Crawling Through Purgatory: Memoirs
of William P. Meyers

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Page 5

My second grade teacher was Mrs. McCullough, and I loved her. She had gray hair and was dumpy. Her manner was very gentle compared to other Catholic School teachers I had, and we were told she was a Protestant. I guess there was a shortage of Catholic teachers. She did not like John F. Kennedy, still alive and President then. I was at least vaguely aware that Kennedy was a Catholic and a Democrat. Mrs. McCullough kept her second graders in good order by telling us stories to break the monotony of the school day. Her stories often involved her dogs. But she told us other things too, notably that her grandfather (more likely great-grandfather) had owned slaves. They had been, she said, happy on the plantation, not unhappy like the Negroes of our day. Of course there were no Negro children at Trinity Academy.

I felt like I was friends, to one degree or another, with all the children in my class. I had no Sandalwood neighborhood friends except the ones who also went to Trinity. Rather than name all my friends I'll restrict myself to mentioning a few who had important rolls in my childhood (and I could be wrong about their names and spellings). Chris Schanze, Mark Pecararo, Billy Henry and Timmy Boyd were friends and sometimes competitors. Paulette Churchi was pretty and smart, but if I had a crush that early it was on Melody Ashton, a very petite, dark haired girl I got shy around. Sharon Broderick I liked as well, she was from my neighborhood and of reddish complexion.

Somehow, after being an average kid in first grade, in second grade I was at the top of my class, more or less. I have to admit this was likely my father's influence. He was going to Jacksonville University days and working in the evenings, so I did not see him much. But he drilled me (and Tom and Lisa) in arithmetic quite often when we did see him, and encouraged reading (which kept us silent and out of his hair). Also the family rule was that homework had to be done immediately upon arrival from school. Anyway, I could add, subtract, and multiply with full competence in second grade. I read quickly, so I was already hitting supplemental reading material. And I was already bored much of the time. I started creating elaborate, imaginative fantasies, mostly having to do with war. I had a whole group of imaginary war scenarios I would slip into at any moment, based mostly on what I had seen on television.

Sitting quietly in my tiny desk under Mrs. McCullough's benign authority, in my mind I would be playing soldiers and Indians, or Indians versus Indians, or fighting Germans, or space invaders. But at recess a few minutes of real-time liberty was much more desirable. Mainly in second grade we played tag or kick-ball during recess. But we also started playing war, the rules of which were worked out over time. Which reminds me of the fire ants.

(to be continued)