More Memories of St. Rose
By Jim Gassensmith
Scarlet Fever and Repeating First Grade
Lucille and I were in the same grade because I’d been held back to do first grade over because of sickness. I’d picked up scarlet fever in first grade. This was pretty serious, and folks died from it back then (maybe we could call this my third brush with death). I missed a lot of school, and I wasn’t too bright to begin with so they said I should do first grade over.
I don’t remember Mom and Dad ever pushing me to do better in school, except Dad was pretty insistent that I go to college. I really never studied until I got to college, but I got average grades. I got the same grades as my friends, and no one was telling me to do better, so I figured my system of never taking a book home was working. I paid attention in class and retained most of what the nuns told me. They were scary and used to beat on my knuckles daily with their 12-inch rulers that were shaped like a triangle.
I was really good at math and had a great English grammar teacher. We would diagram a sentence on the blackboard, and I was called on for that. So what I picked up in class was used to offset what I didn’t learn with homework, and I’d walk away with a B- or a C+. Lucille had better grades, but I think she worked harder at it.
In eighth grade, there were only about eight boys and eight girls in the class, so the nun also taught seventh grade in the same room. When she was teaching them, we were supposed to be studying, and for the most part, I was.
Separate Sandlots and Catholic School Recess
Recess at ten o’clock and two o’clock each day took us outside. The boys would go behind the school in a sandlot filled with cockleburs, and the girls would go across the street to the convent yard. We very seldom played any games together in case we should happen to touch—then someone would probably get pregnant. At least, that’s what most of the nuns believed.
All the grades took recess at the same time, so you’d be playing games with smaller seventh graders and even some sixth and fifth graders. It gave us a good opportunity to showcase our great skills against the younger boys. After recess, everyone would line up by class and size, and the head nun would click her clicker for us to march back to class.
We’d do the Pledge of Allegiance and, one by one, we’d recite our little Catholic phrases, such as “the best way to break a habit was to drop it.” We had to have 40 of them, and each day you were assigned a different one to repeat. Now, 55 years later, I can only remember that one above.
Gold Stars, Coonskin Caps, and Classmates
Kenny Nelson and his sister Delia were in the eighth grade with Lucille and me, as were Margaret Plese, Mary Glenney, and Geraldine Girot. We did our spelling bees where you stood up until you missed a word, and then you sat down. I always thought sitting down right away made a lot more sense than standing around for hours. Maybe I would have done better if you could sit down until you missed the word and then you had to stand up. I’m sure Sister Mary Beat-My-Ass wouldn’t have gone for that idea. If you won the spelling bee, you got a gold star—that’s right, a paper gold star. What they did with these gold stars I have no idea, because me and my friends had no desire for a paper star.
I excelled at blackboard cleaning and eraser knocking, which were little punishments handed out by the nuns for transgressions I’d perform. I was not unlike all the other boys in my class. One was Billy Tinges, who wore a coonskin cap to school. Unlike the fake ones that were popular because of the TV show Davy Crockett, Billy’s was a real coonskin that he had shot and skinned.
Ken Nelson and Jim Reeves were probably two of the more sophisticated boys in the class. Jim Reeves actually wore dress pants to school instead of jeans. He paid for that by being de-pantsed every other day.
Local Business Families and Public-School Paddles
We had no minorities in my grade school, other than a few rich kids. Jim Reeves’s dad ran the local funeral home, and Ken Nelson’s dad ran the local food and potato chip convenience store downtown. Mary Glenney’s (who won most of the spelling bees) dad ran Glenney’s Sinclair Gas Station.
Margaret Plese’s parents ran a farm, as did George O’Brien’s and Jim Gorman’s. Larry Hermes’ dad ran a clothing store in downtown Wilmington. A lot of my friends went to the public school about a block from where we lived, but we had to board the Buban bus and ride to the Catholic school across town. I did go to first grade twice and second grade at the public school since they didn’t have a Catholic school until I was in third grade.
At the public school, I got to meet Mr. Lester Stevens, the principal, who handed out paddles on the butt to those who deserved it. Lucky Gene got to go to fourth grade before he fell under the heel of the nuns. My memories of first and second grade all revolve around playing with girls, chasing girls, drawing big hearts on the sidewalks with chalk, and drawing an arrow through them. Monkey bars were my specialty; I could get to the top faster than anyone. I excelled in first grade the second time through but then leveled off in second grade.
The Buban bus was called that because Tommy Buban’s dad drove it. And I thought I was embarrassed because my dad painted the family car bright red. Tom was from Braidwood along with Tom Kennedy. I haven’t seen Tom Buban since eighth grade, but Tom Kennedy is still alive and kicking out in Colorado.
Fourth of July on the Island and Duck-and-Cover Drills
Fourth of July in Wilmington was the big fireworks display on the Island. You’d sit on the riverbank and watch the display being shot off a mountain on the other side of the river. This was big time for a small town. We went every year and sat on the ground down close to the river. The Island was just that: a piece of land surrounded by water—the Kankakee on one side and a cutoff of the Kankakee that ran right behind the Main Street stores. The Island now has Nelson’s Furniture situated on it, but back then in 1952, there was an ice cream store, hot dog stand, and of course a hardball diamond. A little gravel road ran around the outside perimeter of the Island so you could loop the Island, head back off the Island, turn left, and go back into town.
Wilmington was situated along the Kankakee River, and you could walk to it from about anywhere on the North End (Northcrest) or the South End (Brookside). When I was in the eighth grade, the nuns took all of us on a walk over to the river for our eighth-grade trip. Kids nowadays go to Europe for their eighth-grade trips!
Another memory of sitting in class at St. Rose in the early fifties was the atom bomb drill. Yes, that’s what I said. If the bomb was dropped, we’d get under our desks. To do this with skill, it was necessary for the class to practice getting under our desks. The nuns had to position the boys so that we couldn’t look up the girls’ dresses. No wonder my buddies in the public school thought we Catholics were strange.
