A Walk Down Memory Lane -

On a number of occasions John Townsend has prodded me, on your behalf, to submit an autobiographical sketch, the collection of which you are apparently in the process of compiling, for Goodalers of '53 and/or Denbyites of '57.

I must admit that I have been somewhat reluctant to put such a piece together, either due to sheer bashfulness (for, after all, who likes to talk about himself?), or perhaps more simply due to just laziness or procrastination, as something else always seems to take precedence on today's busy to-do list.

And then again, at least for me, there's another reason, a more important one. The fact is that I find that many of the "events" which shaped my life to have not been so much external happenings, as they are remembered and documented in our past, but more so the internal realizations which occurred along the way, related or not, to apparent external events which invoked them, those "events taking place in the mind's eye" so to speak, with their many surprises, disappointments, elations, perturbances, and so forth - many of which often seem to have more lasting effects than their real causes.

I suspect that this is true for most of us, and an attempt to recount these "significant deflection" episodes of our internal lives would be a daunting task indeed, one far beyond the simple generation of a biographical statement as generally understood. Which is to say, that in each of us there seems to be two running scripts, and not particularly in synchrony: one being the record of our external life complete with obvious associated interactions, and the other, a post-acquistional piece, synthesized from snipits of the first, but overlain with internal narrations and flash backs stemming from later realizations.

But enough for philosophical waxations: quick recollections are still invaluable for do they to give us the framework on which we can tack other things in our attempts to get at the origins of personality, and these recollections also give us a basis of inter-individual connectedness in our attempts to continue to remain related to one another, derived from the rudiments of mutual experience - e.g., John Townsend's common timeframe wavefront theory, a shared "collective unconscious," as it were, if you are a Jungian devotee.

Again, let's put these abstract ramblings aside and get on with the other ramblings at hand. I found the Goodale reunion an absolutely fascinating experience, one truly beyond my greatest expectations. It was if that old notion of Heaven of which we were taught as children had come to pass: an opportunity to become reunited with old long lost acquaintances, all mellowed with age - but here with the added benefits of not having to deal extensively with the sins of the past, or the obligation "to sit around and listen to harp music all day," as Huck Finn used to say.

So it is more with this intention in mind that I would like to submit these few personal Goodale recollections (bittersweet as they might be), but most in which Goodalers played significant parts - and I would hope that this might provoke others will do the same. And perhaps with the help of current communications technology (i.e., Internet connectivity), we might then be able to cut and paste these recollections into some kind of ordered set of remembrances, which can be exchanged to keep the spirit of the reunion going, at least in a virtual sense.

(And in a technical note, John Townsend, Master of the Printed Page [did you know that for several years now John has won a number of prestigious national awards for page layout design?], will help distribute some part of this in traditional page and ink fashion, but I will also make the content available on computer disk or on a Goodale Reunion Website, if we can generate enough interest. The advantage of the latter is that not only is the distribution process is much cheaper and faster, but more so, such means is well disposed to be interactive, so everyone can easily participate - at least to the extent that interested folks have computer access - to add stories, commentary, photos [the Dailey's have a treasure trove of Goodale photos which I would love to see scanned and included - hint, hint], exchange information, and so forth - in a virtual Goodale classroom setting again). I hope that we can get people to participate. My sense is that we are all moved by pieces of Goodale nostalgia, and I hope that this will open a forum for other Goodalers to contribute their recollections, corrections, and mementos.

A Virtual Tour of Goodale Elementary School (circa, 1950)

Approach to the School

We should pay homage to those Goodale days, for after all, many of us spent up to eight of the most formative years of our lives there at 9835 Dickerson Avenue, being cradled to and from, across the street at the corner of Chelsea, outside (see Herb's Candy Shop later in Slideshow), by the limping (and slightly sardonic) Mr. Steckley, complete with official badged officer's hat and stick-mounted STOP sign, - assisted by some of Goodale's finest, the Safety Patrol boys.

My memory has dimmed over time but I believe that Steve DeMaggio commanded the Northeast Chelsea-Dickerson post; Robert Seizenger, the Northwest Chelsea-Dickerson station: and Harry Blalock acted as Steckley's sidekick (but lately someone said that it might have been John Zajac). Going toward Outer Drive, somehow I remember the witty John Townsend, the humorous Jerry Bell, the eternally cheerful Dayton Dailey, stalwart Fred Lyijynen, with occasional others. At the same time, I knew from them prestigiously wearing their white belts, or from the group as a whole assembled to run up the Green Pennant, that there were others: Henze, Bowlby, Monteleone, Genova, and so on, all of whom got to leave class early each day, to dutifully save lives. I, on the other hand, along with a crew of other boys who had been de-selected from the opportunity to save lives (largely because we were a cast of irresponsible slouches), could only look on with envious wonder at these events, and probably in our hearts remain grateful of the wisdom of our teachers who had put the lives of our female classmates and minor children into more responsible hands.

But then again, though the De-Selects didn't get to leave class early every day, at the same time we didn't get home late every day, or have to stand out in the snow and rain either. So being a slacker did have its advantages I suppose. Besides which, I just now realized after 50 years, upon digging out some old report cards for this piece, that deselection from Safety Boy status probably didn't stem so much from me being so much a slacker, as it did from the fact that I seemed to have been absent about 60 half days a semester each Fall, through about Third Grade (with respiratory ailments). Hard to save lives when you're not at the post I guess, and the teachers were smart enough to select more capable people. But for me, Safety Boy envy was real and I would have risen to the occasion to save lives - for the sporadical days that I was in attendance. However, understandably, this was not good enough and what was required was a cadre of full time life savers.

Oh well, we have all had our childhood disappointments, but time heals, so let's concentrate on the bright side and get on with the virtual tour of 1950's Goodale School. For the most part, I walked to school via various routes, rarely the same from one day to the next. Sometimes the alleys were much more inviting than the side streets. As the son of a farm boy, I found them a bit more pastoral as well, their stands of milkweeds, hollyhocks and scotch thistles and other native prairie flora were allowed to bloom, whereas most of the neighbors' yards were carefully mowed and planted with more manorial flowers. Besides in the alleys one could always trash pick a few interesting items to work into a construction project and occasionally on a Summer's day you could run into a sheeny, an old black trash collecting gentleman sitting atop a green wagon pulled by a gaunt horse, and blowing a horn, the sound of which I have not heard since. Ash cans and garbage cans aside, alleys and vacant lots were my urban meadows.

But back alley approaches to and from school were officially discouraged; the thought that evil somehow lurked there was planted in our minds, and crabby old ladies would chase you out of their backyards when taking innocent shortcuts to get back to the streets. Still much adventure was had in these alternate routes back and forth to school.

On rainy days we looked forward to getting a ride from a neighbor, so as not to have to wait for and take the Dickerson bus (which I think cost a nickel with our school bus card). A lady across the street from our house, Tommy Brown's mother, used to drive us to school occasionally in her '37 Ford, one with a big needle dial speedometer and one which I think the windshield cranked open for ventilation. We kids would hurriedly pile in to her back seat, in multiple layers before Mrs. Brown would steam off toward Goodale, with one windshield wiper flapping. It was organized confusion; I liked it.

This was also the time that we learned about raincoats and golashas - the kind that closed with clasps. There was something particularly interesting about those rainy days: the change in focus, the change in pace, in mood. I liked the rainy days. Somehow I can still remember walking along Dickerson Avenue in my hooded raincoat with flopping golashas in the rain; there was something almost ethereal about the experience; it was lovely and mysterious, like walking through the netherland in a fog to an unknown destination.

But at school somehow I do remember, for some odd reason, the halls of Goodale, with their brown linoleum surfaces, their terrazzo coves, punctuated here and there with dual drinking fountain alcoves. I could never figure out how the masons got all those little stones to behave so well in the terrazzo when they laid those coves. (Answer is: they were poured and polished it that way, dummkopf; they were not compounded like a mosaic. But what did I know about the school floor construction trade.) However, I did figure out how they waxed those halls. In fact, it was WE who waxed those halls, once a week or so, when Mr. Steckley distributed those wax shavings all over the floors of the halls. It was our little feet that were responsible for polishing those surfaces, probably to make them easier to clean when Steckley pushed his big wide mop after school or between classes. That I did have figured out. But in another maintenance vein, I could never figure out, for eight years then and thereafter, why the boys' bathrooms at the school were so poorly kept. They were atrocious, and it was just accepted as such. It's odd how different cultures regard their lavatory practices. Oh well.

Kindergarten

Now in Kindergarten we had our own bathrooms, and didn't have to go down the hall. Besides, being avant-garde as we were, I do believe they were unisex. Doesn't it seem like just yesterday that many of us assembled in (slim) Miss Orr's or (rotund) Miss Tower's Kindergarten room, putting our "wraps" in the "cloak room" (instead of lockers out in the hall like the big kids), listening to stories expressively read by our teachers, playing farmer in the dell, musical chairs, doing up assorted drawings, pasting paper doilies on our mothers' Valentines, and buying defense stamps for warbonds - every Tuesday morning, was it?

We sat at those little oak tables and chairs, and I remember those high ceilings and large Longview-facing bay windows, so bright and airy in the springtime, the open tops of which were pulled down by an extension pole. And weren't there some Pawabic tile pieces somewhere in those rooms? Or is it my imagination? The play house of simulated brick cardboard was real enough for us then, and the molding clay - which started off at the beginning of the semester being various bright colors, always seemed to end up by term's end a dull universal brown, the colored pieces having all been eventually mixed together. .

And I remember being so curious about (and a little frightened by) Richard Frank's hole in his throat - (simply he must have had a tracheotomy, but how do five year olds understand that?) Kindergarten was, by and large, a pleasant experience for me, but it would only take a couple of years for me, personally, to fall into disgrace. (See Casey's Fall from Grace)

The Kindergarten rooms were large beautiful rooms, very spacious; but then again, our bodies were only pint-sized at the time. Interesting also, I only noticed recently that the building was built in 1926, perhaps when Detroit was in its fullest wave of economic and population expansion. And what I also found out later, in the 1970's when installing hundreds of Apple computers in Detroit schools throughout the city, was that there were many clones of our old school building around the outer neighborhoods, many with similar layouts, and with identical stairway bannisters which we were so fond of sliding down. It would take a king's ransom now to replace that beautiful oak woodwork. But not to worry, for much of it has been painted over with what appears to be surplus UPS paint brown, so no one knows that that beautiful oak woodwork is even there. (See Chelsea SideDoor ) (Update: And I heard just today [7/5/2000] that this lovely old building, i.e., Goodale School is to be demolished soon. What a pity.)

Now fire drills were supposed to occur unexpectedly - to test our readiness, should the beautiful oak framework of the school catch fire (or more likely should some cigarette ignite the contents of some wastebasket). But, interestingly, those drills, (initiated by a series of 10? bells in the hall), did not occur on rainy days or in the dead of winter. Maybe one occurred in October, and one in late spring, but not on rainy days. And when those occurred, we all marched outside in an orderly fashion, in double lines, only to turn toward the school and see that it was not in flames at all. No smoke to be seen. These exercises did offer a change of pace however, something to break up the monotony of our long homeroom sessions and I liked them.

Now air raids were of two different sorts: Early on, when the Allied Forces were still beating back the Hun, we all sat out in the hall with our heads down, waiting for a bomb to hit the school at any time. Those also were the days (nights) of blackouts at home, when families huddled at home with the lights out and the drapes drawn, so that a stray light peeping out of a Detroit window would not guide enemy bombers to their targets at the Arsenal of Democracy, deep within the heartland of America - as our parents listened to FDR's reassuring chats on the radio.

Later on, air raid drills were different, in the period of The Bomb, in our more senior years. Then we were shepherded downstairs on the Longview side, down past the huge boilers and the big gray ventilation motors and into the plenum chambers, to hopefully escape the atomic blast and shock wave, to say nothing of the effects of the radioactive fallout inevitably soon to follow. Still, the exercise proved an interesting experience - and eventually led Richard Bowlby and myself to revisit those same plenum chambers, quite surreptitiously on our own, in later days after Boy Scout meetings, late into the night. Several times we roamed the entire school and its interstices, we did, even drove old Mr. Steckley's freight elevator up and down at the back of the building with irreverent fascination. We never took or destroyed anything; the adventure of being in these forbidden places at forbidden times was quite enough for us.

First Grade Endeavors

But back to our collective nostalgic walk down memory's corridors at Goodale. In First Grade, on the second floor, Chelsea-Park Drive corner, some of us had Miss Kirchner (later to become Mrs. MacDonald), but I had Miss Howell, a kindly older lady and I somehow recall Miss Bacon being there as well, perhaps as a roving literature teacher. Miss Bacon seemed to be an especially nice person who read us Aesop's Fables and some of the Greek myths, which were very cool, but she smelled a bit odd, but then again, that was B.C. (before Certs).

In First Grade we got started on simple sums and getting our alphabets in order, but I don't recall doing much reading from books yet. The pathway to books seemed to take the flashcard route. I remember those little word bytes written on manila cards, and moved around from slot to slot on a manila backing posted on an easel. (The schools were big into manila at the time: manila folders, manila cards, manila envelopes, manila report cards, etc. Someone on the School Board must have owned a hemp factory, or have loved that stock color, unusual to itself. It was some time before other more colorful paper products came to the fore. Maybe the Big Ten Notebook Company sent most of its dyestuffs to the War effort.)

Second Grade Efforts

Let's see, who's next? For me, Miss Randall, I believe. Short and a bit rotund, energetic and a bit domineering - kind of like my mother. More reading development, this time from Readers (I remember a story about bears) and of course arithmetic: sums and times tables. But what I remember most were the inkwells and those scratchy real ink pens. I remember, impishly, always threatening to dip the ends of Edith Kengel's beautiful blond waist-length braids, terminated by encircling ribbons, into those inkwells, but truly I never would have. She sat in front of me somewhere along the line, and as you can tell, I was enchanted by those braids. Besides, Edith was always a very nice person, eternally happy. - The inkwell threat was just a young boy's perverse way of trying to show attention I suppose, when I should have been practicing my letters on the Big Ten tablet ruled lines, with those scratchy pens.

But those steel pointed, scratchy pens had many uses. They did stick well in the floor when dropped from a height of about 4 feet, the unpleasant ink splotch, notwithstanding. Then there were those blotters, those nifty blotters we used. I still refer to them when teaching students now about chromatography (how black ink separates into bands of different colors as its composite pigments diffuse at different rates, depending on the molecular weights of their pigments). But my post-Beatles students only look at one other and snicker, saying under their breath, "Man, where did this fossil come from?" But as the Townsend time-wavefront principle aptly explains, only we of the same time-plane, are capable of understanding such things.

Soon the inkwells were to dry up however, to be replaced by those leaky ball point pens which were introduced after the war (along with bubblegum, Hershey bars, and other Peacetime items new to us). But vacant inkwells were good for other things, such as using them for resonating chambers under twanged bobby pins against a piece of paper; early physics experiments which drove our teachers crazy.

Now you could perhaps get away with such behavior in Second grade with Miss Miller - who seemed much more mellow than Mrs. Randall - but just try to pull something like this off at the end of the hall in Miss McDonald's room and you would wish that you never heard of resonance, or anything else of the sort. Your head would be resonating at the end of Miss McDonald's yardstick, it would.

Third Grade Miseries

Miss McDonald's reputation of being a consummate witch stood before her, and she largely lived up to it. I still have lumps on my head from that big turquoise ring of hers. I and a lot of other prepubescent, hyperkinetic boys have lasting scars from that woman. She would sneak up behind one of us (in the Jimmy Lucas - David Zumagala - Billy Casey disruptive triangle) and grab a tuft of hair and twist it, leaving a painful lump for days. That woman was evil I tell you. If she were to do things like that today she would be flushed out of the system in a heartbeat, if only as liability risk - sent back to parochial school, where reportedly she came from, and where student abuse was more tolerated (or so we were led to believe at the time).

Now don't give me the excuse that "Miss McDonald only did what was needed to maintain order" business-, and how "order and discipline has largely gone to the dogs ever since-, and that look what we have now"- story. I maintain that her discipline methods were sadistic and entirely unwarranted. I remember one afternoon just before dismissing us for Christmas recess, she gloatingly dragged out of her closet all of her past trophies: a plethora of cap guns, pea shooters, yoyo's, makeup kits, etc., which she had confiscated over the years from unwary former students, and showed us that now all these items were in her ever-lasting possession. How sick. It would have been much more constructive to our pre-adolescent development just to have reminded us that certain things were inappropriate for the classrooom setting and should not be brought to school. But with this now-I've-got-your-evil-toys pitch, there was something just too weird about that, something with a sinister side.

Freud would have a field day with McDonald's mind; but for us at the time this only bred resentment for her and contempt for the system in general. I still think that she must have been partially demented.

Parenthetically however, the lovely presence of Susanne Schmidt who sat in front of me during some of those trying times, did provide some solace, with her bebraced smile and perpetual cheerful disposition. Those girls of German descent with their pretty braids, the Heidi's in our midst. Now really, could the Hun and his sort be all that bad if they stemmed young ladies such as this? Only a hypothetical question for we were all Americans now, were we not, all components of a new social ragu being stirred into the great American melting pot where each nationality intentionally left many of its old ways behind, especially against the background of the raging belligerencies now in the lands of our forefathers.

Fourth Grade Memory Lapses - (Early Alzheimer's Here?)

Then there was Miss Langhagen, a kind of hyperthyroid energetic individual and Miss Ciocitti (who later became Mrs. Amatangelo?), both surely a relief after old Miss McDonald (not to be confused with the another Mrs. MacDonald, who taught First Grade). Miss Ciocitti, I have been recently reminded, taught a junior Social Science class, in a room across from the gymnasium, before being transferred to a home room station. Apparently I had her for home room and remember her as being a bit laid back, and I think that by now, ball point pens, pink rubber erasers (gum for art), monogrammed pencils, loose-leafs with dividers and wooden rulers and more colorful "tablets" had replaced Big Ten notebooks as the little scholars' tools of the day. Beyond that, my recollections are vague: I probably spent time chasing Jimmy Lucas on the playground during recess, and living for Special Classes. They were much more kinetic and it was just tough for me to sit through a three hour sedentary homeroom sessions, as well evidenced in my perceived lack of "Self Control." (Again, viz. Casey's Fall from Grace)

I could do a whole essay on The "Perceived Lack of Self Control in Young Children, Especially Male, by Victorian Schoolmarms, and Its Resultant Consequences on their Developing Sense of Self-Esteem," but I think that you already know its content. My own boys' experiences in open classroom settings (far less regimented) seemed much more productive and emotionally accommodating to normal developmental needs of children (especially male) in this age range. But we didn't need Summerhill to discover that did we? After all, there is this thing called common sense. However, it seems as though educational constructionists had their own mindset, clearly more directed at serving their own purposes than accommodating the emotional needs of the taxpayers' developing children. Stemming from its roots of origin in mid Victorian times, with its "spare the rod and spoil the child" mentality, the public education tradition certainly did have its abusive darkside - largely brought to light by Benjamin Spock's introduction of new attitudes on childrearing in the late '50s, regrettably slightly after our time - and whose attitudes are now, of course, blamed for much of the social decay that has occurred ever since. There seems to be no widely accepted mid ground in social history, where oscillations between extremes seem to be the rule.

Fifth Grade - (No Alzheimer's Here)

But sending such politico-social excursions to the background, now I'll warm the cockles of all our hearts with the reminiscences of MR. HUGHES, along with Winnie-the -Pooh, and Egor too. Now that man, has earned a privileged place in heaven. It seemed as if everyone loved Mr. Hughes. That man was so cool; besides knocking on his desk for when Pooh knocked at Tigger's door, his corrective remarks to his students were so positively conveyed. Even we, the scurrilous outcasts, were made to feel as if we had some smidgen of self-worth, and were motivated to at least try to do things right by that man. Fifth grade was very good year for most folks. My sister, three years older than I, still recites poetry learned in his class:

New shoes, new shoes, Red and pink and blue shoes,		Grandpa dropped his glasses in a pot of dye, And when he put them on again, he saw a purple sky.
What would your choose, if you had to buy? Pretty pointed-toe shoes, Let's have some to try.		Purple birds were flying up from a purple hill Little purple dragonflies were crawling up the wall
		And at the supper table he got crazy as a loon eating purple apple dumplings with a purple spoon.

Hughes was one cool dude, liked and admired by all. Many fond memories here, mostly emotional. Everyone just felt that they belonged - and there were no discipline problems. Doesn't this tell you something?

Sixth Grade - (Partial Alzheimer's Relapse Here)

Now my mind pulls a blank on this one. Apparently, there was a Miss Rini's Class for me, but I haven't a clue as to what went on there. Only embarrassingly meager memory of this was something of a modified the little war jingle:

had been rephrased to Rini is a sheeny ...., not much to take stock in, that and maybe more bad breath, is all I can remember of 6th Grade Homeroom. The action for me, I think, was taking place in Special Classes.

My early poetry musings, I believe, began in Mrs. Derrick's room, at the Dickerson-Longview corner of the building - and they were much less colorful. Everyone felt bad for Mrs. Derrick; she had a disabled husband - a bad back it was - from the war. Well, I'm not so sure about all of this, since I lived across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Derrick on Glenfield, and indeed Mr. Derrick didn't work, but then again he didn't seem to be much disabled either. Oh, he wore a back brace, but he was quite capable playing ball with the neighborhood boys and in other regards. I could never quite figure the whole thing out.

They lived upstairs, next door to a vacant lot, which had been planted as a Victory Garden a few years before. (Remember saving animal fat and stomping tin cans for democracy? And perhaps helping your parents fill in their food rationing books with coupons, during the war? A long time before S & H Green Stamps. But, we all had to participate had to beat back the Hun.)

Besides dealing with long division and square roots ( I never could master that goofy method she taught us to do square roots to this day), we also learned the "I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree ..." poem, and the "In Flanders' fields, the poppies grow, Row, on row, on row" poem, which I guess was all right, but wouldn't it have been cool if we had read some Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson or even E.A. Poe? Probably best to avoid anything passionate or sensual at Goodale. God knows that the sap was beginning to rise in us, but in point of fact, it didn't seem that any of these old school marms had experienced much passionate or sensual in their lives. It did seem like something of a sterile environment - Miss Vojtyshevsky, of course, withstanding; she clearly was cast from a different mold..

To prove the point (about the condition of our sap - not about Miss Vojtyshevsky's casting), it was in Miss Derrick's class that I received my first love letter (oh well, maybe it was just a note) from Donna Swiatlowski, marking a liaison, I'm afraid, which was all too short, so soon thereafter, I found myself walking Charlotte Sperry home to the little bungalow on the north side of Corbett, between Dickerson and Coplin (- with my Schwinn bicycle with its big "knee-action" spring suspension, and a pestering David Zumagala on the side). I was really quite awestruck by Charlotte. Donna had been forward, provocative and fickle, where Charlotte, on the other hand, was quiet, reserved, serious and demure. Somehow I remember a pink sweater and a pearl necklace, and sache. But my old mind falters on the specifics; details are unimportant anyway; the enchanted feelings still remain the same. (In another parenthetical note, Charlotte has recently alluded elsewhere, that we might have kissed on some occasion. Alas, I don't believe so, for THAT I would have never forgotten.) But I couldn't pursue the relationship; she was too good for me; I didn't measure up. That nice young lady with a rogue like me? Best that she wait for someone far more worthy. (At the same time Charlotte, there is this thing such as making up for lost time, you know.) And somewhere, I have recently confessed, there in the old trappings of George P. Goodale Elementary, somewhere partially hidden, on the underside of one of those school desks, with disabled inkwells, there resides a tastefully done scratched heart, with an arrow through it, so inscribed: B.C. + C.S., to immortalize the relationship that might have been. Ah Cupid, thou art a sporting knave!

Seventh Grade

With Love's Labors surely not totally Lost, but nonetheless Tempus Fugiting, the Class of '53 soon found itself in Miss Soucek's class (and speaking of tempus - remember those hexagonal-faced, oak, pendulum schoolroom clocks, that would tick-tock off our penance time, with heads down on our desks, for one infraction, or another. Penance remembrances aside, I love those clocks and someday hope to get my hands on an original one of those, one that I can wind one once a week like Mr. Steckley.)

Our class met Miss Soucek in the afternoon, just after she used to come back from lunch, a little bit sauced, but mellow it seems. A kid could get a bit inebriated just talking to her at her desk after this. Otherwise, I can't remember too much about this year. Social scene picking up, it seems. Sap still rising. We were starting to have some our first after school adolescent social events, i.e., parties! Parties with those experimental kissing games, it has been recently recalled. Any game thought worthy of a reason to kiss, was considered an interesting game.

So there, in Dayton Dailey's basement, during one of those notorious games, did I not get my first girl kiss. And it all came on so suddenly that I hadn't had time to worry about it in advance. There she was, some comely lass, with a blindfold on, sitting in a chair, in front of the laundry tub, in Punky's basement. For years I couldn't think of the game, but I have been recently reminded by others (who must have been there too - no memory lapses here), that it was SALT LAKE CITY. Again, any reason to legitimize a kiss. So the deal was that each guy was given the name of a city (you're Detroit; you're New York; you - Chicago, etc.) and the blindfolded girl had to guess who (i.e., what city) kissed her. So all the boys puckered up, and took turns, while she tried to guess who/where, each time. And then, the dirty deed came with SALT LAKE CITY! when she got to kiss a soppy washcloth saturated with table salt. My what a hoot that was. We must of been demented. But again, any excuse for a kiss. Then there was FLASHLIGHT, and other such games (in Betty Stickle's basement), and the time that Fred Lyijynen and Janice DuBeau disappeared for hours, to steam up a sauna in Peggy Lahtinin's basement. Our torrid pasts are not easily forgotten.

But let's leave something to the imagination here and get on with more serious stuff like MRS. POWERS.

And if that ain't serious, just what is? She was, after all, THE ARCHTYPICAL VICTORIAN SCHOOLMARM

All frivolity was soon quenched, at least within the perimeter of the school block, by this quintessential Victorian fossil, "... if I could, would, or should have done," present, - perfect, - subjunctive-mode, sentence-diagramming - Mrs. Powers, who of, course, drove a coming-and-going 1951 Studebaker car (much as I had a few years later).

"NOW WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE, MR. BLALOCK..."

It wasn't just the same old David Szumagala, Timothy Bauman, Bill Casey cast of no-goodnicks any more; formerly respectable people were also now targets of her righteous wrath. Open season on all but the creme de la creme of the Class of '53. Over the years I had paid my dues plenty so by now I was just trying to keep a low profile, steer a tight course. The lumps on my head from Miss McDonald had not fully subsided. But now, fortunately, we had a new cast of characters, with few of our lot excluded. I can remember old Powers beating Yanco Zajac up against the classroom wall with a yardstick - as he smirked. What courage; that drove her crazy. Nobody was going to enjoy her punishment. Later in the same day, she maimed someone else out in the hall. Could this now just be dismissed as the effects of PMS? Perhaps: Powers' Marm Syndrome, in this case. Not so?.

Wasn't Raymond DeRyke one of her favorite targets - or Tommy Biggs? Harry Blalock used to try conduct verbal discourse (i.e., argue) with her, take exception to some of her dogmatic assertions, now and then. She did not take well to exceptions to her logic. It was her way, or the highway, the high way here, meaning a blow up side the head with the yardstick. Mrs. Powers' logic always prevailed.

But for me the tide was turning and the new victims were taking up the slack. And of course, Powers was not into gender discrimination. For the first time girls began to receive equal parity. Nothing would drive old Powers quite so up the wall as a hint of leftover lipstick on a girl's lips or a blush of makeup on her cheeks, even from the night before. That would put her into a caniption fit. Even then, I used to feel so bad for these young ladies, biologically well into adolescence, an awkward time for us all - and here we were all still grouped socially with kindergarten kids, with a makeup taboo, hall passes to the bathroom required, single files between classes, permission necessary to get a drink -- give me a break! It's a wonder that any of us came out balanced after that.

But we struck back, did we not? The famous instance of when Powers' pen disappeared and she gave us all a chance to give it back, anonymously, I think on a handkerchief, as each of us visited the back closet, one by one. But when at the end of this extended exercise in contrition, the handkerchief too had disappeared, only to be replaced by a note saying "the phantom strikes again," this sent her ballistic -truly an indelible event, poetic in fact, to our developing concept of justice. Did we ever determine who did that ? Wasn't it rumored to be Raymond Monteleone? (We know for a fact that it was NOT Phyliss Kersten, Jean Greimel, or any of those folks that always seemed to do EVERYTHING right - or could it have been...? Were there double agents in our midst? A fascinating question.

Come on, who's got Powers' pen. You can 'fess up now. Will the real hero please stand up? God, everybody now wishes that they had done it.

Well, now we have a dozen confessors; a bar full of posttraumatic heroes you are. But I want you to know, that I have Mrs. Powers here with me right now, and I want each of you claimants to come forth and tell her personally that it was YOU that pulled the caper off. I am afraid that this you must do before we can register your name to fame.

Thought not, you jellied livered heroes! Starch kinda leaves your backbone at the thought of it, I bet.

Now, also was it not in Mrs. Powers' class that we also learned Esperanto, that universal language, soon to be used the world over? Used any Esperanto lately in your travels? Get you out of a tight spot in Senegal did it? Yeah, you and James Bond. But we had our aspirations.

And we did we did get our introduction to World Travel, or at least to America del Sur by flying down to Rio with Mrs. Powers, did we not? She was an interesting old gal in many ways, and it is of course she (notice, not her, for it's a predicate nominative here, you understand) that doused our brains with gratuitous grammar, all put forth in the Indicative, Subjunctive, Interrogative and Emphatic modes, and all fully sentence-diagrammed. A bit structured to be sure, but the old gal did lay a pretty good foundation for further (notice: not farther) language studies. Many more Powers' stories are out there I'm sure, and I'd like to solicit all of you for these.

Eighth Grade

And lastly, in terms of homerooms, did we not have busty Miss Yon? I'm not so sure much of this busty business wasn't more in the hormones of the beholders, for somehow I do not remember Miss Yon as being that sexy. Chesty maybe, but sexy? I do remember her as being quite capable and very upbeat, especially after Powers. But she, too, used to ridicule the girls if they wore a hint of makeup. I remember her going on about someone being "... all dressed up like a circus poster..." [direct quote] ; now wouldn't that build confidence in a young lady attempting to discover her nascent femininity, through exploratory fashion statements at that age? Or when someone must have written their name on their desk, Yon went on about "... fool's names and fool's faces, always found in public places..." It kind of makes you wonder about these repressed post-Victorians; again they would provide a field day for Freudian analysis.

Time Spent On The Bench

And well I do remember how I was one of the hooligans at Goodale School. I frequented the Principal's office on more than one occasion - and sat on the bench in the outer office for hours while waiting for my father or mother to come in and bail me out - once for having thrown a snowball whilst on school property, exuberantly, during the first snowfall of winter. I was in deep trouble now.

My father was an old Canadian farm boy, one of 8 children whose mother had died when he was 8, and with only a sixth grade education (probably equal in many respects to first year college nowadays). He worked long hours as a refrigerator repairman and usually got home late. But today he had to leave work early, and drive in from Northville, to meet with Miss Mahoney, who methodically went on to explain my transgressions to him, including the "trying to put someone's eye out" refrain.

My father had been around the world with the Marines on the USS California, which was later sunk on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor. Though he hadn't been in World War II as such, he had seen his share of atrocities in life in general, I'm sure. Each day during the War years he would read to me about happenings in the Pacific: the Philippines, Midway, Guadalcanal, Corregidor, Iwo Jima. He used to take me to the Telenews theater on Woodward to see the weekly newsreels. He was very concerned about these things; at the time they largely preoccupied his thinking. His brother had been a prisoner of war in Germany in WWI, and my grandfather had received the Canadian equivalent of a Purple Heart in the Royal Canadian cavalry. My uncle was, at the time, in the invasion forces of Japan. Dad, as many at the time, was as much consumed by the war effort, as he was with making a living. And besides that, in his own upbringing he and the rest of his fellow classmates had been the targets of Irish Catholic Priest schoolteachers in rural Canada, and he had not forgotten the abusive sting of the strap and he spoke of it. (So perhaps you could correctly say that much of my rebellious attitude toward officious authority derived rightfully from dear old Dad.)

So my father listened to all this from the Goodale Vice Principal, and then simply asked, "Miss Mahoney, do you really think that my son was trying to put someone's eye out with that snowball?" To which she sputtered, "... Well not exactly, Mr. Casey, but you see, if we allow this to happen ...[blather]... [blather]... [blather]." My dad persisted, "And Mrs. Mahoney, this is what you asked me to leave work early and drive 40 miles to tell me?" She continued to backpedal with more blather, about the danger of it all, really waging a moral crusade to save the eyes of the school's young innocent victims... [blather]... [blather]. It was embarrassing for me even at age 6 or 7; it was a brainless exercise in logic that only grade school principals unto themselves could understand.

This officious old battleax, who had probably never lived a day of her life in the real world, (first being a goody-two shoes during her own education, then sequestered in some teachers' college of limited intellectual demand, then carrying out the same program in one classroom after the next, until principalhood, and finally totally ensconced in banal bureaucracy) - and not even smart enough to recognize the ridiculousness of her vapid argument. And I thought to myself at the time, "And this is what our soldiers at the front were dying for, to save America for this?" God, I felt, let's put the Miss Mahoneys of the world in those trenches, if this is the only part of democracy we needed to defend.

As you can tell, I was really quite bitter about those self-righteous, petty, sheltered old women pushing us little kids around. Many of them were terribly ignorant about real life and yet so authoritative when it came to directing others how to live it - and I expect that it might be much the same way to this day, although not to the same extent. Couldn't we have taught them a thing or two about real life? A friend of mine calls these types the "petty tyrants" of the world, and I'm sure that they are found in almost every setting, some more than others. True leadership clearly works best by example not by authority, even tiny tots could perceive this. [See --->A Social Commentary Digression, if you haven't read it by now.]

Interestingly, on the way home my father didn't speak ill of the old battleax. He simply said, "Bill, if you're going to throw snowballs, best to do it away from school": code words for saying that not all battles are worth wasting time over; some things are better just to avoid. I learned a lot from that response. And that was the end of it. There were more important events of the day to talk about.

But one has to wonder about the effects of all this on us. Ingo Wiederholt, a German psychiatrist friend of mine, after spending several years in the States, claimed that he felt that this was an important American problem: the fact that generations of American youth had been primarily raised in home and school by rather sheltered, bossy women (- not to be confused with the German experience where everyone is pushed around by assertive self-righteous men).

But I will not take a position on this, lest I spark a trans-cultural contention, but nevertheless one can only help but wonder about the lasting effects of some of these experiences: the effects of Miss DeBach's actions on Martin Sears, for instance, as she put him under her desk, and continued to kick him. Remember that one? There was a dark side to some of her craziness, and crazy, she was. Obsessive-compulsive, half nuts. I needn't remind you of her endless harangues, her brother's golf course, .... yada, yada, yada. But we picked up on the old girl's condition, didn't we and almost drove her over the edge, - putting tacks on her seat, leaving the Bible open on her desk, screwing up her Dewey decimal sorting schemes. We fought back. We had to. That woman needed a shrink, big time, and we weren't prepared to minister to the mentally infirm so abusing us.

Special Classes

Now at the same time some of those Special Class teachers were pretty cool, as was the idea Special Classes itself, I was later to find out. It seems that few communities in the country had Special Classes at the elementary level at the time, or even later - not even in the wealthier school districts. Other districts apparently had roving Science or Art teachers, etc., but few had continuing complete half-day programs. We were fortunate this way it appears.

One of the coolest Special Classes for me was Mr. Ryckman's Science Class. Sure, the man that threw chalk at me, and other assorted folks, but only to get our attention on occasion, and with no sense of animosity. He was indeed cool, and mature; no wimp there. This guy did science for us, a resident Mr. Wizard. He changed my life. And he knew his stuff. I remember asking him a few tough questions and he handled them straight away. We did some collections: rock collection, weed collection, leaf collection, etc. And this guy could identify that stuff. I once found this unusual pretty red smooth stone in someone's driveway gravel, took it in to Ryckman. He said, "Lake Superior Agate." Twenty years later, when finishing a degree in geology, I see a similar rock again, labeled, you got it, "Cryptocrystalline Lake Superior Agate."

