Independence Day On The 6’s

04 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Patriotism, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, Sports, Work, Youth

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1976, 1996, 2006, 7 Train, Adulthood, Coming-of-Age, Dwight Gooden, Escapism, Growing Up, Independence Day, July 4th, Lee Iacocca, Manhood, Metro-North, Mets, New York Mets, Nolan Ryan, Peace, Shea Stadium, Siblings, Statue of Liberty, Subway, Technisort

Shea Stadium (taken from 7 Subway), Flushing Meadows, Queens, NY, September 10, 2008. (Gary Dunaier via http://farm4.static.flickr.com/). In public domain.

For me, the 6’s are ’76, ’86, ’96, and ’06. For 2016, all I’ve done today is make BBQ chicken legs and thigh (after an hour of so of marinating), corn on the cob, mac and cheese, and New York Style blondies with chocolate chips and walnuts. It’s a rainy 240th anniversary of America’s independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. About as dreary the Mid-Atlantic and the nation, really, can be during an election cycle.

It wasn’t that way for most of my on-the-6 Independence Days. I’ve talked about my first one, the bicentennial of 1976, the summer of “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.” That Saturday down in a ship and fireworks smoked filled New York Harbor, followed a train ride with my inebriated father to New Haven. I slept more peacefully on that train ride than I probably did at home. At least, until the conductor woke us up to let us know we were in Connecticut. We were lucky the trains in and out of New York were free that day.

Typical Pittsburgh fireworks show for Independence Day, Point State Park, Pittsburgh, PA, July 4, 2014. (http://davedicello.com/).

Independence Day/Week 1996 was pretty good, if not as meandering. Me and my future spouse Angelia went to Point State Park in Downtown Pittsburgh to watch the fireworks. For all of the issues that po-dunk Pittsburgh has, bad fireworks shows weren’t one of them. I needed the break, after a spring of turmoil with my advisor Joe Trotter and weeks revised my then 430-page dissertation (I would end up writing seventy-five pages [net] that month while doing a second set of revisions). It rained that afternoon and early evening, but it cleared up at 8 pm, just in time for some excellent fireworks. We perched ourselves where we could see sparkles and artwork over the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers.

Tuesday, July 4th of ’06 wasn’t memorable. It was my first summer working on Boy @ The Window, and I had already began planning my escape from AED and the daily grind of nonprofit work and raising money. I think we had my sister-in-law over. I made some ribs and chicken, bought dinner rolls and macaroni salad, and talked mostly about my then nearly three-year-old son and his potty training woes. Ah, the boring stability of a more typical middle-class American life!

Of all my Independence Days — on a “6” year or not — one stands out over all the rest. Friday, July 4, 1986. It was the grand re-opening of the Statue of Liberty, courtesy of one-time Chrysler head Lee Iacocca and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, which had raised hundreds of millions to restore both symbols of American inclusion (via European immigrants, at least) and American freedom to museum-quality glory. My Mom, my idiot stepfather Maurice, and my younger siblings Sarai and Eri went down to Battery Park by Subway and Bee-Line bus to see the grand ships and fireworks for that celebration of the Statue of Liberty at 100 years old.

Dwight Gooden, aka, “Dr. K,” Shea Stadium, 1986. (Source/http://itsonbroadway.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/dwight-gooden-aka-dr-k/).

Not so for me and the rest of us. I took me, my older brother Darren, and my then near-seven year-old brother Maurice and nearly five year-old brother Yiscoc to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets play. It was either a 1:05 pm or 1:35 pm start, I don’t remember. What I do remember, though, is that was a beautiful eighty-five degree afternoon, beautiful because it wasn’t particularly humid, and there were no storm clouds to be found that Friday. Dwight Gooden was on the mound for the Mets, starting against the all-time great Nolan Ryan. It was built up to be a duel, and it was.

