Talk about confusion! We didn’t know if we were in the Minneapolis, Robbinsdale or Brooklyn Center School District back in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Therefore, when kindergarten came along, and first grade for my sister Lorraine, we were sent to Loring Grade School in north Minneapolis. It was only a hop, skip and jump away — we could see it from our yard. An easy walk, we loved that school, especially the playground with the swings and slides.
I had my first crush there. His name was Tommy. He had what my mother called a “kitty face.” That’s a face that’s round and unbelievably cute and sweet. We spent a lot of time on the swings and slides. His was my first kiss!
Our class in kindergarten made something that was so unique for little kids to be constructing. It was a life-size, but small, airplane. It had an open cockpit and was fashioned after the fighter pilot planes used in WWI. It was made out of some kind of light weight wood, with heavy paper glued over the skeleton of it. We could crawl up into the cockpit.
Mothers were given a pattern of a WWI flyer’s cap. They were to be made out of a brown flannel cloth. We all came to school with our little helmets on, looking like fighter pilots or a bunch of miniature aviators. Perhaps like Snoopy after the Red Baron!
The Minneapolis Journal visited our classroom and took a lot of pictures of our airplane and our class. We got our pictures in the paper! Wow, big time for little kids!
In 1931, I started first grade. Somehow, all the kids knew how to read, but me. Where did they learn to read, surely not in kindergarten? But they could all read “color red in the square and color green in the circle.” It was so confusing! About then, the school districts came to the conclusion we were in the wrong school, and had us transferred off to Twin Lake School, Dist. 25, in the country. At first I thought I was being punished for not knowing how to read!
The school wasn’t too far away - just a few blocks north of Ryan Lake as the crow flies. However, we were lucky to ride there by school bus and the bus stop was right at our grandparents Nordby’s house. We went to Twin Lake for a whole eight years. Going there that long, and having classes with only eight to 10 kids per class, enabled us to know them pretty thoroughly by the time we graduated. I can still rattle off the names of all my classmates and my sister’s classmates too.
When it came time to go to high school, we were supposed to go to Robbinsdale High. This, my sister did, but I wanted to go to the city school where my best girlfriend was going. I don’t know what kind of strings my dad pulled, but he got me into Patrick Henry and I will never regret a moment of going to school there!
Henry High was the best! Mr. Porter was our principal and he wanted his students to enjoy going to school. So we had noontime movies in the auditorium, after school dances, Sadie Hawkins Day once a year, fine sports teams, really spirited pep-fests and a top notch marching band. While I was there the band got brand new uniforms with colors of crimson and pearl gray. They marched in the Aquatennial every year; they played at all the football games.
I have no idea what the school is like today — if they still have the dances and movies, etc. or if they still have crimson and pearl gray uniforms. But Patrick Henry was on top of its game back in the 40s, and I felt privileged to have been allowed to go there. There was no confusion about that!