LOVE'S SEASON

Bacon Elementary days keep creeping into my thoughts...

Once I got over the first day I liked school and liked all my teachers but in Fifth grade I really loved my teacher.  And that year everything changed at the Bacon School; a very different kind of year in many ways.  Millville was growing  and there weren’t enough teachers to cover all the classes. Two grades were combined into one classroom at the Bacon School,  I attended 5^th and 6^th grades that fall in one very full classroom. 

I loved it.  

Our teacher was Miss Moore.  I never knew her first name - and years later I would learn that that year was her first year of teaching and last in Millville - and looking back I think she did a great job juggling the lessons in this throwback to a  one room school house environment.

I loved it because it was a chance to listen to the 6^th grade lessons when I was supposed to be doing my 5th grade deskwork.  I liked their subjects much more than the “kid-stuff” that I was supposed to be concentrating on in my own grade.

When all was going so well that year the worst thing that can happen to a kid, happened. 

Right after Thanksgiving my mom told some shocking and chilling news.  We were moving to another part of town the first day of Christmas Vacation and I was going to go to the Wood School. Oh no, a fate worse than death.  I was going to leave good ole Bacon School and my South Millville pals at Christmas no less...

I would miss our marble championship matches on the playground, our kickball games after school.  Most of all my comfortable and known place in the pecking order of elementary school life.  I was being forced (against my will) to go into that dark abyss called a new school, a new class, and make new friends.  But there was no escape.

My mind raced for days.  How about I forget my timetables?  Will I have to read more books to catch up?  Will I be embarrassed about my worst subject, arithmetic?  Will they make me talk in front of the class everyday?  Yikes!

One thing I knew - I will never have any friends for the rest of my life.

And so, on the last day before Christmas vacation I waited until everyone had gone and slowly walked up to Miss Moore's big desk.  Even now I remember how young and innocent and blond she was.  She always smelled so clean, not like the old (maid?) teachers I had endured so far - who smelled mostly of chalk dust and perfume.

I told Miss M. that I would be moving and she looked up from marking our final spelling papers of 1954, and she said, “Well it has been a pleasure having you as my student and I will miss you in the New Year.”  And that was it! That was all she would say at this worst terrible moment of life.

I was crushed.  

I stood there for a long moment - I wanted to tell her that I loved her and that I would always love her - but I just said, "Merry Christmas Miss Moore" and staggered away.  Then she called to me, I quickly turned in great anticipation.  “Cal, would you mind closing the door on your way out?”  

"Good bye" I said as I closed it slowly, 

I took one last look at my true love through that tiny window in the middle of the heavy oak door.  And saw my wonderful teacher with her eyes filled with tears as she dropped her head down on her desk and started to cry. And so did I - all the way home.

I think she loved me too!