Click on these words to return to the School Life page
Grade 7; Cady School
I
think my time at Cady school turned into a year full of life changing
experiences for me. Again, as in the
4th grade, the baby boom effect must have caused a shortage of classroom space
and the 1958 6th and 7th grade kids from Larkin and the 7th grade kids from
Mills got mixed together in a three room school on Sturgeon Road called Cady. The
school had three rooms but only two were used for classes. The third was always
empty. There were girls and boys
bathrooms, of course and at least one cloakroom where coats and lunches were
kept.
To
begin with, I think Mr. Pankhurst must have been a lousy teacher. I don't remember much about his teaching
skills but, much of the time, he seemed to have almost no control over classroom
behavior. And we had a couple of
rowdy (and older) guys in the 7th grade who pushed him to the limit several
times throughout the school year. I
don't remember much of any thing about the 6th grade teacher other than she
seemed nice.
As
far as the kids were concerned, I thought the mix of Larkin and Mills was
interesting and fun. I'd been riding
school busses with all the Mills kids for years but I only new a couple of
Larkin kids before that year. My dad
worked with Bill Mason at Dow and my parents would often play cards with Bill
and Betty while we were growing up so I got to know the twins, Ray and Roy
Mason, long before we went to school together at Cady. I also got to know about Dana Wint and
Connie
Of
course, I wasn't disappointed when I finally met Dana and Connie because they
were just as nice and pretty as Ray and
This
was the year that I first fell in love though.
Rock and roll was just getting started and the hormones of puberty made
us all ripe and ready for both love and rock and roll. There was Elvis and Dion and Fabian and
Frankie Avalon and even Pat Boone. It
also helped a lot that the school had a record player and the teachers often let
us dance at lunchtime. Well, I use
the term us loosely. The boys would
only do the slow dances. When the music was fast, the girls danced and the boys
watched. When home alone, I tried to
teach myself how to dance fast like the girls did but I suspect that watching me
try to dance would have been like watching someone trying to use a sledgehammer
to play golf. It wasn't pretty. As much as I thought I could it, my
practice probably wouldn't have mattered because I probably would have been too
shy to try dancing fast anyway.
Anyway,
with rock and roll, the dancing obviously gave us boys and girls an acceptable
way of getting close to each other in a way that was difficult to do any time
before. At the age of 12 or 13,
dancing made it easy to fall in love. And
I did. Probably because it was all
new to me, I was on my first roller coaster ride of emotions that I'd never felt
before. I don't remember any of
circumstances of how we met or why I was attracted to her. We probably exchanged love notes but I
don't think we ever kissed or, except when we danced, even held hands. I can't even remember her face. At this point in my life, I only remember
her name. Although it is not the
same person that you've read about in the news of the recent past... her name
was Linda Tripp. I never saw her
again after that year.
I
don't know if the word 'cool' was in vogue yet but that is how some of us boys
tried to look that year. I remember
that at least a few of us tried to emulate the Elvis Presley look. When we could get away with it, we would
turn our collars up at the back and a few whose parents would allow it had
ducktail haircuts.
Duane
Dice had a little bit of country and western in him and I can still hear him
singing "It's been a blue, blue day, I feel like running away, I feel like
running away from it all". I
have no idea who the original singer or what the name of song was (Blue, Blue
Day?) but, for some damn reason, Duane's version still sticks in my head.
Although
reluctant, my dad even let me buy some PFCs that year (shoes with pointed toes
that we called Puerto-Rican Fence Climbers).
In the Michigan
winter, I wore them out by Christmas and, to my embarrassment, dad bought
sturdy work shoes that he knew would last for the rest of the year.
This
was also a first year for cigarettes for many of us. We would sometimes go way out across the
field to get behind some small trees and have a smoke. Eventually someone got caught and we
weren't allowed to go out there any more so that ended cigarettes for me. I never liked them anyway so it didn't
matter much. Besides, my parents
smoked and I probably could have figured out a way to have cigarettes anytime I
wanted.
One
time we had a problem with lunchtime thefts.
Lunches were stowed on the cloakroom near the bathroom so it was easy to
pilfer a lunch if someone wanted to. Dave
Schneider almost always brought a candy bar, which came up missing several days
in a row. One day Dave announced
that his Hershey Bar had been taken the day before but it was one that his dad
had melted Ex Lax on. The candy bar
thefts stopped but I always wondered if it was the effect of the Ex Lax or just
the thought that it might happen again that deterred the thief.
Back
to rock and roll. This was the year
that The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holley were killed. The school must have had a radio because
after we found out about the plane crash, I don't remember many girls
who weren't crying about it. I
wouldn't see so many tears again in school until the death of John Kennedy in
1963.
Back
to hormones again. We had one kid in
school who was bigger than the rest of us probably at least 2 grades behind. I don't remember his name but I'll call
him 'the big guy'. At lunch hour one
day towards the end of the school year, most of the kids were dancing or
listening to records in the 6th grade classroom when Mr. Pankhurst went in and
told all the 7th graders that lunch was over and it was time to go back to
class. I went one of several who
went back our classroom but some kids, including 'the big guy', ignored the
teacher and stayed behind to listen or dance or watch. When 'the big guy' continued to ignore
his demands to return to class, Mr. Pankhurst decided to kick him in the butt. Not a good idea to poke at the biggest
guerilla in the zoo. I wasn't there
to see it but the story was that 'the big guy' didn't like it very much and was
just big enough to make Mr. Pankhurst understand the he'd just made a big
mistake.
I
think the police were called but by that time 'the big guy' had left. I'm pretty sure that neither 'the big
guy' or Mr. Pankhurst returned and that we had a substitute teacher for the rest
of the year.
With
Mary Lou Woodruff's help, here are the names of the people in my 1958-1959 Grade
7 class photo:
Mr.
Pankhurst, Dana Wint, Mike McCrary, Louise Wendell, Duane Dice, Mary Yates,
Russell Cornman,
Kathy Bozer, Mickey Howe, Jim Letts, unknown, Dave Schneider, Audrey Richardson, Gordon
Swinson, Judy Fick, unknown, Dale Laplow, Violett Wendell, Jim Anderick, Pat Devericks?,
Ray Mason, Ruth Bailey, Roy Mason, Suzanne McGraw, Doug Klemkosky, Jack
Blasdell?, Lee Revior, Ron or Don Potts?, Max
