LoLoma lementary School 1958-60

Room 116

It was a huge old building with the highest ceilings I had ever seen,

and the hallway looked like it was at least a mile long.

Right in the middle was the principals office where we went to register.

I sat and gazed around the cold painted wood-paneled walls and wooden chairs.

There was nothing pretty in this room, but compared to the school I had just

left in Chandler, at least it was a building.

All the school rooms in my old school had been converted army barracks

from Luke air force base or somewhere from the second world war.


When Daddy left me there, I was taken down the hall to the left to room 116.

The teacher was a man! "I'm only in fourth grade, how can my teacher be a man?"

Up until that minute I had only seen men teachers from a distance

and from what my sister told me, I didn't want one.

"Mr. Wilson, this is Lynda Jacobs," the principal introduced me.

Mr. Wilson smiled and immediately I knew I would like him.

He showed me to an empty desk, and said he would get my books together

at recess time. The class was in the middle of an arithmetic lesson,

and the blackboard was covered in student writing of addition facts.

"Two place numbers. I can do that." I thought confidently.

I looked around at the faces in the room. Most were turned to me instead

of the teacher. I wondered if they had never seen a new kid before.


I checked the ends of my french braids to be sure the ribbon was still there

as Mama had put it this morning, smoothed my blue skirt and tried

to look interested in the arithmetic, but all I could think about was

my last teacher making such a big deal of spelling.

She saw me mouthing the words, "A rat in Thom's house might eat Thom's ice cream,"

and called me to the front of the room.

She told the class that it was very bad to have to rely on

crutches to spell things because sometimes we might not be able to use the crutch.

Then she told me to spell arithmetic. I stood petrified in front of the class,

near tears. I tried to do it in my head, "A rat in", then out loud,

"a-r-i" And again in my head, "a rat in Thom's house" then out loud

to the teacher "t-h" But she could see my lips moving and told the class again

how terrible it was to use crutches.

I sat down and tried to fight back the tears.

I was more than embarrassed. I was angry. No one would look at me.

Everyone in that classroom had been embarrassed.

Mr. Wilson didn't look like the kind of guy that would embarrass me

in front of everyone like that. I liked the way he talked to each student

as he helped them work the addition problem.

He talked kindly and carefully guided them, even helping them to move their

hand over the numbers if they needed it. Going to the board didn't seem so

much like a punishment as it had in Chandler.


When the class went out to recess, Kathy was asked to be my friend and

show me around. She showed me the bathroom, which I really needed by then,

and then we went out to the swings. I loved to swing, and when it was my turn,

I pumped myself as high as I could, then bailed out onto the grass.

The teacher on duty came over and scolded me for breaking the rules about

jumping out of the swing. She said she was going to report me to the principal

and I would be in trouble. I really did not want to go back into that principal's

cold silent office. Mr. Wilson walked up and put his arm on my shoulder and told

the duty teacher he would take care of it. He smiled at me, and then said with a

chuckle in his voice, "don't bail out of the swings," and turned me to

walk with him toward the room. "These will be your books for the year.

Keep them clean and don't make marks in them.

Some of the students can help you put these paper covers on them

during the rest of the day.


There was a history, arithmetic book and science book.

He said we would stay in his room for history, science and arithmetic,

but for reading and writing we would go to different rooms.

"How will I know where to go?"


"I'm going to give you a little reading test now and then we will decide."

He had me read a paragraph out of a test booklet and answer the questions,

then said I would be going to Mrs. Nelson's room. Where do the other kids
go?

"Some will go with you to Mrs. Nelson, and the others go to two different rooms."


It didn't take long to figure out that I was in the highest reading group,

because I had always been in the highest group.

They always tried to give them names like red birds or sky halks,

I guess so we wouldn't know we could read good, but everyone always knew which

group was which. When we talked about the classs we would either say,'I'm in

Mrs. Nelsons class for reading, or I'm in the high reading group, where do you go?"

Not because we were bragging, just because it was a matter of fact.


The first day in Mrs. Nelsons reading group she decided to play a little game with

the class. I liked games so it seemed like a fun thing to do.

But no one told me the rules, they just started playing.

"I'm going on a trip and I'm going to take, uh, lettuce."

"OK you can come." "I"m going on a trip and I'm going to take cheese."

"OK, you can come." When It came my turn I said,

"I'm going on a trip and I'm going to take candy." "No, you can't come."