Keith Hernandez drove in a run in the first, and that was it until the top of the seventh inning, when Dr. K gave up a home run to Kevin Bass. Other than that, fly balls, walks, double-plays, and strikeouts were the order of the day. Lenny Dykstra drove in the game-winning run with a double to right-center field at the bottom of the seventh inning off of a reliever, as Ryan was out after beginning the bottom of the sixth giving up a walk and a hit. Despite giving up five walks and only striking out four, Gooden got a complete-game win, and 30,000 saw the Mets go to 54-21, well on their way toward their World Series title for 1986.

That was already a good day. But it so much better with three of my brothers there, away from 616 and Mount Vernon, hanging out, without an adult to supervise, or rather, abuse us in some way. It was one of the first times I actually felt like a responsible adult. I took the four of us down to the city on Metro-North at the Pelham stop, rode into grimy Grand Central, took the Shuttle train to Times Square, and then the 7 Subway to Shea. Maurice and Yiscoc were so enamored with the trains and the city that it seemed all they did was stare at skyscrapers and out of train windows when we weren’t at the game. Darren, though mostly quiet, at least wasn’t staring off into space plotting some revenge on me for my “5” on the AP US History Exam while doing the Wave.

Shea Stadium, second level, behind visitors dugout, Flushing Meadow, Queens, NY, 2008. (http://www.bloggingmets.com/)

It was so cheap to do what we did that day. The four upper-deck, left-of-home plate tickets we bought cost $4 each, but each hot dog was $3, and the sodas were $2. apiece Given my $3.40-per-hour job with Technisort, though, the $50 excursion wasn’t so cheap that I wasn’t thinking about sneaking a Sabrett hot dog from a street vendor in before we got to the stadium. To be sure, the hot dogs at Shea were better than my usual fare on the street or at Gray’s Papaya.

It was probably the best day I had during my Boy @ The Window years. I was with innocent family members, watching my favorite team and one of my favorite players. I was lost in the humongous human mob of New York on a double-whammy of an Independence Day weekend. I slept well that evening, knowing that I’d drawn a 10 am-2 pm shift that Saturday. I planned on buying a new Walkman at the Cross County Mall that Saturday afternoon. A normal weekend for many sixteen-year-olds was a small eye-wall in the chaotic hurricane that was my life back then.

Mrs. Shannon

25 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Affection, Crush, Daydreaming, Demographics, Discipline, Expectations, Mrs. Shannon, Nathan Hale Elementary, Neighborhood Schooling, North Side, Puppy Love, South Side, Teaching and Learning, Traphagen Elementary, William H. Holmes Elementary

Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, circa 1976, June 25, 2016. (http://www.moviepilot.com).

It’s been nearly four decades since my first teacher crush, maybe really, my only teacher crush. Of course there were a number of teachers I came to adore and love, but not in a child-like, puppy-love way. Ms. Griffin, Ms. Martino, Harold Meltzer, even that tough old bird in Mrs. O’Daniel (R.I.P.) were a few of my favorite teachers before college. (And as a professor, I do make the distinction between teachers and professors, since the former [mostly] work with students more closely, and at a more impressionable age.)

For me it was Mrs. Shannon and third grade at William H. Holmes Elementary, the 1977-78 school year. She was my real-life Wonder Woman, with none of the skills but all of the passion of that goofy ’70s show. Beyond that, she really set me on the path to make education my weapon, my equalizer, even though it would be years before I realized the untruth of this ideal for so many.

Third grade was my transition year from Nathan Hale to Holmes. The two elementary schools were at the opposite ends of Mount Vernon, with Nathan Hale on the predominantly Black and more impoverished South Side, and Holmes on the more middle class and Whiter North Side. Though one school veered toward Pelham and the other toward the Bronx, both were similarly composed of mostly Black and some Latino kids. Interestingly, Mostly White Traphagen ES was technically a closer walk than the seven blocks between 616 and Holmes, but the Board of Education cut off the neighborhood zone right at the northern corner of the East Lincoln-Sheridan Avenue intersection.

