Royal Oak Dondero

 Remembrances of Royal Oak Longfellow Grade School

By Norman Jensen

                                                                                                                                                                         (2/26/2007)

When I think of my grade school years the actual time spent in the class room is much less memorable than the out-of-class time.  The order of memory vividness is the walk home, recess time, gym time, special class time, and dead last, the time spent in the regular class learning reading, writing and arithmetic.    

The walk home and back actually did take a fair portion of the day.  Not only did we walk to and from school, but had enough time to and did walk home for lunch.  Sometimes we brought our lunch to school, especially in the lower grades, but when we were able, we walked the half mile home, had lunch, walked back, and still had a little time to play in the school ground.  Once we were old enough to ride bikes to school we had even more time on the playground before the afternoon classes began.   

The walk home for me was mostly along a road known to us as "the Black Road" or "the old railroad bed."  It is now known as N. Sherman Drive.  Longfellow School has its frontage on Maxwell between 11 mile and this road.   At the intersection of the Black Road and Maxwell, the Black Road changes from being elevated to cutting into a sand hill.  A quarter of  a mile north this sand hill recedes into a low area where Consumer Powers had a maintenance center and then cuts through a second sand hill before again being elevated the remainder of the distance to Woodward Ave.   The first sand hill extended east in a long oak studded ridge the top of which is street called Woodcrest.   On top of the second sand ridge, also studded with oaks is Forestdale.  The Rousch sisters, Marcia and Nona, once lived on Forestdale and Jeanne Day later lived in the same duplex that Marcia and Nona had earlier. Streets that ran into the depression from the north (The Farnum side) were Fernwood and Lockwood and streets that ran into it from the south (the Black Road side) were Josephine and Baker.  On the Catalpa end of Fernwood Hal Adams and Diane Gibson lived on east side of the street so that their back yards were lower than their fronts.  About halfway down Fernwood on the West side of the street Dick Jessup's house was on the up side so that his back yard rose up to Forestdale.  Sue Dehart lived on Baker Street on the East side so that her back yard rose up to the first sand hill to a scrub bush field that was behind the Longfellow playground.   That sand hill extended into the playground of Longfellow School and made the playground an enormous natural sand box.   The sand covered the entire back playground making it and enormous sand box.  

There was a section of grass on the Longfellow property. At the corner of Maxwell and 11 Mile there was a large piece of lawn that was bisected by a diagonal path worn by people walking across it to the playground in the back.  However, this large lawn space was forbidden to students during school hours and, as I remember, we weren't even allowed to use the path across to go from the 11 Mile shopping district to the playground in the back.  We did use it when school was not in session and I remember that the cub scouts used to have their baseball games there. Home plate was at the corner of 11 Mile and Maxwell and a well hit ball went toward the windows of the kindergarten.  Fortunately we were too small to reach the windows with our hits.   

Our walk home offered opportunities to play in the sand and in the swamp-like and wooded depression where Consumer Powers was located.  In that depression was located a large seasonal pond which we called " the pollywog pond" for obvious reasons and a large flat man-made pond which Consumer Powers flooded and which was used as a skating pond in the coldest part of winter.  While we sometimes skated on the pond, we spent much more time walking on the ice, breaking it, and accidentally getting our feet wet. This was called, for some inexplicable reason, "getting a hot foot."  Plunging you foot into winter water is anything but hot.    The same sort of game was also played on the pollywog pond. In the summer time, the field in this depression provided a good place to play various types of hide and seek or Cowboys and Indians.  It was thickly overgrown with willow and sumac bushes and small trees.  We made spears from the sumac shoots.  On the way to and from school we had a choice of crossing north to Farnum before the depression and going by the ice skating pond or crossing north just after passing the depression.  The latter was a little shorter and took us by the pollywog pond.  In the spring this route had an additional attraction.  During the winter the City scooped up the snow from downtown and dumped it all along the Black Road and into the depression.  Come Spring, The snow would melt and provide treasures of coins, keys, and other items dropped on the sidewalks of downtown.   That same way from the Black Road to Farnum through the oak woods on top of the hill was also a place of mischief.  In the winter we would hide behind the big oak trees and throw snow balls at the cars below on the Black Road.  

