Swampscott – Hadley School to Elmwood

I started school while we were still staying in the Willey House. Daniel would be going to St. John’s, the Catholic school, but they had no room in the fourth grade, so I was sent to Hadley Elementary. Beginning school in the middle of the year wasn’t going to be fun at any school, so I don’t think I really cared. St. Frances had been a modern school, but Hadley had been built when they still made schools like prisons. It was a huge brick block of a building that sat behind a chain-link fence. Between the school and the fence there was an asphalt playground where the children milled around at recess. Inside were long dark halls with doors staggered along the walls, oaken doors with a panel of translucent pebbled glass imbedded at the top and a glass transom up above. The classrooms all had a wall of enormous double-hung windows that were so tall they had to use a long window pole to lower the upper sash, but because of the large trees outside, little sunshine ever made it into the room. My memory also shows a cloakroom at the back that was filled with heavy winter coats and dripping boots, but I am not entirely sure that I haven’t modified this image over the years.

I was introduced to the class at the front of the room, but I didn’t have to stand and speak so they could listen to my accent like Daniel had to do. When class was dismissed, one boy came up to me and asked me what my religion was. It seemed like an odd question, but then I had always gone to a Catholic school, and when I told him he seemed pleased and said he was Catholic too. We then discovered that he lived across the street from our house and my friendship with Buddy Leonard began. He and another boy walked with me back to the Willey House, and over the coming days he showed me around our neighborhood.

The most important thing Buddy showed me was the shortcut to get to my house. Hadley school faced Redington Street and behind it was Elmwood Road, the street Buddy and I lived on, but to get to it you had to walk around the large end of the block that ran along Humphrey Street, then Monument Ave. and then turned onto Elmwood. Our house, at 156 Elmwood, was across the street at the far end, and Elmwood was long and curved. The correct way to go was up Redington, past one or two houses, turn into Mr. Green’s driveway and go across his lawn to the big stonewall that divided the block. This wall must have been three feet wide and three feet high and made entirely of large rocks set in concrete and topped with concrete. I thought this wall was incredible, and was sure it was the oldest thing in Swampscott. Once you climbed over the wall, you walked down the side of the Odd Fellow’s Hall and you were on Elmwood. It became the route I took daily on the way to school, or when heading down town. The first time I tried this on my own, I climbed the wall too far to the left and found myself on the top looking into a backyard with a boy my age in it. He told me I wasn’t going to cut through his yard and I was dumbfounded, I was sure there wasn’t a backyard there. The boy was Bobby Frizzell, and though we got off to an antagonistic start and would generally be a little on guard with each other, I don’t think we ever actually had a fight. I did have a fight once with his older brother, Eddie, who was Daniel’s age. But it was a fight promoted by Michael and Daniel and our hearts weren’t into it so we just circled each other for a while throwing a few ineffectual punches.

Most fights then were mismatched and ineffectual. We weren’t exactly rowdy boys, but we would occasionally cause disturbances. Phillip would get in fights with the older Theisen brother, who ran to his parents until his father finally came knocking at our door to complain to mother. But when he saw Phillip, a scrawny little kid who was two years younger and a foot and a half shorter, he grabbed his son and dragged him home, furious. The Theisens did get to be friends with my parents and we got along reasonably well with their children. They had four boys, the oldest whose name escapes me, Patrick who was Phillip’s age, and the twins who were a little older than Tom. The mother, Betty Theisen, would visit our mother regularly and we didn’t quite know what to make of her. She was flashier than our mother; she wore more jewelry, more make-up, and louder clothes. Leopard skin was one of her favorite patterns. She spoke in a broad accent that we thought was affected so, when she visited, we would take to sitting on the stairs and singing in an exaggerated imitation of her, “Toe-mah-toes, Poh-tah-toes, and Ahn-deeve salad…” This would mortify mother more than it seemed to bother Mrs. Theisen, who either didn’t hear or chose to ignore us. There was no doubt that we were, in many ways, snotty-nosed little brats.