My first day of school, Branch Elementary, 1958. First through fourth grades met in the right-hand classroom, fifth through eighth in the left.

The school was pink then, absent the bell tower, deemed a hazard by the state. Our schoolbus was a yellow pickup with a canvas top over two benches bolted to the floor, driven by Elsie Cecchetti, also deemed a hazard by the state.

I could read my classmates’ names as our teacher, Mrs. Edith Brown, wrote them on the board. Fifty years later, I realized that my Mom, a remarkable woman, had already taught me how to read.

Each teacher taught six subjects to four different grade levels simultaneously. First grade might be in a reading circle, second at penmanship (those big green pencils and the coarse paper with those big green lines), third reading “My Weekly Reader,” fourth doing a multiplication worksheet.

My teachers were remarkable, too. I got a superb education.

Mom, at twenty-two in 1943, with my big sister, Roberta. In the days when it wasn’t insulting, the first Lucia Mar superintendent, Earl Denton, said that she was the most brilliant woman he’d ever met. Denton’s wife, Nita, was no slouch in the brilliance department, and she was a sweet and lovely woman, too.