My pretend version of an introduction to a documents-based question essay for AP World History (in my best-worst handwriting), June 21, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Despite this zoning, I lucked out. Mrs. Shannon was a young Black veteran teacher, probably between twenty-eight and thirty-three years old at the time. She was full of energy and ideas, and kept all of us on our toes. She even made my first grade teacher Ms. Griffin look lethargic by comparison (and Ms. Griffin was a bundle of energy herself!). She gave out tons of homework, drilled us on spelling, grammar, and all but beat my fingers with a ruler to improve my penmanship (my handwriting is still horrific).

In that year of learning about my new school, my new classmates, and my new neighborhood, I learned a lot from Mrs. Shannon. For one, I learned to read about more than Peanuts comic strips in short picture book form that year. I began to see books not as a burden, but as a window to new worlds, to worlds better than the one in which I lived. I learned, too, the power of multimedia. Mrs. Shannon used the latest in technology, the compact short film strip projector, to show us everything from current events to the rise and fall of ancient Mayan civilization. The screams that came from the tape recorder that came with the film strip made the fall of civilizations scary for me.

But really, after a year of unacknowledged abuse, Mom’s divorce from my dad, moving to 616, and a terrible teacher in Ms. Hirsch, I found myself healing a bit in Mrs. Shannon’s class. She actually hugged us, hugged me even, when it looked like we could use one. She was tough, though, too. I daydreamed so hard during one math lesson that I fell out of my desk chair. I ended up standing in the corner for fifteen minutes while balancing my textbook.

I daydreamed a lot in those days. I usually daydreamed about food, usually Hostess Suzy-Qs (back when they were made with lard) or what we’d have for dinner that evening. As the year progressed, a good portion of my daydreaming was about Mrs. Shannon. I was eight, so mostly it would have been about her face, her smile, her smell, maybe a kiss here, or a hug there. (Back then, I even loved the smell of her lunches, which mostly comprised of cans of tuna fish with the occasional crackers.) She would get frustrated with me, too, because I coasted for most of the year with B’s and C+’s. Mrs. Shannon asked me one, “What are you daydreaming about?” There was no way I could say, “Why, you of course!”

Ice Capades 1978 brochure (with Dorothy Hamill near middle right), June 22, 2016. (http://www.retrospace.org).

Still, without Mrs. Shannon, Mom doesn’t go out and spend $300 on the ’78 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. It was the path that led to my cosmic leap of academic development and use of near photographic memory power. With Mrs. Shannon, I saw the world beyond Mount Vernon and 1978. I could see New York beyond subway and Metro-North rides with my drunk father. I went to the Statue of Liberty and to Madison Square Garden for Ice Capades with her. Without Mrs. Shannon, I wouldn’t have recognized that I had within me any intellectual capabilities to develop. Without Mrs. Shannon, the lessons I barely knew I learned — from Roots to multiplication tables — would have disappeared from my memories.

By the end of third grade, I didn’t want to go to fourth grade and Holmes’ second floor, where the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms were. I felt like I would never see Mrs. Shannon again. On my way out of her classroom, I gave her one last hug, while she reminded me that I could “always do better” academically. I went home that morning, went into the bedroom I shared with my older brother Darren, and walked into our small walk-in closet. Once there, I shut the door, and cried like a little baby for at least a half hour. The good news was, no one was home that Friday. I cried as if I’d never see Mrs. Shannon again, even though I knew I would. That was thirty-eight years ago this week.

My Busing Blues

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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425 South Sixth Avenue, 616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Boston, Busing, Classism, Common Ground (1985), Community, Desegregation Orders, Divorce, Economic Inequality, Educational Equity, Friendships, J. Anthony Lukas, Ms. Hirsch, Nathan Hale Elementary, Ostracism, Racism, School Desegregation, Second Grade, William H. Holmes Elementary, Youth

TFD bus (they're still around?), South Side, Mount Vernon, NY, May 25, 2016. (http://zztalon.tripod.com/).

