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Goodness, I've left you hanging about my memories. I've been on a sabbatical, a rest period, and sort of a vacation. But I'm back with my third grade class and all my memories to write about. Get ready -- it looks like I'm going to be promoted to the fourth grade class come summer. We all were told just before we left for the summer vacation. We had all passed the test to go into fourth grade come Labor Day and back to school.
I believe my last writing was when I wasn't going to be promoted to the fourth grade. How awful! I told my mother and she went right down to school after lunch and told the teacher she had better promote me or she would be fired. I felt like hiding, but there was no place to hide except under my desk. I refrained. "Just what is the trouble with Margery," my mother asked. "Well, she doesn't pay attention," said the teacher. The school arranged that I and four other pupils who hadn't paid attention would go every morning for the next two months to the teachers'lounge for a tutorial class until lunch time. Those were the days when the lower grade schools were let out to go home to lunch. I thought the other four children who didn't pay attention were the smartest ones in the class. I kept this a secret. Well, I was promoted to the fourth grade which meant the next year I hopefully would be promoted to the fifth grade in the Roosevelt School. So I paid attention in my fourth grade year -- I didn't want to be thrown out! It worked! So onward and upward -- We had one half of June, all of July and August for a vacation at camp on Lake Winnisquam. Very nice I thought. My dad had two weeks off for his vacation, too, and then he would come up from Boston for weekends. My mother had a two-wheel trailer hitched to the back of our car all packed up with trunks for clothes and rags for hooking. My mother and grandmother hooked scatter rugs with only all-wool fabrics. People gave them their all-wool bathing suits, etc. Gramma and AA had a couple of friends who had a factory in Tilton that made beautiful all-wool bath robes. My mother talked the owner into selling the scraps - all wonderful colors - for five dollars a big bag full. Anyway we were all packed up, five of us for the trip on the world's worst roads. This was about 1929. Whitney wasn't born yet. The count was my brother Eddy, my mother, dad, Ethel, a high school girl to see that Eddy didn't fall in the lake and myself - that made five of us. What a ride we had. Our car used to give out on hills but dad knew how to keep it going. Anyway we made it to Tilton, N.H. on Route 3. I almost forgot, my mother slept just about the whole trip. Eddy, being five, poked his dad and whispered to him he could go faster because mom was asleep. She was very nervous in cars. When we came to Tilton dad put his foot on the gas pedal and up a hill we went through an old fashioned street with expensive lawns. All of a sudden one of the wheels on the trailer came off. What a noise! Of course we couldn't move. The wheel went across someone's nice lawn and into her shrubs. The woman was having a tea party and came running over and hugged my mother. It turned out they knew each other. The tire didn't go near the tea party. Every one gave three cheers when it went in the shrubs. We were invited to the tea party. Dad, in the meantime, had a garage come up and get the wheel back on. It took quite a while but finally we took off to camp about 20 miles from Tilton. Next month - a summer in New Hampshire. June 3, 2005
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