Memories of York, PA: Report Cards

While digging out the school photos, I stumbled upon a remarkably complete (all save 1st Grade) set of grade school report cards.

Dad's signatures were remarkably legible (for him),
other years, mom signed my report cards "Mrs. William Russell"

The A+ were sources of pride, the B+ were affronts. Not really sure what happened in social studies that year, I pulled straight A's in 7th grade. I imagine my cockiness and inability to study / bear down (never having had to learn those skills) occasionally rubbed some teacher the wrong way. Pretty sure mom and dad did not buy the "C+ Above Average" argument. Amused by the McDonald's stamps, I think we got a free burger or something.

We had a custom of signing report card covers (kind of quaint, note the local ads) and I've retained just two of these - 5th grade and 8th grade. 5th grade had a lot more signatures (albeit a lot less legible), I think, knowing my family was headed to Massachusetts that summer, and I would not be accompanying my classmates to York Catholic High, I was already checking out a bit. My friends David Luck and Tom Brady signed though, and references to Groucho / Marx Brothers.  

And while I have these out, a canonical list of my grade school homeroom teachers:

• Kindergarten (East York) - Mrs. Virginia Klein
• 1st Grade - Miss Lonsdorf
• 2nd Grade - Mrs. Gerard Roventini / Principal - Sr. Justina Marie 
• 3rd Grade - Mrs. Donald Kroft / Principal - Sr. Justina Marie 
• 4th Grade - Sr. Patricia / Principal - Sr. Justina Marie  
• 5th Grade - Mrs. Danner / Principal - Sr. Lorraine
• 6th Grade - Mrs. McNeil / Principal - Sr. Lorraine 
• 7th Grade - Sr. Martha / Principal - Sr. Gordon Marie 
• 8th Grade - Sr. Alice / Principal - Sr. Gordon Marie  

Apparently I never knew any of my lay teachers' first names, since I only see last names (and in the early years, their husband's name)

Memories of York, PA: St. Joseph's School

Except for a year of kindergarten, in public schools, I was a Catholic School kid. I spent all 8 years of grade school at St. Joseph Catholic School in York, PA

Grades 1 - 3, I went to the downtown York primary school, which I've documented a bit here.

Sidebar: A perfect example of why blogging is a dying art; I remembered posting these photos and memories, but thought I had done it here. Nope. Facebook. 100s of perfectly bloggable posts have been posted on social media instead over the past years. 

Definitely a different world, when a parent would put a first grader on a bus to a downtown (inner city) school miles away.

Image: Google Maps

I have a handful of memories or anecdotes from that school:

• Serving mass (super early) at the church next door. Dad would have to drive me to services and go to mass himself. We'd also get tapped for occasional weddings (weekends, we'd get tipped) and funerals (weekdays, we learned to suck it up and not cry, and also got out of school for a few hours)
• My first grade teacher, Miss Lonsdorf, who kind of traumatized me in terms of art. We were coloring some sort of potato based leprechaun for St. Patrick's Day (I'm 60% Irish so the problematic potato famine iconography is OK). I got chewed out for coloring vertically rather than horizontally. I've never given art a chance since. 
• Serving on the school safety patrol. I remember a white cloth belt / sash (which mom dutifully bleached), a badge, and some sense of responsibility / power, even in 3rd grade. 
• Getting tasked with putting up / taking down the American flag in front of the building, along with stern directions about folding and not letting the flag touch the ground. 
• Recess in the parking lot between the school and the church, as well as behind the church

Image: Google Maps

I struggled to post these (violating one of my own sacrosanct policies of no pre-transition photos) but when you hang on to childhood treasures, they must be shared.

St. Joseph's School, York, PA, Grade 3 / Mrs. Kroft's Class (1969-1970)

When we lived in York, St. Joseph had an annex or elementary school (Grades 4 -  8) out in East York, near our home. No bus involved from Grades 4 - 8, instead we walked or (more often) rode a bike.

Image: Google Maps

When we lived in York, it was just the school, a large parking lot, and a lot of grass. There would be one mass a week held in the elementary school gym. Years later the parish moved the church over to the "annex" and sold off the downtown buildings.

Lots of memories from this property:

• Being the "manager" (i.e. water boy) for the grade school basketball team. The school's one African-American, a kid named Keith, was an all star center - as close to diversity as I got back in the day. Protestants were exotic, Jews unknown, and persons of color were just not in my world. To my parents' credit, Keith came to my birthday parties, I held on to a card from him (which seemed far more 60's hip than anything else in my life) for many years. 

