Here Comes the Lunch Truck: Mat’s perspective

The thing I remember most about our days at Cold Spring Park was the diversity of kids on the playground. We grew up in Blackstone, Massachusetts. Throughout my entire educational career, I think there was one black student in our school, and only for a brief period of time.

At least half the kids at the park were minority, giving us our first real experience with kids from other racial backgrounds. I think this was important for us. I don’t think I would’ve grown up with prejudice in my heart regardless of my childhood experiences, but the time we spent with black and Hispanic kids at the park proved invaluable in terms of my acceptance and understanding of them as kids just like me.

That said, my brothers and sisters and I rarely strayed from one another. We were like aliens visiting another world. We knew no one. We didn’t understand the rules of this foreign land. We stuck together and played together for the most part. The idea that our parents would simply drop us off at a park in another town without supervision for the day in order to avoid purchasing us lunch was crazy.

I will also disagree with Kelli on the economic state of our family. In her post, Kelli says that “We were far from underprivileged. We were far from poor.”

I think we were closer to the poverty line than Kelli realizes.

We were free breakfast and lunch kids for our entire lives. As a teacher, I know that this alone indicates a serious level of economic struggle.

Many of the clothes that we owned were hand-me-downs, and most did not fit properly.

We didn’t have much by way of toys, sports equipment and such. I was the worst prepared Boy Scout in our troop, rarely equipped properly for the outdoor conditions. There was a weekend in February when my Scoutmaster had to pile the clothing of other Scouts on top of me to keep me warm overnight because my sleeping back and winter clothing were not suitable for the cold, winter nights.

Band trips, Boy Scout trips and any other event that required money was almost always paid for through some scholarship program funded by other parents. When I spent time in New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island with friends and their families on vacation, I was never sent with a single dollar.

I can count the number of times we ate in a restaurant as children on one hand.

We were recipients of enormous blocks of cheese from the WIC program. Government cheese. The sign of poverty if I ever saw it.

Inexplicably, my parents seemed to have enough money to travel to the Caribbean and the Poconos. They had enough money to go out on Friday and Saturday, leaving their nine year old son in charge of four younger brothers and sisters until 2:00 in the morning.

My parents might not have been poor, but the kids were.

Not destitute, mind you. Not impoverished. But poor.

It should also be noted that we thankfully did not spend every summer at Cold Spring Park. It might’ve been just one. Two at the most.

Kelli was also right about our home. It was an adventureland for kids. In addition to the fields surrounding our home and the pool and the barn, there were huge swaths of forest behind out home that we explored regularly. There were crumbling basements from ancient, burned out homes, cow ponds, swamps, a cave and endless fields of tall grass. We could ride our bikes almost anywhere in town and beyond by the time we were ten-years-old. Our generation might’ve been the last to be sent outdoors at the crack of dawn with the expectation that you would only return for lunch and dinner. The freedom that we enjoyed as children would be unheard of today. I tell my students about the lack of parental supervision and organized play that I enjoyed as a child and they cannot believe it.

Cold Spring Park put a damper on that freedom for a time, but thankfully not for long.

Oh, and the lunches were terrible. Free, yes. But you get what you pay for.

Here Comes the Lunch Truck: Kelli’s perspective

Growing up at our house in Blackstone during summer vacation was great. We didn't have any friends who lived close by, but we had better. There were five siblings in the house. Lots of opportunity for fun.

We had a huge yard and a pool.

We had a barn in the back yard. In the main room of the barn was a couch. We could hang out there, play house (for me and my stepsister) and jump off the roof. Riding bikes off the roof was fun for my brother, but not for me.

If we got bored with that, we could go inside and play Atari or watch television.

If that bored us and we were hungry we could go in our own back yard and pick blackberries or go to my grandfather’s house next door and pick apples, pears, or grapes. We even had rhubarb.

With all those activities at home, my parents thought it would be a good idea to send my siblings and me to Cold Spring Park in Woonsocket, RI for the day. This was odd for a few reasons.

First, we had a lot to do at home.

Second, we did not live in Woonsocket, nor did we live in Rhode Island.

Mom would drop us all off in the morning and leave us there all day. There was an arts and crafts station where we would make necklaces and paint rocks.

There was no swimming, which we could have done at home, and fruit picking was also not an option. People pay to go fruit picking and we could have done it at home for free.

Instead we spent our summer at Cold Spring Park.

We were bored. Very bored. We waited for the lunch truck to come because we knew when we saw it, two good things would happen.

First, we could eat. For free.

Second, we were half way through the day before we could go home.

