GETTING THROUGH THAT FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Pictured above is my first day of school.  Age 6. 1st grade. No kindergarten. September 1954, 67 years ago.

Wearing new clothes to school is awkward.  The jeans are stiff and the shirt is prickly. My shoes are not in the picture, but I'm sure they were dress shoes, a little large and not broken in.

It looks like my mom had combed my hair in a stupid way.  From the direction I was facing, you could see Mount Rainier on a clear day.

We lived in a subdivision of small homes.  3432 6th Place, Renton, Washington, 12 miles SE of Seattle and the home of Boeing Aircraft.

The bus stop was about 4 blocks away, down a steep hill, then up another, then down again.

On my first day of school I made an executive decision to just walk to school.  It was only about two miles, taking a short cut through a gravel pit.

The path down into the gravel pit was so steep you could let yourself just slide down to the bottom.

I never rode the bus and my mom was OK with that, just surprised, is my recollection.

On one of those first days of school, I was caught by a teacher crossing the street in the middle of the block, not at the crosswalk.  

She literally drug me by my ear to an office where a man sat at a desk.

"What is your excuse for j-walking," the man asked.

I responded:  "I thought I was k-walking."

No one thought that was funny.