STRATTON AVENUE

Listening to some music I hear The Street Where You Live… and then I think about “my” street and growing up on…Stratton Avenue.

After the war that I was too young to remember there was a massive housing shortage and returning veterans had priority over others when it came to renting a home.  Our lease on a  Millville Manufacturing “company home” where I lived with my grandparents was up and we were forced to find another place.  But instead my grandfather declared that this would never happen again to us - he was going to build a home!  After my grandmother recovered from this announcement she had said, “Herb...do you know how to build a home?”  “I’ll learn was his reply!” (Now at this time I was only 4 years old so I really only knew this from grandmother Ethel who told me this family legend many times over as I grew up)

And so, we moved and on a cold night I do remember packed our stuff in a borrow truck and drove across town to my uncle Francis home (pop’s brother squeezed us in his modest south Millville house  - I do vaguely remember this.  Especially all of us sleeping together in an unfinished and chilly attic)  Pop bought a small lot for $50 dollars on the next street (actually a narrow graveled lane) called Stratton Avenue and in the early spring he began to build what would be my small home a decade with the help of his four brothers who lived with a few blocks of each other.

Now something that would never happen today - happen!  Pop started to build a homw without a plan.  Each of his brother brought first hand knowledge to the job - one was a mason and another a carpenter and pop was an auto mechanic and pooling their “hands-on” working person knowledge they built a home.  Four guys who had not graduate from high school.  These were kids of the great depression.. Pop had  only gone to school until the fourth grade when he had to go to work to help support his big family.

The beginning was a one-room large “shed” from a farm he got for the price of moving it from a farmer he knew.  It remains a mystery how he moved it from miles away - it just appeared one day.  This old building became the first room - the bedroom.  And week by week, rooms were added with lumber salvaged from many sources.  Few of the materials were actually bought I learned.  This was definitely a “community project” that was taking place all over our small town. Pop worked a full day maintaining trucks at a factory and then worked late every night by the light of a swinging light bulb on an extension cord and many hours each weekend - he was an incredibly strong and tireless worker - forged by a life of labor that most today no longer have to endure.

By summer we moved into our cottage - one bedroom,bathroom with no fixtures; a living room and the most important Nanny’s kitchen. The interior was bare studs and pop knew he had to finish the walls before the winter.  Piece by piece he did.  He had bought a used refrigerator and gas range.  I slept with my mom in what was to become the “front bedroom”.  My grandparents slept in the “living room” and we had an “outhouse” which I would soon dread on those long and cold winter nights!  Our front door was a cardboard box...and so forth.  Nanny said, “We will make do for awhile!”  And we did - this rambling hand me down hodgepodge became a warm and loving  home.  Pop had achieved a bonafide Herculean task.

As the years passed and I started at an elementary school a few blocks away the house grew.  Two bedrooms were added. Our road was oiled and no more dust.  Homes were being built around us.  Stratton avenue got “city water” after it was being paved.  Rural pinelands called South Millville had finally become part of the “city”.  It was now the “50’s” and the hardships of a war had turned from fear and rationing to joy, long awaited luxuries  and hope for a bright future.  Peace had finally come for us all.

And for me the song Nanny hummed made a lot more sense then and much more now…

“Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there

Which seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere

Home, sweet home, there’s no place like home

Home, sweet home, there’s no place like home...

...An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain

Oh give me my lowly-thatched cottage again

The birds singing gaily that came at my call

Give me them and that peace of mind, dearer than all

Home, sweet home, there’s no place like home”

FOURTH GRADE PHILOSOPER

    I saw a Facebook post by one of my friends asking the question "Did anyone go to the Bacon School and remember Miss Rhulander, my brother tells mean she was the meanest teacher he ever had?  This stirred a long buried memory of Miss R, my 4th grade teacher…

In Bacon school the kid grapevine teacher warning system was finally tuned.  Our teacher had labels - "Gives a lot of homework; Is really mean (which meant no fooling around); Makes you memorize stuff; and many more categories.  A strange memory bubbled up.  In my elementary years all teachers were addressed as "Miss" no matter their marital status.  The teachers with known first names were the ones most of us  "got along with".  Those  only known by their last name were the strick ones who hated slackers and talking in class. And a small few had nicknames that were widely shared on the playground. 

Miss Rhulander was known as "the grouch".  But one didn't have a choice.   Having her as one's teacher wasn't a choice, it was an inevitable - unless you were a genius and skipped 4th grade entirely.  A rarity I would never encounter.