I was surprised because so far everyone else got to go on the trip but me.

They were all naming foods, maybe I shouldn't have said candy.

I would try a good healthy food next turn. They continued around the room until

most of the students had permission to go on the trip but me.

After three turns, and plenty of giggles, I was nearly in tears.

Had I known the names of the kids in the class it might have been

easy to figure out that the item had to start with the same letter as my first name,

but I didn't know any names.

It was my first day, and even though everyone had stood up and said their name,

I didn't remember even one.


I never liked to go to reading class after that.

It just felt too bad, but I liked being in room 116 with Mr. Wilson.

We made a big map with salt clay outlining the state of Arizona

and at Valentine's Day; we made pretty envelopes to put Valentine cards in.

Mama bought a box of Micky and Mini mouse valentines that said cute things

like, "Be mine, Valentine." and "Can't live without your love."

We were supposed to sign them on the back and put the name of every student

in the class, one on each card. I had been there six weeks,

but I could only remember about l0 names.

Suzanne Littlepaige came over to do hers at the same time.

She brought her cards with her. Suzanne had been a new student two weeks after me,

so I had tried to be friendly to her and help her.

She was in the high reading group too so we were together all day long.

She sat there and rattled off every kid in the class going up and down the rows.

Mama was so impressed.

Suzanne said, "well I just remember them by where they sit."

and Mama said that was really good. I felt really stupid.



We wrote the names and in the morning we put the valentines in the envelopes.

The last hour of the day some of the mothers brought in sugar cookies decorated

with pink icing and little candies and kool aide. We opened our envelopes and

read all the little valentine cards. Some people gave candy.

A couple of kids wrote the student's names on the back of the card

and not their name, so we didn't know who the card was from,

but most the kids just giggled and said they knew.

Suzanne got a special card from Kyle, not just one from a box and she looked

at him and smiled.

Suzanne played the piano really well.

I had taken lessons in Chandler but never got where it sounded very good.

I had to practice a lot just to recognize a song.

What I wanted to play was a bass fiddle in the orchestra.

When I went to talk to the orchestra teacher, he asked if I knew music.

I told him I had taken piano lessons for two years.

He asked if I wanted to play piano for the beginning orchestra.

I told him what I really wanted to play was the big fiddle,

but he handed me piano music and told me to practice it.

I couldn't play it when it was time, and he got mad and asked

what I had done during the two years of lessons.

I didn't go back to orchestra class.


Just after Easter Sam moved in from Nebraska.

Sam Giebelhause. He was small and quiet, but he was smart.

He said he had athsma. And everything we did he told us,

“back in Nebraska we did it this way.”

He was in our reading group and the three of us became friends.

After all when you're the new kid you know how it feels.

We played together at recess and walked home from school in the afternoons.

He lived about a block away.

We followed the open irrigation ditch own Osborne road to

Mediterranean Avenue, where we went our three separate directions home.

A few weeks after Christmas vacation Donald moved into our class. He was tall

and skinny and wanted to make friends but didn’t know how to go about it.

He poked at me and took my things, and said mean things to me.

I didn’t understand male psychology at that young age so I decked him at recess.

I shoved him down and hit him in the face.

Everyone was rooting for me so I kept hitting him.

He was crying and had a nose bleed, and the teachers broke it up and

took him to the nurse and me to the principal.

They called my parents and my dad came to the school.

I heard him laughing in the principal’s office, and suddenly the door opened

and he walked out with the principal behind him.

After that everytime anyone disagreed with me someone would say,

“watch out she’ll beat you up.” I thought they had all been impressed with me

fighting him, but now they were teasing me about it.

Even my dad and brothers teased me about it.

I thought they wouldn't ever stop.

The year went really fast from there on.

The May Day music program was held outside and there were lots of flowers.

The fifth graders got to dance the Maypole dance every year for

the last fifty or so years that the music teacher had taught there.

Each year every class did exactly the same program as the

class did the year before, both for Christmas and for the spring program.

I hoped we would get to do that when we were older.

Everyone brought Iris flowers and Roses from their yards to decorate and

most the parents came to clap and tell us how wonderful we sang.

I wished we had flowers to bring, but we only had cedar bushes and cacti

in our yard. By May first it was hot outside so the program was held

early in the morning. Even at 9:00 it was about 95 degrees.