TFD bus (they’re still around?), May 25, 2016. (http://zztalon.tripod.com/).

Schooling and friendships have been the main theme of my posts this month. I find myself in deeper reflection about my years before the Boy @ The Window years these days. Maybe because I’ve come to realize that those years between ’74 and ’81 were far more influential in how I saw the world than I’d previously given credit.

One issue that I think I’ve had insight into for years before actually becoming an educator is busing. Maybe not so much in relation to school desegregation, though. As a seven-year-old, it would’ve been in terms of friendships and belonging. The only time I faced a no-choice busing situation was my last two and a half months of second grade, between April and late-June 1977. My Mom and Maurice had moved in together and moved me and my brother Darren to North Side Mount Vernon and 616, the house of horrors that would become the central locale of my memoir.

The Soiling of Old Glory, Boston, MA, April 5, 1976. (Stanley Forman/Boston Herald American via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use due to historical important of photo and low resolution.

The only thing I knew of busing before the move from 425 South Sixth to 616 East Lincoln was that Darren had been taking a bus to Clear View School in Dobbs Ferry every school day since my first day of kindergarten in ’74. Also, the images in my head from national news on the three main networks about Boston Public Schools and protests in ’74 and ’75. I had no idea in the spring of ’77 that many White and more than a few Black parents were fighting a desegregation order that required widespread busing in Boston. All I knew at the time was that a lot of angry people with signs and bricks and bottles were on my TV screen at the beginning of September almost every year.

My spring of busing was one of misery. Not because Mount Vernon was under any desegregation order, which it was. Mom had made the decision to not disrupt second grade for me by keeping me at Nathan Hale Elementary, the school that we had lived two doors down from prior to our 616 move. The other option was for me to start at William H. Holmes Elementary five months sooner, so that my transition to third grade would’ve been easier. Thanks, Mom.

Even at the time, I wished she had. Mom had been sick for half that school year. She and my father Jimme were in the midst of a nasty divorce. We had already moved. It made no sense for me to continue to go to Nathan Hale Elementary. I couldn’t stand my teacher Ms. Hirsch. She was the only teacher prior to Humanities, and especially Humanities at Mount Vernon HS, who thought of me and other students as essentially kids without a future. Ms. Hirsch was the only teacher prior to my senior year at MVHS who told me that I wouldn’t “amount to anything.” I hated, hated being in her classroom. It was a feeling I wouldn’t have again until David Wolf and AP Physics my senior year, and even then, that feeling only lasted for forty-five minutes, and even then, it wasn’t with me every day.

By the end of second grade, I was without any friends. Not because I did anything weird, which I’m sure I did. The constant disruptions in our living arrangements meant that I no longer played in the playground next to Nathan Hale after school, where I could hang out with other first, second, and third graders. (I was scared to go there by myself otherwise, anyway — this issue, to be continued.) A bunch of my first grade friends from Ms. Griffin’s class had left during the summer of ’76, leaving Winston, a first grader, as my only friend at Nathan Hale. Yeah, I talked to Lauren and one other girl in Ms. Hirsch’s class, but that was pretty much it.

Now and Later candies, made by Farley’s and Sathers, October 26, 2010. (Evan-Amos/Vanamo Media via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

Taking the bus to and from school for those last fifty days or so of school was torture. Not because kids make fun of me, which they didn’t, or because I was part of some experiment related to desegregation, which I wasn’t. I hated the smell, of bubblegum and Now-&-Laters, of sweat from recess and gym, of exhaust fumes from cars because our little TFD bus wasn’t air-conditioned. Mostly, I couldn’t stand the forty-five minutes or hour that it would take to go from 616 to Nathan Hale, picking up kids all through Mount Vernon along the way.