For the first couple of months in her classroom I witness why.  She made us be quiet with our hands folded on our desk when the bell rang throughout the halls announcing that our school day began and before it ended and the last bell rang.  Sitting quietly for a fourth grader boy was torture but most of the girls seemed to like this time of contemplation and meditation on the  lessons of learning ahead of us that day.  She also made us stand when we answered a questions (and there were many) - most of us tried to be as "small" as possible during these Socratic sessions.  And the worst of all - she made us memorize poems and recite them in unison every Friday. But for the most part I was not an object of her wrath for slackers and those who slouched until November and of all times - Parents Day which was traditionally the day before Thanksgiving holiday.

For weeks before the big event Miss R prepped and prepared us for our performance before our visiting folks.  She read us stories about pilgrims and their plight; their hardships and diseases.  Their homes with dirt floors and no heaters.  We learned about planting dead fish with corn for greats crops - a tip from the "friendly" Indians, (Yes we called them Indians - get over it) and practiced "Over the River and throught the woods..." as Miss R pounded out the tune on an ancient upright piano in the corner - a song I would always hate from that time on.  We drew countless turkeys with rainbow feathers.  I was excused from the reading sessions to render one of my famous blackboard chalk masterpieces (that's another story) - This time I copied a golden cornucopia from the Ideals the now long gone tome of seasonal classroom decoration ideas, poems and stories that every teacher had next to the Bible on their desks.  It was at least five feet high and spilling out a harvest bounty and colored gourds.  Hung all over the room where our art class masterpieces, scrawlings of  Indians in war-bonnets and black-dressed puritans sitting at picnic tables.  On the big bulletin board was a dozen of the best our “finger painting” renderings of turkeys that all look same because they were traced from by outlining our hands on the paper.

Parent's Day arrived and my grandmother (Nanny to me) was my stand-in parent because mom could not take a day off from her factory job the Thanksgiving holiday.  I wore my best shirt with socks of matching color following Miss R's strong advice to us to "look nice" for the parents.  When the bell rang we practice our song and were warned that we should be on our best behavior.  She strongly suggested that we comment and ask questions during her history lesson about the "Pilgrims" first feast.  Promptly at 9:00 AM a dozen parents (many moms and one nanny) filled the back of our classroom.  About half of the kids had someone attending.  The other half tried not to look disappointed.  Miss R greeted them with a most pleasant voice we had never heard.  We sang "Over the River" and Mary J, the arithmetic wizard and trusted Miss favorite  recited a Thanksgiving poem 1492 (the clean version)

In fourteen hundred ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He had three ships and left from Spain;

He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.

He sailed by night; he sailed by day;

He used the stars to find his way.

A compass also helped him know

How to find the way to go.

Next was Miss R’s turn to show off her pedagogical skills.  She began to “teach” us and our guests about our first Thanksgiving?  She began with a litany of the hardships the Pilgrims faced - religious persecution...sickness on a rough voyage...landing in the wrong place...starvation...no houses...more sickness. Then she caught the whole class off-guard with a question, “Class what do you think they were thankful for?”  No one raised their hand.  She nudged us, “What would you be thankful for?  The sounds of silence followed.  Then to my surprise she uttered, “Calvin what do you think the Pilgrims were thankful for???  I stood up and pondered this question and then blurted, “I really don’t think they had all the much to be thankful for.”  There was a chuckle from the back of the room and then laughter rolled forward from all of the parents, except my grandmother.  Miss R didn’t laugh however.  “Calvin how can you say that???? We talked about how grateful they were about...well...a...that they...sit down.  I heard my grandmother gasp.  Finally the show was over and our folks adjourned to the cafeteria for ginger snaps like brickbats and waterdown apple cider courtesy of the PTA.

After the room cleared I knew what was coming.  The wrath of R.  She walked to the front of my desk and with eyes like daggers she said, “You sir have ruined parent’s day for all of us and for your imprudent comments you will stay after school today and wash the blackboards, clap the erasers and take down all of our beautiful decorations.”  Gads detention on the day before a holiday.  But the worst was going to be a note to my mother...My turkey wad cooked to borrow from the old saying.  I was sure I would never recover from this moment of philosophical rhetoric.

But I did.  And all was back to our normal drudgery on the following Monday.   

The moral:  Always hink before you blurt and  sometimes silence is golden when dealing with an ancient maiden school teacher.