Parting Glances
Shortly before retiring from the digitally enhanced adventure called teaching 14 years ago I chanced across a bound volume of back issues of news about students, teachers, education, circa early-50s.
Flipping through the collection I was startled to find a poem I had written while at Harry Burns Hutchins Intermediate School (to and from which I took a 10-cent bus ride for three happy years, 1948 to 1951. I still judge Hutchins one of my best education learning experiences.)
My poem was originally included in a student-illustrated hand-stapled, mimeographed booklet, "The Coach and Four." (I began writing poetry during my first summer at Baptist Camp. The "gift" came along with an equally inspiring crush on my camp counselor.)
Though I wrote "The Clock" when I was 13, I'll be the first to admit -modestly, of course -that there's about it a touch of precocious, otherworldly, Emily Dickinsonian, Americana genius. (Get you, Mary!) Said youthful opus contains insights not normally accessible to persons, shall we say, less "sensitive." Or, "jocund." Or, gay.
Here's the poem in its pristine simplicity. (I'll be delighted to read same in person for any festive occasion warranting the inclusion of a spiritually uplifting, LGBT-inspired, rhymed composition. Gratis.) And so…
"Our dusty old clock sits on the shelf,/ Ticking softly there by itself./ Slowly counting the hours away,/ As night turns to another day. / Winter. Summer. The whole year through:/ Tick tock, I hear it. Do you?/ We grow old and pass away./ But the clock goes on from day to day."
(Shared in remembering: when I went to Burton Elementary School part of our learning experience was memorization. So; If asked -again gratis -I can recite "Casey at the Bat" -an offer I'll add that was once curiously declined by the Womyn's Coffee House.)
Come to think of it as a kid I was Mr. Starlit Stairway -with an enthusiasm I find refreshing looking back on it.
In Auditorium class I excelled. We students learned rudiments of acting, blocking, projecting, and making five-minute speeches. I loved being center stage. It was fun.
At Hutchins I did a ventriloquism act, with a dummy named Hermann, purchased at Hall's Magic Shop, once located in downtown Detroit. I haven't a clue what my script was. I think it had something to do with the terrors of jaywalking, but apparently I got enthusiastic applause for my schizoid efforts.
That same year I put on a magic show at the Cass Avenue Methodist Church. As the proud owner of a multipurpose Gilbert's Magic Set: linking rings, deck of prepared cards, trick magic wands, vanishing handkerchiefs, fake mustache, I felt myself Harry Houdini incarnate. (Handcuffs came much later.)
My assistant was Carolyn Clark, whose father George Murray Clark claimed to have worked with Harry Blackstone, one of magicdom's greats. Our performance left a lot to be desired I'm sure. But Carolyn and I had a grand time, and the applause and free dinner made stars of us if only for an hour's indulgence.
(Carolyn's father would on occasion pretend to hypnotize me, for the amazement of apartment tenants gathered on the building's back porch. I'd go along with it for 25 cents a session, until he "suggested" I act like a five-year-old girl. Even then, there were limits to what roles I would and wouldn't do to augment my limited actor's equity income.)
Looking back on "me" I smile at the unsullied innocence of the likable kid I was. Life had a wow! pow! quality about it. Get out on stage. Take charge! Pull rabbits out of hats! Link rings. Change silken hankies: purple, blue, green, red, yellow, orange. Take bows. Hocus pocus!
Now you see it . . . Now you don't. (How time flies!)
