MRS. KIDDER

"'MRS. KIDDER LET A POOP INTO THE TOMATO SOUP!" is a 'poem' or rhyme I created in Third Grade while attending South Cornish Elementary School, a one-room affair with grades 1-4, where Mrs. Kidder taught. The tomato soup was part of the hot-lunch program set up during WWII and which eventually became a nation-wide program and now a 'right and necessity',perhaps an 'entitlement' for all school children. The tomato soup was probably the only thing I liked that Mrs. Kidder cooked or had. Her concoction of 'veg-all and eggs' I could not really stomach and it was so bad that I had my grandmother write a note to Mrs. Kidder to excuse me from eating it. I nearly gagged on the stuff. Of course, all the other pupils soon repeated my verse but I am not sure if Mrs. Kidder ever knew about it. Also at the time, the Maltex Cereal Company was urging pupils and school kiddies to eat a 'hot' cereal for breakfast every morning. Myself, I didn't really like Maltex or Hot Ralston,but I did like Cream of Wheat and a lot of cold cereals, like shredded wheat, cheerios, kix, quaker puffed rice or wheat, and sometimes PEP (which sometimes had pins and prizes) or FORCE (which had 'gold coins'). I tried most every cereal at one time or another and can't recall all the brands,etc. right now. Mrs. Kidder ruled the school with what might be termed, 'an iron hand' and I suppose I should be most grateful to her for stirring me up from my 'daydreams','fantasies' and 'personal thoughts and problems' udner her tutelage,since she had some 'unique' methods for doing so. If she saw you or thought you were so doing, not doing your lesson(s) or concentrating on the books in front of you or whatever, she would come slowly, silently by and YANK YOU OUT OF THE SEAT,SHAKE THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU, AND GRAB THE SOFT FLESH UNDER YOU CHIN, PINCHING IT TIGHTLY AND LOOKING ANGERILY AND INTENSELY INTO YOUR EYES AND SAYING: "Are you going to pay attention?" I was the recipient of this many times than I can recall but I never told my grandmother about such until years later. I think we were all 'shocked ' into submission by her. However, this was not the entire story. There was a girl, whom I shall call, "PATSY" who lived in the house across from the school and eventually came to class,first grade,maybe,because she was what was known in those days as 'RETARDED' and there were no special classes, schools or programs,etc. for such persons in those days. I recall one day when Mrs. Kidder escorted Patsy into the hallway-entrance,which was not in view of the school and carried with her a thick-looking yardstick(wood) and from our seats we could hear the 'whacks' across her body or legs and the girl being punished for not grasping what Mrs. Kidder had been trying to perhaps 'teach' her, 'cram down her throat' or whatever. The girl came back in the room with tears in her eyes, of course. I suspect she took her out of the room, not to spare the girl embarrassment but to vent her fury on her out of sight with no real witnesses to see what happened,although I am sure, the others, like myself, well knew. I mention this because when Mrs. Kidder retired after many years she was feted, congratulated, eulogized, and so forth being considered 'a great and dedicated' teacher,etc. and various testamonials perhaps were given,but I don't know. I wasn't there at the time. But in years I realize that Mrs. Kidder, childless, with a lazy husband, as many teachers of those days seemed to have if they were married, and, undoubtedly sexually frustrated, found herself going nowhere in life and doing a tiring,frequently difficult job,etc. But she could be most pleasant and smiling at times and give some lessons that were 'academic' and 'needed'.

THE FRONT SEAT KID

If you are reading this and have perhaps noticed that the address of this blog is 'the front seat kid, you may wonder about this. I consider myself a 'front-seat kid' because I grew up in an era of more freedom from certain restraints than children now can experience. I was free to have jackknife, a hatchet, to walk and wander the streets and woods, buy tobacco and cigarettes,etc. for others, have bows and arrows, hold guns and sometimes shoot them, do chores that involved manual labor of sorts, and to go to movies,etc. but I also was able to sit on the front seat of cars and trucks when cars and trucks were simply cars and trucks and not the type of today. I was free from being strapped into cars like an astronaut and cars were far more comfortable and ran fast but not at the speeds of today and the highways were not conducive to such speeds or races or 'hurry-ups". I will have more to say on this at a future date.