Fourteen years later, in an upper-level US urban history undergraduate course (my last history class before grad school) at the University of Pittsburgh, one of my required readings was J. Anthony Lukas‘ Common Ground (1985), his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on busing and school desegregation in Boston. There were so many powerful parts of Lukas’ book that piqued my interest. His coverage of parents from all sides of the busing controversy. The sense that school desegregation was a bit of a Pyrrhic victory legally, but not so much culturally, because of the “hearts and minds” issues around race. What struck me, though, was the limited perspective Lukas provided on kids who had to ride these buses between Black, White, and Puerto Rican neighborhoods to get to these schools throughout Boston.

Front cover of Common Ground (1985) by J. Anthony Lukas, September 3, 2014. (http://goodreads.com).

I imagined what it would’ve been like to bus in Boston during my K-2 years. I had it hard enough as a child of abuse and divorce, with a move to an uncertain future, and with at least one teacher who saw me as little more than human garbage. Add screaming and spit-flying from White parents raging over school desegregation? I really could’ve been written off, never having a chance to become a good student, and more importantly, a lifelong learner. Maybe the only lesson I would’ve learned from busing was that Whites against busing have serious high-blood pressure issues. Or, more realistically, that White parents didn’t want me to become friends with their kids.

Either way, Lukas helped me realize, maybe for the first time, how twisted and evil American society would have to be to expose kids to blatant racism and not-so-blatant economic inequalities as demonstrated through busing.

Sixteenth Anniversary

28 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture

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Anniversary, Crisis, Family, Mother-in-Law, Old Age

Guinness Chocolate Cake with Bailey’s Cream Cheese Glaze (may make this for us after wifey gets back) March 17, 2010. (https://culinspiration.files.wordpress.com/).

Today’s our sixteenth year together in marriage, my wife Angelia and I. Except that we’re not together on this special day. Twelve days ago, my eighty-five year-old mother-in-law collapsed outside her senior high-rise in the lower Hill District in Pittsburgh. She fractured her chin and broke her right wrist in the process. Between that and her various medications for her heart and blood vessels, my mother-in-law became deeply depressed and agitated, to the point where the doctors postponed one of her surgeries. And that was within thirty-six hours of her collapse.

So my wife left for Pittsburgh eleven days ago to help take care of her mommy, to make sure the doctors and nurses did right by her, to maybe help lift her spirits, to get her affairs in better order. Thankfully, my mother-in-law recovered emotionally and psychologically, to be the cranky curmudgeon she’s always been. The doctors did my mother-in-law’s wrist surgery last Thursday, and they moved her to a rehab nursing home on Tuesday. There, maybe my mother-in-law can learn to be ambidextrous for the first time in her life.

The result has been that this is the second longest time me or my wife and my son have been away from one another (the longest were the two-week stretches I spent teaching at Princeton in the summers of ’08 and ’09, where I’d come back for a day or two). For her, I’m happy that her mommy is doing better, that everything worked out. It has been exhausting for me, being a single parent for more than a week and a half. But for Angelia, running around dealing with insurance and financial issues, family dynamics, a deeply depressed mother, and being away from us. I’m sure she’s ready to find a cave with a nice soft pillow and bed for hibernation. I’m sure because that’s how I felt after just six days in Mount Vernon in July 2010, working with my own severely depressed Mom to ensure that my late sister Sarai got the proper send off.

My wife not being here on this day is uncharted territory. No dinner plans or special desserts. No cards or flowers or other gifts. I will be able to do some of this once she’s back. The only thing that makes sense after the past two weeks is a co-ed day spa, where the two of us can get full body massages. That, and enough ZQuil for us to both sleep at least twelve hours, is on the consideration menu.

Wow, that’s about one hundred words too many to say that I miss my partner in life today! Still, Happy Anniversary!

