Fifth Grade

Fifth grade was where I had Miss Loe — short, round-faced and I think newly graduated from Iowa State Teachers or a similar school. I have the vague feeling that she was at Gowrie for only one year. For some reason I had a mild dislike of her. When I was in fifth grade my Aunt Lillian taught sixth grade for one year (it was the year before her marriage and I think she wanted to be at “home” during the preparatory period — for several years previously she had taught in nearby Dayton) and when I expressed my feelings about Miss Loe, she said she thought Miss Loe was an earnest, well-intentioned teacher.

In this class the pupils faced north, as in third and fourth grades and my seat was midway in the row next [to] the west windows. In from of me sat Marian Hunt, who was part American Indian in ancestry, her father being white. Marian was a rather thin waif-like child with the black hair and dark coloring of her mother. She was very shy, and never seemed to smile. Like Bill Jones there was this unbathed aura about her which I disliked. She was a moderately good student but her shyness probably affected her work. She was in my class only the one year. In retrospect I have a feeling of sorrow for her, sort of an alien in a strange culture.

Once my mother sent me down to the Leader store during the non hour some some grocery item and while I was there Marian came in. I think she and her parents lived in the Munday Hotel, just across the street to the north from the Leader store. The Munday Hotel wasn’t really a hotel anymore, as it had been at some time in the past when people visiting Gowrie such as traveling salesmen came and went by train and used it for overnight stays. It had become apartments and in one of these the Hunt family resided. Marian had a nickel and her mother had instructed her to spent it doe some item, I don’t really recall what. Either the item wasn’t available or she didn’t have enough money. Anyway, she stood there in a shy and painful quandary and I felt a pang of sorrow for her. Maybe she was afraid to carry news of the situation back to her mother.

Miss Loe in her effort to develop a sense of citizenship and responsibility in her pupils had instituted the practice of having a little chart on the wall, not far from the entrance to the room, in which merits and demerits for each pupil were recorded. What these items were I don’t remember but I’m sure demerits were for some kind of anti-social or disruptive conduct in the class.

On one occasion Harris Magnusson and I were in the room after school for some reason and Miss Loe left for some reason. Harris had some demerits listed which he felt were unfair or unjustified and since they were recorded in pencil he talk me into erasing one or two. When Miss Loe returned her antenna must have sensed that we had been misbehaving in some way but since she didn’t know in what was she said nothing. But I have the vague recollection that next day there were demerit marks added for both Harris and me.

Harris had a paper route and I often accompanied him on Saturdays when he made the rounds of his route collecting the weekly change. So I spent quite a bit of my spare time with him, enjoyably, but I don’t think he was always a proper little boy as he might have been.