First Day and Last Day of School This Week

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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ABD, Bruce Anthony Jones, Cecil Parker Elementary, CMU, Common Ground (1985), Dan Resnick, Daniel P. Resnick, Dick and Jane, Dissertation, Dissertation Overview Defense, Humanities, Humanities Program, J. Anthony Lukas, Joe Trotter, Kindergarten, Mrs. Shannon, Nathan Hale Elementary, PhD, World Book Encyclopedia

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

I’ve written about parts of this before, back in my first days of blogging about my life and times as a student. But this week is especially poignant. Yesterday (September 2) marked twenty years since I sat through and passed my PhD dissertation overview defense at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, making me ABD (All But Dissertation, an official PhD candidate). Tomorrow (September 4) will be forty years since my first day of school, attending kindergarten at the Nathan Hale Elementary School (now Cecil Parker ES) in Mount Vernon, New York. It was a school two buildings and an asphalt playground down from our second-floor flat, 425 South Sixth Avenue. In between was nineteen years and 363 days of time as a formal student, going from learning how to read “Dick and Jane went to the store” to writing a “book” about multiculturalism and Black Washington, DC.

I’m sure most of us don’t remember so much of what occurred in between day one and day 7,303 of student-hood. I remember plenty, though. I remember the morning being unusually cold and having to wear a windbreaker or a raincoat (according to a weather website, the high that day was only 69F, and it actually rained at some point during the day). Kindergarten was only a half-day endeavor back then, so I remember getting released to come home for lunch and spending the rest of the day playing with my Tonka toys and watching Sesame Street and The Electric Company.

Second floor of Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, December 2, 2010. (Daderot via Wikimedia). In public domain.

Contrast that with a warm first Friday in September ’94, at a time when I’d met some new first-year PhD students in the History program, Carl, Jeff, Susannah and a few others, who all seemed surprisingly interested in my dissertation work. I think it was just that I was one of their first points of contact, going through something they themselves hoped to do within a few years. Either way, I’d been preparing to defend my eighty-page dissertation overview for the previous six weeks, in between working on a migration studies research project for Joe Trotter and keeping an eye out for dissertation grants that I firmly believed were necessary for me to get out of grad school with my sanity intact.

As I walked up the sloped, dark, factory-mimicking hallway on the second floor of Baker Hall to what would be two hours of interrogation from Trotter, Dan Resnick, Bruce Anthony Jones and Department Chair Steve Schlossman (among others in the conference room that morning) with my “entourage,” I had this two-decade juxtaposition in mind. I actually started thinking about the long path from kindergarten to PhD, and all the bumps, bruises and breaks along the way. About how on a September 2nd morning six years before, I’d been homeless and came within days of dropping out of college. About how none of this would have been possible without my older brother Darren, who taught me how to read on Christmas Day ’74. Or, for that matter, without my third-grade teacher Mrs. Shannon encouraging my Mom to buy the entire set of the ’78 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia, which led to me reading through that set between December ’78 and April ’79.

Even J. Anthony Lukas‘ Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (1985) was in my head as I laid out my papers and dissertation overview as references for my overview defense. I’d only read the book in the previous year. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book for nonfiction lived up to the award it earned Lukas, as he went to excruciating lengths to make the process of desegregation by busing, White fears, and Boston’s racism and racial divide come alive.

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

In reading about what the White parents did to stop busing in September ’74, it forced up a memory of watching the evening news my first two days of school about Boston’s White community rioting over busing and desegregation. The picket signs, the bottles and rocks. I remembered asking my Mom about it then, but I don’t think she gave me a direct answer. Lukas, though, did, twenty years later.

Finally, I thought about my Humanities classmates as I sat down and had gone through all of the pleasantries with my dissertation committee and other professors and grad students in the room. I thought about how classmates like Josh and Danny ridiculed me as a savant, who told me that history essentially was only trivia, that I couldn’t do anything with it other than “go on Jeopardy.” In some ways, they were right. They just weren’t correct on September 2, ’94.

All of this gave me a place to start. So when Trotter asked me, “What in your life has prepared you for this moment?,” I knew from which parts of my life’s journey to pick. Only to realize that in starting at the beginning, I was nowhere near full circle.