St. Joseph's School, York, PA - Boy's Basketball (1974-1975)
Back Row: Jack Angelo (coach), George Johnson, Chris Boyle, Jan Slobozien, Joe Scerbo, Dan Meehan, John McGowan, Marty, Moynihan, Me (manager), Artie Full (manager), Matt Moynihan (coach)
Front Row: Kevin Ochs, Mike Boldin, Joe Corcoran, Tim Marks, Keith Alleyne, John Moquin, Brian Lau

 I'm not particularly tall when lined up with the mostly 6th and 7th graders in the back row, my 8th  grade peers were the manly dudes in the front row. I was, in hindsite, quite the runt.

• Playing folk mass (wall of guitars, all strumming in furious unison). In those days before electronic tuners, one person would tune to a pitch pipe or tuning fork, and we'd all tune to that person, and must have been a gloriously atonal mess.  
• Taking down the seating after mass, before the home basketball games. The chairs would go on long rolling carts, which rolled under the stage. To this day I kind of like putting tables and chairs away. 
• For some reason, I ended up being one of several kids tapped to open up the school. We'd ride our bikes to arrive early, get in through the kitchen, and open up the metal security gates for the nuns, who would arrive en masse in a station wagon from the downtown convent. I think we could get our fingers in to unscrew the bolts holding the gates to the floor, the gates would open 18" or so for early arriving staff and teachers. Once the nuns arrived with keys we would unlock the gates and stow them for the day. 
• Sr. Kathleen, a rabid Phillies fan, who would sit us in order of performance on the last math test, and task the person in seat #1 (star pupil, no need to really pay attention) with listening to the game on the radio with an earphone, and report any scores.
• Sr. Alice, a tall drink of water who was also the gym teacher, and I suspect excelled in basketball and volleyball in her own school days. 
• Sr. Patricia Anne Doyle, who got that I was one wounded little kid behind my "smartest kid in the school" exterior, and tried to round me out a little.  
• Sr. ________ (name escapes me) who would show 35 mm filmstrips, with cassette tape soundtrack, and would fall asleep. We'd go (quietly) wild, make sure to rewind the film to the start before she awoke.
• My nemesis, a kid named Francis W. I'm pretty sure our battle royale was for last place in the school pecking order. I think I got into a real fight with him at some point in my school career which must have been, in hindsight, pretty pathetic.

St. Joseph's School, York PA, 8th Grade Graduating Class (May 1975)

Notable above: Monsignor Topper (dad's bridge partner, front row center) and Sr. Alice to his right (she might have been the principal by then). No idea about the other priests nor the other teachers (one lay, one nun). Me and my two best friends (Tom Brady, David Luck) are second row, left.  My aforementioned nemesis is 2nd row from the top, 2nd from the right (looking kind of like he might be sorted into Slytherin, now that I think about it). The girls are notable for real dresses (not uniforms, what they wore every other day). And all that damned plaid - got to love the 70s.

Aside from Keith, not a lot of diversity, although looking closely at the faces (I don't recall many names)  there were probably a few middle eastern, Mediterranean, and Latino kids. But we all spoke English and we were all Catholic - so not much in the way of cultural diversity evident.

Truth be told, I adored the nuns, probably because they were mostly proto-lesbians with varying levels of butchness, sportiness, curious hobbies and interests, trying to find a place in a world that was not quite ready for who they were.

Swirling Winds of Change

I'm reminded this morning of the fragility of spaces, communities, resources, jobs. So many well-intentioned, delightful, and beloved restaurants, shops, arts spaces, music venues and yes, yoga studios, are unable to remain in business.

I'm grateful for the people who keep showing up: turning on the lights and the heat, making that first pot of coffee, and tallying the numbers at the end of the day. I'm grateful for the small business owners who invest time, money, work, and worry into keeping their doors open for themselves, their employees, their clients and customers. So few of us have the passion, the nerve, the discipline to even know where or how to begin.

Part of the yoga practice is developing the tools to deal with change. But it's never easy. Sending a little love out to all my friends and family caught in the swirling winds of change this week....

Memories of York, PA: Brighton Drive

November looks to be a slow month, work-wise, so I've decided it would be a good time to put down some memories of my childhood in York, PA. This will hopefully be a bit of a series, until I run out of places and themes from York. Here's a good blog about York's Past.

First stop - my childhood home on Brighton Drive.

My parents bought our brick raised ranch home in the Haines Acres sub-division on Brighton Drive brand new, circa 1965-1966. We lived there until the summer of 1974 when we moved to Framingham, MA. The home is still there and is well kept; the trees are taller, the houses seem shorter and squatter. Perhaps it's the influence of the Three Little Pigs, but I've always remembered the brick exterior of our home on Brighton Drive positively, as compared to wood shingles or siding in later homes. Zillow values it at $182K - not too shabby.

