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September 2009

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The Victoria

GAZETTE

From the Editor

         It’s already September and the first day of school has once again been anticipated, accommodated, extolled, arrived, lived, related, and relegated to yesterday.

         On August 20th my first grandchild, little Addie Sue, experienced her first day of first grade out in Tioga, ND.  Last year in kindergarten Addie had exclaimed to her mother, “I have a new best friend, Mom, but she doesn’t talk to me very much.”  Did Addie already know that friends don’t need to talk so much?

         This year, the fall of 2009, after the first day of first grade, Miss Adeline exclaimed as she nearly jumped out of her skin with joy, “I loved it!  I know all of my classmates!  We have four new people!  I sat next to Hunter!”

         I can see my own children -- Jenny and Nick -- on their much anticipated first day of school in first grade at Chanhassen Elementary, waiting for the bus at the end of our road with me and my camera.  Their first step up into the bus was so big, like when I step up into my pickup truck today without a running board.  I see driver Ed Vanderlinde closing the bus door behind them, then I watch till the bus is out of sight and I walk back home with a lump in my throat.  That lump comes back as I write this paragraph.

         Do you remember your own first day of school?  Were you a resident of Victoria?  Did you live in Minnesota?  Was it a private or a public school?  Did you ride a school bus?  What was your teacher’s name?

         I remember my first day(s) of first grade at St. Eloi Catholic School in Ghent, Minnesota.  There was no school bus for parochial school kids in those days so my parents drove, usually Dad because Mom was home with a baby.  I see a line of big people and little kids outdoors, standing along a line of registration tables set up to the left of the old two-story brick school building that resembled the old two-story brick school buildings in Victoria when we came here in 1971. 

         I see a pronounced raised entrance and roofed facade on the front of the school, with several steps to the top where Sister stood by the door with a box of chocolate candy bars at recess time.  For 5-cents we could buy one.  Many times that 5-cents came together as five pennies.  If we were short a penny, we were short on luck.

         That old two-story school housed eight grades, four up and four up higher.  I was never on the upper level of that school because before I became a fifth grader there was a brand new school constructed for us three blocks down the street.  The old two-story was demolished long ago; I had never stepped foot in it again after fourth grade.

         I see a long descent of stairs with no landing partway, that led to the basement of the school where there was a narrow entry -- no door -- to a narrow bathroom with a sink at the end.  I sense there was a whole row of toilet stalls but most likely there were only two, maybe only one.  It was a dark location and everything probably loomed large for a little 5 and a half year old girl far from home.  Okay, it was only three miles from home and I didn’t have to walk either way.

         The lunchroom was also in the basement and we ate in shifts, first the little kids, then the big kids.  We had hot lunch and there was a little girl who cried about it so Sister allowed her to bring a sack lunch.

         As a first grader I got the big idea that I should be able to receive Holy Communion like all those other kids at daily Mass.  Each class sat together with their teacher in the front pews of the big church, which means I was sitting with Sandra, Linda, Ardyce, Joan, Carolyn, Joyce, another Joyce, Bernard, Tommy, Pauline, Bobby, Jimmy, Linda, Valerie, Monica, and Sister Avita. 

         Well, I hadn’t realized the proper order of things when it came to Communion.  I hadn’t realized that First Holy Communion didn’t come in First Grade, but that it came in Second Grade after proper instruction and with a white dress and veil.

         So when I decided to make my move one morning while still only a first grader, I scrambled quickly in front of my classmates to the end of the pew and stood in line with the big kids and then knelt at the Communion Rail with the big kids.  Whew!  I had made it!

         Then a little kid pulled on my dress and said I had to get back to the pew.  I shook my head no and stayed put.  Then Sister Avita was behind me and I didn’t have a choice since she was much bigger and stronger than anybody else in the whole church.  She whisked me away from the Communion Rail just in the nick of time.  Fr. Siebenand and the altar boy kept moving down the rail as though I had never been there.

         When I was in first grade, our readers -- you could call them books -- told about Dick and Jane and Spot.  “Come, Dick.  Come and see.  Come, come.  Come and see.  Come and see Spot.  Look, Spot.  Oh, look.  Look and see.”

         My parents attended first grade in the same school building as I did, and I happen to know they usually travelled by horse and buggy and sometimes they walked -- uphill -- both ways.  Now let’s all sing together, “School days, school days, oh those golden rule days ...”