We watched for the truck. When we saw it we all yelled, “Here comes the lunch truck!” We got a menial lunch: bologna sandwich, an apple and a carton of white milk.

Once they left we just watched for our parents to come and finally get us.

Looking back now, as an adult, I know that the park lunch program was for under privileged families.

We were far from underprivileged. We were far from poor. I can't help but wonder: Why were we there?

PS: I entered the Little Miss Cold Spring Park pageant and was the first runner up. I didn't make the paper like the winner did, but I was still the coolest girl on the planet, so I thought.

Elementary School Teachers: Matt’s perspective

As I expected, I remember considerably less about my elementary school teachers than Kelli, but I seem to remember more details about the ones I do remember.

Oddly enough, I remember kindergarten better than the following two years combined. My teacher was Mrs. Dubois. I loved her. I remember her being kind, patient, and in my tiny mind, a freakin’ genius.

I can still remember specific lessons that she taught us to this day. I can still picture specific pages of our math workbook. I remember learning about sets and basic addition and subtraction. Every time I learned something new, I assigned her all the credit.

There are many reasons I became a teacher, but I suspect it began in kindergarten with Mrs. Dubois.

Mrs. Dubois taught us the alphabet using letter people: large, inflatable characters that represented each letter. I loved those letter people, and Mrs. Dubois must have known it, because when she replaced a leaky Mr. R with a new one, she gave the old Mr. R to me to take home and keep. Mr. R had rubber bands for hair. I thought that was just about the cleverest idea in the world.

Apparently the letter people were associated with an educational television program at the time, complete with video and song. I recall the songs a little, but I don’t think we ever watched any videos about them.

Mrs. Dubois was the first teacher to discipline me. I can remember being send to the corner for the first time. I stood beneath the American flag and stared at the pencil sharpener, wondering if she would ever let me out. I swore that I would never do another wrong thing again while I was standing in that corner, and as far as I can recall, I was never sent to the corner again in kindergarten. 

Our classroom was filled with blocks and puzzles and pretend kitchens and the like, and I remember adoring the time we had to play. Kindergarten was always sunny in my memory. I never rained as long as I was with Mrs. Dubois.

Mrs. Carroll was the equivalent of the kindergarten paraprofessional, and she would take each one of us out of the classroom and into the hallway to test us. We would sit at a round table between the two classrooms and demonstrate our knowledge of our birthday, our address, our ability to spell our names and count to 100, and similar information.

I just did some poking around online and discovered that Mrs. Dubois retired in 2006. Her first name is Cora. I wonder if I can find her and thank her for all that she did for me. Kindergarten was only a half day for me back then, but those few hours of schooling each day were precious to me.

I have almost no recollection of my first or second grade teachers. In fact, I can’t even recall their names, though Kelli’s mention of Mrs. McGann makes me think that she was probably my second grade teacher, too.

Since I grew up in the age of tracking, where children are grouped according to ability, I may be able to recover the names and memories of these teachers. The kids who were in first grade with me remained with me for the most part throughout elementary and much of middle school. We were Group 1. The smartest kids. Just imagine grouping students solely by perceived academic ability and then informing them of the pecking order by assigning a number.

I still can’t believe it happened.

As such, any friends that I have from that time had the same teachers as me and might remember.  

My third grade teacher was Mrs. Laverne, though I suspect that I am spelling it wrong. I find no mention of her online.

I remember Mrs. Laverne’s class because that was the year when I realized that my family was not doing well economically. I was in a class filled with the best and brightest from our town, and as you might expect, many of those kids came from homes that were at least middle class and often above.

My family was not.

Third grade was the year when I realized what it meant to raise my hand every morning during the teacher’s lunch count when she asked who was “getting free hot lunch.”

I still can’t believe they had us do that.

My fourth grade year was a disjoined time that deserves a post of its own. Probably a chapter in a memoir someday. As the top group in our class, we were sent to middle school a year early, but when the second middle school in town was condemned, administrators sent those students to my middle school and sent us back to elementary school for the remainder of the year.

As you can imagine, we were an unruly bunch. We went through at least two substitute teachers for those final months and most assuredly learned nothing. I’ve had conversations on Facebook with childhood friends about that year, and they might be able to offer those details again to me. I recall a lot of Blondie dance routines from the ladies and a lot of fooling around in the back of the classroom by the boys. I know that for a short period of time, my friend’s mother, Mrs. Lavalee, served as our teacher. She was a German with a thick accent who had no control over us whatsoever. 