He used to talk to me about organic chemistry compounds, the extent of which I didn't hear again till third year college. The Conservatory, with plants, frogs, turtles and yellow and black striped garter snakes; experiments with electricity and magnetism; little chemical experiments. No end to how cool that experience was for me, but it was not to last for he soon transferred to another school, somewhere on VanDyke, they said, to become a Vice Principal. A loss of a great classroom teacher.

So after that, whom did we get? Mr.Wimpy Sutherland, that's who. Sutherland stayed away from real science as much as he could. He made us memorize the names of the bones of the body and do other assorted no-brainer things. Every time we got testy, he'd cry a little and go into that "And to think that I could have been a doctor routine." Even at age 8 and 9 we knew he was a jerk; if he really could have been a doctor and wanted to be one, why then was he wasting his time (and ours) at Goodale? We were all on to him. A mere sham of what a science teacher should be. But I must admit, he did have one redeeming feature - a gorgeous-looking wife, whom we happened to meet the night that we all took a bus to Cranbrook to peer through the telescope at the moon, on some nice October evening while in the 7th grade - same night that I got a chance (first and last I'm afraid) to kiss Julia Sylvester, in the shadows of the Science Museum - all in the true interest of science, of course.

Overall our Gym teachers were also pretty cool: Mr. Scuito and Miss Heavner for standards, a couple of others also rotated through. (Didn't four guys once carry Miss Weymeuller's little Crosley car from the street onto the sidewalk, or something like that?). The field sports, red rover, an occasional tough-of-war, outside; basketball, box hockey, lethal dodge ball, etc. inside. And physical fitness: sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, rope climb, high jump, etc. Poor old Harry Blalock announced that he "was flying like a bird" on the high jump, shortly before coming down with a flop and breaking his arm (wing?). Arm (wing) was in a cast for a while after that one. Kent Henze set a high jump record to last for ages.

In Gym class there was also dancing, the nemesis of all shy young persons: square and ballroom. I dreaded the embarrassment of it all; it was as bad as sports team selection day. No one ever wanted to choose me for their team (an outstanding athlete I was not), so each time, left to the last for all to see, was old Bill Casey and perhaps Steve DeMaggio, whose other talents however (including dance) easily excused him from generalized rejection. But I tried to take the wrap in step and I really didn't so much mind not being chosen till last for teams or dance partners, it was just the embarrassment of not being chosen, that was the worst of it. Oh well, it all builds character in the long run, they say -or some other nonsensical resultant virtue.

I could understand why no regular girl would ever want to be paired with the likes of me; that was easy to understand, given the reputation that I had apparently established. Again, I didn't have such a problem with that as I did with public display of it all, and I am sure that other shy persons felt the same way. After those experiences I must admit, having built character at length during these early years, then while in high school and thereafter, I would always make it a point to ask the wallflowers to dance, in a genuine spirit to make their day just a little brighter - so perhaps these early character building sessions from the Goodale gymnasium did have its positive effects.

Weren't our teachers sensitive to these social situations? Guess not. Also, I now hear how difficult it was for some, girls especially, to climb that thick rope, supposedly to the ceiling. Didn't these physical education majors know anything about differences in upper body strength between the sexes? Maybe more brawn than brain in some of these teachers, and one can only wonder at the content of their higher educations. But Ms. Heavner did do a cool itsy, bitsy spider routine when we were younger, did she not, and later showed us pictures of her Youth Hostel European bike tours, and that was cool. But there were apparently many sensitivity issues in Gym, which were certainly not recognized by these teachers.

And we did do First Aid, complete with triangle bandages, emergency splints, and all. (By the way, doctrine now has it forget all that pressure point stuff for arterial bleeding; current action is to apply direct pressure to the wound.) Also remember to properly differentiate heat exhaustion from sunstroke, etc., you walking medic you. Overall, Gym was tolerable experience for me, but largely a no-brainer.

Then there was senior Social Studies with Miss Swiss, another formidable tour de force, and not a no-brainer class. Ms. Swiss was clearly a demanding teacher, and didn't take much nonsense, but very fair, compassionate and well-organized. She led by example. I can still remember her reading that book, The Foundling, to the class, a story about an orphan child at Christmas time. I liked social studies: Marco Polo, far-away places, conquistadors, Incas, Aztecs, and so forth. Cool - very cool, except for the oral reports and the reading aloud in class. God, how I dreaded that. I would sweat drops of blood as my time for recitation neared; I would get physically ill on the day that I figured it would be my turn to read aloud, as the reading queue meandered up and down the rows. Anything to avoid that experience. Sometimes I would be absent a couple of days in a row, just to hedge my bets as to when the Angel of Recitation would alight on my shoulders.

But the Semester Oral Report could NOT be avoided; the Recitation Angel could easily outwait you on that one. Your slot was just rescheduled that's all, regardless of when you were originally scheduled. The report had to be delivered while sitting at the head of the room, facing the class. God, how I dreaded this, like a condemned man facing the jury. I tried to think of every possible excuse not to be able to do it. None worked. the dreaded day approached. The Recitation Angel had me in his/her crosshairs.

Fortunately, Miss Swiss assigned me something that was actually interesting: Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. I really got into it. But when the time came for the presentation, I tried to read my notes and couldn't speak (odd for a person who could never shut up at the back of the class). Swiss handled the situation beautifully. She just started asking me about Balboa; who he was; where he came from; how he traveled; what he found..., and she really got me going, and then for a while I forgot my embarrassment, and told the whole story: An unforgettable experience. And that was the first time, in a very long while, that I didn't feel awful about myself. Miss Swiss was a good egg in my book.

To this day I recall those experiences and when I have students do oral presentations now, I am very sensitive to their shynesses, and help them along in much the same way Swiss did me. Sometimes I even cite my Miss Swiss' experience to them. I learned a lot in that class. She was tough but very fair, and I greatly respected that; she wasn't petty and held no grudges. She taught us the rudiments of social justice, lessons to last a lifetime. She now sits up there somewhere with Mr. Hughes, I'm sure.

Now how about Music? We had a number of music teachers, I think, a Miss Guiden(?), in a room first next to the Office, but later we all remember that spunky Polish girl, right out of college, sent to deal with us in a room across from Ms. Swiss' room. Ms. Wojtyfhevski got us singing Poly-waddle-doodle all the day, did she not, as well as some of those old Americana songs: Erie Canal, Battle Hymn of the Republic; the Negro Spirituals, etc. Earlier we were all assigned some instrument (I always got the triangle), but later she would let Kent Henze play his cool jazz stuff, only to get a little rowing-across-the-floor, in return, on occasion, That really flipped her out. But I thought Wojtyfhevski was cool, and probably had repressed lecherous thoughts about her at the time. (Among the many things forgotten since those times, is how these teachers' names were spelled).

On one occasion Wojtyfhevski drove about six of us boys down to some football game at Briggs' Stadium. Man, what a wild experience. Drove her '49 ford like a hot rodder, handed out cigarettes to the crew, etc., really tried to relate to the guys. A bit of an odd duck, perhaps, in retrospect, but a welcome relief from the old tyrants.

