Fourth Grade

Fourth grade was taught by Juanita Johnson — medium height, medium build, dark and sort of curly hair, a pleasant face. Here I don’t recall at all where I sat but the pupils did face north, as in third grade, with the windows on the pupils’ left.

About the only incident I remember from this grade was the time the class was competing at the blackboard to see who could do arithmetic problems fastest. At one point I was paired with a Bill Jones and I was pressed to outdo him but as I recall I did. Bill was the eldest son of a rather shiftless farmer and my main recollection was that he apparently didn’t have a bath very often since he carried with him a distinct aroma.

He was in my class all the way through school and we graduated together. He was one of the give (out of a class of 28) who didn’t show up for our 50th class reunion and I believed he had died. I think he was in the trucking business, a small-time operator like several others in the community who hauled grain, coal etc. For awhile he resided on the outskirts of Fort Dodge in the vicinity of where Vivian and Gene owned the little blue house near the Des Moines River south of the city.