ReTRo HouSeWiFe

RETRO-SPECTIVE THE DECADES PAST:
Ginny M. Boston MA - A personal story from the 1940s  
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Once when Cleo was still a small puppy, my mother left a string of fat sausages in the lower oven, door slightly ajar. The she went to lie down on the den couch. Cleo came over and my mother started absent mindedly petting her on the head while she was reading the paper. Suddenly she jumped up, why is the dog's head hot? Off she went to the kitchen and sure enough, all six huge sausages gone. They weighed almost as much as Cleo did. But she lived. Oh how we loved her. When she died we cried over the long distance phone (Long Beach to Boston) for an hour!

Back to Latin School. 8th Grade was bad! I got 2 Ds on my report card, and I and another 20 or 30 were put on probation. (Do better or you're out!). That was the year Ryk went into the army, then went to California. I was a really lazy student from the elementary school days and I had gotten lousy habits. When concepts were explained there, they were repeated until we all got them. At Latin School, they were explained once. Too bad if you missed it. At first I had Ryk. So what if I didn't grasp it at school. He was my willing and excellent tutor. When he left, I sank. A good lesson. I started taking responsibility for learning and the following year I was on the dean's list with an A+ in Math. Mr. Williams Algebra. How I adored Mr. Williams. He was bald, two inches shorted than I, loved math and enjoyed teaching. I so adored him I stayed with a problem until I solved it, no matter how long it took. I got to school early so that I could ask questions alone with him, but I could never think of any. I got 100% on every test.

He always insisted we had to do our homework. He didn't care if we did it on torn paper, dirty paper or even old lunch bags. Everyone carried their lunch in a I a brown bag which we stuffed in a green book bag which we carried over our shoulder.

So one day every one of us produced our homework (which he went around & collected every day, from each of us, on a brown paper bag. We could see he was startled by the first one, (oh how we trembled lest he be angry). The first girl was really scared... But not a word. He collected each one checked off the name, put the pile on his desk and went on with the day's lesson.

One day he was teaching us the lowest common denominator tapped the blackboard with his chalk + said L pause C pause D pause! Dulcy Handly rose, we always answered by standing Everyone looked dumbfounded then someone realized Dulcy thought he spoke her name. TBC.

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