My
Elementary School
In
1929, Norwood Elementary School was built in Pine City, which is located in St.
Petersburg, Florida. Back then, Pine
City was mostly a rural community of early pioneers. The neighborhood back then consisted mostly of
lumbermen, sawmill workers, fishermen, and a few pioneer families that settled
in the area. I grew up about four blocks
from Norwood Elementary School, and I went to kindergarten there in 1944.
I
remember several things about some of the kids that went to Norwood. As I grew older, I began to realize how poor
the surrounding area was back then. For
example, no one thought much about it if a kid came to school barefoot or with
a bowl haircut. Kids brought their lunch
to school in a brown paper bag, or walked home for lunch as I did many times. Because so many other kids in the
neighborhood seemed to be a lot worse off than our family, I didn't realize at
the time how poor my family was. Anyway,
some of my favorite teachers of all time worked at Norwood Elementary School
for most of their teaching career. Later
on in life when I was in college majoring in Elementary Education, I went back
to Norwood Elementary School and personally thanked many of my old teachers for
all they had done for me, and for putting up with all of my foolishness and
shenanigans.
Stories
about George as Told by Butch
We
all played with each other in the neighborhood and saw each other in Sunday
school at Norwood Baptist Church where we all attended a Sunbeam class – a form
of Bible school training for young children. When I was in the fourth grade at Norwood,
George was in the third grade. I
remember George was a good athlete and one of the toughest kids in school. He would fight anybody at the drop of a hat,
including sixth-graders. Anyway, George
always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder about something.
A
good friend of George was Bruce. He was
in the same grade as George and lived one house next door to him on the same
side of the street. Bruce would tell me
some funny stories about George on what he did in the classroom. Bruce said that George was always known as the
class clown. He would always do
something disruptive to make someone laugh at him if he couldn’t do something
on the chalkboard just right. When
George was being tested on the chalkboard for his multiplication tables, he
would always write some of his numerals backwards or upside down. I noticed on some of his spelling papers he
would write some of the letters backwards. George was not a very good reader, and he
avoided spelling contests. Bruce said
whenever they had a spelling bee with the boys against the girls on different
sides of the classroom, George was always one of the first to misspell a word
and had to go back to his seat. Even
though George was not a very good student in the classroom, he was smart enough
in sports and in subjects he liked. He
could recite all kinds of poetry and knew all about insects, snakes, birds, and
flowers. George also seemed to have a
problem with names. He could not
remember the last names of some friends in his classroom. This was always a problem for him at
Valentine’s Day or whenever he tried to introduce them to someone.
Bruce
always thought that George’s foster mother was a little rough on him. George told me that whenever he said a cuss
word, even if he didn’t know what the word meant, his foster mother would put
hot peppers in his mouth. Both of his
foster parents would spank George and Harvey with a black motorcycle belt, but
never Harry, who was always known as a mama’s boy. George got in trouble in school for fighting
and all sorts of misbehavior in the classroom, like talking too much or
annoying other students. Bruce said that,
more than once, the teacher taped George’s mouth shut with Scotch tape and made
him sit in front of the class next to the teacher’s desk.
George
also got into a lot of trouble around the neighborhood. He would steal just about anything that wasn’t
nailed down. One day, so the story goes,
George brought a toy home to play with from Robert house. When questioned about the toy, George said
that Robert had given it to him. So his
foster mother called Mrs. Strawn and asked her about the toy. When the truth was revealed, George had to
return the toy to Robert’s house, give it back to him, and apologize for taking
it. Bruce said that George was really
embarrassed about what he had done. Another
time, George stole a model airplane from a neighbor’s garage across the street.
When his foster mother discovered him
playing with the airplane, she asked George where the airplane came from. George said a friend gave it to him. Not believing George, his foster mother
tricked him by saying that the man saw him steal the airplane. “That’s funny,” said George, “nobody was
home!” Again George had to take the
airplane back to the man and apologize to him for taking it. He was always punished with a spanking and
then sent to bed.
