.

She had been my classmate since fifth grade, but I didn’t really notice her until seventh grade. She always sat in the next row, or in back and I was in front. No teacher ever placed her and me side by side or next to each other in a row. Then again, no one knew of my “secret love” except me. I had no courage to step up to Rachel and tell her how I felt. I think I did mention it to Dave once or twice. But he was no more a lady’s man than I was. Outwardly I was her friend, her classmate. Inwardly, she gave me more to like about seventh grade than would have been there without her.

Sarah was another girl in the seventh grade who was special to me, although I never had a crush on her. Mr. Hill had arranged our desks so that two rows were together side by side, with an aisle between each double set of desks. Sarah sat at the desk to my right, so we worked together whenever Mr. Hill made assignments where we could work in pairs. Sarah was a bright and bubbly person who always had a smile on her face. She was also very smart, so I benefitted from her mental abilities whenever we worked together.

MY WORK ON THE KEPPEN CHRONICLE
In Windsor’s Child, I wrote about my love for words and my interest in writing, so I was excited when Mr. Hill said we were going to start a class newspaper. What opportunities that would provide for the budding writer in me. I was pretty certain that I would be a newspaper reporter when I grew up. Somebody said that ink was in my blood, yet, whenever I cut myself, I bled red, not black ink. But with a newspaper at school I could begin a career as a writer. Perhaps I could even be the editor.
As it turned out, a classmate named Diane got to be editor, but I was on the staff. Working on the paper meant bringing my lunch to school sometimes. Since I lived only a couple of blocks from Keppen, I was in the habit of walking home for lunch, and then walking back to school for the afternoon sessions. But Mr. Hill wanted us to work on the paper during lunch, so I began “brown-bagging” it, something I did until my sixty-third year of life.

The paper was reproduced on the school’s spirit duplicator, a terrible method of reproducing work involving typing on a spirit master, which didn’t make much allowance for errors, and copying on a messy, smelly, chemically-infested system that did not always make a clear reproduction, no matter how hard you tried. For example, the third issue of our paper has one page that is barely readable. The lines between the three columns show up fairly well, but the copy is very faint. The copies were purple. Always purple. No blacks, no blues, no reds, just purple. If we had had the computers and copiers available today back then, we would have made a much better newspaper. But we did our best with what we had, and we made a reasonably good paper out of it.

It was February 12, 1954 when the first issue of The Keppen Chronicle was issued from Room 120 at the school. Our editor-in-chief was Diane, with Joe and me her assistants. George, who got paddled by Mr. Hill, was in charge of the joke column along with Julie. My friend Dave was doing the crossword puzzle, although no such puzzle appeared until the third issue.

On the front page of the first Chronicle, Diane wrote an editorial about keeping Keppen clean. “Lets keep our position as one of the best looking schools in Lincoln Park,” she wrote. She did not put the appropriate apostrophe before the s in lets nor the hyphen between the adjectives best and looking. She also wrote about safe snowballing. “We can all have fun and be safe,” she wrote.

My contribution to that first issue is reproduced below, complete with errors just as I made them, errors which survived the proofreaders’ scanning.

HELPFULNESS
There are lots of ways to be helpful. If you’r a boy you can help your father when he washes the car or mows the lawn. If your a girl, you can help a neighbor with odd jobs, too. You can help your mother. To be really helpful don’t expect to get money for helping people. T.P.

I wish I could report that my debut as a writer produced something that would be characteristic of someone who always wanted to write, as I did. But, as you can see, it did not. In fact, in the second issue of the Chronicle, issued on March 12, I didn’t have any articles appearing at all. Whether that was the result of the failure of my first article to stir any interest in my abilities or not I do not know.

The third issue came out on April 15, 1954, and I am not even mentioned in the list of workers. I suspect that was an oversight. I do not have any articles signed by me in that third issue, either. My debut as a writer was much less than spectacular. But I would blossom later.

Those are the only three issues of our paper that I have. I don’t know how many we did. I suspect we did one for May; then school was out, and we were out of Keppen for good. Keppen did not have an eighth grade.

I do note that in the first issue, it was reported that Mr. Hill’s seventh grade class was going to make a field trip to the Ford Motor Company plant in nearby Dearborn. I remember that trip. We watched monstrous blocks of orange-hot steel being vomited out of the huge furnaces. We watched 1954 Ford automobiles being assembled on the production line. And I did not throw up.

The paper also mentioned Scottie, our intrepid and beloved and often beleaguered custodian. His thick Scottish accent earned him the name I knew him by. Scottie, the paper reported, along with Mr. Shilling, our principal, had planted thirty Chinese elm trees around the school, but students were apparently not treating the trees properly. Some were broken, others trampled. An unsigned article stated, “Scottie has worked hard to beautify our school, but if the children won’t cooperate there is nothing we can do to beautify our school.”

