Saturday, April 22, 2006
Thank you, Dave,
It was so good to hear from Dave Ebbett yesterday. He commented on the posting "His Story or Mine" from Thursday. His dad and uncle played major roles in building the Schweitzer Road, and he participated in the process back in 1963.
Dave and I go back to first grade at Lincoln School, along with Lesle Oliver, Kathleen Brackney, Laura Delamarter, Smokey Chubb, Vance Ekwortzell, Larry Copley, Harmon Cantrell, Regina Hansen and several others. We received our first six years of education in that classic red brick school house across from the mill, which was Balch Lumber Co. at the time. We've all done okay for ourselves.
Dave's mother Marian, and my mother took turns with a few other parents running the school PTA with cooperation from the principal Marvel Ekholm and her teaching staff. Let's see: first grade Mabel Kinney. In the introduction to my upcoming book about teaching, I've written about her and her razor-sharp red fingernails which had a way, with their well-honed pinching ability, of making us behave.
In second grade, Mrs. Betty Lunn, who must have been 110, kept us in line. She also enhanced my desire to have better penmanship by giving me U's for not curving my S's enough. I learned after that first set of U's on my report card to give every S a better tail.
And speaking of S's, that's all Miss Altha Young ever gave anyone, no matter how hard or how little you worked in her class. As I recall, that average grade for everything kinda fit her average unchanging expression. I can't really remember any good stories on Miss Young because everything ran along a straight line, never wavering any direction.
By fourth grade, we were thrilled to have Mrs. Sutliff who actually smiled and talked to us like we were human beings. I don't know if it was the teacher training or if we just drew the wrong lots for our first three teachers, but Mrs. Sutliff seemed to me like a breath of fresh air. Except for the day she caught me just after lunch on my hands and knees at the front of my row instead of at the back of my row in my seat where I belonged.
I guess I just hadn't said it all during noonhour and some important factoid needed sharing. I think I was in mid-sentence when I felt a swat on my rump, turned around and spotted Mrs. Sutliff, who with a stern glare, directed me back to my seat. Otherwise, she was a pretty nice lady.
In fifth grade, we had Mrs. Mabel Beck. I thought she was firm but sweet. She had kind brown eyes that watched over us through spectacles, just like all the other teachers. In fact, I don't think I ever saw a teacher without glasses until Mrs. Dona Meehan, the district choir teacher who'd just moved to Sandpoint from Minnesota, came and stood in the doorway between fifth and sixth grade classrooms to sing "Bless This House."
It was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard coming out of another human's mouth at the time. I later had Mrs. Meehan for choir, and try as she might, she could never get much more than a monotonous squawk out of my voicebox.
Besides Mrs. Meehan's lovely melody, my other stand-out fifth-grade memory came when Mrs. Beck lured each of us to the front of the room and made us stand on the scales. I was the first kid in our class to break 100 pounds. Quite a distinction! I don't know when Dave ever caught up with me, and more than likely, he may never have kept up with me in the weight department, even though he passed me by in height.
Sixth grade, things changed. We had three teachers that year and a MAN. Mrs. Ekholm, the principal, spent a lot of time with us. Later, we doubled between Mr. Scheibe and Mrs. Fredstrom, whose daughter Karen had started out with us. Sadly, later in high school, she was killed in a car wreck. But during the sixth grade, we all enjoyed the fact that we were the big shots and that we'd soon be moving on to a different world, downtown at the junior high.
Our Lincoln School gang was closeknit, so any time one of my classmates pops up out of the blue, it's pretty special to me. Thanks, Dave, for the memories of Schweitzer and for turning on my Lincoln School nostalgia switch. We were a good lot, even if we were from Stinkin' Lincoln.
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