May 28, 2008

• San Jose, CA 1949-’50, Kindergarten

  I thought I was ready to leave my youth behind and take up my story where I left off in the ‘seventies, but that’s not where the memory strays these days.

  A night or two ago, between putting out the light and falling asleep, I had a vivid mental image of an incident or series of similar incidents in kindergarten.  I know I have written a bit about the beginning of school, probably in one of those discontinuous entries I produced after I’d gotten my first scanner, as I went through the tins of old photos.  This morning, I didn’t find any entries mentioning Mrs. Mendelowitz or kindergarten at Jefferson Elementary School, so this one might cover some things already said.

  The school was old, and had been expanded by at least one addition since it was originally built.  The older building was a single story, but the number of steps up to the entrance suggested a basement, probably where the furnace and boiler were, for the place had steam heat, the first radiators I’d ever seen or heard in my young life.  The towering height of the building also suggested an attic, which was probably used for storage.  Only the one floor was used by students, and only the kindergarten and first grade classes were in that building, along with administrative offices.

  There were worn wooden floors in our classroom, and little wooden chairs, eight to each low table.  One wall perpendicular to the windows held old black slate blackboards.  At the end of the room opposite that wall, was our “art room,” an alcove with child sized easels holding pads of newsprint.  The smell of tempera paint from that area permeated the entire building.  We mixed powdered colors from big jars with water for painting with brushes, and with boiled flour and water paste for finger painting.

  Across a central courtyard, a two story addition with lower-ceilinged classrooms and new green “blackboards” sprawled back from the street, with our taller old building on the corner.  The ceiling in our classroom was high, over twice the height of our teacher, and tall windows rose from about chin height to a kindergartener, almost to the ceiling.  Every afternoon following lunch recess, we were expected to take a nap.  To create an ambiance more conducive to napping, Mrs. Mendelowitz would draw the blinds.

  They were old dark green roller blinds, with cracks and pinholes that let in light in interesting patterns that I used to scan from slitted eyes with my head on the desk, doing my best impression of sleep.  To pull them down, Mrs, Mendelowitz had to use a long pole with a hook on the end to snag a loop of string on each blind and pull it far enough so that she could reach it to draw it the rest of the way down.

  At the end of nap time, Mrs. Mendelowitz would give each blind a tug to disengage the ratchet restraining the spring, and the blinds would roll up to within a foot or two of the top, where they formed an uneven line across the tops of the windows.  Once in a while, a blind would retract too far, wrap itself completely around its roller, leaving no loop of string for the teacher to hook and pull it down.  This was a double treat for the class.  First was the zip, whoosh, flap, flap, flap of the blind’s mad flight, which was always greeted with laughter, and later came the janitor with his tall stepladder to retrieve the tail of the blind for the teacher, providing amusement and distraction for the class.

  

  • 3:10 pm
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