Portal to childhood Hell

First day at school

2/27/12

Portal to LAUSD Hell

            You might say I was partially lucky.  I lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood, when, actually, my family should of have lived in a trailer park, somewhere in North Hollywood.  My family was dysfunctional, but not in humorous way--in a sad way.  Mental illness is nothing to laugh at.  My parents should never have married.  My mom would have fared much better as part of an art colony, and my dad, in the graphics design department of a gay advocacy magazine, living the life of a swinging bachelor.  But, no!  Thanks to 1950’s conservative conformity, they got married and had kids!

            Our house was right next to the school district’s border.  Had I lived on the north side of Beverly Boulevard, I’d of have gone to Melrose Elementary School and, later, to Bancroft Junior High.  As it were, I attended Hancock Park Elementary on Fairfax Avenue.

            My parents were anti-social. They had no friends and rarely visited with relatives.   Normal parents of that era had cocktail parties; my parent would sit in the living room every weekend, giving each other psychotic stares.  They didn’t shelter me; they sequestered me!!!  I was taught to fear the world.

            I presume that, by law, they had to resister me for school.  So I went.  After all, compulsory public education was designed to keep kids out of the labor market!

            According to my school records, my first day of school was February 2, 1959.  I do not remember what I wore that first morning.  My mom woke me at 7 a.m. and told me to get dressed.  I hated waking up early!  I always felt hungover.  I never slept well because I had sinus allergies, which forced me to breathe through my mouth.  I remember my mom rushing me through breakfast so we could be on time. 

            She drove the two miles to my new school in our 1952 Pontiac.  What I liked about our dark green Pontiac was the Indian head on the hood of our car.  It was made out of orange plastic and looked to be a very wise man.  My mom drove west along 3rd Street.  I remember the overhead wires strung along the center of the street, like telephone lines.  These enabled the electric buses to operate.  I remember seeing the sparks fly each time one passed us.  Sadly, by 1963, they were all gone.

            My mom made a left turn onto Ogden Avenue, which swirled into Colgate Avenue.   She found a parking space on the street.  I think we were five minutes late.  She hurriedly got out of the Pontiac and went to my side of the car, opened the door, and grabbed my hand.  She yanked me through the chain link fence toward the outdoor steps that led to the kindergarten room.  Halfway up the steps, I freaked out!  I started to whine, “I don’t wanna go to school! I want to go home!”  My mom and I had a tug of war and I started to cry and stomp my feat.  Apparently, the teacher saw my mother having a hard time with me and, the next thing I knew, she came over and talked to me.  Her kind, female voice calmed me as she asked, “What is your name, little boy?”

            “Stevie!”  I said, choking on my tears.

            She said, “Well Stevie! Don’t be afraid! Everything will be all right.”

            She took my hand and, together, we went into the room.  Once I went through that door, the Los Angeles Unified School District would have my ass for 13 years!  (I would end up spending an extra year because I was held back a grade.)

            My mother waited by the door for a while, then she left.  For the first time in my life, I was alone.  All through my short life, I had been told not to talk to strangers and now, here I was in a room full of strangers!  I soon came to realize that I had two separate lives, a home life and a school life.  

            The kindergarten room was the largest room in the building.  I learned later that this room had served as a library, until an extra wing was added to the school.  There was a wall-sized, French window in front of the room, which admitted natural light.  I never could understand why they planted a tree in front of that window!  The room had a high ceiling so, whenever a light bulb burned out, the janitor would use a long stick to remove the old bulb and screw in a new one.  There were heaters along the walls, covered in mental housing.  The floor was Linoleum with a square, Art Deco pattern.  It was kept clean and well waxed. To the left of the room was the playground reserved only for kindergarteners, fitted with swings, Jungle Jims, and sand boxes.

            Most of my time in kindergarten is a blur.  I do remember naptime, however.  We’d drag out these heavy rubber mats onto the floor that had been piled up on some shelf.  I didn’t understand why we had to take naps.  I remember never sleeping during those periods.  My parents used to make me go to bed at 8:30 sharp each night.  I still remember the odor of the rubber mat while I lay there, pretending to be asleep.  The teacher would close the drapes and shut off the lights.  Then the room went silent.  You could hear the tick, tick, tick of the clock on the wall.  That was the most morose sound I’d ever heard.  A bomb timer would tick swiftly, but a school clock was so slow.  Tick…tick…tick...

            Now, the boy’s lavatory was very 1940’s.  There were large water tanks that ran into the communal urinals.  Every minute, on the dot, the tanks would release water into the urinals.  The place sounded like a water possessing plant.  It was a trip into the past.

            Construction of the front building started in 1937, which is the same year my house on Martel was built.  The school was completed in 1939.  The building design was European, which was the case for many L.A. schools.  Hancock Park Elementary even had a boiler room!  Why?!  This wasn’t Chicago!  It got cold in the wintertime, but not that cold!  What the school needed was air conditioning!  Those Indian summers were a bitch in those classrooms!  As it turned out, the coolest room at school was the kindergarten room!

That was my first day at school.

These were the very stair steps where I freaked out on my first day of school, 1959.