CARNIIVALS

LANCASTER FAIR

RUTLAND FAIR

HARTLAND FAIR

SOME OF MY COUSINS

UNCLE DELBERT

UNCLE DUBE

MY GREAT AUNTS: SADIE,ELLA, BELLE, VINIE

UNCLE TOUSER

UNCLE FLETCHER DONAHUE

BEAMAN'S POND & BLOW-ME-DOWN MILL

CORNISH FAIR- 1 & 2

TOM OHARA

MRS. HOLMES KINDERGARTEN

SOUTH CORNISH SCHOOL-THE ONE ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE

MRS. SMITH MY FIFTH GRADE TEACHER

"MY THEATRICAL CAREER" BEGINNINGS

ST. GAUDENS MEMORIAL

"MY LITERARY CAREER" BEGINNINGS

BECKY

NANA JAKE

UNCLE BILL (LLOYD)

MY THREE GRANDFATHERS

You've probably have heard that song which was popular a long time ago,especially on Western/country stations, well, actually what we called 'Hillbilly' and 'Cowboy' music, titled, 'I'M MY OWN GRANDPA'. Well, I had three grandfathers. It happened this way, my father's father, Frank Jones, was,for me, my primary grandfather, for many reasons. My mother's father, Joseph Dubois was my second grandfather,while my third grandfather was Edward 'Ted" Savage, my third grandfather. But to complicate things, 'Grampa Ted' also my Great Uncle on my fatheer's side, as he was my grandmother's,Vera Lucy Jones,nee Savage, brother! HIs wife was Hazel Brown Dubois Savage and their son, Edward (Jr.?) 'Sonny' Savage was both my uncle and my cousin, though I seldom, despite my mother's attempts and urgings, referred to him as "Uncle Sonny'. My grandmother, Hazel had divorced my grandfather Joseph "Joe" Dubois and had eventually married my Grandmother's brother. I also want to say, for the record, that both Grampa Dubois and Grammy Savage were Canadians and had lived and worked in the US for years and collected their social security and died and are buried here in Claremont, no far from each other. Grammy Savage was English/Irish Canadian, while my Grandfather Dubois was French Canadian and with some Indian in him.

THE 'CATCHER'

JDS wrote the famous book,'THE CATCHER' and when it began evoking those special feelings in adolescents, both young and old,in school or in college, and teachers and English profs,etc. were urging the reading of this book, I did not read the book UNTIL AFTER I had completed a report on it for a psychology class on Adolescent Psych at UNH, and guess what? I got an a+ on it! My writing of the report was based only on what the jacket or back cover of the book contained or said, and a few quick thumb-throughs of the work. I still have the book and my report among some of my papers and books stored in the shed. "Jerry's" name(and,no, it's not the JERRY OF BEN & JERRY'S for all the ignoramuses that might well confuse the two) cropped up once again when I was teaching in a private and expensive Connecticut school for boys because one youth claimed to know JDS personally,based on the fact that the boy and his family came from Westport and he simply had to read everything that JDS had written,of course. The Director of the school in the meetings we held usually weekly among the faculty, enjoyed related this tidbit about the pupil knowing Salinger,etc. but I suspected,having lived in Cornish at the time JDS came there that,not only did he con the other teachers but also his psychiatrist and the school head on this claim. I concluded that it was a way to bolster his ego and self-esteem for many reasons. While there an article appeared that talked about JDS or 'Jerry" and where he lived, which was certainly not Westport,CT, as the jacket blurbs and photo might lead you to believe,but CORNISH,NEW HAMPSHIRE, where he still lives! The student was surprised to learn that I had live in Cornish and surprised even further than I had not met JDS or made any attempt to meet him when I was there. In fact, I had taken another student on a trip to Cornish to spend time in my Aunt's & Uncle's camp/cottage on the old farm property there,but that is another matter. During the time I employed at the school, I found time to read other works by JDS and works on him by various authors as well as to read a paperback, which I still have with some of the others, of short stories in which the main character of the 'CATCHER' was introduced. Speculation on the publication of any or all of his writings done before his actual death si a complete waste of time. And,if any writings exist, after his death, may never be published or, as they say, 'see the light of day'. I suspect that all of this will become a sort of marvelous plot/conspiracy theory or notion. Anyway, for JDS, TIME IS RUNNING OUT! as it is for all of us,so he may well be speeding up what little literary talent and output he has left and I,personally, hope so!