Holiday Traditions (really, not having any)

12 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Hebrew-Israelite, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Work, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Abuse, Chanukah, Chiropractor, Christmas, Domestic Violence, Family, Giving, Haves and Have-Nots, Holiday Traditions, Maurice Eugene Washington, Mom, Mother-Son Relationship, Poverty, Receiving, Suicide, Womanizing

Christmas Holiday and Traditions Around The World ornament bulb, December 12, 2015. (http://johnseville.benchmark.us).

At my chiropractic appointment yesterday morning, my bone-cracking doctor of fourteen years and I got into a discussion of our holiday plans over the next couple of weeks. Her and her family will visit with extended kin in Virginia, while we’re heading to Pittsburgh to see my in-laws. During our conversation, my chiropractor brought up some of the family traditions she’s preserved with her handful of Christmases with her young daughter and two sons. Traditions like Danish pork roast for dinner, ornaments and other hand-me-downs from her grandparents and other ancestors as part of trimming the tree.

“I wouldn’t know anything about traditions. Matter of fact, there were eight years growing up where we didn’t even celebrate Christmas,” I said, with no forethought about what her reaction might be.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” my chiropractor said in a quiet yet somewhat shocked tone, as if I’d ruined the Christmas spirit for her kids.

“That’s what happens when you go up in poverty,” I said apologetically, realizing that I might have cost my chiropractor some peace of mind this holiday season.

Even at nearly forty-six, I can still say things without thinking, causing others to have to think more than they normally would. Sometimes, it’s without intent or malice, sometimes it’s because I don’t give a crap what people may think. Regardless, it’s certainly not because I want people to feel sorry for me or to give me a hug.

The truth is, the only holiday traditions I have come either from my wife or her family or were born out of my circumstances. Like making super-sweet, two-packs of Fruit Punch Kool-Aid and mixing it with either ginger ale or Sierra Mist for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Or getting our son’s Christmas presents ready for him without him knowing the night before. Or me making some holiday/birthday cake for me and us (since my birthday is two days after Christmas). And often going to a soup kitchen, homeless shelter or other venue to give away clothes, toys, money, my time in knowing that no matter how I might feel about my life, plenty others have it much worse.

The truth is also more complicated than simple poverty. Up until my eighth birthday in ’77, my Mom and me and Darren (with either my father or my idiot stepfather) celebrated Darren’s birthday, Christmas and my birthday as separate or nearly separate events. Some of my best times growing up were those days. Then, when the hyperinflation of the late-1970s kicked in — along with a second marriage and two more mouths to feed — Christmases ’78 and ’79 consisted of a fake two-foot table tree, a new shirt or sweater and a new pair of slacks. There were no birthday celebrations for me.

A contemporary Candelabrum in the style of a traditional Menorah. United Kingdom, Chanukah service, December 2014. (Gil Dekel; http://www.poeticmind.co.uk; via 39james via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-4.0.

Between Christmas ’80 and Christmas ’88, we didn’t even have the fake dwarf tree. Of course, four of those years we were Hebrew-Israelites. But there is this holiday known as Chanukah that also occurs in December, in which Torah believers celebrate the Festival of Lights with eight days of gifts and giving. But these were also the worst of our poverty-stricken years, and we could barely afford one candle for the menorah, much less eight or nine. The best gift I got those years was my idiot stepfather being out the apartment at 616 and on the prowl for other victims for his fast-talking nonsense about making money and living a godly way-of-life. I also attempted suicide on my fourteen birthday, not exactly a tradition worth repeating.

Finally, in December ’89, we had our first Christmas at 616 with my Mom having divorced my now idiot ex-stepfather. She bought a fake full-sized tree. I bought my four younger siblings gifts big and small for the holiday. My mom even made me a Duncan Hines chocolate cake with vanilla icing for my twentieth birthday that year. We didn’t have much, but what we did that year meant so much as we moved into the 1990s.

