2nd and 3rd Grade Trauma – Memoir Continued

While living next to the farm, much to my chagrin, I was inadvertently educated in the inhumanity of my spiecies toward others. I witnessed a pig being slaughtered, hung up, gutted, and drained in the entrace to the farmer’s large tool shed. It was a gruesome experience that I’ve never forgotten. It’s probably at least part of the reason that I’m vegan today.

I also learned how to shovel coal into the coalbin in our basement through the basement window. Dad helped/showed me how at first. Then it became my ‘job’ when the coal truck made our delivery. That only happened a couple of times before we moved to our next rental home.

We were also educated in hiden dangers of playing around old haystacks and cow pies. My mother had to hose us off before letting us into the house after our barn and haystack adventures.

We moved to another location on East River Road and Guy (Gery, as he was known then) and I were enrolled at an old school house, Golf Road School, a small wooden structure probably built around the turn of the 20th Century. It was so small that the second and third grades were in the same small classroom. In fact, all the grades were doubled up like that throughout the school.

Again, my performance was substandard. And the teacher, Mrs. Commavies, frequently bent my fingers back and slapped the palm of my hand with a ruler for not paying attention… (interestingly, I went to a high school dance with her daughter nine or ten years later; fortunately, her mother didn’t remember me…).

As a result of my continued poor academic performance, the school administration recommended that I repeat third grade and my parents agreed; all parties considered me incorrigible, I think.

To be Continued

–LE