Oscoda Elementary

Oscoda Elementary,

we love it as you can see.

Learning here is so much fun.

We are Friends with everyone.

We like our classes everyday.

At recess we love to play.

We learn to play the flute-a-phone.

Our art projects we take home.

Mrs Ridings

1973 (or so)

Mrs. Ridings wrote that song and we sang it at a school appreciation assembly when I was in the 3rd grade.  I vividly remember standing on the risers on the stage in the gym belting it out.  Occasionally, like now, the words still run through my head.  

I attended Oscoda Elementary from second grade to forth.  My memories are many, not only because I went to school there, but because my mom was a third grade teacher and my dad a custodian.   It was a regular family affair.

This was my moms room.  I don't know how many years she taught in there but it was many.  That was where I went after school to wait for her to get done for the day so we could go home.  I can still see her desk, he lesson plan book opened up on it and my favorite place, her large closet.  Inside she had a never ending supply of chalk and construction paper.  I can still smell the dust from the chalk board and hear the desks scrapping across the floor as the custodian moved them aside to sweep under them with his big, dusty broom.  

This was Mrs. Ridings room.  Her windows used to be full of Geraniums.  (I love geraniums,  I think thats why)  She was my moms best friend.  They rode together every morning.  Her daughter, Lisa, was my best friend and she would be waiting in her mothers room after school for her dad to pick them up after he left the high school where he taught.  Lisa and I got into a lot of mischief some days after school.  One day, while our mothers were in a teachers meeting we decided to climb out Mrs. Ridings windows.  It is hard to tell front the pictures, but it is a long way to the ground.  Especially when you are nine years old.  I remember  Lisa was hanging on to the window sill for dear life and I was inside yelling for her to let go because her mother was coming.  Fortunately, a teacher, who's identity I don't recall, came by and helped Lisa to the ground.   He properly admonished the both of us for trying such a stunt and told us to never do it again.  We never did.

This is where I spent the third grade in Mrs. Kruttlin's class. We spent a lot of time studying the pioneers.We would knit while she read "The Little House on the Prairie" to us.  One time I made the mistake of talking out loud to Sherry Crooks while she was reading. I was promptly sent out in the hallway for my transgression. As I was serving my time,  Mrs. Ridings came out of her room and saw me standing there.  There was no punishment I could have endured that would have been worse then the look of disappointment that she gave me as she walked by me to go into the office.  You can be sure I never, ever spoke a word again while Mrs. Kruttlin was reading aloud.  Steve Lecureux tried it once.  He got slapped on the knuckles with a ruler.

 This was the entry my dad used when we went to work.  Not just every kid in the school got to use it, but I did, because of my connections.  It lead to the bowels of the school where the great, big, Hogwarts like, furnace was.  It was dark and dank and you had to pass it to get to another place that not every kid got to go to....the teachers lounge.   And in the teachers lounge was one of those pop machines that you put your money in, opened up a silver lid and inside were ice, cold, bottles of Orange Crush.  On a good day my dad would give Lisa and I money to buy one and we would share it.  We could also collect all the sticky pop bottle caps from the little box that would catch them under the opener.  We were going to make things out of them, I don't remember what.  But we were sure it was going to make us rich.

This is the door that lead to the gymnasium.   It had as shiny, wooden floor and bleachers that got pulled out when we had an assembly.  You had to be in the higher grades to sit in those.  It had a stage with heavy velvet curtains and a locker room with little lockers in it.  That was another place I had special passage to with my dad, as they were only used when Oscoda Elementary was the high school. That gym is where I bumped heads with Matt Jack during some game.   I got a terrible headache and remember laying down in the corner of the playground because my head hurt so bad.   I then went in from recess and threw up all over the floor of my second grade classroom.  I was so embarrassed that my mother had a terrible time convincing me to go back to school. In retrospect, I am sure I must have had a concussion.  After that, for what seemed like forever, every time  Jeff Rutter would walk up to the teacher he would stop, look at me, and then cut a wide birth around the spot where I had vomited as if it were still there.

I must have raced out theses doors a hundred times going to recess or out to play with Lisa after school.   Straight through those doors and down the hall was my mothers classroom.  I would try go by there on my way to recess as inconspicuously as possible.  If she saw me, especially after lunch, and my face was dirty I would have to endure the spit wash.  She would grab the back of my collar, drag me inside the door of her room and then proceed to spit upon the kleenex that she kept wadded inside her sleeve.   She would then wash my face,  give me a little shove and send me on my way.   Nothing is worse than enduring the spit wash while your friends are rushing by on their way outside to play.  (except maybe vomiting all over the floor of your second grade classroom).  Occasionally she would grab her large, dull, teachers scissors from the drawer of her desk and chop a stray patch of hair from my bangs that she had trimmed the night before. I certainly did suffer a lot of indignities.  

As I was walking around taking these photos the other day I stopped and looked into the windows of the front door.  The school has been closed for many years and used for many different things.  But the old, black speckled staircase was still there.  The same one I was going up when I dropped the ceramic model of the ear and its one thousand parts and broke it.  My mother had in trusted me to return it safely to the storage room.  She told me not to run, but I did and tripped and broke it on the stairs.  Up to the right was the office where Mr. London, the principle had his office. Mrs. Shirley Smith, who just recently passed away, sat and actually typed on a real typewriter.  It is too bad that someone can't use that  building for something but I am sure that with the structure being so old the cost would be huge.

Although still standing, the building is falling apart bit by bit. The playground is now a parking lot and grass is growing in all of the sidewalk cracks.  But, I wonder, if I were able to go inside if I could still hear the sounds of kids laughing, lockers slamming and bells ringing?  If I made my way down the hall, would I still feel the urge to quicken my steps as I passed my mother's class room? If I continued on to the gym, would I still be able to hear a bunch of third graders, standing on risers on that old stage singing "Oscoda Elementary, we love it as you can see?"