Stories
about George as Told by Wayne
I
was a classmate of George at Norwood Elementary School. George was always getting in trouble for
misbehaving in school. I watched George
get two spankings with a ping-pong paddle in one day by two different teachers.
Bruce, Boyce, George, and I would always
get up in front of the class to sing a song as a group or as individuals. We four were almost always picked by the teacher
to play certain characters in a school play or talent contest. George was captain of the sixth-grade patrols
and I was his lieutenant. Of course, the
patrols were picked by the sixth-grade teachers. When it came to sports, Norwood dominated
other schools in competition. The boys’ team won trophies for the school in
softball, football, and basketball; of course, George was a star in every game.
George’s
other good friend was Bruce. George and
Bruce were more into outdoor activities like the movie character Daniel Boone. They were always out in the woods building
tree forts or bow hunting. Both of them
were a good shot with bow and arrow, and could hit a papaya growing on a tree
from at least 30 yards away. The two of
them spent many hours together to practice throwing their hunting knives and
hatchets into a large oak tree behind George’s house. It was also almost impossible to beat either
one in a game of splits or mumbley-peg.
Splits
was a game that all the boys in the neighborhood played. Both games involved the use of a small pocket
knife. In the game of splits, you faced
your partner, feet together, about an arm’s length away from each other. After you decided who went first, the object
of the game was to stick the knife blade into the dirt no more than 12 inches
away from your opponent’s shoe on either side of his feet. To judge a qualifying stick in the dirt by
the knife blade, you had to be able to get three fingers underneath the knife
handle in case it stuck at low angle. If
it was a good stick, you had to move your foot to touch the knife blade. The process was repeated until you could
stretch no longer with your legs apart or had to lie down on your side to
complete the stretch. The further you
had to stretch, the more difficult it was to make the knife stick into the
ground at the proper distance from your opponent’s foot. You won the game when your opponent could no
longer touch the knife blade with any part of his body.
Stories
about Bruce as Told by George
One
day I was walking past Roger’s house, which was in my neighborhood next to a
church I used to belong to. The church
had an airplane club for elementary children where they could make model
airplanes. The club was called Sky
Pilots of America. I remember when Bruce
and I were building an airplane that we bought from the club. In order to be a member of the Sky Pilots,
each child was required to memorize and recite a number of verses from the
Bible. While we were at the meeting, we
had a guest speaker from Japan. I don’t
remember his name, but I do remember he told the audience that he dropped the
first bomb on Pearl Harbor! Bruce and I
and several other neighborhood children engaged in all kinds of activities
ranging from sports to (later on) Boy Scouts.
Every year around Easter time, the new Duncan yo-yos
showed up in all of the local stores. The
Duncan yo-yo was the Cadillac of its day when it came to yo-yo enthusiasts. It had the prettiest colors, the shiniest
surface, and was the best yo-yo for doing all kinds of tricks. Annual contests were organized by Duncan
representatives. The final contest was
usually held at one of the local movie theaters that had a large stage for the
contestants to perform on. In order to
get into this contest, you had to qualify in your local neighborhood. Every neighborhood usually had one or two kids
that were the best at doing certain tricks with a yo-yo. In fact, some kids could do loop-to-loops with
two yo-yos at the same time using both hands at the same time! You just knew these kids would be hard to
beat in a yo-yo contest.
Bruce,
my next-door neighbor, was one of the best trick yo-yo performers in our
neighborhood. I don't know if playing
the guitar helped him with his yo-yo tricks or if being a natural athlete, catching
onto things very quickly helped him win many yo-yo contests. Maybe he was just naturally talented in
almost anything he attempted, as he could do many tricks with the yo-yo that
most kids had never mastered.