Recess on the playground was usually dominated by the latest activity fad.  It could be marbles, pea shooters, squirt guns, pocket knives,cap guns,yoyos, or trading cards to name ones I remember.  The pea shooters, squirt guns, cap guns, pocket knives, and yoyos were usually purchased at a hardware store just around the corner from Longfellow on 11 mile.  In a small strip of stores located there were a barber shop (called Whitney's at one time), a drug store, the hardware store, Smith's grocery store and Willis' meat market. Our kindergarten teacher Miss Fickle later married Mr. Willis.  Another store worth mentioning was Dixon's hobby shop it was located farther east on 11 Mile just before it met the Black Road.  The elderly, slightly seedy, Mr. Dixon dealt in used comic books, model airplanes, cap guns, caps, knives, and various kinds of penny candies.  He wore cowboy type shirts and a string tie.  He also smoked very smelly cigars which pervaded the store and smelled up any penny candy that he sold.  

Card trading did not mean, as now, trading things like baseball cards, but rather playing cards.  One would get an old deck of playing cards from home that had an interesting picture on them and then trade the deck one by one to others.  One of the prized decks that made a big stir in the trading was one with the famous race horse Man-O-War on them.  

For little boys, recess also meant wrestling and determining who the toughest and best fighter was. Although not that big, Richie Kerr was definitely the toughest. He would never give up and would bite if necessary. His specialty was the choke hold which he would not relinquish until you gave up. The Sarate brothers were also dominant in this endeavor.  They were all a couple of years older than their class and therefore had an additional advantage. Juan(ito) Sarate was in our class.  His younger brother, Ignacio, was a couple grades below us and the same age as our class.  Even older brothers were Salvador and Manuel.  There lived on the short street that ran east of the Black Road before it crossed 11 mile road and merged into the Grand Trunk railroad tracks.   

Marbles as played at Longfellow was not the classic game of marbles with is circle and rules which I never learned.  Instead, we simply played a sort of bocce ball type game in which the object was to win the other person's marble.  One person would throw his marble up ahead several feet.  The second person would try to hit the first person's marble standing in the same spot where the first person threw his marble.  If he hit it, he got to keep the other person's marble. If he missed, the first person could try to hit his opponent's marble from the position of his marble .  Since that was likely to be much closer to his opponent's marble than his opponent was to his marble when he missed, missing put one in a very bad position.  This led to a strategy of just getting close enough to an opponent's marble to tempt him to try to hit your marble, but miss.  The pre-game negotiations dealt with which marble one would use and which marble would be surrendered if one lost.  

When we were able to play on the play ground during gym, I remember each person having to try climbing a pole, chinning , and swinging on the monkey bars.  We also competed in broad jumping and running.  There were two types of pole climbing.  In the easier, you had to shinny up a leg of one of the large swings.  This was easier because of the slant and the smaller diameter of the pole.  In the second, harder variation, they had a  vertical pole in the back southwest corner of the playground.  It was also thicker and that also made it harder. I remember that Billy Wright was the fastest runner, Sue Dehart and Richie Kerr were the best at chinning,  Gary Wright and I tied in the broad jump.   I was also fairly good at the pole climbing and the monkey bars, but hopeless in the chinning.  

Gym inside was a lot less memorable.  I seemed like we mostly just stood in a row standing precisely on a  line.  Helen Rosso, our gruff and masculine gym teacher would have us stand in a row on a line and spend more time telling us what we going to do than we spent doing it.  I can see her clearly, pacing back and forth running her finger up and down her key ring.  She used a shower curtain ring for a key ring and would run her little finger up and down the narrow part as she talked to us.  She usually wore a lumberjack plaid blouse, a solid color wool skirt, saddle shoes, and bobby socks over nylon stockings.  My most cherished memory is the look on her face the day she hit David Gilbertson and he hit her back without hesitation.  Another time user in gym was changing our shoes.  We each had a pair of gym shoes that we kept in a locker on the hall side of the gym.  We would first be told to stand on the line and she would take roll. Then we were told to go get our shoes from the locker, change into them and stand on the line again.  I can't remember what we did in the gym except run back and forth in a regimented fashion.  I do remember the dreaded days when we had to square dance.  I am sure it aided my life-long dislike for dancing.  