Peanuts Land

01 Sunday Apr 2012

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

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Ass-Whuppin', Charles Schulz, Charlie Brown, Ebony Pictorial History of Black America, Grounding, Imagination, Inspiration, Intellectual Development, Lucy Van Pelt, Peanuts, Peanuts Gang, Reading, Running Away, Snoopy, World Book Encyclopedia, World War II

Snoopy and Charlie Brown taking a nap, circa 1964, March 10, 2012. (http://wallpaperpimp.com via United Features Syndicate). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution, subject matter and is no longer in production.

I loved Charles Schulz’ Peanuts comic strip and his Charlie Brown and Snoopy books growing up. From the time I turned seven all the way through sixth grade, they helped expand my mind and world beyond 616 East Lincoln Avenue, apartment number A32 and Mount Vernon, New York. So much so that when I had read all of the books available to me through Mount Vernon Public Library, I took the idea of Charlie Brown

Lucy and Charlie Brown, from a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, November 20, 1973. (http://billluton.com via United Features Syndicate). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution and subject matter.

to heart. I saw myself as the Black version of the lonely misfit of a kid, who could almost grab the brass ring but couldn’t quite hold on to it, who had some friends, but not close ones.

World Book Encyclopedia literally changed my life between December ’78 and April ’79. And with that change came my ability to use Charles Schulz’ Peanuts as the image in my mind’s eye for understanding it all. It was after running away from home to get away from my new stepfather, the now-and-forever abuser and idiot Maurice Washington, whom had married my mother in October ’78. Because my stepfather had pissed me off with another one of his rules, and because I knew that my guardians had already started to argue about money, I ran away from home. I packed two days’ worth of clothing and walked out with the plan that I would get to New Rochelle, find a boat, stowaway and eventually get to Europe or France. There, I could be free.

The Pelham Manor Police found me three-and-a-half hours later, having lured me into the squad car with the promise of hot dogs and orange soda. My mother gave me the belt-ass-whuppin’ of my life at the time, as it seemed to last forever, with her screaming, “You do this again, you won’t be around to cry about it!” I was on lockdown in me and my older brother Darren’s bedroom for six weeks afterward.

It was during those six weeks of no TV and no going outside that I decided to punish my mother and stepfather by ignoring them with books. I cracked open the “A” volume of the ’78 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia and began reading. And reading. And reading. “I’ll show them!,” I thought. Pretty soon I didn’t miss TV. I didn’t have lots of friends, so going out to play became less and less of a hardship. So I kept reading.

By the time I decided to go outside again, it was April ’79, well past my six-week grounding. But going

McDonald's Big Mac styrofoam container, 1975, February 27, 2011. (bolio88 via Flickriver.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws, as picture is for illustrative purposes only, and said container is no longer manufactured by McDonald.

outside to play for the first time in four months felt more alien to me that what I had been doing after reading sections of World Book Encyclopedia. I’d taken what I’d learned about city government, taxes, urban planning, population density, and created what I called “Peanuts Town” in our bedroom. Charlie Brown was the mayor, and Lucy Van Pelt was his wife. Snoopy, of course, was the deputy mayor and in charge of law enforcement. Once my father Jimme came back into our lives, I’d buy Matchbox cars to drive around the city, and created a restaurant and entertainment row of the city that included a McDonald’s Big Mac and Burger King fries containers as restaurants.

By the end of fifth grade in June ’80, my encyclopedic world view had expanded to include national and international issues, including history and World War II. And not just through World Book Encyclopedia, as I cruised through Ebony’s four-volume Pictorial History of Black America collection that spring also. I made “Peanuts Town” the capital of “Peanuts Land,” and Charlie Brown was the president. By this time, Charlie and Lucy had kids, just like I had a younger baby brother in Maurice.

Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace on his doghouse Sopwith Camel, circa 1964 (scanned from Thermos lunchbox), January 23, 2008. (Maravin via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution, with image no longer in production.

I made up maps of this country, including its natural resources and its naval bases. I’d make ships out of aluminum foil, stamped into shapes using the old, heavy wooden frame windows we had in our bedroom. I had made at least fifty battleships, aircraft carriers and cruisers, preparing for the Soviet threat. All without the prospect of nuclear war.