In all of my adult Christmases, I’ve actually only done one in Pittsburgh prior to our trip coming up in eleven days. It was Christmas ’98. That week, perhaps the only important tradition I’ve ever been a part of began. I moved in with my then girlfriend Angelia, mostly as a cost-cutting measure, partly out of love and concern for our respective futures. We’ve been living together and celebrating the holidays ever since!

Aside

Thank You, Ms. Griffin

22 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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#BlackWomenAreMagic, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Angels, Dedication, Demons, Heroes, Hugs, Mom, Ms. Griffin, Nathan Hale Elementary, Nurturer, Parent-Teacher Conference, Teacher-Student Relationship, Teaching and Learning

My report card from 1st grade, Nathan Hale ES, 1975-76, and close-up of Ms. Griffin’s signature, September 22, 2015. (Donald Earl Collins).

I have spent a ton of space in the blogosphere thanking teachers like Harold Meltzer for making me the thinker and writer I am today, flaws and all. Meltzer, though, was not the first teacher who ever took a deep interest in me. My elementary school teachers deserve just as much credit, if not more. For if it weren’t for the likes of Ms. Griffin at Nathan Hale ES, and Mrs. Shannon, Mrs. O’Daniel, and Mrs. Bryant at William H. Holmes ES — Black teachers all — I would’ve never made it to have Meltzer as my eleventh grade AP US History teacher in the first place.

But it all really started with Ms. Griffin. My passion for being right. My adrenaline rush with As, and eschewing of Bs and B+s. My wanting to learn more about what I getting wrong and then fixing those things. That all began for me in first grade, in September ’75.

Cecil Parker Elementary School (formerly Nathan Hale ES), Mount Vernon, NY, November 23, 2006. (Donald Earl Collins).

At this middle-age stage of life, I don’t exactly remember every detail about Ms. Griffin, our classroom, or most of my classmates. I was five-going-on-six. Still, there were more than a few things that stood out. Ms. Griffin seemed like a tall woman to me, I mean, nearly as tall as my six-foot Mom, with similar skin tone and other features. That’s where the similarities ended. Ms. Griffin was always nice to me, very patient. Even when one of us got rowdy, she didn’t scream or holler or demean to get us to settle down. Everything with her was a teaching lesson, so even when one of us would act up, it was a teaching and learning moment.

Ms. Griffin decorated her first-floor classroom to communicate the world to us, not just to make the room pretty for a bunch of first-graders. I remember pictures of MLK and maybe Harriet Tubman on the wall. Along with standard colored digits, basic addition and subtraction problems, and lots of words to spell, read, and write neatly. From day one, Ms. Griffin was always on me for my bad penmanship (if only she had seen my father’s chicken scratch!).

I remember Ms. Griffin mostly for two things. One, she was always available for me emotionally. Once, the class had a birthday party for one of the students, which included a Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey game. Ms. Griffin dutifully blindfolded me, had a couple of my classmates spin me around, and I missed pinning the tail on the donkey’s butt by a full meter. The kids all laughed. I didn’t. I got mad, balled up my fists, walked over to Ms. Griffin, and made a small kicking gesture, where I nicked her on the side of her left calf. Her response was to tug me by my right arm, tell me she understood why I was upset, but also explain with both kindness and sternness how my reaction was unacceptable. I would have to stand in the corner for five minutes after school before going home. And at the end of that day, she still gave me a hug.

Snoopy hugging Woodstock, 2011 downloaded September 22, 2015. (http://pinterest.com; © Peanuts Worldwide).

Two, Ms. Griffin was available in ways that most teachers who would make themselves this available now would likely burnout in four or five years. I had zero chance of getting away with anything in her classroom, including kissing my girlfriend Diana in the middle of a lesson a few times. She would actually call my Mom to tell her about it! One time my father found out about me being upset about a B+ on a spelling test because Ms. Griffin bumped into him at a bar one weekend! Ms. Griffin had at least one parent-teacher conference with my parents every single marking period. It wasn’t that she just took an unusual interest in me. Ms. Griffin was interested in all of us, in wanting all of us to be prepared for the next step.