One
day I was taking a shortcut through the neighborhood. I would usually walk behind the houses where
there was an alley. The alley was mostly
used by the garbage men to pick up household garbage. I liked the alley because there was very
little traffic, and it gave me a different perspective of other people's
houses. Plus cutting through the
neighborhood saved time. Anyway, as I
was approaching my house, I spotted Bruce in his backyard practicing his yo-yo tricks. So I stopped by and said hello. “What are you doing?” I asked Bruce. “I'm practicing a few tricks for my yo-yo
contest coming up this Saturday at the Roxy Theater on Central Avenue,” he
replied. So I watched him for a moment
while he performed a few of his special yo-yo tricks. “I noticed you put the yo-yo string on your finger
next to your thumb,” I said. “Yeah,” he
said, “it gives me a smoother and quicker release for the yo-yo to spin better,
and helps the yo-yo to keep its balance.” After a while I noticed that Bruce's yo-yo
string was a little shorter than normal.
“Hey, Bruce,” I asked, “Why is your yo-yo string a little shorter than
normal?” He just laughed at my question.
“Look, George, this is a secret that I
don't tell just anyone!” “A shorter
string does several things to the yo-yo's action. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well,” said Bruce, “it helps me practice my
tricks and loop-to-loops for the upcoming
yo-yo contests at the Roxy Theater this Saturday.” “Oh,” I said, not really understanding what
Bruce was trying to tell me. “You mean a
shorter string makes your yo-yo work better?” I asked. “Something like that,” he said in a roundabout
way. “George, I can tell you're a little
naïve when it comes to performing yo-yo tricks, so I'm going to let you in on a
little secret that I've learned over the years. But you have to promise me that you won't tell
a soul what I'm about to show you!” “I
can keep a secret as good as anyone,” I said. “But if you're worried about it, maybe you
better not show me or tell me your big secret,” I said. “It's not that,” said Bruce. “It's just that it took me a long time to
figure out how the same people were winning the yo-yo contest year after year,”
he replied. “So a short string is the
big secret?” I asked. “It gives you an advantage
on some tricks,” he revealed. “Okay,” I
said. “I guess you'll have to show me!” “The first thing you have to understand is how
important your string is in relation to the tricks you are about to perform. Let me demonstrate how this works out.” He reached into his pocket and took out a
nickel bag of yo-yo strings that he bought at the store. After he fastened the new store-bought string
on his yo-yo, he began to demonstrate. When
the string had reached its full length and was dangling from his finger, he
began to spin the yo-yo with his other hand so it spun around clockwise like a
top – not like a yo-yo! “This is how you
make a yo-yo perform certain tricks,” he said. “How does that help?” I asked, almost in
disbelief. “Look closely at the string,”
he said, “when the yo-yo stops spinning on its side.” I looked at the yo-yo string as I held it
between my fingers. “What do you see?” Bruce asked. “It looks the same to me as it did before,” I
replied. “Okay,” Bruce said, “let's try
it another way.” He spun the yo-yo again
as he did before, but in the opposite direction. When I looked at the string again, I could
clearly see that the string was unraveling! Bruce had a big smile on his face. “This is
how you make a yo-yo sleep, as he demonstrated one of his many yo-yo tricks
called walking-the-dog. “In order to
perform many of the qualifying tricks, you have to be able to make your yo-yo
sleep a little or a lot to sort of slow down the spin.” He next demonstrated the trick called rock-
the-cradle. When he was finished with
that, he continued to demonstrate what the yo-yo would do if you wound the
string tightly the other way. “Now watch
the action of the yo-yo,” said Bruce, as he tried to make the yo-yo sleep for
walk-the-dog again. No matter how many
times he tried, the yo-yo would not sleep, but immediately returned to his
hand. “Now let me demonstrate a few
tricks when you don't want the yo-yo to sleep.”
He began by doing a trick called around-the-world, followed by a few
loop-to-loops and a shoot-for-the-moon. “Now
to answer your first question about using a short, tightly wound string. When
all of the yo-yo tricks have been performed on stage by all of the contestants,
a contest is won or lost by the person who can do the most continuous loop-to-loops.
In order to win most yo-yo contests, a person has to do well over 102 loop-to-loops!
A short string gives me a tremendous advantage for performing that many
loop-to-loops!” I began to laugh out
loud! “Bruce, you are the smartest kid
in the neighborhood when it comes to games of skill.” Bruce put his arm around my shoulders and gave
me a great big smile. “That's what I
like about you, George – you’re a great sport!”