Just near the school was an old set of asbestos sided apartment buildings.

They were being torn down.

Sam decided it would make great building materialfor a club house in his back yard.

Everyday after school we took his wagon and hauled a

load of lumber or asbestos siding.

We hammered and hauled for over two weeks until

we had a little shed like club house.

Mother made us some seat covers by cutting circles the size

of our five gallon paint cans, then sewing a skirt onto the circle.

With a piece of padding underneath they made wonderful seats.

All through the last weeks of school we built our club house, painted it,

furnished it and finally by the time school ended it was perfect.

We sat down for our first meeting and had absolutely nothing to talk about.

What was our club about. What would we do?

Building the clubhouse had been the fun part,

but there was nothing left.

So naturally, we began to argue and fight over things.

The fight ended with me calling his mother a bleached blond,

because that was what I had heard Daddy saying about one of the ladies

in the apartments.

The next day Sam handed me a drawing of a little worm that said, “your mother.”

I told my mom about it through tears, and Sam and I didn’t play together

during the summer time.


I spent the summer in the swimming pool of our apartments and on

Tuesday mornings I went to primary.

My sister was in the next older class and they let us come into

their class to meet our “big sisters” and learn about homebuilders.

I had a bottom of a bleach bottle with a pull string bag around it

that we made to put our sewing supplies in.

When I learned that Marie was not to be my big sister,

I bonked her on the head with it. The teacher scolded me for being irreverent.

I learned to embroider. We each embroidered a cross stitch sampler

that said, "Greet the day with a song, Make others happy, serve gladly."

That was the Homebuilder motto, one line for each year.

I finished it on July fourth 1958.

I could have finished it a few days before but I wanted to stitch on “July 4"

so I held off the last few stitches.

Mother starched and ironed it and put in a frame.

When I went into the middle Homebuilder class I was a Bluebird.

I learned to crochet in my bluebird Homebuilder class.

I carried my crochet thread and needle in my same bleach bottle.

I loved crocheting more than embroidering.

I made doily after doily with the purple variegated thread Mom had bought for me.

I gave everyone doilies for presents.

Marie and I spent the Saturdays during the cooler winter

weather riding our bikes and exploring the town.

We rode to an area near down town, and found a vacant area near the canal.

There we named a tree that grew sideways, Monkey Skull Tree for

the similarly shaped knot hole.

We ate picnic lunches of bologna sandwiches or Vienna sausages and crackers.

When the weather warmed up we walked bare footed in the irrigation ditch

that ran along Osborne road.

There were forests of Olieander bushes that had never been cut.

It was like a jungle with great Cotton Wood trees rising out of the jungle.

We played in the jungle with our imaginations.

One limb was thick enough to ride straddling it like a horse and

bounce up and down over the ditch.

We climbed up the Cottonwoods and found comfortable branches to nest in.

One day we decided to fool our friend, and we put three chicken eggs

in a nest we found in the tree. When we showed it to our friend,

she just said, “those are kitchen eggs!” and we were dissappointed.


We only lived in the house on Mediterrainian a few months,

then moved into the apartments which were further away from the school,

so my parents could be close to manage them.

We were grateful to have each other because other than our school friends

that lived a few blocks away, once we moved into the apartments

we didn’t have a lot of contact with friends. Scottsdale Ward at the time

ran "from Thomas Road north". It didn’t even say where it ended,

we could only assume Payson? The nearest girl my age lived across the canal

and with no bridge, it was several miles to go around by Indian school road.

Two others, Marilyn and Edna lived way out north in the Country Club

section of town.


School started again after Labor Day. The old school looked just the same.

The old temporary barracks buildings that had been put there before I was born,

still lined the side of the playground along street in front of the school.

The Bermuda grass was flooded once every two weeks to keep it growing

and the cracked basket ball courts supported the rusty backboards and baskets.

We were in fifth grade now, but still in room 116.

I was glad because I liked that room. It had a sunny eastern wall of windows that

looked out on the street in front of the school, and I could watch the cars go by.


Scottsdale, in the fifties was a little Western town in the desert northeast

of Phoenix. It was completely surrounded by empty desert.

Many of the streets were still dirt, or just roughly paved and the open irrigation

ditches and canals lined the streets. When the growth spurt came,

construction was everywhere we looked. Apartments sprang up around ours.