What else? Hazel Thompson's Art Class to be sure. Miss Thompson was a very nice lady, actively an artist. And she had to take care of her mother, I remember. She always had that sign on a stake drawn on the upper corner of her blackboard with assignments lettered in. I had occasion to later work under her direction at Wayne State a few years later (along with Steve DeMaggio), as some sort of student assistant for media distribution for the College of Education where she was an Adjunct Professor. Just as nice as ever and still taking care of her mother. The practice of art, regrettably, was not my forte, but I like it a lot when others do it. So Art for me was only tolerable class, although I could see how it was a great joy for others, especially with Miss Thompson.

Now what's left, as we saunter around the first floor main hall to turn the corner on the Longview side? We've already discussed Miss DeBach's Library scene. And despite the oddities there I did read a number of memorable books in those classes, starting with the little kids' books behind her desk (Dr. Suess' 500 Hats, etc.), the Homer Price and Henry Higgins books, up through Robert Lewis Stevenson's adventures, etc., and then A Boy and a Battery, which got me started with experiments in electricity, and then The Radio Amateur's Handbook, the physics and math of which I could scarcely fathom -but interestingly, it was on those old oak shelves, over on the side where the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary lay eternally open atop its stand.

Now heading west on our Goodale tour, we go past the door leading downstairs to the Boiler Room (and we have side stories on that), past the backdoor of the Auditorium, then on to the front Auditorium doors, and next to a stairwell and the Manual Training room, all on the inside wall of the school, while the HomeMaking and the Kindergarten rooms were on the street side of the Longview hall.

Miss Brand and Miss Fisher held forth in Auditorium, and that proved for lasting experiences: Listening to the Skaters' Waltz on the old Victrola console which resided at the center front of the class, that coupled with some other "classical" music, which was really quite nice. I actually asked my parents to take me to the local Grinnell's Music Store to buy a Steven Foster album after one of those sessions. What a pushover I was; I still have the set of 78's. and will send you a tape of same if you have nostalgic cravings for Sixth grade musical remembrances.

	Contents Including, but Not Limited to:
	Camptown Races
	Mass's in De Cold, Cold Ground
	I Dream of Jeannie with the Dark Brown Hair
	My Old Kentucky Home, Old Black Joe
	Oh, Susanna, Old folks at Home, & Others
All with Andre Kotelanetz and his Flying Circus

And we heard lots of Tsychkowski: Peter and the Wolf, Nutcracker Suite, some Beethoven, a little Chopin, etc. Never any medieval stuff, no Renaissance music, no 20th Century stuff, no cross over stuff: jazz, big band, etc. It would have been nice if they had done a standard mini history of music thing for this might have been the only time most of us would have had such an exposure, aside from music woven into radio programs, the Lone Ranger with Rossini's William Tell Overture notwithstanding.

In Auditorium we also listened to pieces broadcast on early FM radio (WDTR, the Detroit Public Schools, still maintains the station, same dull programming, same weak signal.). And we were shown works of graphic art, were we not? But pretty pansy stuff (Gainsborough's Blue Boy, Winslow Homer, a little El Greco, some 19th Century living room wall stuff, Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell and the likes) but hardly any Degas, Renoir, Manet, Mondriaan, Picasso, Oriental art, sculpture or architecture. But maybe I'm wrong on some of this; maybe some Van Gogh and Picasso was included, but certainly no naked people, not even those bare breasted ladies triumphantly leading the forces of the French Revolution. Only naked people in that room were in the National Geographic Magazines, stored in the right hand bookcases, and those were pictures of native African/Polynesian people, and certainly not Jane Russells, or Marilyn Monroes budding American boys were hoping for. (But come to think of it, the pubescent lads of the Class of '53 did make up for such deprivation by purchasing girly magazines with pictures of comely ladies in almost see-through lace underwear, from beneath the counter at the store on the corner of Longview and Dickerson, and that's where we extended our art appreciation. (The boys of the Class of '53 had to wait another three years for the advent of the Playboy generation, an event which occurred while I was working at Daniel's Drug Store, corner of Glenfield and Chalmers when I was about 14. And thereafter, we made up for such earlier deprivation, did we not?) But again, I do digress; just latent remembrances of rising sap I suppose.

Now we did see movies in Auditorium, however, but again, no Citizen Cane, or Blue Angel, or even Fantasia or other classics. Can't remember a one that we did see at the time. Need some help here - (Quo Vadus, The Robe, African Queen, and some of those Cecil B. DeMille flicks were playing at the Harper Theater at the time - but nothing of the sort in the Goodale Auditorium.) I do remember the old 16mm film projector droning away behind the class (not in the projection room, as expected), with a few snags of the film loop, but I can't remember the content of the films. Guess that major production films weren't readily as available as they are today for public/school use. (Compare that to what kids can see on video today. Boggles the mind.) And we did have film strips too, with recorded narrations, usually didactic in nature, telling us about manners, etiquette - or near about the Seventh or Eighth grade, how to survive an Atomic Bomb blast, when fallout shelters were in vogue. And of course, the twice annual real-live theatrical productions with our own classmates as dramatis personnae, produced and directed by the auditorium teachers. Who can forget the Steve DeMaggio and Diane Fanale leads, the Easter Parade production, and others. You were all great. Applause then and now.

By careful avoidance of eye contact with the teachers and creative absences, one could avoid participation in almost all stage productions, save the Detroit 250 Year Celebration, in which everyone, by necessity, had to participate. I think that I wore a mustache and carried a rifle as one of the early French settlers in that historical piece.

And the Christmas Concerts, singing carols from those little books. That's where I first fell in love, with someone on stage, three years older, Sandra Minken, daughter of a judge who lived on Rosemary, three houses off Newport. I used to follow her home after school, just to dote on her loveliness. (I think that they now call that stalking.) This is all before I became amorously involved with real girls in our own classes: (Paula Swiatlowski., Charlotte Sperry., Julia Sylvester., Audrey Morris, Linda Stewart, and others, most of whom, never knew that I existed). Sandra Minken was the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen. (She did, in fact, go on to become a Homecoming Queen at MSU years later.) I had my sister deliver a Valentine to Sandra, when I was in grade four and she was in Grade 7. No doubt she is probably still wondering what unknown dork sent her the Valentine back then. Well, that's the story of my life: good intentions, bad execution, and routine rejection - but somebody's got to play the fool - perhaps the story of many of our lives. Probably better to remain unknown, than to be identified as the dork who did such and such. So much for Auditorium; many other interesting experiences there.

Now next, what about Homemaking? Our gender didn't have much exposure to the feminine arts of the day (cooking, ironing, sewing, and the like). Prior to our cigars-and-brandy-in-the-drawing-room days, (bleeping out our adolescent burlesque show experiences), manhood was to be developed for us in Manual Training: ToolTime with Mr. Crawford.

(Now, to be honest, I do recall one occasion when the boys did visit the Homemaking room for the day, for what purpose, I can't recall. I just remember there being a lot of surrounding tools of women's trade: stoves, irons, aprons, sewing machines and the like. Rumor had it that occasionally they baked chocolate chip cookies there, and an odor was occasionally put forth in the halls from those quarters to perpetrate this. But I don't recall any hard, soft or even gooey evidence to substantiate this claim. That, I think I would have remembered for sure, as well. (But now it comes to light that there were feminine concocted treats delivered from that room occasionally to the Safety Boys, presumably after their hard days' work in the rain. More evidence of discrimination against us non-Safety Boy slouches.)

Where to start with Manual Training? So many stories, so much history stemming therefrom. This could take volumes, but time does not avail.