Sadly, I didn’t see much of Ms. Griffin after first grade, and completely lost touch with her once Mom and my father broke up and we moved to 616 East Lincoln. I had my own demons to deal with, so much so that only in the past year have I found them all. Ms. Griffin, thankfully, was an angel of a teacher in the midst of two big waves of hurt growing up. I’m almost certain that without her, I wouldn’t have made it through educationally or psychologically to the preteen years at all.

Aside

Running Away, 30 Years Later

25 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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"Emotion (Ain't Nobody)" (2014), "Runnin'" (1995), 616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Dreams, Envy, Family Responsibilities, Fleetwood, Lliy-White, Loneliness, Making Plans, Maurice Eugene Washington, Maurice Washington, Maverick Sabre, MVHS, Pharcyde, Single-Minded, Spin Moves, Visions, Whiteness

Today’s date marks three decades since I took on my idiot stepfather Maurice Washington, and actually won, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I’ve written about the incident and my twenty-three-hour trek through Mount Vernon, my dreams, prayers, and wishes, and my confrontation before, here and in Boy @ The Window. (Even now, the baseline to Pharcyde’s “Runnin'” (1995) is running in my head, temporarily replacing my writing theme song for the past week, Maverick Sabre’s “Emotion (Ain’t Nobody)” (2011), but that’s how my mind works). So I won’t go over all of the details again. Still, there are a few important takeaways that puts Sunday, August 25, 1985 in my lifetime victory column.

Michigan WR Jeremy Gallon’s spin move gif on way to a 61-yd TD against Notre Dame, Ann Arbor, MI, September 7, 2013. (http://thebiglead.com/).

1. Physical advantages. It never occurred to me until Maurice tried to blindside me in the apartment hallway with a punch that I had much faster reflexes than the idiot. It also never occurred to me that I had a better sense of balance. I managed to avoid the punch and spin around him by using his 350-400 pounds of bulk against him (I really hated having to touch the unwashed, greasy fat frog of a man), and in only a foot of space between the two of us. That’s how I escaped Maurice’s punch and grasp, and got out of the apartment to begin my trek. Knowing what I know now, I should’ve tried out for basketball instead of baseball in eleventh grade.

2. Not finding my father. I kind of wished I had, just to have a few hours that day not to think about my present and future. But my alcoholic dad was a significant part of my present, and his absence gave me real time to think about how jacked up my family life was. I knew, if nothing else, that Maurice, Mom, and Jimme couldn’t pin that on me.

3. Walking up Gramatan Avenue and into Fleetwood. It was partly a walk that reminded me about how the other half of Mount Vernon — affluent and predominantly White — lived. I knew that I’d never be a part of that Mount Vernon, and not just because most of them would run me over with a car sooner than say “Hello.” It was the sense of exclusively, the ability to check in and out of progressive issues, like Humanities and magnet programs, that made me see. These folks I could never befriend.

St. Ursulas Roman Catholic Church, 213 East Lincoln Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY, August 2012. (http://maps.google.com).

4. MVHS overnight dreams and Catholic church prayers. Both reminded me that if I played my cards right, I could be on my way to college in two years, twenty-four months, 730 days. I could cope with 616, Maurice, my older brother Darren and my younger siblings and high school and Humanities for that much longer, I thought. But I also knew I needed to make a conscious, almost single-minded effort to do so. Even then, I was tired of burying my thoughts and emotions and playing the role of enigmatic weirdo, though. I realized this was going to be a battle with myself.

Yet what I didn’t learn from my ordeal would also be two more reasons to leave Mount Vernon. I wouldn’t learn those reasons and lessons until the spring and summer of ’87, when the respectability police, the good middle class folk of Black Mount Vernon, would give me just the push I needed…