As I kept reading and using my imagination, my SRA tests for fourth and fifth grade confirmed that all of this deep thinking was paying off. I had raised my reading score from 3.9 (just barely at the fourth grade level) to a 7.4 (the equivalent of an above average seventh grader) by the end of fourth grade, and to an 11.0 by the end of fifth. A story of irony, imagination and naivete, the story of my young life, a boy at the window. One of success, of living, of wisdom and love and understand, of self-discovery, of all the things that makes one human.

World Book Encyclopedia’s Insidious Effect

15 Tuesday Mar 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Marriage, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Ass-Whuppin', Imagination, Intellect, Learning, Mrs. Shannon, Parent-Teacher Conference, Peter Cottontail, Reading, Reading Level, Reading Scores, Runaway, Running Away, Teacher Crush, Third Grade, World Book Encyclopedia

World Book Encyclopedia, 1978 Edition, March 15, 2011. Source: http://cgi.ebay.com

I’ve talked about how World Book Encyclopedia literally changed my life from a reading standpoint between December ’78 and April ’79. It was after running away from home to get away from my new stepfather, the now-and-forever abuser and idiot Maurice Washington. I talked about how after my mother gave me an ass-whuppin’ that seemed to last forever, I was forbidden from having any playtime for six weeks. I punished myself, my mother and my idiot stepfather by picking up the A volume of World Book Encyclopedia and began to read it. “I’ll show them!,” I thought.

I made a point of reading and reading. By the time I decided to go outside again, it was April ’79, well past my six-week grounding. And my SRA test for fourth grade confirmed that I had raised my reading score from 3.9 (just barely at the fourth grade level) to a 7.4 (the equivalent of an above average seventh grader). So much for punishing my mother and myself!

Many of my former classmates, and certainly a number of my closest friends, have heard parts and various versions of this story over the years. But I’ve hardly ever told the story of how I had access to the ’78 edition of all thirty or so volumes of World Book Encyclopedia in the first place. That started because of a teacher crush, the second one I had in my first four years of K-12. This one involved my third grade teacher at William H. Holmes Elementary, Mrs. Shannon. She was fun, funny, beautiful, and dressed like a young Sue Simmons from WNBC-TV New York did when she started working for Channel 4 earlier in

Sue Simmons, circa 1978, March 15, 2011. Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution of picture and relevance to subject matter of blog.

’77-’78.

Like most crushes I’ve had over the years, this one snuck up on my eight-year-old self and hit me in the head like a 90-mph fastball from Randy Johnson. And like the crushes I’d have when I reached Humanities in middle school and high school, I acted weird throughout February and March ’78. I became shier than I already was. I found myself daydreaming during reading time, not following instructions for assignments, just generally out of sorts.

Then there was the Easter play, the Peter Cottontail play. I wanted to play the lead role of Peter the Bunny, but all Mrs. Shannon wanted me to be was a stupid flower. I was mad, acted out, and she punished me by taking me out of the play all together. Following that, I refused to talk to her in class the next day. “You don’t have to speak,” Mrs. Shannon said as she sent me to sit in the corner until I was ready to talk again. I stayed in that corner the rest of the afternoon.

The following week, this week thirty-three years ago, Mrs. Shannon called for a parent-teacher conference with my mother and soon-to-be idiot stepfather. My mother, who had only been to two meetings at my schools since kindergarten, now found herself finding out that I was a bad student. Well, not exactly. Mrs. Shannon told them, “He has the ability. He has the potential. He just doesn’t want to concentrate.” Then she suggested that my mother could find a way for me to focus through World Book Encyclopedia. “It’ll draw out his imagination,” Mrs. Shannon said.

That’s all I thought and talked about on my way home with my mother. I brought it up so much that my mother said, “Alright already!” after two days of me constantly asking about it. We met a World Book sales person, and my mother wrote a check for $310, which was a lot of money for her. Within a week, four or five boxes reached 616, by far the largest order of books I’d see until grad school.

I didn’t start reading them immediately, and my mother complained about “spending all that damn money” on these books. But after December 2, ’78, my Saturday of running away from home, the investment began to pay off, and with it, the ability to think and imagine while being as weird as I wanted and needed to be, and others believed me to be as well. It’s a bittersweet memory, how I became a brainiac, how a teacher crush put me on a path of intellect and writing, of constant remembering and of painful transformations. How insidious knowledge — and the search for it — can be.