A young boy growing up in a small town has its advantages and sometimes disadvantages!
When I was in fourth grade in the school year 1948-49 at Ellsworth School, I had to stay after school because I didn’t understand long division.
I can remember standing at the blackboard crying and the teacher’s saying, “How many times does this number go into this number?”
Well, how can a number go into a number? It didn’t make any sense to me, so I had to stay after school the next day also. Still, I didn’t get it!
So the next day I did the next best thing: I ditched school!
Where does a 4th grader go to hide? Since there was no one to play with because my friends were all in school, I went over to Swartz’s Lumber Yard. It was just north of the tracks on the east side of Washington. Some guy yelled at me, called me by name, “Hey, Keller, does your dad know you’re not in school?”
So, I got out of there and went to the freight office which was the old depot on the north side of the tracks. Same thing there. And same thing at Boecker, Coal & Grain by the tracks on Ellsworth St. by the walk under subway.
Since I had no watch and didn’t know what time it was, I went home. My mom asked why I had come home, so I told her the nurse sent me home.
“I’m sick,” I said.
Well, she sent me to bed, pulled the shade and unplugged my radio. There I stayed until my dad got home.
I had never seen him so mad! After a lecture out in the back yard and little spanking, he asked if I knew why I was being punished.
“Because I didn’t go to school?” I replied.
And he said, “NO! It’s because you lied to your mother!”
I decided I was better off going to school.
That evening, Dad had called the teacher and found out about the arithmetic problem. He sat at the kitchen table with me and drew a division box and put 25 inside and 5 outside.
Then he asked, “How many 5’s does it take to make 25?”
I answered 5, and he asked how I got that number. I answered, “By multiplying.”
And he said that’s how you learn to divide.
So that was the disadvantage of growing up in a small town where everybody knows everybody.
On the good side, after I moved to our home on Columbia, Bill Albrecht was helping me put in a water softener and he kept sending me to Soukup’s Hardware Store on the south east corner of Washington and Jefferson for parts. Frank Lizjak ran the store and after my fourth trip to the store, he handed me the key to the store and said, “I’ll be closing in a 15 minutes, take what you need and write it down on the counter, I’ll see you tomorrow!”
That’s small town goodness!
In the summer of 1950, we had what was described as a 100-year flood. In the area below the Ss. Peter & Paul Cemetery, down the hill on Huffman Street, there were four feet of water! It was up to the window sills of the houses and a lot of people had to be evacuated. It was a real mess!
Next time, I’ll share thoughts on 1951 and 1952.