Lastly, our principal was Mr. Hartnett, for whom the new middle school in town is now named. He was a kind but firm man who I had to visit on more than one occasion for minor indiscretions. What I recall most about Mr. Hartnett was that when I was sent to his office, he would call me into his office even if he was meeting with other adults at that moment and let me have it right in front of them.

Public shame is a powerful tool. Mr. Hartnett understood this well.

Elementary School Teachers: Kelli’s perspective

Going to school in Blackstone, as probably with every other school in the world, there were teachers that every kid wanted and teachers that every kid dreaded. Having two older brothers, I always had the inside scoop on which teachers were “nice” and which ones were “mean” and it started as early as kindergarten.

There were only two teachers for kindergarten at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in the 1970s.

Mrs. Dubois was the nice one, the one every kid wanted.

Unfortunately I got Mrs. Roberge. Mrs. Roberge a short, angry woman. She wasn't nurturing like a kindergarten teacher should be. Halfway through the day, selected kids would put their things in a shoe box and go to the other class to be taught by that teacher for a while.

I wasn't one of those children either. I spent the whole school year in Mrs. Roberge's class.

On graduation day, during the family party after the ceremony, I spilled my milk. Mrs. Roberge yelled at me. I was very happy to leave the class that day.

Another teacher that none of the children wanted was Mrs. McGann. She taught second grade. She yelled a lot and gave way too much homework. There was a rumor about a fourth grade teacher named Miss Chaukins. Kids said she scratched a student one day for forgetting his homework and made him bleed. No one could ever say who the kid was or how long ago it happened, but it was a rumor that spread through my entire career at JFK.

Mrs. Callahan had a reputation of being a nice teacher. I was lucky enough to have her. She didn't yell too often and made learning fun.

Mrs. Daignault was a fourth grade teacher who every kid wanted. In the middle of my fourth grade year, she went on maternity leave and left us with Miss McMichael for the remainder of the year. She was nice but she was no Mrs Daignault.

In elementary school there were two gym teachers. Mrs Bergeron was the teacher everyone wanted. She was easy on the kids and didn't yell very often. Mr. Bourgery wasn't as nice and definitely made gym class a lot less fun.

After elementary was done, my brothers gave the good and bad list for middle school and then elementary school. For me, being the youngest, it was nice starting a new grade knowing what I was getting into. There were some upsides to being the youngest.

The Bus Stop: Matt’s perspective

I loved the bus stop. I miss those days when my siblings and I stood beneath that enormous oak tree, waiting for the bus.

The bus stop was the place where Kelli, Jeremy and I gathered everyday. Regardless of what was filling our lives at the moment, we always came together at the bottom of the driveway for a few minutes each day before going forth and taking on the world.

Yes, it’s true. I would tell Kelli and Jeremy that if you placed your ear on the street, you could hear the vibrations of the bus from far away. There may have been a time when I actually believed this, but eventually it became a way of getting Jeremy to lie down in the street so I could inwardly laugh at him. 

And yes, it’s true that we collected “Cocoa Puffs,” which were actually tiny, multicolored insect egg sacks that would fall from the tree and land on the ground. And yes, referring to multicolored spheres as Cocoa Puffs seems a little ludicrous today.

There was also the day when Kelli, still in first grade, had to pee while waiting for the bus. Being latch key children in every sense of the word, our parents had already left for work long before we ventured down to the bus stop. I had a key tied around my neck on a length of string, but knowing that the bus would arrive any minute, I told Kelli to hold it.

She started crying, begging, pleading to pee. After a moment, I handed her the key and told her to hurry up. She ran up the driveway and into the house.

We waited. And waited. She did not return. I grew impatient and worried. I became annoyed and frustrated.

Finally I told Jeremy to hold the bus if it arrived, and I ran back into the house to find out what had happened.

In her haste to pee quickly, Kelli had launched herself onto the toilet and fallen straight through, When I peeked my nose into the bathroom, the only thing I could see were her head and her feet. The rest of her was jammed in the toilet bowl.

She was crying.

I managed to extract her from the toilet, and she cleaned herself off, but in the meantime, the bus had come and gone. Jeremy had been too shy to tell the bus driver to wait for us.

I called my mother at work to tell her that we had missed the bus, and she told us to stay home for the day. A third grader and a first grader were instructed to stay home alone and “make sandwiches for lunch.”

A different time or questionable parenting? I’m not sure, but I recall it being a great day for the two of us.

The Bus Stop: Kelli’s perspective

Living in Blackstone we had the benefit of getting a bus everyday to school. Because we didn't have any other kids our age in the neighborhood we got picked up right at the bottom of the driveway. Even though we were only at the bus stop for a short time, as a kid it felt like forever. We did a few things to pass the time while we waited.

We stood under a tree at the bus stop. In the spring, small round colorful balls fell from the tree. I’m not too sure what they were but we made a game out of it. I called them Cocoa Puffs. Looking back now I think Trix would have been a better name for them since they were different colors. It's pretty surprising that none of us realized it. The Cocoa Puffs would  fall from the tree and we would pick them up on the side of the road and put them in our school bags. After school we brought them up to the house and put them with all the other ones we collected in The Cocoa Puff Kingdom.

Looking back at it, we were strange children.

Matt had a theory. He said if you lie down on the street and put your ear on the road, you could hear the vibration of the bus and you could tell how far away the bus was. I was the only one too scared to do it, which is ironic because I am the one who 25 years later was hit by a car attempting to cross the highway.

It wasn't always fun and games at the bus stop. We did have fights  sometimes. Some being physical.

Matt and Jeremy were getting annoyed with me one day. I'm not quite sure what I was doing to annoy them but being their little sister, I'm sure I didn't have to try too hard. Matt, finally sick of me, grabbed my Disco Daisy Duck school bag and swung me around by it until I fell. I stayed down on the ground and cried. This didn't make my brothers feel bad. It made them more angry. The bus was in sight and they didn't want me crying when it came. Matt grabbed me by my hair (which unfortunately for me was a bowl cut throughout my entire childhood) and pulled me up.

After school that day, my mother told me to change my clothes because I had worn a dress with tights that day. When I tried to take off my tights they were stuck in the cut that I got that morning and it had scabbed over. My mother kept dabbing it with water and pulling it out little by little. I was angry because Matt had not got in any trouble for what he did.

After Matt got his license he started driving and it was just Jeremy and me at the bus stop. Then Jeremy graduated and I was alone. It just wasn't as fun anymore after my brothers left.

Food Nazis: Matt’s perspective

I’m so glad that my sister remembers the trials and tribulations surrounding food like I do. It’s true. Eating was something that was only tolerated in our home.

One of the saving graces for me was my lactose intolerance as a child. Though I quickly outgrew the problem, I did not tell my parents because it allowed me to drink fruit juice at dinner in lieu of milk.

The only three liquids we were ever allowed to ingest as children were water, milk and a bastardized version of Kool-Aid.

A cup of apple juice was like a treasure.

It was also odd how some of our parents’ decisions seemed to have a nutritional underpinning while others did not.

Yes, you can have a Pop Tart once a week, but unfrosted only. No unnecessary sugar for you. And only healthy cereals like Wheaties and Corn Flakes. Nothing with an animal or a leprechaun on the box.

But here, have a slice of bologna on white bread with catsup for every single lunch of the entire summer.

And potato chips to go along with these sandwich monstrosities?

Never. I don’t think I ever ate a potato chip unless I was visiting a friend or relative. 

I almost never saw a slice of cheese as a child, other than the blocks of cheese that we would receive sometimes from WIC. I still think of American cheese as a priceless commodity. When I see it in my refrigerator today, I can’t help but want to horde it.

Snacks in the summer were often picked off my grandfather’s fruit trees. He lived next door and grew apples, pears and peaches in abundance. We were forced to eat the fruit right off the tree regardless of how ripe it might be.

I like to say that as a child, I never went hungry but was always hungry.

We were active, growing children who played outside everyday regardless of weather or temperature, but we were probably living on a diet of about 2,500 calories.

Kelli was correct about dinner, too. Grub was exceptionally common.

“It consisted of scrambled hamburger and baked beans. The state should have removed us from the home for that one.”

Yes, indeed.

There was also a lot of spaghetti, almost never with any meat in the sauce, and many times without sauce. My mother eventually bought a pressure cooker, and for a time, everything was cooked in there. An endless parade of meatless stews and unidentifiable soups. One day she placed the heated pressure cooker on the counter and burned a hole in the shape of the pressure cooker about one centimeter deep. The repair of the counter consisted of placing a cutting board over the hole and calling it a day.

Our parents also dropped us off at Colt Spring Park in Woonsocket, Rhode Island every day in the summer because a free lunch wagon would come through the park and feed any child who was playing there.

Mind you, my parents didn’t stay with us. They dropped us off in a strange park in another state and left us for a few hours so we could get a boxed lunch from the Woonsocket social services department.

I’ll have to ask Kelli to write about those days in the park. I recall them being surreal and scary.