Yes, as I now think about it, I must have had the almost perfect childhood. I began school at 6 and we lived close enough that I could walk around the block to the school. You will notice that I said, "the school" and not the elementary school. That was because all of the school was in one building with the first and second grades in the basement, along with the high school science lab, the typing classroom, the restrooms, and the cafeteria. On the first floor were the classrooms for grades 3 through 8 as well as the superintendent's office; and on the top floor was the big auditorium with two classrooms on each side, on one side the Home Economics lab and on the other the English classroom. Everything else was in one of the other two rooms. And that was our school. First graders saw high school students in the cafeteria, the auditorium, and on the playground. Seventh graders talked to high school juniors and the superintendent talked to everyone. It really was a very nice way to go to school.
Of course, now that I know about schools and about learning, I know that it wasn't the best educational setting that might be provided. After all, a system that small couldn't provide either a selection of electives or advanced classes that would only serve a few. We had basic biology, but not advanced anatomy and physiology. But the classes that we had were excellent. I often said that I majored in English in college based on what I had learned during those years in that small school.
My home was also almost the perfect home in which to live. My parents were so good. I really never heard an ugly word spoken between them, much less one directed at me. Although my mother worked when I was very young, I was surrounded by family and family friends until we moved from Fort Worth to that very small town when I was four. Then, my mother was at home every day (except when she was organizing the PTA for the school or the WMU for the church and then I was either with her or at school). It was a lovely time for me. Mother could do anything ... and she did. She baked (even during the war when there was no sugar); she sewed (everything I wore including underwear and coats during that same war); she entertained (the visiting ministers always stayed at our house); and she mothered, teaching me either to do all the things I do today or the fact that I could do those things.
It always seemed to me that everyone I knew led the same quiet, idyllic lives. I now know that surely someone in the group had problems at home that no one knew anything about, but it was never evident. Everyone seemed to live as happy and contented a life as I did. We went to school and in the summer, we all went to Vacation Bible School. Birthday parties came along every year and it seems that everyone was invited and we all seemed to get along together, at least until we went to high school! Doors were seldom locked and our small town didn't even have a policeman. I don't remember anything ever happening. Everyone (almost) went to one of the three churches in town, even the Presbyterians who didn't have a church and so went to the Baptist Church. And all in all, everyone treated everyone else as they should.
Looking through papers after the death of my dad, I learned that about the time I was in the sixth grade, my daddy earned about two thousand dollars a year. I think that must have been good. I really don't know. We had whatever we needed with mother making all of our clothes, and the Sears catalog providing our shoes for the year (how exciting it was to read the catalog in August before starting the new school year.) We had a garden and a locker downtown filled with the beef . The grocery store had apples in the fall and peaches in the spring; but because strawberries weren't grown anywhere near, we only had those on rare occasions. Food wasn't picked early and shipped green across the country all year round. We had what was grown within a few hundred miles and was brought to us ripe and filled with nutrients.Our life was completely different from that of children today.
It seems that my memories of my small town growing up are everything anyone would want them to be. It was all very happy and easy and done with very little money. And kids today would hate every minute of our quiet, easy going existence. But I remember it with love and joy and all the fun I could imagine. In fact, you might say that my imagination was my favorite toy. It was the perfect childhood.
