My Early Education Helped Shape Me

On a discussion forum I frequent, one of the regulars posted a photo of an old abandoned 1-room schoolhouse he used to attend, and made the following comments:

" K through 4.

"No Internet
No phones
No gym
No sports
No indoor plumbing

"No wonder I'm such a bitter, gun-toting domestic terrorist."


The school where I spent first grade in 1961 was a lot like that...although they did have indoor plumbing. Now an historic landmark known as the Leora Brown School, it had been the "colored school" in town before the school system integrated. When we "baby boomers" overwhelmed the capacity of our 1914-built grade school, a couple of "overflow" classrooms were set up a couple of blocks away when they put up a partition wall in the formerly-one-room "colored school."

Mrs, Bickel--who had been my dad's first-grade teacher in 1936, back when she was Miss Miller--was my teacher. The other classroom went to Mrs. Merk, the wife of the principal at the junior high. [Mr.Merk had been my dad's senior English and Latin teacher in high school...and Dad hated him.]

The only phone in the building was one that hung on the wall in the back hallway, and its purpose was for use in case there was an emergency, so the principal at the main grade school could be notified. There was no gym, and the only sports were whatever we could work into a short recess on the part-gravel, part grass-and-mud playground. I use the term "playground" quite loosely, since the only play equipment there--besides our own imaginations--were three 2x12's u-bolted to a crude pipe frame to approximate some teeter-totters.

While "busing" was something that caused some strife under court-ordered integration in Louisville in 1975--and still causes some controversy even today--it was nothing new to us. We rode the bus to school, except for the kids who lived close enough to walk. At the "Annex," we rode the bus the 3 blocks to the main grade school for a cafeteria lunch...at 25 cents a day for that meal [Extra milk was 2 cents for a half-pint carton...and chocolate milk was ONLY allowed on "special occasions', with an extra carton costing 3 cents.]. And we rode the bus back to the "Annex" for afternoon classes...and then we rode the bus home. Black kids and white kids all rode the same buses, and we all managed to get along. No, we didn't sit an a circle holding hands singing "Kum-Ba-Yah" at school; we were too busy teasing each other about who had a crush on what girl, or playing "catchers" ["TAG! YOU'RE IT!"] or some other game that normal first-graders play.

We weren't taught how to be "politically correct" back then. The environment? Well, they tried to teach us to clean up after ourselves, and not to waste things, with varying degrees of success...but I guess that's that's the heart and soul of effective environmental protection--cleaning up after yourself, and not wasting resources--isn't it?

In the community where I grew up, owning a gun was not only accepted, but it was almost expected. Back then, most everyone either hunted or fished, many did both, and we skinned or scaled and cleaned and gutted and cooked and ate what we shot or caught...or gave it to someone who WOULD cook and eat it. "Catch and release"?? Only if the fish wasn't big enough to be a "keeper." Often we seined our own minnows, and usually threw back the crawdads and hellgramites that we occasonally ended up with...although some folks used them for bait, too.

So I guess growing up as I did, I never understood the need for any of the "politically correct" BS we keep hearing abut these days...because we knew better than to pollute the places where we hunted and fished, among other things, because we wanted to continue to be able to hunt and fish there. And we knew who our friends were, and didn't care if they were black or white becaus we all grew up riding the same school buses, and shared the same classrooms, lunchrooms and restrooms at school anyway.

And in my eyes, it's a shame it's taking the rest of the country so long to try to learn what I was being taught in first grade, at what used to be the old "colored school."

Growing Up In Downtown Corydon

When I was a kid, I pretty much grew up in downtown Corydon, IN. And since my dad and grand-dad ran a business in town, I knew most of the businessmen [and women] as well. So anyone who grew up in Corydon during our era might well remember:

*when the Krause Hotel at South Capitol and Poplar Streets burned down;
*the Corydon Jaycees' annual Pancake Festival, which used to close off all of Elm and Beaver streets for carnival rides every May;
*the old Blaine Hays law office on the southeast corner of Chestnut Street and Capitol Avenue;
*the Eureka Telephone Company's green-glazed building;
*the Elm Restaurant [bonus points for having come and gone through the side door];
*Foley's Barber Shop, on the south side of East Chestnut street;
*Dwight Harper's barber shop, when it was between Berlin's and Davidson's Pool Room;
*Ledford's Grocery...as well as Johnny Frederick's;
*Rick Warrick's Buick dealership, on the "Mauckport Hill", across from Claude Windell's Shell station;
*Corydon Auto Supply, across Capitol Avenue from the courthouse;
*Hobie Poellein's Western Auto store, where we got most of our bicycle accessories;
*Nelson's Firestone, on Chestnut Street, where we got the rest of our bike stuff;
*Ordner's Variety Store...bonus if you remember when they were over by the Corydon State Bank;
*North Side Garage, operated by Kelly Hardin;
* West Side Garage, operated by Tom and Doug Robson;
*the original Hamburger Castle, and the pinball machines in the back that cost a nickel a game, 6 for a quarter;
*Roy LaHue and Sons mens clothing store;
*the A & P grocery [and the smell of freshly-ground coffee when you walked in the door];
*the Marathon station just before Parks Chevrolet;
*the Mobil gas station on the West Hill;
*Sherrill's Roller Rinks...the one on the hill AND the one at the fairgrounds;
*the rampside Corvair appliance delivery truck from Hurst-Miles Hardware store;
*home milk delivery by both Sealtest and by Kannapel's Dairy.

These are but a few of my childhood memories of growing up in Corydon. I'm sure you have your own, and some will be different from mine. But these were a part of growing up in an isolated small town, and with the interstate highway system, the kind of childhood we had can never happen again.

Organizing the Garage: An Exercise In Futility

Ever since the days of the caveman, the "man-cave," also known in modern vernacular as a "garage," has been disorganized. Man has, through the centuries, invented many storage devices to help organize this "man-cave," and yet nearly all have utterly failed in this purpose. Man has even used "wo-man" to help organize the "man-cave," but this arrangement has proven unsatisfactory because "wo-man" has different ideas on what is important and what is junk than does Man...and once "wo-man" organizes the "man-cave," Man can never again find what once was close at hand and extremely necessary. So the failure is one of the "cave-man" who utilizes his "man-cave," rather than the reverse. And it has been so since the time of the Neanderthals...and will most likely continue throughout the time of the George Jetsons and beyond. It is our nature, written in our DNA, it seems.