Looking at the house today, I recall that my bedroom (at least in later years, once our family was complete) was downstairs, under the living room bay window. The octogonal window in the garage was up pretty high for us kids but we liked to climb on boxes, shelves, or ladders to look out it (and look in from the front steps). Our parents kept the cars in the garage overnight, so it was mostly empty, but on rainy days mom would pull her car out into the driveway so we could hang out in the garage and play. There was a door into the backyard at the rear of the garage, and two doors into the house - one into the living spaces, a second into a laundry room along the back of the house.

One winter, the backyard froze solid and then thawed suddenly, and the bottom floor flooded through a rear slider in the family room; I remember being in my pajamas and snow boots, using a snow shovel to sweep the water through the house and into the garage, as dad dug a trench in the ice pack to take the water around and away from the house.

Image: Google Maps

A nice write-up about the Haines Acres community here:

"Curvilinear road layouts are typical of developments from this time period and tend to follow the rolling topography of the subdivision. The curves also serve to calm traffic in residential neighborhoods and are often used to market the safety of the development for families." ~ Living Places

 A bird's eye view is the first place to describe the neighborhood.

Image: Google Maps

Our neighborhood was really the block framed by Brighton Drive, Cambridge Road, and Alton Lane. The backyards were wide open back when we lived there, some young hedges, an occasional decorative fence, but nothing to really impede neighborhood wide games of capture the flag or flashlight tag, or winter sledding from up the top where Cambridge and Brighton met. We knew folks on both sides of Brighton but really the neighbors connected through the backyards, and when we went out to play the entire block was within our range.

I still remember the family names - on our side the Glass family, the Russells, the Kellys, the Eastmans. Behind us the Kaplans, the Quinns, the Keffers. Looking at the map, the five larger, newer homes on the far side of Alton Lane were built in the late 70's, after a large barn located on that spot (and used by the builder Epstein & Sons to store equipment and lumber) went up in flames (September 1975, soon after we moved).

Epstein & Sons provided a lot of entertainment for us kids; the neighborhood was in some sort of development throughout our time there, and we kids invariably found ourselves playing in the houses under construction. Kids would swipe wood from the scrap pile for forts, we play in the unfinished houses (surely way too dangerous in these more sanitized times) and we'd keep an eye out for "Epstein" in his El Camino, come to chase us off. 

Back in the day, a small creek (more of a gully or drainage ditch, I imagine) ran between the homes on Brighton Drive and Schoolhouse Lane; we'd spend long hours messing around in it - catching crayfish, following toys floated down the creek, wading in small pools. If I recall correctly, there were drainage pipes that ran into the creek from the street sewers, and adventurous hooligans (not I) would crawl into them and spy on people from the storm drains.

I don't remember much about the neighbors. The Quinn family directly behind us were fast friends (to this day, June Quinn mourns the loss of my mom more than we kids do) and had three kids around our age - Karen, Rob, and Sue. One house up from them was Alan Kaplan (who picked up the regrettable moniker of "Fudd", no idea why). He had pretty good toys and brand name snack food, if I recall correctly. The Eastman family, down two houses on Brighton, also had kids our age, I think there was a Guild and Katherine our age, as well as Linda (older) who babysat us now and then.

I also remember a kid (Craig? maybe) way down Brighton near Sundale in a more traditional single story ranch that I played with occasionally. I remember playing Risk and Stratego and setting up basement spanning wars using soldiers.

Three other memories from that house and period:

• We had a small metal box on the front porch and would have milk delivered (and leave the empties for collection). I suspect somewhere in the family archives there's a picture of one of us on the front steps (first day of school photo) with the milk box in evidence. It made a nice place to sit, and we kids would hide stuff in there as well. 
• When it rained, the street had small, curved gutters or gullies to catch and carry the rain water, and that would be a fine place to set a boat or ball and follow it as the water carried it down the street, so long as you caught it before it hit the drain.
• When it snowed (not all that often) construction road graders would be used to plow the streets. When we moved to Massachusetts, I was quite confused to find rather pedestrian dump trucks with plows affixed in use, and thought perhaps that was because MA could not afford proper snow plows.    

I'll be continuing this series - here's a bit of a placeholder for myself and preview of what is to come:

• East York Elementary School
• York Suburban Middle School
• St. Joseph's Elementary Center
• Wisehaven Swim Club
• Hill's Department Store
• Jay's Supermarket
• Misericordia