Our St. Paul Central’s Gathering for a 67th Year Class Reunion!

Student leaders of my graduation class from high school organized a reunion celebration which I shall, God willing, be attending this coming Tuesday.   We survivors  had all graduated from St. Paul Central High School, June, 1952.   So many of us have been dying recently those leaders must have decided to speed up our showings before we all disappear.

High schools “taught”  ninth grade then.  No one normal would have been stupid enough to detach puberty developing human animals from seniors in high school “to kin”  with  seventh  graders in junior high….except for typical College of Education majors of any day.  Unlike our today, teachers actually taught knowledge in public school.  They themselves, as it turned out,  were well educated, civil and JudeoChristian….especially the Christian part.

The more  knowledge I could amass, “the closer to God I would become”  was the mantra I had heard again and again the ideal why I was in school.   I was also expected to seek and discover a career for my future.

The only thing then I knew about the University of Minnesota is that it beat Nebraska 61-7 in the fall of 1945, the same autumn we began to get GIs; as teachers in 7th and 8th grades to replace the retiring demanding, encyclopedic, well educated  old maids.

I had a reading problem.  School mate, Brian Humphrey did too.  We couldn’t read novels.  My best friend, Jim Meeker could.  He was a well disciplined, A-plus, super study, rather quiet guy and good student and reader.  He could read nearly a novel per day!

I was reduced to Classic Comics….and loved the entanglements of their stories!!

A Mrs. Dagmar McClement was our basic 8th grade teacher at St. Paul’s Horace Mann Elementary School, K through 8th grade.   A  buxom bossy gal, intelligent, but NOT of the old maid well educated “religious and well learned”  old  guard type.  It was, after all, only eighth grade and consuming knowledge hadn’t arrived yet!

I had seen the  movie, “The Yearling” which was based on very popular novel of that day.  Some time well after Christmas Mrs. McClement announced  we would be having our annual  “Weekly Reader” test from the folks who publish the “Weekly Reader” an up-to-day learning weekly news piece about general knowledge the publishers and educators of the day thought necessary to read and follow beyond the school curriculum….pictures of stuff, articles of animals, maps, paragraphs of historic events, 100 items for the eye to conquer for the mind.

I had no trouble reading paragraphs, even pages, books  of history, especially where maps might be involved or newspaper articles.   But, I could, can, never read or follow a novel.

Jim Meeker and I were the best of friends from first grade on.   We played all sorts of games scholastically  oriented at his house, just the two of us…..for years!  He had a college-educated brother twelve  years older than we were, who had lots of stuff available we could work with.    I was certain he was my only real competitor.

Day of the annual Weekly Reader class test…..100 items, all short answer or multiple choice.   I had left only one question blank, and was certain I had finished the rest of the items correctly.   Jim told me he  had  left two blanks.   It turned out no one was close to us.

One of the question items was a picture of a dromedary we had to identify in writing.   Jim couldn’t name the creature so left the item blank.

I wrote in “DROMEDOR”. The answer should have been “DROMEDARY”.

Mrs. McClement didn’t like me.  I knew that.   She told the class I had misspelled the name of the animal, and therefore the answer was just as incorrect as Jim’s no answer at all.   She reminded me and the class that Jim was a better all around student and therefore had earned the book!

I was “mature” enough NOT in any way to blame Jim.   But, Dagmar was evil in my mind for the rest of the school year both in her classes and others.   I had ‘hired’ an anger about school I had NEVER before experienced, which carried me to my first class in high school,  English with Mabel Wicker the very next year.

There she was, that September….68 years old, her last year of teaching English.   Four feet ten,  90 pounds, a confident but  shadow of a woman, one wearing a red wig.

First hour, first day in her class we were to buy a pamphlet of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”.  We had to buy all of our school books in those public school days.   I looked at its first pages.  I smelled trouble.    I knew immediately Shakespeare English might as well be Chinese.  I had, have, never been able to read a novel, even to this day…end of story!

The very next school day Miss Wicker began her Shakespeare menus….She began reading with “Enter Antonio”, who says,  “In sooth.  I know not why I am so sad:  It wearies me; you say it wearies you;  But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff  ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn;  …….and such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to know myself.”

Salarino responds;  “Your mind is tossing on the ocean;   There, where your argosies with  portly sail.  Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Or as it were, the pageants of the sea, Do overpeer the petty traffickers,   That curtsy to them, do them reverence,  As they fly by them with their woven wings……..”

I was warned studying in high school would be a challenge.   Unbeknownst  to me,  the fact she had already read the play  to me as a member of the class made it possible for me  to understand the core of the drama itself.     I felt I was reading almost like anyone else.  I so wanted to read properly!

There were forty kids in the class….mostly boys….which I didn’t recognize until two years later when my college prep teacher at Central, Grace Cochran, cornered me regarding my bad reading ability.    “Who was your Freshman English teacher”, she asked.   She told me Miss Wicker  was the English teacher responsible for weeding  poor readers out of  the college prep line sending them to machine shop.    I admitted I hated Wm. Thackeray stuff, and by Nature couldn’t read “Vanity Fair” anyway.

She soothed me by mentioning a lot of boys were poor novel readers…..She told me to stay with my Classic Comics habit….at least I would know the Classics’  basic plots.

Miss Wicker failed me the first marking period.   She called each of  her  forty students as they were seated,  by alphabetical order to come quickly to her desk…..I, being Ray, was toward the end of the list, meaning I had to sweat  longer.   She called each of us  by her  same tone and volume.   When needed she spoke loudly so  every student in the room knew who isn’t working up to ‘snuff’.

I was quite nervous waiting for my turn.   I wasn’t used to doing homework.   “Mr. Ray!”

On her desk there sat a black ink well and a red ink well.    Each grading card was a small stiff card with the titles of  classes on the left,  with six or eight grading periods awaiting marks toward the right.   One’s grades were open for the world to see.

Our meeting was brief.   She  admired my improvements on her test scores concerning Shakespeare….However, she showed me the total absence of any and all homework I was supposed to do….

Her pen reached to the RED ink well.  Miss Wicker made as big a red “F” as she could in the space fit for the grade…..THE VERY FIRST CLASS MARKING ON MY REPORT CARD FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR for all to see!!!   My first grade at Central!