By the end of our second year there, nearly every empty lot in our area

had been built on. Eight unit apartments lined the streets.

And there were stop signs at every corner.

Some of the adults began calling it Stopsdale.


When Daddy had first bought the Hopi apartments on Hopi Way there

were just a few others in the area. When we took over it was more like

an economy hotel. We furnished coral colored towels and linens,

but people stayed a week or two and didn't get maid service.

Some people started returning every year and staying all winter.

We called them snow birds, because they were flying away from winter

weather to Scottsdale. They would sit out by the pool and drink sun tea

or stand around the shuffle board.

We learned how to wax the shuffle board and how to play the game

when the tenants weren’t using it.


My family lived right in one of the apartments so we saw

a lot of people come and go. Not very many had kids, of course,

because they were mostly retired people that could leave their homes

during the coldest part of winter to take a vacation in the sun.


Daddy had some post cards and paper pool slippers printed to advertise.

"Hopi likey, Hopi stay, Hopi you like the Hopi Way."

I didn't understand why Mama was embarrassed.

Mama did all the maid work and Daddy did the pool maintenance and repair.

My older brothers mowed the lawn and helped with the pool.

I thought by having a swimming pool I would have more friends,

but it turned out everyone I wanted to be friends with had a swimming pool

at their own apartments too.


Our fifth grade teacher was Mr. Wallace.

There were two new men teachers named Mr. Sassi. and Mr. Head.

Mrs. Ax was back next door. Daddy liked to play with words and names,

and he made up a sentence about the teachers at LoLoma Elementary School.

"Don't get Sassi with me, Wallace, or I'll Ax your Head off."


We had a new principal, too. Mr. Flick.

I won't even tell you the jokes about that name.

I didn't understand them, anyway.

Mr. Flick decided that we should plant palm trees along the street.

The school bought about two dozen palm trees, little ones about two feet tall.

Each classroom got to plant a palm tree in a hole that some workers dug for it.

But first we had an assembly. Mr. Flick said that the palm trees would grow tall

through the years as we would, and when we were parents we could come back to

Scottsdale and point with pride to a tree we planted.

We all groaned and rolled our eyeballs.



I decided I wanted to play in the band.

We had a new band and orchestra teacher, so I thought, why not?

My cousin said to choose clarinet. I had no idea what a clarinet was,

but Daddy decided to let me rent one to try it before buying one, so when we went

to the music store I asked for a clarinet.

The clerk asked me what kind and I stood there embarrassed.

He pulled one out. It was beautiful.

All black with silver keys and buttons going every way.

The mouthpiece had a silver bracket on it to hold the paper thin reeds,

and when I put all the pieces together it was long and slender and beautiful.

I loved my clarinet. Every time I took it apart I carefully put cork grease

in all the right places and ran the chamois through it twice to

be sure it was clean. The store provided four lessons and

then I learned to play it in the school band.

My sister played her clarinet too, so we got to be together in the school band.

She was in sixth grade that year. She was in Mr. Sassi’s class,

and I was so glad I was still in fifth grade.

Everything there was to love about Mr. Wallace, Mr. Sassi lacked according

to the stories Marie told me walking home from school.

Of course she never got in trouble because she knew how to keep her mouth shut

and how to do multiplication tables really fast for the speed tests

they had about every day.


Sam and I were still friends in fifth grade, and in the same class with Suzanne,

the piano player. She knew how to behave too, so she never got in trouble.

Not only that but she always got to do the special things for Mr. Wallace because

she was always finished with her work and always behaved nicely.

She only was out of class to play the piano for the advanced band.

I think I was still mad about the piano thing from last year,

or maybe I was just plain jealous of her. It started out kind of a joke,

Sam and I put her inside the monkey bar dome and wouldn’t let her escape.

We just kind of pushed her head down to push her under the bar,

and then blocked her way out. The bell rang for us to go in before we released

our prisoner. My name and Sam’s were both on the board after lunch,

so we knew we had to stay in. But what a surprise when our usually friendly

teacher started scolding us. I said “we didn’t do anything,” and he clasped his

hands together and brought them down on the top of my head causing me

to bite my tongue in the middle of the word anything.

He shoved Sam into a nearby desk seat saying, “or this” and

Sam slammed down into the desk. I think he was crying too,

but I know I was, more from shock than the mild abuse.

