When I Began School...

When I was six, I began the first grade in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, since my dad was assigned to the ROTC Unit at Ohio State, and to Lockborne AFB. We first lived in a big old kind of spooky house on the Olentangy River Road, and then we moved closer into town, near Worthington and Westerville. I was already reading by the time I began school; I had already just visited NYC with my grandparents by myself; and I had just had my tonsils taken out. Our house was a little busy, since my mom had given us a new baby sister, Martha Susan, in July. I can remember shopping in NYC for dresses to wear to school, most of them plaid cotton ones, with full skirts. Somehow, I was forever tearing the hems out of them, which was most exasperating to my usually patient mother, so I carefully examined the stitches and taught myself how to put a hem back in so I would not get into trouble about it yet again. I have often wondered if she ever noticed that! The most memorable thing about those first few months was that one boy got into big trouble over something and had his hands whacked with a ruler, which looked like it really hurt, and he cried. Another kid got spanked. So I lived in dread terror of doing something wrong while there. Fortunately, a few months into the school year, we moved closer to my grandmother's house in Columbus, which was only about a half mile away, and I could easily walk there. You know those stories about " a mile uphill..."? I actually did, in first grade, walk a mile to school and a mile back home, all by myself sometimes. My first grade teacher at Clintonville Elementary was Mrs. Lowry, and she was same teacher my mom had in first grade. That tells you about how old she was! But she was sweet and didn't go around hacking up people's hands! Just like 1HW, I do remember the Dick and Jane books with baby Sally and Spot and Muff! I really thought they were pretty boring, though, and soon I began to find other things to read. That led to a life-long love of reading! One of my favorite possessions yet today is a copy of Little Women, which I received for my eighth birthday and promptly devoured, and then I began looking for any other Alcott books I could find. Jo was quickly joined by Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, which Herb soon shared with me. Those were then outgrown, and I went on to the adult section by junior high, which drove my parents crazy. I was reading books like Gone with the Wind, and as I began to go through more and more books, my dad felt like he needed to read the same ones I did, to know what I was reading. Admittedly, I did hide Peyton Place under the mattress in high school! I most certainly did not want to discuss THAT one with him! While reading so much fiction, he also led me to biographies, non-fiction, especially history, and historical fiction. By then I was totally hooked on history. So that's how all of that began...