School Days

School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful barefoot beau
And you wrote on my slate
"I love you, so"
When we were a couple of kids

Nothing to do, Nellie Darling
Nothing to do you say
Let's take a trip on memory's ship
Back to the bygone days
Sail to the old village school house
Anchor outside the school door
Look in and see
There's you and there's me
A couple of kids once more

School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful barefoot beau
And you wrote on my slate
"I love you, so"
When we were a couple of kids

'Member the hill
Nellie Darling
And the oak tree
That grew on its brow
They've built forty storeys
Upon that old hill
And the oak's an old chestnut now
'Member the meadows
So green, dear
So fragrant with clover and maize
Into new city lots
And preferred business plots
They've cut them up
Since those days

School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days.
Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful barefoot beau
And you wrote on my slate
"I love you, so"
When we were a couple of kids

    Music by Gus Edwards
     Lyrics by Will D. Cobb, 1907

School Days

When I was but a little tot
T'was like a "flittermouse",
And really never gave much thought
About the old school house.

But on my last trip to my "Home"
I drove to old "Fohs Hall",
And through each room there, I did roam
With memories in them all.

My first-grade class was on the right
When entering through front doors,
My second-grade was full of light
With still the wooden floors.

The basement with it's dreary halls
Was where the third-grade went,
The paint was chipped on all the walls
In the air, a musty scent.

My fourth and fifth, on second floor
Was like most all the rest,
With plain, bare floors and splintered door
And old "ink-well" type desks.

The basement held the rest-rooms too
There's where the stories fly,
To get a "flush" the seats came down
And boy were they high!

There aren't too many schools like this
The teachers too, were rare,
And as I fondly reminisce
I yearn to be back there!

~ author ~
Donna Lilly Marcus

School Excuse Notes

These are excuse notes from parents
(with their original spelling) collected by
schools from all over the country:

My son is under a doctor's care and
should not take P.E. today. Please execute him.

Please excuse Lisa for being absent.
She was sick and I had her shot.

Dear School: Please excuse John being absent
on Jan. 28, 29,30, 31, 32, and also 33.

Please excuse Gloria from Jim today.
She is administrating.

Please excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days.
Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.

John has been absent because he had two teeth
taken out of his face.

Carlos was absent yesterday because he was
playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.

Megan could not come to school today because
she has been bothered by very close veins.

Please excuse Ray Friday from school.
He has very loose vowels.

Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday.
He had (diahre) (dyrea) (direathe) the runs.
[words in ()'s were crossed out.]

Please excuse Burma, she has been sick
and under the doctor.

Irving was absent yesterday
because he missed his bust.

Please excuse Jimmy for being.
It was his father's fault.

My daughter was absent yesterday because
she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.

Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday.
He had a cold and could not breed well.

Please excuse little Jimmy for not being
in school yesterday. His father is gone and I
could not get him ready because I was in bed with
the doctor.

Notes: My brother, Bill, and I attended 1st and 2nd
grades in Midwest City, Oklahoma while Dad was
was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base during WWII.

The grade schools are more advanced because children
usually did not go to school past 8th grade unless
they planned to go to college.

I had trouble with school and had to repeat 2nd grade.
I would often ask my mother to let me stay home.
The school had a rule that you must bring an excuse
from your parents if you were absent the day(s) before
returning. Mother said she wouldn't lie for me.
So, I asked her to just write "Please excuse Scott."
This worked for several months until the teacher
demanded a reason. I quit being absent because of fear.
Mother took me out of school and had me repeat 2nd grade.

We moved to Gunter Air Force Base outside Montgomery, Alabama
Dad had to go to an advanced Officers Training school after
he had outfitted the two B36s that ended the war with Japan.
When Dad completed War College, we moved to New York.
Bill and I enjoyed New Hempsted, New York for awhile
while Dad was stationed at Billy Mitchell Air Force Base.
Rather than tell you about our view of New York,
I give you the following from another person's viewpoint.

In the '40s, comics were big. The boys on the block bought Captain Marvel and Superman. The girls bought Pep comics to catch up with Archie and Friends - Blonde Betty and Veronica and her annoying friend, Reggie.

But I only loved Mary Marvel, alias Mary (Batson) Bromfield, twin sister of Captain Marvel, alias Billy Batson.  When Mary arrived on the scene in 1942 in Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Fawcett Publications, she was the closest thing to a heroine the comics offered little girls of my generation, and to top it all off, she could fly at supersonic speeds. To give you the condensed version, it seems that Mary's nurse, Sarah Primm, switched Mary for a dead baby of the Bromfields, another family who employed Nurse Primm. Primm gave Mary's twin brother Billy half of a locket and the other half, of course, belonged to Mary, who had no idea she was switched at birth. Like all good fairy tales, Billy and Mary found each other through the locket.  Meanwhile there was the Egyptian wizard Shazam who originally gave Billy his powers and the magic word "Shazam" that turned him into Captain Marvel. Mary yelled "Shazam" during a particularly harrowing experience once and it turned her into Mary Marvel. The wizard actually said something like, "although she is a girl" the magic word worked for Mary because there are female counterparts to the gods and demigods that gave Billy his powers. Mary seemed happy to be "allowed" to do what the boys did. But then, it was 1942.

When I was in JHS 196, I liked to stop at the playground after school to play handball with a pink rubber Spalding. It was smaller than a tennis ball, and hairless.   Later I graduated to paddleball played with a solid wooden paddle. Still later, the wooden paddles had holes in them. Finally the racquet evolved to look like a little tennis racquet.  I continued playing as the game changed and the racquets changed and I changed. Out of this beginning grew my life-long love affair with racquetball, which has never ended.

Yesterday (June, 2004) Gordon and I were in Bed, Bath and Beyond in Gainesville, Florida, and near the cash register I was surprised to see a large display of Spalding balls! I bought one for nostalgia's  sake. It says "High-Bounce Ball" under the name Spalding. The only difference I can see is that now there is a bar code on the back! Sign of the times.
 

School field trips took us Brooklyn kids to extraordinary places we took for granted. Places like the Statue of Liberty. How exciting it was to take the ferry from Battery Park over to Bedloe's Island (now called Liberty Island) to see Lady Liberty.

When I read the immortal words below which are carved into the statue's pedestal, I try to imagine what it must have been like for all four of my Italian grandparents to first see "Liberty Enlightening the World" (as the statue is officially entitled). Their ships left Italy from the Port of Naples  in the 1890s and glided into New York Harbor after weeks at sea to be greeted by Lady Liberty.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,
yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

by Emma Lazarus

The inside walls of the Statue were covered with lipstick graffiti in 1944. Somehow I doubt that it is now, but I have never been back. We weren't allowed in the crown when I went with my classmates because they told is it had something to do with security. It was during the war--WW II, "the BIG one," as Archie Bunker used to say on the classic TV show, All In the Family.

My fascination with ancient  Egypt was born at the Brooklyn Museum of Art the very first time I laid eyes on the Egyptian mummies. It was nurtured at the American Museum of Natural History, my favorite of favorite museums as a child. I always felt my children missed out on so much culture growing up in north central Florida in the fifties and sixties before there were any real museums here. With population growth, that has changed.

One of our favorite treats was a field trip to the Hayden Planetarium. A lot of field trips were outdoors. I guess they thought city kids needed to see parks and gardens. The teachers took us to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (and taught us not to call it Gardens please, as there was no "s" on  the end), Prospect Park and Central Park  We visited the Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park, the Fulton Fish Market at Beekman and South Streets, Chinatown in Manhattan and, of course, the Empire State Building. Life was rich. We had no idea how rich.

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