The third issue of our paper reported an incident involving George and Scottie. George experienced a painful sliver deep in his thumb, and was sent to Scottie for help in the boiler room, where “Dr. Scottie” removed it. Dr. Scottie “stated that he felt absolutely no pain himself.” George had no further comment. Whether thumb or backside, George seemed to suffer more than his share of painful incidents. Of course, today, a school would be in serious trouble if it sent a student to the janitor for any medical procedure. Why did the world of the 1950's not see the problems this might cause? Perhaps people then were less concerned with the rare situation where something might have gone wrong and more concerned with the practicality of a kindly janitor who really did love kids removing a sliver from a student’s finger in the boiler room.

MY CAREER IN THE DAIRY INDUSTRY
Scottie had selected Tony and me for the important job of delivering milk to all the classrooms each morning. Little bottles of regular and chocolate milk were delivered to the school each day, and Tony and I had to take the correct number of bottles to each room before lunch. That meant we got out of Mr. Hill’s class for about twenty minutes or so each day. I remember enjoying that responsibility. I can still hear the glass bottles clinking against the metal frames of the carriers we placed the bottles in and the chocolaty smell of the empty bottles we collected after. I remember cold, winter days we brought the bottles in, our breath showing a white mist as we labored over our cases of white and brown cargo. I remember spring and fall days with a warming sun shining on us as we worked, causing us to sweat. I remember the laughs we shared, the little problems we overcame to get the bottles to the right rooms at the right time, and the fun we had working together. And I remember the taste of the cold chocolate milk I had with my lunch each day, it being even tastier because I had helped deliver it to the classroom. And I am certain that Tony and I milked that job for all we could.

Days go by fast, I have discovered as I have aged. I don’t remember them going by fast then when I was a scrawny, goofy-looking kid delivering milk and thinking of myself as a future great journalist. But they did. And that was all so long ago now. More than 18,000 days have slipped by since I set the last empty bottle in the metal tray on the last day of school at Keppen in June of 1954.

ON TO LAFAYETTE SCHOOL AND EIGHTH GRADE
Since there was no eighth grade at Keppen, when school began in the fall of 1954, we would all have to go to Lafayette School, which was too far away for me to walk to school each day. My dad would have to drive me in the morning, and I would have to ride home with a friend, or take a bus after school. I would have to brown-bag it every day. And the work of the Keppen Chronicle would be passed to others.

Lafayette School had originally been the high school, but that was long before my friends and I arrived. It was an elementary and middle school housing grades up through eighth. It had a much older building than Keppen, and much larger. Our little group from Keppen had to be absorbed into the larger group of eighth graders from Lafayette and Keppen combined.

Something else was new, also. We had to rotate classes. We had never done that before. From first grade through seventh grade, I had always spent all day with one teacher in the same classroom. But now we had several teachers, and we moved from classroom to classroom each period.

I really do not remember much about that eighth grade year. Because of the distance the school was from home, I had to stay all day, and that meant taking my lunch as I had done at Keppen when we were working on the newspaper. Now it was every day. I adjusted quickly, if I remember correctly, to the changes. I still had many of my Keppen friends with me, but I also made some new friends. One such friendship was with a boy named John.

I didn’t like John at first. He seemed arrogant and pushy, always telling others what to do. My best friend at Keppen, Dave, was laid back and never told anyone what to do. John was always in charge. And for some reason, he decided he wanted to be my friend. He was stronger willed than I was, so I accepted his friendship.

John was, in many ways, the opposite of me. I was quiet, shy and just average in most things. John was bold, outgoing and got good grades. Perhaps these opposites were one reason our friendship became strong and lasted all through high school and even for a short while, at least, beyond that.

Graduation from eighth grade took place in the spring of 1955. I had now completed eight full years of education, less than half of the nineteen years of education I would eventually complete. In the fall of that year I would be a freshman at Lincoln Park High School. The world of the teenager awaited me. The silly-looking kid with the stubborn cowlick would become a sophisticated and debonair high school student. A metamorphosis was about to happen. I could hardly wait.

At home, this is when I began asking my mother to stop calling me Tommy and start calling me Tom. Mother understood my need for a more mature name to match my more mature look and lifestyle, but it was difficult for her to give up her surviving little boy and she often reverted to the use of the second syllable of my childhood name. But at school I was already Tom, a name which spoke of maturity and intellect. No one would take seriously a writer named Tommy, but an article with a byline which included the name Tom could be taken seriously. Sometime during the summer of 1955 Tommy was laid to rest and Tom took over.

But it would be another three years before Tom the sinner would die and Tom the child of God would be born.

Photos: [1] Our Lincoln Park home from 1951 to 1996. [2] From Wikipedia: Exterior, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan and The Main Hall of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers.