The Dreadful Vocabulary Drill

School was back in full swing across the county with big yellow buses, crossing guards and football games. Even though summer was way too short, I was ready for fourth grade at McKenzie in September 1952. I knew nearly all my classmates, the nooks and crannies of the old brick building, and I actually looked forward to learning new stuff.

My after-school piano lessons with Mrs. Myrtie Berry Westcott would soon start up again, and mama had even enrolled me in dancing class one afternoon a week. I loved reading, I loved music and I loved drawing, so as long as we had library books, singing and art classes school would be okay. Who knows, I might even enjoy tap, ballet, and ballroom dancing. (Not; those classes were very short-lived.)

School went fine for the first few weeks but gradually I figured out that my teacher didn’t like me. She didn’t call on me, she picked on me. She didn’t correct me, she criticized me, and I couldn’t understand why. I managed to stay under her radar by doing my work as quickly and quietly as possible and daydreaming the rest of the time.

Things came to a head one day with a vocabulary drill. My desk was away from the windows, half-way back on the hall-side row. She started on the other side of the class, requiring each row of students to make a new sentence with the designated word.

To make matters worse, she walked between the rows and faced the kid whose turn it was, tapping her pencil against the pages of her grade book as she waited. If he came up with an acceptable sentence (no matter how dumb it sounded to me), she’d check off his name and step to the next desk. Borrrrrrringggggg. Off my mind drifted into a chapter of my latest Nancy Drew library book.

Suddenly I felt her presence — it was my turn. I looked up, and there she stood with her grade book. My mind completely blank, all I could see was her scowl and all I could hear was the tap-tap-tap of her pencil. I couldn’t remember what the vocabulary word was, much less how to make a sentence with it. I had paid attention for the first row of kids, sort of half attention to the second row, but since then my mind had been many places, none of them this classroom!

“We’re waiting, Betty,” she said. My face grew hot, my tongue seemed to get tangled up in my mouth and I couldn’t get any word out, much less the vocabulary word.

After another moment, she proclaimed in exasperation, “You could have repeated the sentence the last student gave.” I could have? If only I’d been listening! Shaking her head, she hooked her finger and pointed me out of my desk and onto a straight-back chair in the hall.

It seemed like forever that I sat there, thinking how I never wanted to enter that room again and face the smirks of the other students. Betty’s daydreaming again, ha-ha-ha. But only a few minutes later she motioned me back inside the room and the day went on as if nothing had happened. I did my utmost to never let her get the best of me again.

In spite of my terrible lapse that day some good things happened in fourth grade. Our class learned an Irish jig and an old fashioned square dance, demonstrating our new abilities to the whole school on stage in an assembly program. The girls showed off our frilly dresses and slips, Mary Jane shoes and lacy socks, the boys looked spiffy in their look-alike pants and shirts, and we had a blast.

It was a pretty good year except for that miserable vocabulary drill, in spite of the teacher keeping an eagle eye on me the whole time for some strange reason.

A while back I went down to the Administration Office for a printout of my parents’ school records to add to my family tree. Out of curiosity I requested my own records, first grade through twelfth. There at the bottom of my fourth grade report was an amazing handwritten note: “Demand strict obedience from Betty from the outset. She is a gifted child. M.R., 1953.”

I wish I’d known she thought so the day of that dreadful vocabulary drill. I thought she didn’t like me, maybe even hated me — but she was trying to challenge me, to rein in my overactive imagination. She didn’t totally succeed in doing that, but she did make me pay attention and work harder in class.

As I read that little note several times, my attitude toward her changed from resentment to gratitude. This is way overdue, but Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds.

“Number, please”

“Duz does everything.” Remember Duz? Duz laundry detergent got out all kinds of dirt and stains. But just in case you didn’t really believe that, in the 1940′s and 50′s you could furnish your kitchen with good old Duz. Goblets and dinner plates, flatware and dish towels all came free with Duz laundry detergent. You might get a little pasteboard box containing a teacup in your Duz this week, assuring you’d buy more to get the saucer next week.

I don’t remember how well it cleaned the laundry but Duz did one thing well, it sure sold laundry detergent!

Perk-a perk-a perk perk, a perka perk perk… can’t you smell the “good to the last drop” Maxwell House percolating? The perky commercial stuck in your mind and when you hit the grocery store, why naturally you had to buy a bag. The last time I used a percolater it was to heat water for instant coffee. Boy, my days sure are different now.

