My First Day of School

 

My family moved, literally on my first day of kindergarten at Holy Name of Jesus School, located Uptown on Calhoun Street. I left that morning from my Dublin Street home, headed for school and then, after my very first half day of kindergarten, walked to my new home at 2035 Palmer Avenue, just two blocks away, that very afternoon -new school and new home all in one day. The year was 1964 and yes, I walked home everyday by myself, with my mom waiting midway on the corner of Palmer Avenue and Cromwell Place, in a wonderfully safe New Orleans neighborhood from that day on.

I loved living on Palmer Avenue which was lined with beautiful oak trees and really big houses. I remember during the Mardi Gras season when so many of those houses proudly displayed their Rex flags. 

My dad would always say that we lived on the “right side” of Freret Street, insinuating that we, or maybe he, had finally arrived. What he didn’t know is that he was planting a mental seed in my little sponge of a brain that I somehow couldn’t play with any of the kids in my class who might have lived across Freret Street, on the other side. What he also didn’t know was that I was immediately aware of the fact that we lived in the very last house on the “right side” and I felt sure that we were now the poorest people on the “right side” of whatever - the crap we hear from our parents and how an immature five year old might misunderstand what the adult actually meant (eye roll).

My parents could stretch a dollar and a house further than anyone I knew. And my dad could see the finished space in his head, long before construction even started. My parents were the perfect team, together. They turned the second floor attic of our new home into a living area which included a central den, two large bedrooms, a full bath and a children’s study/library, with a framed black board on the wall that he made himself. My dad built book shelves in the study and he expected all of us to use this room everyday to do our homework. The study also had a dormer window that overlooked Freret Street. This window would eventually become my favorite window from which to throw objects out onto the rooftops of the passing Freret buses. I don’t really remember studying very much in that study, but it was a great study/library, nonetheless.

I shared the upstairs front bedroom with my little brother Pete, who was 18 months behind me. We each had our own single bed with our matching headboards backed into the dormer windows on the front of the house. Whenever my dad was going to come upstairs to spank me for whatever I’d done bad that day, I would run into my room and climb out of my dormer window, shut it behind me and then sit on the side of the dormer until I thought he had calmed down with an Old Fashioned. My big brother Kenny had the second bedroom in the rear of the upstairs all to himself. Eventually, Duncan and Madeleine were born and they shared a nursery bedroom, in the back of the downstairs, next to Stephanie’s bedroom.

Mom prepared breakfast every morning, and dinner on the table every night, promptly at 6:00 PM. I remember my dad sitting in his chair

in the living room, wearing his white, starched button down, khaki shorts, black knee socks, and his black lace ups, always reading U.S. News & World Report and enjoying an Old Fashioned before dinner.

© 2022 Jeffrey Pipes Guice

My Wonder Years: A Book