AUTOBIOGRAPHY - 1955 - Fith Birthday - Muscatine, Iowa - Barry Avenue

Originating Circle:
Family - Added new baby brother, Paul Edward Parish, July 26, 1955
Grant Elementary School - Teachers and students; Miss Northey, Principal and Kindergarten teacher
Myron Hetzler
Carla Dunlap
Candy Clark
Mary Alice McGowen
 Patty

What Happened:

Paul was born in July, and I was five.
We got a television set when my mother was pregnant with Paul.  Paul I did drag around.   My television favorites were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Miss Frances ("reach for the stars"), and of course Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody.  Mr. Rogers came a little later.

Kindergarten started in the fall of 1955 at Old Grant School.  My friends and I had to walk across a bridge over a gully, which in my imagination was a rickety swinging bridge over a mountain gorge.  Sometimes we walked the long way around to avoid it.  The old school had a big bell with a fist-sized rope.  It was a treat to be allowed to ring the warning bell, or the tardy bell.  I knew my abc's and how to write myu name on the first day of school.  I had trouble learning to tie my shoes, and I was embarrased to have to practice on the wooden shoe in the front of the class, even though other slow learners had to do so as well.  One day when Mary Alice and I walked the long way around to school, rather than across the gully, we were tardy.  BAD!!
After Christmas our class walked together across the bridge to our new kindergarten class in the New Grant School at the end of our block on Barry Avenue, spick and span, very modern, without the large hallways and stairs and bells and carved stone of the Old Grant School.  It was turned over to students with disabilities, the much taunted "special" kids.

Whenever anyone had a birthday or was sick, Miss Northey had us draw pictures of our birthday or get well wishes for that child and compiled the drawings into a book, which she delivered in person.  If it was a birthday child, then of course we always sang.  Miss Northey read to us every day.

My parents read to me at bedtime and tucked me in.  They helped me learn to count and tithe my ten pennies allowance for Sunday school.  It didn't take long to learn to read and write.  They tucked Tim and Paul in too and I suppose we all got read to together, but I remember how I loved to have my parents hear my prayers and tuck me in and turn out the light.

We first got a television set, black and white,  when my mother was pregnant with Paul. I did carry Paul around like a doll after Mom got over her first alarm.  My television favorites were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Miss Frances ("reach for the stars"), and of course Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody.  Mr. Rogers came a little later.

Mom liked to dress me up, and once I started school I not only got a new Easter dress and a Christmas dress, but new clothes and shoes for the first day of school.  That was an annual even I came to love.

Mom liked decorating for the holidays, and I loved to help with the cookies and play with the pieces of the Nativity set and tell the story.  When I was in kindergarten I helped my Mom make Christmas candles. She poured hot paraffin into tin cans, then added the wicks--hazardous, yes.  When they were set and cool and out of the cans, she whipped more hot paraffin, added red and green food coloring to two batches, and frosted the cooled candles.  I especially liked the candles she frosted in white. We threaded gold sequins and beads on pins and stuck them into the frosting before it cooled solid.  Glitter, my yes.  Mom kept a few candles, sent some to the church bazaar, and gave others away with plates of cookies.   I loved helping make the sparkly candles.  I was very proud I was big enough to help.

Stickies:  "I'm scared", "I'm bad,"  "I 'm a bad girl."  "It sounded like fun."

Amazing movement and structural language in sharing:  freedom, playful, what age?  About 5--I was still running around happily most of the time.