Fifth Grade

Fifth grade for me was taught by Miss Loe. Whereas some teachers were long time fixtures in the school and most stayed several years I think Miss Loe was only in Gowrie for one year. I think she may have been newly graduated; at any rate she was I think somewhat inexperienced but nonetheless quite conscientious. I seem to recall some comment to that effect by y aunt Lillian who was at Gowrie for one year (I’d guess the year before she married). I believe aunt Lillian taught sixth grade that year but I’m not at all certain about that.

In fifth grade my seat was in the row next to the windows, about in the middle (front to back). As with the other grades I’ve retained only a few memories. In this case one was that I sat behind a girl by the name of Marian Hunt. She was part American Indian — at least her mother was. Her mother was short and overweight, and of course dark in color. Whether she was of mixed ancestry I don’t know. Her father was elderly and rather slight of build, stooped and gray. They were only in Gowrie for a year or so, and lived I think in the old Munday hotel, which by then no longer served transients but rented out apartments.

One time I had been sent by my mother to the Leader store on some errand during the noon hour and while I was in the store Marian came in with a nickel or dime, seeking to purchase some beans I believe for her mother to cook. I got the impression that they were to be prepared for lunch that day, and I remember wondering how the lunch could be prepared and eaten in time for Marian to get back to school by 1 p.m. I also remember some uncertainty as to what she could get for her 5 or 10 cents and that she was at a loss as to what to do — sort of caught between her mother’s dictum and what the clerk indicated was possible. I felt sorry for her.

She was indeed sort of a pathetic figure; she was sort of a non-smiling waif, being between two cultures and hardly belonging to either one. She was bright enough in her schoolwork but she was always diffident and hesitant in speaking and in her relations with the other pupils. Since I sat right behind her and was close enough to notice that there was always a sort of unwashed fragrance enveloping her, I wonder how often she had a bath or her clothes were washed.

She disappeared after fifth grade; I wonder how her life turned out.

As nearly as I can make out it was about the time of fifth grade that I became sexually aware — certainly in a quite preliminary and incomplete way but definitely aware. There were a few incidents prior to this time that I failed to understand at the time; perhaps they started the process of understanding.

The first of these actually involved Vincent. He had apparently heard some story at school and wished to relate this newfound information to someone, so we were seated on the floor in the kitchen of the little brown house, in the nook beneath the place where the telephone was, near the doors to the bathroom, dining room and back bedroom. My mother overheard what was being said and reprimanded Vincent.

I don’t have any recollection at all of what Vincent said or was about to say, so I am only inferring from the surreptitious nature of Vincent’s approach and my mother’s reaction to what she heard that the story had some sexual implication. The incident occurred at noon and the essential parts of it remain quite vivid in my memory. In a way the incident points out the characteristic of my personality that I am slow to start or react and others, younger as Vincent was, “catch” on sooner than I.

A second incident occurred when I hay have been in even second grade. A boy at school, whom I cannot picture at all now, had a hand-copied poem which he showed to me, again in a somewhat furtive approach. I read it, but my recollection is that I didn’t understand what its import was. It was a poem of considerable length, of four-line verses. Again it is only in light of later reflection that I surmise that the poem and the incident had specific sexual connotations.

The third incident involved a playground physical contact between a girl and a boy by the name of Franklin. Whether the contact was entirely accidental or partly premeditated I don’t know. At any rate there was some conversation regarding the incident by onlookers in which another boy made the comment that Franklin was trying to “f–––” her. This was unintelligible to me and I tried to elucidate the meaning of the comment (actually I believe with Hollis, the older brother of Franklin). Sensing that I was naive I guess, Hollis was evasive in his answer and I left with my question unanswered. Again it is only in retrospect that I can reconstruct the incident, but it was certainly vivid enough at the time to impress it on my memory.

I do not recall ever having had any discussion regarding sexual matters with either my father or mother that elucidated such basic biological events. What I learned was by “osmosis” I guess, perhaps piecing together bits of information from such incidents as I described above with an instinctive reaction to my gradual adolescence.

I think by the fifth grade I had the concept that babies were born from mothers and not “gifts from heaven” but it was not firmly embedded in my thinking. What crystallized it in my mind was an event once when I was wiping the dishes as my mother was working (in the little brown house). For some reason I commented that babies when they arrived were clean and immaculate, to which she replied that they were characteristically bloody.

I was somewhat taken aback by the terseness and intensity of her comment and it had a decisive effect on my thinking. Basically however it was a comment that really assumed that I had a knowledge of what the birth of a child implied and constituted, without my mother having had any reason for the assumption that I would know. In a way I fault my parents for this lack of instruction, not so much for the lack of knowledge as for the vague feeling of inhibition in sexual matters that I gained from their attitude.

One last recollection from fifth grade. One of my boyhood chums was Harris Magnuson, he of the paper route with whom I tagged along occasionally when he was delivering papers or on his weekly collection. Miss Loe, as part of her assessment of student deportment had a little tally sheet posted on which merits and demerits for each pupil were marked up. Harris and I were together in the classroom for some unrecalled reason — Miss Loe was absent and I believe it was after school. Harris looked at his record and opined that a demerit he had received was not warranted and it should be removed with the present opportunity. Somehow or other he inveighed me into doing this.

The upshot of this was that I received a demerit — at least there appeared a mark on my record shortly thereafter to which I could ascribe no other reason. How Miss Loe detected this action of my part remains a mystery to me to this day. Harris, I have decided much later, was for all his easy-going personality, a person of rather flexible principles and a not entirely reliable model. Although he was in my class at school through fifth grade he was retained a year at some point and was not in my class in high school, nor I think in junior high.