People used to feel sorry for Mr. Crawford for his wife had died some years earlier, but Crawford was a stately tool man, in his own way. His gray shop smock complemented his graying locks, and a small lisp emitted probably from a partial plate. He was a good-natured sort, charged with the daunting task of trying to rein in a critical mass of hooligans (i.e., the schools' testosterone constituency). And he did it well, never asserting authority or whimpering how he could have gone to medical school, or haranguing us about his brother's golf course. We spent no time with heads down on our benches for time outs there. Again the virtues of strong leadership, by example.

The rest of Goodale school afforded book learning and that was fine, but in Manual Training ours was to be a greater mission, and there was a lot which had to be done to prepare for it. Just as with the estrogen constituency across the hall, we had serious work to do to prepare ourselves for adulthood. While they whiled away their hours learning how to feed our faces and mend our clothes, we were here to not only learn something to help us get a job (for most jobs in Detroit were technically related at the time), but further, we were here to prepare ourselves to be home repairmen as well, in order to keep our families safe and sound from the natural elements.

Carpentry was a major component of this plan. From early grades on, Crawford would explain the project and show us a completed example. Then we would go into the lumber (and paint) room, select an appropriate piece of stock, from pine, gumwood, plywood, or occasionally hardwoods, and then start the project. Later on, I think that working drawings were required before the hands-on stuff got started.

So then we would measure, ("finger gauging" was one of his techniques), mark, saw, drill, bore, counterbore, countersink, plane and chamfer.(God, how I love that word, chamfer [to bevel, coming from the Old French chanfreindre]. Crawford used it repeatedly, and I have never heard it used since. Other people might have beveled, but we did chamfer.) So we would do all this to a piece of wood, and then put it together with other pieces of wood, to fashion something of questionable use (for after all, how many trivets, knickknack shelves, and potholder racks do you need?), and then sand it, paint it, rub it with linseed oil, or shellac it - with several coats, in most instances.

One of the first of the items was a little three pegged piece which one moved different sized disks between the pegs, kind of a forerunner of a Toys-R-Us baby special. Next, I think there was a donkey pull toy on four wheels. I'm still not sure what kid would want such a thing. Obviously, I haven't been able to give mine away yet. Then there was the anchor lamp, all wired with a switched socket, one I still use of course. And an ornamental greyhound piece to hang on the wall. And the list goes on. (See Crawford's Inspired Constructions).

One thing that I can recollect making was a Mr. Bojangles guy, made out of quarter-inch pine, with jointed appendages. The deal was that, once completed, you could hold this guy by a stick attached to his back, over a horizontal piece of wood which you tapped, and the guy would dance with jointed arms and legs swinging. Kinda cool; don't know if I ever finished that project, but I can somehow remember cutting all the notches for the joints. I could really get into that woodworking stuff. I did finish cutting out the eight reindeer and Santa Claus sled, gluing it all up, painting the works and presenting it to my mother, who used it for Christmas and still has it. I loved working with my hands, fashioning things to fit just so, sanding things smooth, the smell of the wood, the solvents of the finishes. I often think that I should of been a cabinet maker.

However, not all was carpentry in Crawford's class. We also made some puzzles, out of wood and stiff wire. We also wired up of lamps and doorbells, and learned about series and parallel circuits, changed washers in faucets, threaded pipe, and so forth: all the skills necessary to physically maintain a homestead, plus a few projects on the side, both authorized, and unauthorized. Authorized side projects included brass or copper bracelets for our sweethearts, embossed with letters and fashioned to shape a delicate wrist using planishing hammers (another Crawford-specific word). I started to carve a letter opener out of walnut, but never finished. There were much better carvers in the class (Monteleone, Henze, Bell...) and I left this to the artisans. I did build a fine electric motor however, out of nails wound with magnet wire, and a few strips of metal for support and an all important metal strip brush to switch current off and on to the armature. Thing ran like a charm, Edison and Westinghouse would have been envious.

Other approved projects included Harry Blalock working on his stick model airplane with its .029 gasoline engine, and making model race cars, propelled by CO2 cartridges, which we raced down the hall, between classes. Tim Bauman's always seemed to win.

And the unauthorized projects? Blackjacks made of metal rods wound in friction tape, and an assortment of lethal knives and small swords, all turned out on the newly acquired war surplus drill press and ball bearing grinder. Fortunately, none of these items ever found their way into service I believe.

And there was mechanical drawing, which I found that kind of boring. T-squares, plastic triangles, scales, compasses, 4H pencils, and the rest. Orthographic projections, artificial horizons, vanishing points, and so forth. First part was okay, but when it came to inking the piece with India ink, where that drop of ink which you put between the points of your drafting pen with the eyedropper in the bottle, when it contacted your T-square, and ran underneath it, leaving a big Rorschach test right there on your final drawing, that I couldn't get past. Thank God now for CAD/CAM.

And then last, but certainly not least, was the tool room. What a fine place that was, and apparently, in large part, constructed by Crawford, himself. (Goodale was constructed in 1926, and from what my uncle told me who attended there soon after its opening, Mr. Crawford [and Miss DeBach] must have been on hand to lay the cornerstone.) If I ever get to Heaven (fat chance), I want a tool room just like Mr. Crawford's: A place for everything, and everything in its place. He took such pride in the tools; I remember that he sent saws out for sharpening once a year. There were crosscut saws, rip saws, miter saws, hacksaws, coping saws, not to be confused with the electric jigsaw. And there were short carpenter's planes, long carpenter's planes, block planes, and spokeshaves. (I only figured out where that tool got its name about ten years ago; these were used to shape spokes for wagon wheels for centuries.)

There were braces and bits, C-clamps, furniture clamps, corner vises, screw drivers of all sorts, and wrenches (box wrenches, open end wrenches, ratchet wrenches, monkey wrenches and Stilson wrenches [yes, Stilson wrenches- pipe wrenches to you]), of all sizes, each in their place. We, the rotating student tenders of the tool room, used to issue the tools to the other little craftsmen, over the lower half of a Dutch door (and throw carving knives into the wall so they would stick at a distance, during our idle time - which seemed to be a tool room tenders' tradition.) Green? Weren't the walls of the Tool Room painted green, or maybe gray?.

Oh well, I could go on forever about old George P. Goodale Elementary School, and about the folks that we all were in these early years of our formal education. The pea gravel on the playground on which we skinned our knees; the back wall on which we played handball and pitched pennies, the side trips we occasionally took, the after hour experiences we had. Scouting events would fill a volume in itself. Lunch Room experiences with separate lines for bringers and buyers and milk at first 2, and later 3 cents a pint. Free apples from the farm bank for a while.

Somehow the paths we took in sharing these formative experiences and the people who were with us along the way, together with our own internal meanderings, lead us to the selves that we are today, a truly amazing journey for us all.

Nostalgia seems to be good for the soul, and I invite others to come forward and tell/show us recollections of their 1950's Goodale related experiences to help reconstitute our collective faded engrams.

Your Goodale stories, pictures, comments and corrections can be easily included into this Goodale Alumni Website. Please send them to any of the organizing parties either by e-mail, snail-mail, or by conversation. At present, the organizing parties include: John Townsend, Kent Henze, Ray Monteleone, Betty Stickle Kordas, Ed Mason, Joan Keene Dailey, Steve DeMaggio, Charlotte Sperry, Emily Schimmelpfennig and Bill Casey - and yourself, if you wish to become active in the on-going maintenance of these Goodale remembrance efforts.