Union Primary School
Micro Memories

Using blackboard chalk, a capital A was written on my wooden desk by my teacher. It was nineteen twenty-four and our first grade subject, the alphabet. Little blue and green wooden pointed pegs were provided to arrange on the chalk lines. How many letters were learned each week isn’t re-called.

The school dentist made his rounds and anyone with tooth problems saw him for twenty-five cents. One lower molar of mine had a small cavity so the dentist didn’t deem it practical to repair and pulled it, the only one of my teeth lost in over fifty years.

When a German zeppelin was to arrive we were all taken out to the playground in back of the school, wait for it to come over the woods, pass almost overhead on its way to Lakehurst, New Jersey. There were several of those experiences, because fortunately the airship arrived in the daytime.

Nineteen twenty-eight was the year when our teacher took the boys, five at a time, and showed them how to use the newly installed urinals. That made quite an impression on me. How did a woman know that?

During a class spelling contest that year, a girl by the name of Harrington went to the blackboard and was asked to spell a word like melody, but she started with a capital N. Our team was going to lose and then she put another loop in front of the N and made it an M. I thought she was the smartest girl in the world.