Education in Meriden

In my youth, there were five schools that got whittled down to three by 1954 and finally just one in 1973. The changes were not, as one might expect, the result of a declining student population, but rather the result of improved roads. You see, in the late 1940’s, there was a school in each end of town, Plainfield, East Plainfield, and Meriden plus one on Methodist Hill. As the use of asphalt expanded and plow trucks could clean snow from the pavement, it became fiscally prudent to close the schools in East Plainfield and on Methodist Hill and bus the kids to Meriden. They used a Jeep station wagon to bring the entire school population down from Methodist Hill to East Plainfield where they and the East Plainfield students boarded a yellow Blue Bird school bus for the trek into Meriden, six miles away. A number of years later, they built a new school in Meriden and now all the children in town go to it.

By 1954, however, it became necessary to add more classroom space, so an old school, long out of use, was reopened. Known as the Brown School to differentiate it from the White School, it was a two story building with four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs, The one on the left downstairs was the classroom, the one on the right had chicken wire over the windows and served as a basketball court. There was no basket, but an old Union Regulator Clock served as a target and was soon smashed flat. I recently saw a similar clock for sale for around $500.00.

Upstairs, the room on the left was vacant and on the right was the town library. There was no running water in the building, so one of the big boys would go across the street to Edith Whitney's to fill up a stone crock for drinking water. In the rear, along either side of the woodpile, were unheated facilities, one for boys and one for girls. The aroma of these facilities was rather intense, particularly in spring and fall, but even worse, in the boy’s room in winter, a ridge of ice would be built up around both of the two holes, so we’d delay certain functions until we’d get home.

For the readers unfamiliar with the little village of Meriden, I’d better explain why the two schools were differentiated by color. It had absolutely nothing to do with the race of anyone, but more with the color of the two buildings. The White School was, indeed, white, covered with painted clapboards, usually pronounced as clabberds. The Brown School was covered with stained wooden shingles that had turned darker brown over the years.

In the 1940’s, children started school in the first grade when they were six, so in autumn of 1948, I was enrolled in the school system. It had taken at least a year of discussions to make me understand that I’d have to stop wearing my brogans and bib overalls, and that I’d need to put my learning to use. I knew my ABC’s, I could count to as far as I knew numbers went, and I had a new wardrobe, so off we went to the Meriden White School. All eight grades of the Meriden school district went to the White School. It was a large imposing building from the front. That is, it was large to a six-year-old from the country who never rode an elevator until he was a teenager. A staircase went up from ground level to a pair of windowed doors that gave entry to a hall that stretched the length of the building. Just inside those doors was a brass bell that would soon play a role in humiliating me in front of the entire school. There were doors that led to each of the classrooms and at the ends of the hallway were the facilities, boys at one end and girls at the other. I always wondered what he difference was, but never once in all my years of learning at the White School did I dare look in to see.

The classrooms were divided into the “big room” and the “little room”. As a first grader, I was in the “little room”. That room was further divided into four rows, with the first grade being along the wall nearest the hallway and the fourth grade, or the big kids, being along the wall with windows that looked out over the playground. How I longed to be one of the big kids so I could be closer to the windows, not realizing that the glory would only last one school year and then, as a fifth grader in the “big room”, I’d be along the wall without windows, looking longingly at the eighth graders along the windows.

The first grade is fraught with dangers and Miss Jenney was the one to correct any and all failings. She had a wooden ruler which she’d use mercilessly on the backs of the hands of any student who failed to follow her rules. We first graders saw that ruler as being nearly the size of a two by four, but with a brass straight edge burrowed into a groove along one edge, the purpose of which was to surely inflict extreme pain and agony.

As a first grader, I was pretty obedient. I walked almost half a mile to school, past a cow pasture on the left and a choke cherry bush-hidden brook on the right. Beyond the pasture was the football field for the local prep school, the school farm buildings, and then the Baptist Church. I’d cross the road at the church, then an iron bridge with a loose wooden plank surface, across a flat and out the lane to the school. The lane, as well as the school parking area, was unpaved, so in rainy weather, there’d be mud to contend with.

Shoes were expensive commodities for my family, so I had a pair of galoshes to wear over my shoes whenever the weather was rain or snow. Those black rubber galoshes fit rather tightly over my shoes, then were tightened with four or five special buckles that would clamp the boot top to my leg. I noted earlier that the bell near the front door would one day play a role in my humiliation, and these somewhat difficult buckles would add to that role.

It was a rainy day and that morning, Mom insisted that I wear those ungainly and definitely uncool boots to school with the admonishment that I had to wear them when we went outside for recess. That was also the day that had been tabbed as being the day for a fire drill. Now we’d practiced fire drills before. The bell would start clanging, we’d grab our coats from the coat closet at the rear of the classroom, then get in line along the wall and march single file into the hall, through the front doors, down the stairs and out into the yard where the teachers would count heads to make certain we all had escaped the imaginary holocaust.

The bell went off. The students crowded into the coat room, grabbed their coats, put them on as they were getting in their place in line, then marched out into the parking lot. The teachers did their job. They got the fire drill started, prompted and cajoled the kids to hurry and get in line, and then marched them out into the parking lot. I say “them” because at some point I became a bit confused. The teacher was shouting to hurry up, but Mom had been pretty specific. I struggled with those boots while all about me kids were getting their jackets and pushing and shoving their way into line. Finally it got quiet and I could concentrate on the matter at hand, getting those infernal boots on over my shoes and buckled. I was still struggling when Miss Jenny returned to see why her student count was off by one child. I had one boot buckled and my shoe was in the other one, but it flapped as Miss Jenny grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the coat room, through the now empty classroom, across the hallway and out those doors onto the top of the steps where suddenly, time stood still. Nearly every student, from the first graders to the eighth graders watched as little Jimmy McNamara was dragged down the steps, one boot clasped tightly, the other flapping wildly, arms akimbo, jacket unbuttoned, at the end of Miss Jenny’s arm.

About the only saving grace from that event was that as we descended, Miss Jenny and I saw what no one else saw. The entire school, with three exceptions, was watching my humiliation. The exceptions were me and Miss Jenney, of course, and my classmate Dougie Carver who’d somehow figured his school day was over and was halfway down the lane, on his way home. I don’t know how Doug felt later on about his error, but for years, whenever the event of that day was brought up by someone, I’d point out that he’d taken off, hopefully dimming any further humiliation.