Jun. 14, 2003 - 20:34 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Bright Gold Coin

When I was young and opening the book of life to its first pages, my eyes, ears and nose young and efficient, school was almost the whole of my life then.

While trying to master block printing and the hated ovals and sawtooth practice for penmanship, addition, proper use of crayon and library paste there would come a very welcome time of morning. A man would come into our room with a case and put it on Teacher's desk. There would be glass half pint bottles of milk and graham crackers in it. All kids in our class always brought their milk money, so everyone was in on it. In an orderly manner we each would approach the desk and get our bottle of milk, a straw and two graham crackers.

I think both boys and girls tried to make the milk and graham cracker consumption come out even, nibble and sip, nibble and sip. I remember wishing that I had two bottles, one to use with the crackers and one to gulp down. We boys would carefully remove the thin sheet aluminum lids from our bottles and while eating we would use the smooth handle of our jackknives to make those caps completely flat. Then put them in a shirt pocket, saving them to later emboss into esoteric designs. A very happy time of day it was for us.

When the slowpoke of the class had finally finished, Teacher would say, "Heads down on your desks now and take a nap." Trying to look back it seems that maybe we were heads down for fifteen minutes. Sometimes sleep would sneak up on me and carry me away. Made me mad though 'cause it didn't seem I slept long enough to wander to dreamland. But, neat-o, when I didn't fall asleep, with my head down and eyes closed I explored the world of thought, feelings and ideals as well as traveling to lands far, far away. Its a wonder that Teacher could wake me.

That time was a time of learning to be the "me" that I wanted to be. What I ended up as was started way back then. From that time my life has been a Bright Gold Coin . . . . . . . . . . . .

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