My 2nd grade year in Mrs. Hickey’s class (the only one of my first four years in school during which my mother did not teach the same grade that I was attending) was no more or less eventful than the previous one had been. My mother, now ensconced in a considerably more comfortable 3rd grade class, continued to cultivate her teaching skills, while I continued to excel at what later would be referred to as Language Arts—reading, writing, and spelling. In addition to my school, leisure, and musical activities, I also belonged to the Bluebirds, the junior version of the Campfire Girls, which was another great social and philanthropic outlet for my time, energy, and skills. Members of both the Boonville and Philo Methodist congregations were some of my best customers for the annual sale of boxed mints to fund the many activities which the organization provided.
In addition to her role as teacher and care provider for my brother and me, my mother also willingly and efficiently fulfilled all of the duties that being a minister’s wife entailed. Having grown up as a Methodist minister’s daughter herself in her home town of Carthage, TN, it was a role that she was born to fill, and she played it with style and grace, whether it involved chairing the Women’s Committee, singing in the choir, assisting my father with pastoral calls, working at the church booth for special occasions, such as the annual county fair in September, or organizing the weekly potlucks at the church in Philo. Methodists love their potlucks almost as much as they love Jesus, which was graphically illustrated by a joke that my late minister in Sacramento told during a Sunday service that was held at her (and her husband’s) church over a decade ago.
It seems that a 2nd grade teacher who had students in her class from many different religious traditions decided to take advantage of this opportunity to teach a unit on comparative religions, which involved allowing each of the children to bring in a visual token of their core beliefs to share with the rest of the class. When the day arrived for each of them to make their presentation to the other students, Benjamin, a Jewish student, brought in a prayer shawl to share its significance, Mary, a Catholic student, did the same with a rosary, all of the other students followed suit with their items, and finally it was Susie’s turn. Striding proudly up to the front of the class, she resolutely declared, “I’m a Methodist, and the thing I’ve brought to share that signifies my religion is—a casserole dish!” When I shared this joke with my mother, she laughed for several days.
Of course, being the minister’s daughter was not without its disadvantages, as well as its benefits. Having been virtually raised in the church since birth, I had accumulated quite a store of knowledge of facts from the Bible, which were at the core of the lessons in my weekly Sunday School class. Every week, at the end of the lesson, the teacher would quiz the students on what they had learned that week, and mine was almost always the first, and always correct, response. Apparently the teacher felt that my being the minister’s daughter gave me an unfair advantage over the other children, so she informed my parents that whereas my retention of Bible trivia was admirable, she felt that I needed to hold back more in order to give the other children an opportunity to participate in the discussion at the end of the lesson. That was one of the first times in my life that I learned that excelling at something doesn’t always guarantee recognition.
Fortunately, that was not the case with my regular school lessons. I was consistently encouraged by Mrs. Hickey to work to the highest level of my capabilities, and she constantly provided me with new challenges, even if it meant surpassing grade-level work, which it often did. One of the curriculum materials I recall was a brightly-colored cardboard box containing a series of large cards on which were printed stories followed by a series of comprehension questions. Each section was color-coded, indicating increasing levels of difficulty, and the cards in each section were numbered. As the students independently worked their way through each section by reading each of the stories and answering all of the questions correctly, they could continue to move forward through the higher levels of difficulty. It was labeled SRA, and I loved it.
I did reasonably well at math, social studies, science, and P.E. (although less so at the latter after moving away from Boonville, and beginning to put on excess weight), and I flourished in all of the lessons dealing with any of the arts. The richness of the geography and culture of the Anderson Valley and surrounding areas in Mendocino Co. offered such a treasure trove of sensory experiences on which to draw in completing creative, artistic activities in school and at home. Although the performing arts have always been much more my forte than the visual ones, when not playing the piano, performing in skits with my brother, and writing my stories, I enjoyed my humble attempts at capturing the locale through drawing, painting, and photography.
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