My Mother did a good job of helping me not be afraid to go to school. I also had help from my older brother David, who was four grades ahead of me and who had already taught me to read, although I wouldn't do any reading in kindergarten, That would come next year in first grade, when I would first encounter The Nuns From Heaven - And Hell. (Story to follow)

Our trailer on Barbara Lane was a quarter-mile or so down the hill from "the Main Road", which is what we called Rt. 370, the paved highway, and because Barbara Lane was in part a dirt road with nowhere for the bus to turn around, we had to walk up to the Main Road to catch the bus. I had a little note pinned to my jacket with my name in case I got lost.

I don't recall that my brother came with me that first day, because as I recall the kindergartners took the same bus as the High Schoolers, and the middle schoolers took a later bus. My brother and I never attended the same school. Unlike my brother David, who was born in 1945, I am an early member of the (infamous) Baby Boom Generation, b. 1946 to 1964. There are more of us around than just about anybody else. So there.

So many of us that there was no way we could fit into the existing schools. Our parents had been so busy chasing each other around the house after the end of WWII that babies were popping up like little mushrooms all over the place. The old folks in charge of the schools were frantically trying to catch up with us, but they hadn't yet built the new schools that they would need to keep us off the streets and under our desks hiding from the A-bombs that the Russians were plotting to rain down on us.

And so on the very first day of school the bus dropped us off in front of the bus garage, and we were herded into a big garage bay for probably three or four buses, separated by a partition from another similar room next door. The buses would now have to be parked outside. The classroom was filled with little boys and girls, some of whom would be with me all the way through High School - and even college. In these rooms were kids from the Town of Lysander, which is East of the Seneca River that splits the Village of Baldwinsville. Two I remember in particular - Pete Young, and Fred Gaske.

We sat on the floor on our little rugs, upon which we would take our naps. I was sitting at the back of the room, and I noticed the doorway in the partition that separated the two classrooms, and I could see inside the next room. The teacher in the next room was tall and very pretty, with dark hair. To me she looked like Snow White. The teacher in my room was elderly and skinny, with gray hair and a plain old printed Grandma dress. Mrs. Posthill*

So i picked up my little rug and I marched right over to the room next door and sat down in the back of the room. The gray-haired teacher poked her head in the room and said a few words to my new teacher, and then just went back. That was that. My Mom wrote a little about this incident in her baby book that she kept of significant doings in my young little life.

Mom wrote "Dicky came home from school and said he did not like the teacher because she had "cotton battin' hair". (cotton batting was used in those days to stuff pillows and so on.)

My pretty new teacher wasn't Snow White, she was Mrs. Bitz, perfectly lovely in every way. We finger painted our houses, and one day, while taking our nap, Mrs. Bitz walked across us to get something, and as she stepped over me, I quickly turned my head and opened my eyes, and I saw her pretty long legs and her white panties, and then I just as quickly turned my head back and pretended to be asleep. I must say I was a randy little rascal right from the get-go. But my love for my pretty teacher was as pure as any little boy's. The devil made me do it.

One day around Thanksgiving time Mrs. Bitz took our kindergarten class to visit her husband's Plainville Turkey Farm. Mr. Bitz the turkey farmer was dark haired and very handsome, and we saw hundreds of snow-white turkeys gobbling like crazy out in the field, and then in the big bright shed where others were eating their corn. On the way out of the shed Mrs. Bitz gave us each a big red and green apple. Not a poison apple, like Snow White's, but a delicious MacIntosh apple.

After the holidays a new school was completed for us, and we moved to Van Buren School on the other side of the river in the Town of Van Buren. There were a few different kids in the classroom, and there were tables and proper windows and other things. One day Mrs. Bitz brought out some toy trucks, and immediately the more assertive boys grabbed them and played with them. I sat nearby, feeling left out, and Mrs. Bitz noticed that I was sad, and she brought me some modeling clay in brand-new wrappers like sticks of butter. I opened a stick of clay and started to knead it and make little snakes out of it by rolling it in my hands back and forth. What fun. I loved Mrs. Bitz.

Before long kindergarten would end and next year I would start First Grade at the Catholic School - St. Mary's, where we had the most beautiful church in town, and where I would spend the next eight years with my little school family of 30+ kids and the Nuns From Heaven - and Hell.

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What I have learned recently from her obituary is that Janice Abbot Bitz grew up on Abbots Farm on Rt 370 not a mile away from where I grew up on Barbara Lane. She was 24 years old when she was my kindergarten teacher, six years younger than my Mom. Rest In Peace Mrs Bitz. I Love You

Obituary - Janice Abbot Bitz 1930 - 2018

*Thanks Karen Pfohl - fellow kindergartner, for remembering Mrs. Posthill's name