For several months in the late 1940′s my family occupied an upstairs apartment in a big two-story house on West Palmetto Street. One memorable summer morning I wandered around indoors looking for something interesting to do. I had already cut out all my paper dolls, read all my comic books and colored all my coloring book.

Etta (our housekeeper/babysitter) was in the kitchen ironing the Duz-fresh laundry, sipping Maxwell House coffee and listening to Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club on the radio. Harold occupied himself with his Lionel trains or something. I couldn’t jump rope indoors. Couldn’t play hop-skotch indoors. Needed more girls to play jacks. What to do?

Making my way into the living room I spied that remarkable gadget, our very first telephone. Heavy and bulky, there was no dial, just a smooth black surface.

Hmm. My curiosity getting the best of me, I raised the receiver to my ear to see what it sounded like in there. A lady’s voice demanded “Number please.” Startled, I was afraid to hang up — the woman in the phone might know where I lived! But I didn’t know any telephone numbers, not even our own, so, quick-thinking me asked for my mother’s office. The kindly telephone operator looked up the number and said, “I’ll connect you now.” And she did.

Of course I got a good talking-to since the phone was strictly off-limits except in an emergency, and “What time are you coming home?” wasn’t exactly an emergency. I explained as best I could that it was all a terrible misunderstanding, but I had a feeling there would be another talking-to when mama did come home.

I went into the kitchen, opened the icebox and took down a bottle of milk. The block of ice in the box was nearly melted but the milk was still cold. Etta hummed along with the radio, her squirt bottle going “swhush swhush” as she dampened a shirt for ironing. I dunked a cookie in my milk and pondered what to do with the rest of the morning that wouldn’t get me into trouble.

Well, dress-up was always fun. I made a beeline for mama and daddy’s bedroom. I carefully lifted the lid of mama’s jewelry box and listened to the little tune, then fingered through the dainty necklaces and earrings. Selecting several mismatched drop sapphire earrings, I carefully screwed them onto my lobes. Those orphan earrings now reside in my own jewelry box; I’ve never been able to part with them.

I scrounged around in the closet for articles I figured mama wouldn’t wear again, then lugged my makeshift wardrobe into the living room. Onto my skinny shins I pulled run-filled stockings, sliding round garters up my legs to keep the baggy hose in place. It was a lost cause; they kept creeping down and I had to keep yanking them back up.

I added a crinkly crinoline to my ensemble, adjusting the waist with a safety pin. A gold knit top came next, picked and pilled with a few runs in it too, but I loved it. I carefully hitched up a black felt skirt over the crinoline. Knee-length on mama, it was evening dress length on me. I cinched a wide elastic belt in place to fasten everything and knew I looked glamorous.

Next I perched a black straw pillbox atop my head, untangling the veil and pulling it down. By the time I got all that netting straightened out it stretched nearly to my chin. Oh well, more glamor! Finally I slipped my toes into a pair of mama’s high heels. Clinging to the sofa, I rose to my wobbly feet and attempted to strut across the living room. I soon discovered I needed a bit more padding in a few strategic spots, including my feet.

Maneuvering in those slippers proved to be a real drag, especially when I had to yank my stockings back up every minute or so. I didn’t care. I was Marlene Dietrich to my heart’s content that morning.

In spite of my telephone misadventure I had a lot of fun that day, mostly with stuff that doesn’t exist any more. Of course, I do still have two Duz goblets (acquired when doing my own laundry many years later) and the orphan screw-on sapphire earbobs. They might be worth a lot on E-bay these days, but they’re worth a lot more in memories to me.

Mother’s Day Memories

A while back I wrote that everything I really needed to know I learned in kindergarten. That’s not completely true. I also learned a great many things from my mother and grandmother, my aunts, from Sunday School teachers, public school teachers, the mothers of friends, and a lot of other women. The main one, though, was mama.

Mama always worked outside the home. Before I was born she did clerical work on the military bases where Daddy was stationed. After I was born she worked in an office downtown. Bad parenting? No, economics. My brother and I didn’t consider it being “deprived;” it was just the way things were.

