Mrs. Dix's kindergarten was just a part of the neighborhood. You went down the street, past the Hoffman's driveway that led to their lawnmower repair shop, past the Hoffman's yellow house, past Mrs. Dudley's peaberry bush (you had to reach up and grab a peaberry every time you passed), past Mrs. Dudley's house, then the house that had apartments in it. My Aunt Florence lived there ("She's not your aunt, Janie, she's my cousin," said my mother. "Freddy calls her Aunt Florence, " I said. "She's not his aunt either."). Following the sidewalk around the peculiar way the street curved and then to the brick building with the big TAXIDERMY sign.
Walking on rainy mornings with the boy next door, David Bradley, wearing our raincoats with buckles and the hoods with the built-in visor, we splashed through the big puddle that formed on the sidewalk every time it rained. The same big puddle we jumped on in winter to splinter the ice.
Mrs. Dix welcomed a new class every fall to the high-ceilinged classroom with its big window facing the street. When you turned left, there was the kindergarten and straight back, another door led to In the Mr. Dix's taxidermy, a dusty mysterious place. Everett and Twila were their names, though calling adults by their first names was out of the question. In addition to the kindergarten and the taxidermy, they also had antiques - Mrs. Dix collecting china dolls with dusty hair and vacant eyes and Mr. Dix, those tall three-wheeled cycles, that he sometimes rode in parades.
This was a private kindergarten, established to get the community's five-year-olds ready for first grade at a time when there was no kindergarten in the Coudersport School Jointure. My grandparents paid my tuition - or dues as she called it - $10 a month.
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| perhaps I was practicing my penmanship on the invitation to graduation. |
Mrs. Dix was grandmotherly, though she and Mr. Dix had no children or grandchildren. She twinkled in that way of grandmothers in the little golden books, a cloud of rosewater, lipstick that collected in the wrinkles around her lips and the kind of shirtwaist dresses with matching belts that all the old ladies wore. She would sit at her desk twiddling her fingers, her reading glasses on a chain around her neck, while we were working at our desks, seated in the squeaky chairs, both feet on the floor.
She favored very elaborate and exciting 'programs' to celebrate the seasons, culminating in the graduation program in the spring. It was expected that parents would dress their girls in white dresses with crinolines, patent leather Mary Janes and ankle socks with ruffles and the boys in little boy suits or at least shirts with ties, their shoes freshly polished.
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| Susan Frederick shared this 1957 photo with me as we gathered for our high school class reunion last summer. She's in the front and her mother the lady watching in the grown-up chairs. Susan still has her diploma - celebrating her as a master of rhymes I believe. |
6 comments:
What a vivid picture! I love reading your memories.
I remember the Dixes well - as very good friends of my parents. Antiquers all seem to know each other. Their home in Portville was submerged in the 1972 flood and my family went down to help out. Only the heads of her beautiful dolls were salvageable. So sad as she loved them so. Mr. Dix collected iron mechanical banks. They had some surface rust, but were restorable. Such nice people. My family was very fond of them.
I too was a student in Mrs. Dix's kindergarten but probably a good bit earlier than Jane. It would have been in 1946 or 1947. Louise McCaigue, our neighbor and then a preteen, would walk me to kindergarten on her way to school--we lived over on the other side of town. I recall that I was the biggest kid at the school, despite being about a year younger than most of my classmates, and I admit to having been something of a bully. Mrs. Dix took me quietly aside and gently delivered one of those life lessons you never forget. At the elementary school the situation soon reversed itself and I was the skinny little kid with coke-bottle glasses and a classic bully target. There were a lot of fights and a lot of pairs of broken glasses, sad to say.
I remember Twila Dix and the long sandbox and my shiny patent leather Mary Jane’s. Carl Mosch was my good buddy.
You always remember more than I do. Thanks for filling in the growing blanks. I remember the promise of a trip upstairs to see the dolls if we behaved. Also the threat of being turned into a taxidermy project if we were really bad ( just kidding). I did think of it as I played housewife in the miniature kitchen.
David Bradley. Out west. Where the cowboys grow.
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