This is where the "thing" happened that I had told London about awhile back. And after I told her, and Harold said I should write about it, I started on my grade-by-grade School Daze narrative. Before I get to the interesting "thing," though, a little background about the school I attended the last half of my 6th Grade.
We arrived in Cloverdale just before Christmas, and I got to spend my first, and only, Christmas in the balmy California climes. It seemed weird to me that we could rollerskate in our short-sleeved shirts down the sidewalks while our Moms were cooking Christmas dinner.
When we first moved there, we lived right inside Cloverdale, and my Daddy got a job in a nearby auto mechanic shop. We were close enough to ride our bikes to school every day, and since it was warm year-round, that was our mode of transportation the whole time we were there. Even in the winter rainy season.
My Mom went and got us both registered for the school we would attend: Jefferson Elementary School. There were two elementary school in Cloverdale at that time: Washington and Jefferson. And believe you me, there was some hot rivalry between the two. You almost had to spit on the ground if you mentioned the name of the other school.
My first day of school, I heard a word I had never heard before, and it was used on me: Okie. Well, actually, DUMB Okie. I had to ask my parents what it meant, and they laughed and explained it was a word that Californians gave to anybody from the midwest, or, in reality, not from California...and was originally supposed to mean someone from Oklahoma. Oooohhh-kaaaay...I was from Missouri. Well, I may have been a dumb Okie, but I was smart enough to know that I was being made fun of because, since I wasn't from California, I was apparently supposed to be dumb. Whatever. I had moved enough already to know one thing: you can't let what other people think of you define what you think of yourself. So it rolled off my back.
I also found out that when I started the classwork that what they were studying was what we "Okies" had learned back in "the stick" at least one to two years before. So I just kept mum and did the work. Again. Besides, I really liked my new teacher, Mr. Creel.
I did learn one new thing: Foursquare. No, not a church, or some kind of software. It was a schoolyard game played with a big, rubber, bouncy ball and man, those kids were serious about it! So I did get to learn something new after all. They had ZERO playground equipment. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. Their "playground" was paved with black asphalt, so running was verboten. If you got whistled down by a teacher for running, you spent the rest of your recess sitting in the classroom with all the other running rebels. Well, the black asphalt playground pad had those foursquare grids painted all over the place. And that, boys and girls, is what we played. Every single day.
Another thing that was a real change for me was that they didn't have hot school lunches! Man, what kind of deal was that!? No hot rolls, or fried chicken, or school pizza? Instead, they had a school "cafeteria" set up with long picnic-style tables where we all went in one big group to eat the lunches we brought from home. Or that somebody else brought from their home that we swapped with. But they sold ice cream, and that's where I met and fell in love with orange juice bars. My eyes still water thinking about those! And my Mom bought bags of Wampum chips to put in our lunch every day because my brother and I insisted that we had to have those in our lunches. I always loved the name of those. Wampum chips.
ZEKE
Now, time for the "thing" that happened that I shared with London, and inspired me to start this whole school writing mission.
I had probably only been at the school a couple of days at the most when one day, during class, I heard the loudest voice I have ever heard in my life, coming from outside our CLOSED classroom windows. It was saying "Awwwwk! You're a bear, I'm a crow! You're a bear, I'm a crow." All of a sudden, all the heads in my classroom swiveled around and everybody looked right at me, and everybody had a big grin on their face. They had been waiting for this!
I looked at Mr. Creel. He wiggled his finger and said "Come here" and walked over to the window. When I got over there, he said, "Look up there on the flagpole." There sat a big, black crow. When he noticed us walk up to the window, he flapped his wings and I saw it then, with my own eyes: he TALKED! "Awwwwk! You're a bear, I'm a crow". He was looking at the California state flag, which has a big bear right in the middle of it. The kids just started laughing! And so did I! Mr. Creel then told me that the crow's name was Zeke, and he lived nearby, and he comes to school all the time to talk to, and play with, the kids.
I got accustomed to seeing Zeke flying low, zooming the kids on the playground. Especially when we were playing softball during P.E. class on the grassy field beside the school. I saw him one day swoop down and grab a cap off a boy's head and fly off with it. After he dropped it, he laughed. Really laughed! Like a person. And the hatless kid would chase after Zeke, and Zeke would say things like "Don't kill Zeke....hahaha." It was something I would never, ever forget.
I tried a few years ago to Google Zeke the crow of Cloverdale, California, and came up dry. So when I started getting close to this chapter in my School Daze log, I googled again, and bingo! There it was! I wasn't imagining or dreaming. It really did happen. And I also learned something else: Zeke.....was a girl! This article which appeared in a January, 1969 newspaper article confirmed I wasn't dreaming. That's all I have ever found about Zeke. But it's enough, for now. Maybe someone else who has some more information, or even pictures, of Zeke will find this and contact me. I would love to find out more than this little article provides.
Oh, and when our grade cards came out, word was out on the asphalt playground. Only two people in the whole school got all A's (ten A's, to be exact). In whispers, it spread like wildfire: "The OKIE got straight A's!" Now I was just "The Okie" instead of the dumb Okie. Which wasn't so bad. When someone would call me Okie, Mr. Creel would always just look at me and grin. Wonder if he was an Okie, too?
Well, when school ended, we moved just outside of town. My Daddy had got a new job. He was the driver for a local wrecker. And when we moved outside of town, a little area called Asti, the house we lived in was right across the highway from what was then called the Italian Swiss Colony Winery, now called Cellar No. 8 at Asti Winery. Back then, and still today, tourists can "taste" all the free samples they want during tours and tasting events. So Daddy's job was pretty secure, some of the tasters didn't get very far down the road without needing his services. Or even past the ditch at the end of the long driveway to the winery. Job security. For awhile anyway. Then Daddy was offered a job at the same logging company as his brothers and he took it, driving a logging truck. That's the job he had been waiting to get since we moved to California.
We enjoyed a fun summer playing with the kids who lived on either side of us, one family was French, the other was Italian, and since they were related to each other by marriage, we were privy to some very vocal, sometimes very heated, family "discussions" (I believe the Brits call them rows) in their mother tongues. It was quite fascinating to watch. And hear. But the two French boys, Pierre and Emilio, both took piano lessons from a teacher that made house calls, and I hatched a plan: I could take lessons from her when she came to give their lessons! She would only have to come next door!
So my Mom and Daddy rented a piano from a music store because they knew how much I missed my old friend, the upright, Howard piano, with all the missing teeth (ivories) that I had memorized. I don't remember my teacher's name, but she would put little stars and stickers on all the pages of my music books that I would play for her. And she actually got a kick out how I would embellish those little songs with "extras" I added by ear. I still have those books. I later learned that she was not your run-of-the-mill piano teacher. Embellishing the written music was apparently a no-no to most other piano teachers. So they got the straight music during my lessons with them. But I embellished to my heart's content in the privacy of my own home.
Living in California was magical. I remember it vividly fifty years later. Especially Zeke the crow. But staying longer was not to be. My Mom got a phone call one day and she was told that Daddy had gotten hurt on the job. Pretty badly. We waited for him to come home, and when we did, he was on crutches. He had broken a foot pretty badly, and that was that as far as the logging business for him. Besides, as nice, and as fun, and as pretty as California was, we missed Missouri.
And all our dumb Okie friends and relatives.
And another school year was just around the corner...
I am not good with a computer so I hope you are getting this. my email is jas8729@comcast.net
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