Speaking of the masculine Miss Rosso, leads naturally to her housemate, the ultra-feminine-acting principal, Miss Hattie Smith.  While she was always dressed in a very feminine fashion, reeked of perfume, and spoke in a very feminine voice, she was tough as nails and ran the school with an iron fist.   I remember we had to use pencils until they were down to very small stubs.  Then the teacher would have to collect them and submit them to Hattie in order to get new ones.  Hattie would count them, check them for sufficient shortness, and only then give the teacher as many new pencils as stubs were turned in.   While I didn't spend a lot of time in Hattie Smith's office for misbehaving as my friend David Gilbertson did, I was there several times to see the school nurse, Miss Weir.  She was a brusque, but very kind Scottish lady who served as the school nurse.  If you had a sore throat she would swap it with iodine--ugh!. 

I also remember music class and Miss Lynch the teacher.  There was a very strong choral music emphasis in the Royal Oak School System which started in grade school, was honed by the talented and imperious Eva Storer in junior high (Royal Oak and then Clara Barton Junior High), and  culminated in the high school's A Cappella Choir, which was, no doubt, the inspiration for the high school choir in Judith Guest's Ordinary People.  Miss Lynch had us sing and there was a school choir.  She also taught us about classical music using pieces such as Peter and the Wolf as aids. She was a tall, fairly young, and attractive woman of Irish complexion.  She was quite strict and would turn beet red when mad.  David Gilbertson again comes to mind.  He used to launch paper spit balls with a rubber band in her class.  She turned so red in anger that I thought she was going to explode.

David Gilbertson

A now conservative 68 year old David Gilbertson with son, wife, and grandson. [Don't think he is still 68.... but there is always hope]

I also remember Mr. McDuff the geography teacher.  I liked his class since I was always interested in maps as far back as the age of three, but what I remember most vividly was his corporal punishment technique.  He would put his thumb under your chin, his index and middle finger on top of your chin and shake vigorously.   

Library class taught by Rachel Brown.  One got to pick any book and read it. My favorites were a series about American frontier heroes such as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Chief Black Hawk. I read them all so many times that I can still remember their exact location in the library (north end, east wall, first shelf to the right of the west-facing window and toward the floor.  I wish I could remember yesterday as vividly as I can kneeling on the floor looking at those series of books and trying to decide which to read again.  

The special days of the year I remember were Halloween , Christmas,  and Valentines Day.  In the early grades, we all gave valentines to each other.  You could buy a book of them that could be punched out of the pages.  Most all of them were used for one classmate or the other and the real task was deciding which one to give each person. On Halloween we all came to school in the costumes we were going to use for trick or treating.  We had a party and the whole school marched through each classroom so we all could see every costume in the school. Christmas involved a religious type pageant and the singing of Christmas carols.  I think they had to do it in two groups, but they filled the auditorium and turned down the lights for the Christmas program.  There was a big Christmas tree in the auditorium.  When it was decorated each class went one by one to the auditorium so that each child in the school could  add some tinsel or ornament  to the tree.  

Thinking of the auditorium brings to mind the Friday Night movies.  After dinner on Friday nights you could go to school and watch a cartoon show for a few pennies.  As I remember, they usually had a lot of trouble with the projector and with film breaking.  We would wait and wait for the show to start and after a while start to stomp our feet and chant that we wanted the movie.  I can remember looking back at the projector and seeing it's harried operator trying to splice the film and rewind before the show could continue.  

The kindergarten where we started school was at the south end of the school and had a large bay window.  Above it was the library.  As we progressed through the grades we moved down the row of class rooms on the lower floor to the east end of the building and then upstairs for the higher grades.  In the middle of the lower floor in front was the principal's office and across the hall on the back side was the lunchroom. At the east end of the lower floor toward the back was the auditorium.  To get there we had to go through the double doors at the east end and into a lobby which entered the auditorium from the back.   Near those double doors at the end of the hall were stored several large dark green boxes which housed voting machines.  

Upstairs on the east end toward the back side was an office for Helen Rosso, the gym teacher.  Across the hall was the music teacher's room.  The social studies (geography) teacher's room was in the front at the west end over the area where the first and second grade rooms were.  The gym was in the middle facing the back and over the cafeteria.  