JDS or J.D.S.

If you mistake the letters JDS as being somewhat the same thing as JDL, then you are sadly mistaken.The latter refers to the JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE, while the former refers to 'everyone's favorite author'! Probably this topic, as usual, will be more about myself than about JDS himself,but a recent article in NEW HAMPSHIRE MAGAZINE (go to WRITERS' CRAMP for details) prompted me to make mention and I am placing this topic in several of my blogs,including this one,YANKEE BOYHOOD and HAPHAZARD HAUNTINGS & OTHER ODDITIES, for surely the person described in the article appears to be 'an oddity in himself' or an oddity when compared to others except J. Paul Getty, Howard Hughes, Krishnamurti, and some obscure Tibetan Lamas in the Himalayas. JDS arrived in Cornish, NH, during the 1950's and made the pages of the Claremont DailyEagle and also LIFE MAGAZINE,shortly afterwards. JDS had allowed a high school girl to interview him for her school paper and, of course, it went from there into a sort of sensational story of sorts. Since that time,occasional things have cropped up concerning some of which I have read about now and then. My late classmate, BONES, a lifelong Cornish native/resident save for a few journies elsewhere,sometimes encountered "JERRY" who would,in a gesture of passing civility,wave or nod silently. But the unwritten Code of Cornish peopleis/was there-namely-not to impinge on or to invade his particular and perhaps,peculiar privacy,which extendsquite often to others who are not celebrities or less well-known,famed or notorious. It's 'mind your own business' of the taciturn Yankee, perhaps. Especially, when it comes to what are now termed, 'Uppity Flatlanders'. The magazine also contains an acocunt by Ed Bennett, former EAGLE TIMES publisher, who has now opted for the PEACE CORPSwhich I find a bit ironic since during the Viet Nam War in the late sixties,early seventies, I wrote, and had some published,to that paper, criticizing his editorials,etc. to perhaps this extent,though I have no real proof of such, but someone told me when I asked what happened to him,etc., that:"he thought you were out to get him' and this was proffered as oen reason, perhaps among many others, that he gave up the EAGLE TIMES and left town for Vermont. I don't really know. The point is, that I was an ex-PCV at the time I wrote these letters and after that I returned to the Philippines in 1972, just after Marcos declared Martial law, by actually emigrating there and lived there for eight years.

YANKEE BOYHOOD

I was born in Windsor,Vermont, in the Windsor Hospital, which is now a sort of old-age/nursing/maybe retirement home and so to look for any records of me there would be a waste if time. My days in Windsor as a baby and child were few as my parents moved across the Connecticut River to Claremont, so that I have often wondered what my life would have been like had I been born in Claremont,"The Heart of the Twin-State Valley' and left from there to Windsor. I attended schools in Claremont and occasionally in Cornish, New Hampshire, and graduated from both CLAREMONT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL(once part of the Stevens High School Building) and STEVENS HIGH SCHOOL I graduated in 1954 and have much to say about all this,of course, but those tales shall have wait. In Windsor, I believe we lived on River Street and then we moved to Kenyon St. in Claremont, where my father, and with help from my grandfather(his father)built a house which was not quite directly across from the house my grandparents owned there.