“Growing Up Gassensmith: Lessons, Linoleum, and Heartbreak“
By Jim Gassensmith
First Days and Frustrated Nuns
My very first day of school at St. Rose was when I went to third grade. I was happy as a lark at the public school, but once the Catholics built their school, my parents were obligated to send us there. I don’t know if St. Peter came down and said, “They must go to St. Rose,” but there we were. I had Lucille right across from me and my brother Gene one row over. The same nun was teaching both third and fourth grade. Now, she was spittin’ out “Gassensmith” about every fifth name she called. It also became apparent that the nun, who had my father’s full support, wasn’t going to put up with my spirited approach to school. She, very quickly—before we had even said the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag—was rapping my knuckles with her ruler.
By three o’clock, I was told to stay after school for throwing a paper airplane to my new friend, Ken Nelson. I was assigned the task of cleaning the blackboards and dusting the erasers outside the back door of the school while everyone else was sent home for the day. After about an hour of cleaning six blackboards and dusting all the erasers, she turned to me and asked me if I’d learned my lesson. I’m not sure what my lesson was, but I knew enough to say yes. She told me I could then go home. I informed her that my yellow bus had left an hour ago, and she wanted to know why I hadn’t told her I had to catch a bus. This was the beginning of a very frustrated nun.
Household Rules and The Gassensmith Way
My parents would have to be called, but they worked and weren’t at home for another hour or so. So the janitor was run down and assigned the task of driving little Jimmy Gassensmith home. Since Lucille and Gene were aware of my being kept after school, this information was repeated by one of them to Mom as soon as she got home from work. You have to remember that in 1953, priests and nuns were considered saints in our house, and any kid who angered a nun was probably evil. I don’t recall any punishment, which means my mom never told my dad. Punishments were rare in our house, but those administered were never forgotten.
Proper language also set us Gassensmith children apart from the common folk of Wilmington. “Shit” was never a word spoken in our house. We used the more polite term of “muss”. Nothing like a good old muss after a big meal. We “peed,” never pissed. Dad was very religious and, as I’ve mentioned, never swore.
Slippery Gyms and High School Prospects
I played basketball at St. Rose under Coach Ernie Woolwine. Our gym had a linoleum floor that sweated from September through February, so most of us learned to shoot a sliding layup. You’d dribble to the free-throw line, stop, and slide 10 feet to under the basket and throw it up. We beat all the visiting teams that came to our gym because they slid out of bounds. However, when we went up to Joliet to play on a hardwood floor, we couldn’t make a shot when we weren’t sliding.
I had shot up in height in seventh grade to about six feet two inches, which made me one of the tallest not only in my school, but in all the surrounding schools. Frank Miller, the Wilmington High School coach, told me I could probably play as a freshman if I went to Wilmington High. Brother Gene was already riding the bus into Joliet Catholic High, so I knew my chances of being a Wildcat at Wilmington were slim to none.
Besides, I really wasn’t a very good basketball player—just tall. Frank Miller did assemble a group of grade schoolers, including me, that went up to the high school and beat the frosh-soph team one night. My buddy Ken Nelson did go on to Wilmington and starred in all three major sports.
Grocery Stores and “Little Shits”
By about fifth grade, I’d moved on from my first love, Anita Vandermark—or she had moved on from me, I’m not sure. Before I moved on, I beat up her brother Jim, which just added to her mother’s resentment of me. As I mentioned, Mrs. Vandermark ran a grocery store attached to her house in Northcrest. This was a hangout spot for Gene and me, along with Max Rogers, Bucky Rogers, Bruce Johnson, Ronnie Rinker, and several other unwashed, dirty-clothed kids.
Mrs. Vandermark used to refer to us as “little shits” and run us out of her store. Of course, I knew that anyone who used that word “shit” rather than “muss” was not as refined as our family. Lucille remembers that her husband, who had been killed in a car crash, had been friendly to us and often gave us Popsicles on hot summer days.
The Waiting Game on the Front Porch
After Anita, I became interested in Margaret Plese, Mary Glenney, and Geraldine Girot. All were knockouts, but Geraldine was rapidly developing a chest. Somewhere around sixth or seventh grade, after scoring 30 points against five-foot-two-inch opponents, I got up the nerve to ask her to go to a movie on Saturday afternoon at the Mar Theater. She said she would be delighted.
I had second thoughts later because my buddies were all going out to the Island that Saturday to watch the high school baseball team. Mom said I had to go on the date because I’d asked Geraldine and I couldn’t back out. So I rode my bike over to her house and knocked on her door. Her mom came to the door and looked at me like I was some dead-end kid who’d stumbled in off the street—six feet two inches tall and one hundred and forty-five pounds, due to shower that night, but pretty rank that afternoon, and with all the social skills of a lumberjack.
“I’m here to pick up Geraldine for the movies,” I said.
She said Geraldine wasn’t at home—she had gone to Braidwood to swim. I said I’d wait and sat down on the front porch. Her mom didn’t ask me in or offer a Kool-Aid or anything. Well, I sat there for at least two hours after the movie would have started and finally knocked on the door again. I asked her mom if Geraldine had said when she would be home, and her mom then decided to find out who I was and how I knew her big-chested little girl. I explained that I went to school with her and we were in class together, and I told her my name. She said she had never heard of me (probably not a big grade-school basketball fan) and that Geraldine wouldn’t be back until dark—like she couldn’t have told me that two hours earlier.
My being stood up was never mentioned by her or me at school later on. It was like she had never been asked out or as if I’d never been dumped on. The family moved a couple of years later to California, and she ended up as a runner-up to the Queen of the Rose Bowl. I don’t think she ever came back, and if she did, she never looked me up.