He didn’t even want to hear our side of the story,

which I’m sure we could have made very different from what Suzanne had told him.

We both left in tears and walked home together promising to get even with her.


That was not the only time I got my name on the board.

It was up there almost every day all through fifth grade.

Sometimes it was the only name on the board;

I guess I just didn’t learn very fast.

The rule was the first warning about talking or being out of our desks was

our name on the board. Of course, by recess my name was there.

I couldn’t sit still. I sometimes wondered how other kids did it,

but mostly I didn’t really think about it.

It wasn’t til later in life that I realized that not everyone’s back hurt

the way mine did, so I wiggled and scooted around in my desk

to relieve the pain. Who knew? But there is no excusable reason for talking.

I just said whatever came into my head.

So the second time there would be a check by my name.

For each check mark we had to write 25 words in sentences.

That was fun.

Twenty five words is nothing for someone who can’t keep her mouth shut.

A second check doubled the word count and a third check doubled that.

So by lunch time I usually had a one hundred word story due.

Sometimes by dismissal I had a challenge of 1000 words.

I had so much fun writing the stories, that Mr. Wallace

finally had me start taking them home for my parents to sign

that they had read them. Daddy just laughed when he read them,

and signed them. Even if he knew it was for punishment,

I don’t think he would have cared, because even at his age he pretty much said

whatever came into his mind. Mother would tap his arm and whisper,

“Daddy, daddy, daddy.” I don’t think he nor I knew what that was supposed to mean.



Mr. Wallace never gave up on me. He kept putting my name on the board

day after day expecting different results.

The problem was I really did not understand what the problem was.

I enjoyed writing the stories, and I enjoyed talking to my friends.

I don’t know if explaining it to me would have done any good or not –

maybe he did try and I was just too obtuse to understand his explanation.

I certainly didn’t understand his demonstration on the day he whacked me on

the head and pushed poor old Sam into his seat.

I stayed mad for a long time, and didn’t talk or write anything for him

for several days after that.


But I soon forgave him and things went back to normal.

Sometimes he had me sit out in the hall outside the classroom.

I enjoyed that because I could read and watch people walking in the hall,

or write whatever I wanted. So he told me I would have to outline the

chapter of history. I went through the chapter and wrote things like

"Why did they throw the tea in the harbor?"

"What did Paul Reavere say to the people?"

I wrote all the questions that the sections answered,

but didn’t write any answers.

When I went to study for the test from my “outline”

I didn’t have any information and had to go back into the book to study it.

That was a good lesson, and I figured it out myself.

After that I took better notes and outlined.

We wrote stories about the people we studied,

and at the end of the year Mr. Wallace let us put them into a book

and staple them together and design the cover.


My handwriting was really bad, according to everyone who tried to read it.

We got a grade on our report cards on penmanship.

I wanted to be on the honor roll so I worked to make

good grades in all my subjects.

But I couldn’t make my handwriting improve.

Mr. Wallace said he gave a C letter grade to just about everyone

because we all had “average” handwriting.

I was devistated. I knew, of course that Suzanne got A in everything,

including handwriting, but you should have seen her letters.

They were perfect, of course.

Every letter slanted the same way,

was the same height and looked just like the ones on the wall above the chalkboard.

Well, I knew I could never copy that,

so I made a deal with Mr. Wallace:

If I make all A’s and B’s will you give me a B in penmanship,

and if I make all A’s (we both knew that wasn’t going to happen)

will you give me an A?

He agreed so I was able to be on the honor roll all year,

and I really did try to write more clearly.

My sister always got good grades in everything without even trying it seemed like.

And her teachers liked her because she was quiet.



When fifth grade came to an end I thought my heart would break.

We begged Mr. Wallace to teach sixth grade and take us with him.


I wrote poems and songs for the class to sing to him

telling him of our love for him.

We planned one song to sing as he entered the room.

It ended with the words, “we’ll always remember you just as you are today,

and there was supposed to be a bucket of water fall on him from the door frame

as he entered the room.

It didn’t happen so we told him over and over about how it was planned.

The fear of having Mr. Sassi was enough to make my summer unbearable.

But we managed to find things to do.


Daddy had gone in partnership on a 16 unit apartment complex near the

Hopi Lodge. We moved in to one of the two bedroom apartments to live.

My brothers had left home, one to college and one to the Navy.

