Elementary School Memories
The Architecture of My Catholic Education in Small-town Ohio
The Building
When I was young, I went to a catholic elementary school in a small town called Zanesville, Ohio. Like all parochial schools, it was housed in an ancient building downtown that had seen better days but was well looked after none the less. Over the years, they must have painted the interior 10 times the same cream green color because the walls looked more like light green skin than painted board.
The Basement
The basement of the school served as our lunchroom, a gambling casino, and an air raid shelter. We bought lunches that ranged from German sourcrout and hot dogs, to Italian spaghetti, to Mexican burritos. On Saturday nights, the lunchroom became the center for Bingo Night, which is how the parish got most of its funding. During tornado season, we would have tornado drills where my classmates and I would kneel, put our foreheads on the floor, and cover our heads with our hands — kind of like being in reverse-fetal position. We all joked that we were preparing for nuclear war.
The Gym
Our gym was down the street, so we had to change into our gym clothes in the classroom — first the girls would change while the boys stood outside, then vice versa. Once dressed, we would march single file down the street to a local theatre. It may seem strange that we had gym class in a theatre, but this building was not like other old performance venues.
It was a full-fledged theatre with three seating sections and a balcony. The stage however was unique. There were two sets of stage curtains. If there was an act performing, they would open the first set of curtains and the artist would play at the front of the stage. I remember the Catholic Community was all up in arms when ZZ Top was allowed to play their Devil’s music on that very stage. God forbid!
The real magic was that if you pulled back the second set of curtains a full regulation basketball court would appear. I guess the idea was that people would come to see performing artists one night and then cheer for the local basketball team the next.
In that gym in the late 70s, yoga and stretching were popular, and my gym teacher, a former university basketball player, believed that we needed to stretch, do calisthenics (push-ups, sit-ups and jumping jacks), and run numerous laps around the court for a full half hour before we even started a game. It’s been nearly 50 years, and I still do the same exercises she taught us.
The Renovations
Once we were given a whole week off, because the government forced the school to remove all the asbestos insulation from the building because asbestos was proven to cause lung cancer.
The Church Basement
Directly across the street was a cookie-cutter gray stone Catholic church and in the basement was a large room with a stage at the front where we children would do plays and watch each other perform. Once, the school had the idea of putting on their own version of the popular talent show called The Gong Show, but whoever thought of The Gong Show for primary school students must’ve had a screw loose. The very idea that a young child would be gonged off the stage, because the parish priest judges did not like your performance, was nothing short of vicious. Strangely, the fantasy story that I presented started strong, but had no action or climax but was not gonged, but later when my gang of friends and I put Vaseline in our hair and tried to sing the Grease theme, we were gonged before we even got to the chorus. It had been so much fun and hard work to prepare, so to be gonged devastated us. My 6th grade girlfriend got gonged for a poem about basketball, which my friends and I were sure would win the whole competition. She was inconsolable and spent the rest of the day barely holding back her tears.
The Playgound
Our “playground” if you could call it that, was a blacktop parking lot surrounded a four-foot-tall chain-link fence, so we had to be very careful that our ball did not go into the busy downtown streets. We played touch football, basketball, kickball, and a game called “smear the queer” which involved beating up the person who had possession of the ball. If the ball was released the next person who got it became the “queer”. Sadly, the “good Catholic” playground attendants, nuns included, never stopped us from shouting “smear the queer”. I hope they are more sensitive now.
I must be getting old, because all these types of memories are flooding back.
Copyright © Paul Davidson. All Rights Reserved.
