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Just in case someone someday asks, “Bud, where did you go to school?,” I am going to list here a few things, somewhat random, that come to mind when I tick off on my fingers the schools I have attended.
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Kindergarten
My parents did not send me to kindergarten, but eventually, after I learned my ABC’s, they made me read Robert Fulghum’s book about it.
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1955-56
Parkway Elementary School
Hyattsville, Maryland
I remember having my name, along with a classmate’s, drawn from a “hat”; the wished-for prize, for two lucky first-graders, would be to eat lunch in the cafeteria at a special table with the lucky principal. I prayed I would win, and I won. That prayer may have damaged me, theologically, for life.
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1956
Yoyogi Elementary School
Washington Heights, Tokyo, Japan
A classmate died from leukemia. Not in the classroom, but somewhere. Prayer, as far as anyone informed me, had nothing to do with it.
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1956-57
Narimasu Elementary School
Grant Heights, Tokyo, Japan
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Most days, all year, as I walked to school, I appreciated a glorious view of Mount Fuji. Boys, possibly only the boys, played marbles for keepsies in the dirt of the schoolyard before the morning bell summoned us to class.
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1957-58
Nasugbu Beach Elementary School
Near Yamashita Park, Yokohoma, Japan
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A French woman, wife of a diplomat, mother of a schoolmate, took a turn as a chaperone on school bus duty. My mother did, too. The French woman once wore a sleeveless blouse on a warm autumn day. When she gripped with one hand an overhead chromed bar in the bus, she permitted a memorable view of an unshaved armpit.
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1958-59
Narimasu Elementary School, again.
Grant Heights, Tokyo, Japan
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Judo. Lots of other good things at Narimasu, but I fondly think of judo class.
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1959-60
Fort Shafter Elementary
Fort Shafter, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii
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The only time I ever socked someone in the jaw, I was in fifth grade. The kid was not expecting it, and I had to stand on tiptoe to land my one good punch. I can’t recall today why the fellow needed punching.
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1960-61
Our Savior Lutheran School
Arlington, Virginia
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Leaf collection, rock-and-minerals collection, insect collection. A pearwood soprano recorder. Conversational German. Captain of the crossing guards. Sixth grade might have been my most useful academic year, ever.
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1961-62
Ellen Glasgow Intermediate School
Fairfax County, Virginia
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I fondly remember John Grannis, my industrial arts teacher. I’d say he taught the most enjoyable class I ever had. I turned a laminated maple-and-walnut lamp base on a wood lathe. Four years after I produced that lamp, my pal Rick Wagner pointed out something that my family and I had never noticed, a highly suggestive shape in the maple against the darker wood. I never again could lay eyes on that lamp without blushing.
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1962
Lafayette Junior High School
Lexington, Kentucky
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Schoolroom shortage. They had two shifts at Lafayette that year, and mine was the early one. I enjoyed waiting for the school bus in the quiet dark before dawn; I really liked a soon-after-lunch dismissal and a luxuriously elongated afternoon. Before the year was out, though, our family moved to another part of Lexington.
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1962-63
Bryan Station Junior High School
Lexington, Kentucky
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Mr. Parker, my social studies teacher, allowed students who finished reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to not take the final exam for the class. Don’t ask me anything about that book, but I know I must have read it because I’m positive I did not take the exam.
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1963-65
Rio High School
Rio, Wisconsin
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Oh, Lordy, where would I start? Easily my favorite three semesters of all time.
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1965-66
Dundalk High School
Baltimore County, Maryland
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Went there in January of 1965. I am pretty sure these were my three least favorite semesters ever, and not merely because I missed my friends and family in Rio. I found Dundalk students highly inhospitable. But now I wonder, Was it me? Was it them?
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1966-67
Admiral Arthur W. Radford High School
Honolulu, Hawaii
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Half-day of classes, half-day of paid employment at Toyland on Hickam Air Force Base. Couldn’t ask for a better place to be a lazy student, I must admit.
Enough. This is a good place, at Radford High, summer of ’67, to pause in this recitation. I might say something about Oakland, Fort Wayne, Los Angeles, and one place more, but not today. I have already, several paragraphs ago, run out of fingers, and I can’t quite reach my toes.
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