We had a swimming pool and spent hours from April on swimming,

playing mermaid, racing and diving into the end that said,

“NO DIVING” We wanted a diving board, but the rules said it had

to be 8 feet deep for a diving board, and ours was a kidney shaped pool,

from 3 to 6 feed deep with a love seat on the side and wedding cake steps

in the 3 feet water. We made good use of the steps and the

love seat playing Marco Polo, diving after things and having a

mermaid kingdom of our very own.


My cousins came and stayed over a week.

I remember because Daddy kept hinting that visitors weren’t company

after three days, and Mother kept saying, “daddy, daddy, daddy.”

But with their three girls we spent the days swimming happily.

The youngest was supposed to stay on the steps.

I was proving my self by swimming the length two and a half times

without coming up for air when I saw off the steps a little figure

in an upright position, waving her arms helplessly under the water.

Her face was under water too, an her hair was flowing straight up.

It seemed like it took a long time to reach her and pull her up out of the water.

She had slipped off the steps and was very frightened.

We pulled her out and wrapped her in a towel and took her to her mom.

It wasn’t til later I realized she might have drowned.

I couldn’t be proud that I’d saved her because as one of the older girls,

I should have been watching her more carefully.



The whole area was being built into apartments.

We could ride our bikes up Hopi drive, which was now renamed 66th street,

and Hopi Place was named 66th place.

We were using Phoenix street numbers to make things easier to find.

I like the old names and didn’t start saying my address as

66th place until high school.


Sixth grade started after Labor day 1961.

All my fears were complete when I saw my name on the door of Mr. Sassi.

For one thing, I didn’t like the idea of having a room outside my big hall.

The door opened right out onto a covered sidewalk at the end of the building.

Going into the hall was off limits unless we had business in the office.

We couldn’t even go into room 116 to see Mr. Wallace,

who now had a whole new bunch of students we were

afraid he would love more than he had us.

Then the worst thing happened. He called the role and as he said my name,
he asked, “are you Marie’s sister.”

I admitted that I was.
And he answered, ”we’ll expect good things from you.“

He gave us homework the first day.

He showed us how to walk in line and

gave us a list of rules he expected us to follow.

Then immediately he introduced us to the multiplication speed drill

and said we had to be able to do it in less than 3 minutes.

I knew Marie could do it, because she had lived through sixth grade,

but I didn’t think I ever could.

We were handed an empty grid and had to

start numbering it with a number the teacher would announce.

Across the top and down the side, from one to 12 or from 4 to 12

and then 1, 2 ,3, so we couldn’t memorize the order

without at least knowing the first product with which to start.

In my mind I saw each multiplication as separate,

and had to think it through with each square.

I did not until I was an adult realize that filling in that grid was

just counting by 2, 3, 4 or 5.

That when I got to the numbers on the other side

they were the same as the ones before just in reverse.

I think he could have explained that a whole lot better.

So I watched kids finishing in two and three minutes,

and I would be figuring out each separate problem

and never completed it in time.

The other thing I hated about this class was that

we didn’t even get a warning.

When our name went on the board we had a punishment.

And still being very hot in Scottsdale in September,

he chose to make the punishment most undesirable.

When the class lined up to go to lunch at 12;00,

those with their name on the board, always including me, lined up last.

We had the special privelege of standing in the basketball courts

in 110 degree weather while the other “good kids” marched in line across

the field to the lunch room.

If we talked in line, it took longer to get to lunch.

Everone in the line always groaned when I talked out and

added time to our punishment. However, we did find the appealing part of this.

Sixth graders got sixth grade portions but when we lined up after

the eighth graders, we got eighth grade portions, which were considerably larger.

Most of us liked this arrangement and considered it worth the extra wait.

Of course in those times school lunches were home cooked meals on a

large scale with yeast rolls and butter, real mashed potatoes

and gravy and other such tempting feasts of fried chicken or roast beef.

Even deserts of jello or iced cake or squares of pie.

On especially good menu days, the late lunch bunch grew noticeably larger.

As the weather cooled into October the benefits of the “late lunch bunch”

were well worth it, and caused a great frustration to our would be

Army General Teacher. Once we began to chant a marching song

as we went to the lunch room, I think he knew he has lost that round.



Well into October, just after the first six weeks report cards came out

there was a change in the air. Not only was the weather cooling down,

but Mr. Sassi was smiling. He had a secret and we wanted to know what it was.