Our kindergarten teacher, Miss Marie Fickle, was a small woman much beloved by her small charges.  The boys all said "eat a pickle kiss Miss Fickle."  I remember the nap times were we had to drag out mats, put them on the ground, and rest for a while.  Then we had to put the mats back in an orderly and neat fashion.  The activities I remember most was finger painting, music and making your hand print in clay.  The hand prints were painted blue or pink depending on the child's sex , fired to hardness, and sent home with you.  I still have mine and  Miss Fickle's workmanship was a lot better than any of the teachers who made similar hand prints for our three children.  I also remember comparing my hand print with Judy Thorogood's  and finding that they were the same size.  Judy was the first of many girls I had a crush on in grade school, but I remember her because she was the first and also because I have been reminded of that crush by Charles Schultz, the Peanuts cartoonist.  Some of the funniest and most poignant of his cartoons are the ones in which good old Charlie Brown can't get summons the courage to speak to the little red- haired girl.  As Charlie's object of adoration did, Judy had red/auburn hair.  

The kindergarten music activity I remember was "orchestra" that consisted of the students playing drum sticks, drums, and triangles as the teacher played the piano.  About 3/4 of the children played drum sticks on the floor, a handful had triangles, and one person got to play the drum.  Of course, everyone, especially the boys, wanted to play the drum.  I don't think I ever got to play the drum and only once the triangle.  I remember I was told that I was "needed" on the drumsticks.

 We had Mrs. S. Deasy for first grade.  She was the oldest of our grade school teachers.  Her class  room was strung with the first words we learned from Dick and Jane books.

 I had Muriel Barr for second grade.  She was the first teacher to get me interested in science.  She was a butterfly and moth collector and had  a specimen of a Luna moth which she had caught as a caterpillar and raised to the moth stage.  In class we did the same thing with a cecropia moth in class.  Every day we would check the pupa to see if the moth had emerged.  She inspired me and my neighborhood friends to hunt butterflies.  That field around the pollywog pond was a prime place to hunt monarchs, swallow tails, and  especially admiral butterflies that seemed to like the willow. 

In the second and third grades when we got to learning our multiplication tables, I remember we were split into small groups to quiz each other.  In my group were Christine Kramer and Jimmy Mower.  We had a great time competing with each other as to speed and I used to go over to their neighborhood  to play after school.  They lived across the street from each other on Woodcrest.  Kathryn Snow also lived there. In the fall Woodcrest's large oaks supplied an enormous quantity of voluminous leaves which we raked into a huge pile in the street at a point where the lawn was above the street.  We would then run down the slope of the lawn and dive off into the leaves.

 Somewhere about the third grade I was skipped a half grade to the Jan 57 class were I belonged age-wise.  I had started kindergarten late due to illness.  In the third grades I had Miss Helen Baughman (later Mrs. Thompson) and Miss Margaret Rumenapp.

 In the firth grade I had the only teacher I really disliked.  Her name was Miss Jean Jeffery and she had it in her mind that I should be a "leader."    She explained to me that I should be a leader and help her get the class to behave.  It was also written on my report cards that I was failing to develop my leadership potential.  I rebelled and told both her and my parents that I didn't have any intention of being a leader. The marking system at Longfellow, and I assume at other RO elementary schools, was quite a bland one.  One got and S for satisfactory, or a U for unsatisfactory.  I always got all S's, but that always seemed like damning with faint praise.  Certainly, I would hope for a work reference to describe me as more than " satisfactory" and my neighborhood friends who went to much the more authoritarian Catholic school (the famous Charles Coughlin's Shrine of the Little Flower) were also mystified by our grading system. During this time, marking became even more non-judgmental.  Apparently the latest educational marking approach at that time was for children to rate themselves and more or less write their own report card.  Therefore S and U system was switched to the new approach and my- leadership failure had to be written down by me first.  I didn't  oblige, which escalated the conflict with the teacher. 

I survived Miss. Jeffery and in sixth grade we had Mrs. Blanche Cook.  She allowed us to proceed with our work at our own pace.  Since I liked arithmetic, I got way ahead in that subject and had my desk so crammed full of exercises that I had done ahead that I could never find them.  I wasn't very neat and by the time I found the right exercise the class was through checking it.  I also remember Mrs. Cook warning us that junior high would be harder than grade school.  That was partly right, especially the 7th grade English class taught by the blue haired terror Miss Duff, but that is another story.

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