THE ROCKAWAY I KNEW
By Matthew Bashie

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: TROUBLE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

When I was in my sixth year of elementary school, I was demoted to the second grade! It wasn't that I was unbelievably stupid, it was that I was especially annoying. But on that fateful Wednesday morning, I became "too much" for a teacher to tolerate and so she ordered me out of the room and told me to find somewhere else to go. I was left wandering the halls of the building, looking for another teacher, another class to "take me in."

I was born down south and for the first three years of my public elementary education, I experienced the southern schools and a system somewhat less advanced than that "tabernacle of wisdom" available to the fortunate kids up north. I was aware of this and for years, whenever I had any setbacks in school, I blamed my lack of sophistication on my prior background and training. In any event, true or not, it made for one hell of a good excuse.

We had moved into a major apartment complex labeled "Wavecrest Gardens," located on Beach 20th Street in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, in late May of 1952 and one of my dad's first tasks in the new village was to find appropriate training facilities for his little boy. Roughly translated, that meant a place to "dump" me during the daylight hours when my parents would be at work. My father settled on a older three-story brick school house located on Beach 35th Street, in the Edgemere area of the Rockaways. He really didn't have any choice in the matter because I was in that particular district and so that is the school I would have attend.

I remember Public School # 106 being very overcrowded at the time - classes were even being held in a small gymnasium and in the lunch rooms. The school was operating on a series of shifts - the older grades attended school for four hours in the morning and the younger children went to class for four hours in the afternoon. A new elementary school was being constructed at that time and was due to open to the "kiddie" public the beginning of the fall of 1953 - which was more than a year away. The old facility was located fifteen blocks west of where I lived and I walked to school each morning on the beach-front boardwalk, especially tricky on snowy days. But those were simpler times and it was a most enjoyable trek. At the end of the school "day", buses lined up outside of the building and I usually took the bus home.

The new school, P.S.215 opened in September of 1953 and I was in its first fifth-grade class. What a difference! What an improvement! This lovely three-story building located on Grassmere Terrace in Far Rockaway was still in minor stages of completion when I first entered in the fall of that year. I can still remember workmen putting down tile floors in a few of the newly constructed classrooms. No more overcrowding, and my school day was finally a reasonable "nine to three", with an hour off for lunch at noon. We were actually "dismissed" at twelve and I remember that the teacher had to take attendance twice a day. She called the roll in the morning and then again after lunch in the afternoon and often, children who attended classes in the am did not return after one - so it was not unusual to see children marked "absent for one-half day." A major advantage to this system was that if I didn't feel well enough to go to school in the morning I might have felt better in the afternoon - a great excuse for sleeping late!

It was now the fall of 1954 and I was in my second year at the "new school" -I was in sixth grade. Wednesdays were special days at P.S. 215 -assembly day! The children were expected to dress differently on that day (each week) for the special occasion. In the case of the boys, we were expected to wear a clean white long-sleeve shirt and a red tie. I don't know where the "red" tie came from - I knew we had to put on a tie for that event but so many of the children decided to wear red that the principal announced that the students had chosen the school colors by their attire - so from then on, the official school colors were red and white. The things that people come up with!

On the Wednesday morning under dissection in this chapter, it initially appeared that it would a typical assembly day. At the appropriate time, the children would be lined up outside the classrooms, the teachers would pass by and do ageneral inspection and then on cue, we would all be marched downstairs

to the modern auditorium to be seated in our predetermined wooden chairs. We had performed this same routine for months.

As for myself, what all of this really added up to was two hours without school work. I had no objection to sitting patiently in a theater seat watching some kids up on a stage perform acts, sing, or do some dancing. I didn't get a grade on any of this so to me it was a "free ride."

The presentation on that day was a dancing troupe of fifth grade girls doing some ballet exercises. I had a younger female cousin and on a few occasions, she had done a bit of dancing in front of me and she had explained what it was all about, how important it was to her, but I was really indifferent and unmoved. None of this stuff had any real relevance to me. A classmate sitting next to me made a comment, then another comment, and then a joke - I am sure that I responded appropriately. Remembering back, nothing he said to me had any relationship at all to what was happening on the auditorium stage but a teacher (not OUR teacher) had been aware that "we were talking" during the performance and that was a criminal matter back in those days! So, without warning, this "officer of disciplinary educational law" came over to us and ordered us out.

Stunned to be singled out, we both sat there in "juvenile shock," but then understanding that this woman was in dead earnest, we followed her instructions and left our seats and shuffled out under the glare of the hundreds of eyes of our fellow students - what a major embarrassment. I cannot imagine how the poor girls on the stage must have felt seeing all of this. I am certain that they had no idea what was going on - their performance temporarily interrupted because all attention was diverted to the sight of two eleven year old boys sulking out towards the rear of the auditorium, under the direction of a school teacher.

Once out in the outer lobby, we were ordered to find another class - any class - and we were to stay in that class with that teacher until someone came for us later on.

Being my usual "smart-aleck" self, I felt that all we had to do was to walk around and look into the classroom windows and find a substitute. Now a regular teacher would understand the terrible crime that two six-graders had committed but a substitute, new to the situation and not knowing any better would simply accept us as we were and we would sit out the next few hours in the back of a strange classroom, possibly reviewing elementary lessons — maybe playing "tic-tac-toe". After a few minutes of "hunt and peek" I located a "strange" face in a classroom on the second floor - so we entered and announced that we had been banished from the "upper grade" and would be in the presence of her company for a short period of time. Another error on my part because it turned out that not only was this instructor NOT a substitute, but her husband was the Administrative Assistant at Far Rockaway High School and she definitely knew what to do with "hoodlums" such as the two of us.

The classroom I had incorrectly selected that day was for "second grade" and my partner and I were separated and intermixed with seven year old kids and were expected to do lessons on that level. While the material we covered that day was not difficult, dealing with the obvious amusement on the part of the youngsters was most uncomfortable and my friend and I were both relieved when our own sixth-grade teacher came in a short later to reclaim the two of us.

The teacher who had singled us out in the auditorium for "unnecessary talking" had decreed that we would write letters of apology to the girls who were performing on the stage - the dancers whom we had so rudely interrupted by our "escapades" that morning, but the principal later decided that the girls would not understand what had happened and might "take our letters the wrong way" so, in his wisdom, he dismissed the entire incident. However, a grade demotion - even so brief- is an event that adds to childhood memories. Thinking back now some fifty years later, I can still remember how this all happened and the recollection is so vivid that it feels to me like the event took place only last week. Mind games??

If you wish to contact me at any time, feel free to do so through this web site.

matt@rockawaymemories.com

I always love hearing from my fans and friends. M. B.