I had gotten honor roll grades, even getting the timed tests under 3 minutes,

which I am sure shocked and bothered my teacher greatly,

but he had written a caustic note on the comment section about my behavior

leading others into misbehavior.

“Why can’t you be like your sister?” he asked more than once.

When he mimicked our complaints in front of the class we accused

Mr. Wallace of betraying us and telling him our gripe sessions to him.

He looked at us and asked, “Did you expect him not to hear you complain

right outside the teacher’s room door. You complained very loudly.”



We were reaching a stand off when we learned in an unintended manner

that the three sixth grade teachers has been asked to submit a

list of six students each to group together under a

new fourth teacher who was to be hired.

Amazingly enough, every regular member of the late lunch bunch was on the list,

as I can only guess the same type of criteria was used for

choosing the other 12 students.

One marvelous day we were called out lined up and marched

across the school yard across from the cafeteria among

the first grade classrooms. These were real brick buildings

with a drinking fountain built into the room, and restrooms

just across the sidewalk. The teacher, Mrs. Lovelace

(oh, how we enjoyed playing with that name)

had been taken out of retirement along with many

other hastily hired teachers in the district,

as the classrooms were busting at the seams with all the new growth in the area.


Families were moving into apartments, which was unheard of.

New subdivisions of houses were being built.

Whole citrus orchards were sold, butchered and turned into curvy streets

with look alike houses. The whole section of citrus groves

north of Indian School road and the canal were taken out

and the upper class houses sprouted up.

To the west of the canal more apartments complexes were built,

not 8 or 16 but multiples of those and families filled them.

Grandparents turned their homes over to a new generation of families

and the baby boomers filled Scottsdale to the brim.

New schools were being guilt as fast as could happen,

and one of them was right behind our apartments where the old deserted

Yaqui Indian reservation had been.


Sam and Marie and I had spent many hours exploring the old ruined church

that had been the center of that property.

We had even climbed the bell tower on dares,

and read the puzzeling words painted on the walls.

We were told it was dangerous, but that was what made it so swell.

Mother liked to watch Lawrence Welk variety show of singing and dancing

and Liberace play the piano in his brightly studded tuxidos,

but Daddy liked to watch the news and read the ads in the real estate section

of the newspaper. He didn’t listen to sports games and had his bit to say

when a young singer named Elvis Presley was presented on the new variety shows.

Since I believed everything my Daddy said, and quoted it freely,

as if it were my own opinion,

sports games and Elvis Presley were definitely not worth my time.


There was one good thing about baseball, Daddy said.

The Red Socks came to Scottsdale every year to do spring training.

So just as the snow birds left, the redbirds filled up our apartments.

I didn’t know enough about baseball to be thrilled that major league players

were living right under my nose until Pat moved into our sixth grade class.

The neat thing about being the new class, besides being with a bunch of kids

who got kicked out of their first class and having a teacher

with absolutely no classroom management skills,

was that all the new kids that moved in got assigned to the

smallest class–ours.

Soon after new kid moved in, until our room was solid desks.

Mrs. Lovelace was happy to let any of us out of the room,

so Sam and I and then Pat and Juli took full advantage;

we signed up for band, newspaper, student government and any other outside

activity that took us out of the classroom environment.

Then we stayed in at recesses and lunch breaks to decorate the room or

paint a bullitin board.

It surprised us that the opaque projector could blow up

a winter picture from a Christmas card to fill an entire bullitin board,

so we covered it with paper and began to trace in the lines to paint later.

It looked so perfect, until we turned off the projector,

and there were just a bunch of pencil lines on white paper.

Our painting didn’t turn out nearly as beautiful as was planned,

but it took up our spare time and created a lot of commotion,

so it was well worth it.

The school year ended with the annual MayPole dance and festival,

a carbon copy of the years before, and the excitement of the

new school being built. Many hours of speculation were

spent as the walls went up and the school took shape.

Even the new teacher names with lists posted two weeks

before the start of school created awe and confusion,

but Marie would be in Mr. Stephenson's class and Lynda in

Mr, McElhone's class, now how that was pronounced would be a mystery

until starting day.

Eight grades plus Kindergarden thrown together in yet another

school named for an Indian Tribe.

Two years there and then off to Scottsdale High School,

just one year from Marie before the advendure began.