Most schools are back in session. It seems a little quieter around my neighborhood as a result, but nothing like the decrease in volume and activity that would occur on the street where I grew up when school resumed each year. When we were kids, we actually played outside. Imagine that.

On that first day of school back then, the silence must have been eerie, although surely a blessing to the housewives and old people left behind on the deserted streets of my hometown.

I can remember my first day in first grade. My teacher made me stand in the corner for talking. In the first grade! I was off to a bad start.

I also remember my neighbor, Charles Butler’s, first day in first grade. Charles’ mama had to force him to go to school, and he cried all the way there, then ran back home at recess. Today Charles is a police detective.

My first school was a three-story brick monstrosity built sometime in the 1920s. It was torn down many years ago. The fire escapes on each side of the building were giant slides or chutes that promised a thrilling ride from the third floor to the ground. Much to my dismay, however, they stopped using the old fire escapes by the time I entered school and I never got to hurl myself down one during a fire drill.

I loved exploring the old school with its creaky wooden floors. There was a basement where a big boiler grumbled and groaned, and each classroom had a narrow cloakroom where students put their coats and lunch bags in the morning.

When the janitors cleaned the building at night, they tossed something on the floors that looked like sawdust and a good helping of it would end up inside our desks where we kept our books. We’d have to shake the stuff off our textbooks each morning.

I loved the cafeteria, too, where the staff made its own hamburger and hot-dog yeast buns that were big and fluffy and melted in your mouth.

I had some fine teachers at the school. In second grade, my teacher was Mrs. Castlelow, who was a very sweet lady. Her husband, B.B. Castlelow, was the principal. One day some of us kids were making suggestions about what B.B. stood for, and I opened up my mouth and proclaimed it must stand for “Butter Belly.” I don’t know why because he was a very thin man. It would have made more sense to call him “Butter Bean.”

Anyway, one of the other kids promptly went and tattled on me to Mrs. Castlelow, and she sent me to the principal’s office even though the episode had merely been an exercise in trying to match a name to the principal’s initials. To this day, I don’t know what Mr. Castlelow’s full name was.

But he went easy on me, simply reminding me that it wasn’t nice to call people names. My parents learned of my behavior, though, and I received an attitude adjustment that left my rump sore for the rest of the week.

Wow, I wonder what Mr. and Mrs. Castlelow would think of the names kids call each other today?

After I made it out of second grade, I calmed down a lot and never had any further behavioral problems in school, maintaining a “satisfactory” in discipline on my report card.

My parents were grateful. I think they had feared I’d turn out to be a hoodlum.

T&D Region Editor Carol Barker can be reached by e-mail at cbarker@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5525.

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