But when mama was home in the evenings and on weekends, we were learning things. Like chores. Chores were divvied up like pieces of a pie. Our house, no matter where we lived, had white woodwork. Today a lot of houses lack woodwork around doors and windows. Saves on housework, that’s for sure. Our semi-gloss woodwork collected stray fingerprints and smudges like a magnet. Amongst laundry-folding, furniture-dusting and trash-emptying, removing “not white” marks from door jambs and windowsills was a weekly responsibility.

Washing dishes was my daily duty after school. There weren’t many plates and forks to wash but oh those pots and pans! Steel wool time. Every afternoon I dillied and dallied until it was nearly time for mama’s car to drive up before I ran the dishwater. Seldom did I get an early start and have the kitchen spick and span before her arrival home. Soon it was time to peel something like onions or potatoes, slice something like cucumbers or tomatoes, or grate something, like cheese. Cheese for cheese biscuits, cheese for macaroni and cheese, cheese for cheese grits, any of which was a favorite on the supper menu; or cabbage for cole slaw, which wasn’t.

In between chores, mama taught us the three R’s, particularly reading, from the time we could hold one of those thick-paged baby books. While my grandmother Mimi subscribed to every magazine she could think of, mama loved books. There were library books, new and used paperbacks and hardback books on many different subjects. How-to books on electricity, plumbing and math, informational books on Southern Snakes or Southern Skies, science fiction books by Isaac Asimov et al and Christian books by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale — everywhere you looked there was a book or two on an end table. Reading for themselves and reading to us was as natural to my parents as preparing meals or paying bills. You just did it.

Mama also loved piddling around the house, piddling around the yard, and piddling around the sky. That’s how she put it. She encouraged us to piddle too. “I’m just piddling,” she’d say as she stitched something up, like old draperies to make sofa cushions, or old skirts to make aprons.

“I’m just piddling,” she’d say as she planted marigolds and zinnias, chrysanthemums and asters in neat graduated rows against the front yard fence. She’d explain about ladybugs and garden snails, and why some weeds were fine and some were not. She’d never just pull up a dandelion, she’d solemnly explain if you blow the thing to smithereens and scatter all those fluffy seeds, which yes indeed did look like fun, there would be zillions of them next year stealing all the good nutrients from the pretty zinnias, see?

“I’m just piddling,” mama would say as she lugged out the telescope to watch sputnik go over on a clear night. (I wonder how many households owned a telescope in those days.) “Come look, the stars are so pretty tonight. And would you make me a milkshake and bring it when you come?” I’d carefully measure out a spoonful of vanilla flavoring, stir two spoonfuls of sugar into a tall glass of milk, drop in several ice cubes and join mama’s sputnik-watching, or Big-Dipper watching, or man-in-the-moon watching.

When I needed spending money over and above my weekly allowance, mama taught me how to do office work. She’d bring home box-fulls of envelopes and letters, show me the proper way to fold a page in thirds and stuff it in an envelope, then the easy way to seal a batch of stuffed envelopes. Fan the flaps out so only the gummed part of each one is showing, then run a damp sponge across all the flaps at once and quickly flip each flap into place. Nothing to it. She’d pronounce my work acceptable and pay me a dollar or so. We’d discuss many things while we worked, school, friends, hair styles, grades, books, newspaper articles, homework assignments — come to think of it, school got into our conversation a lot in those days.

Mama was a classroom volunteer and for some reason I don’t remember what exactly she did. Maybe she brought cookies or something, who knows. One thing I do remember, though. She was voted the prettiest mother in the 8th grade at Poynor. I was dumbfounded to learn my classmates adored my mother. I knew I adored my mama, but I had no idea anybody else’s kids did too. I was impressed!

When I was small I loved to make Mother’s Day cards for mama. Even if I had purchased something I still made the cards for her. Usually they were multi-layer creations: when you opened the first page, there was a smaller page glued inside, and another inside that. Each page featured a hand-drawn, crayon-colored picture, maybe a flower or a heart, and each page said “I Love You, Mama.” I might spend several hours with scissors, rubber cement and crayolas, sometimes starting over several times until I got my masterpiece just right.

After she died in 1970 I came across an old pasteboard box with the flaps folded into each other. Prying it open I discovered my birth certificate, baby clothes, baby book, old report cards, piano recital programs, and handfuls of those home-made cards I’d given her. It looked like she had saved every one I’d ever made. I sat there a long time, fingering those little pages and re-reading each one. I think about that a lot these days when Mother’s Day rolls around.