Grinning back at Barrett

By Jim Banholzer

I’m the guy at the bottom center here -with the dark suit and white turtleneck.

Although the quality of this second-generation photo has faded, I expect it will still help augment this story.

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In the Sixties, our family lived in Arlington Forest. I attended Barrett Elementary from 1965 -69, until we moved to Fairfax. I still have fond memories of Barrett and the surrounding neighborhood. I recollect learning how to read on that dazzling first day of gradeschool - how it all started flowing through me in a miraculous manner. Barrett started a cutting-edge NASA program for us children in 1967 or ’68. You can see by the class photo that we were called ‘Team 3’, as we were no longer termed with ‘grades’. Students were permitted to work at their own comfortable paces and this program worked well. I remember excelling with math, science and creative writing. It was an exciting time; the Apollo space program had just begun, and we were aiming for the moon.

I see from Barrett’s website that the school is once again connected with a NASA program.

A few years back I called my brother on one of the anniversaries of the first moon landing, as we had watched it together in Arlington Forest. Our recollections of that defining day at 140 N. Columbus St., I eventually spun into a story / opinion piece, which ran in the local (Idaho) newspaper and then again on my personal weblog:

http://greenvanholzer.blogspot.com/2007/07/one-giant-leap-for-humankind-or.html

I disremember if it was 1^st or 2^nd grade; but at one point, there were two sisters at Barrett who both were instructors. Incredibly, the taller sister’s name was Mrs. Tall and the shorter sister was Mrs. Lowe! We kids got a good giggle out of this, since it struck us as very Lewis-Carrollian. Back then, Tetherball was quite popular as was jungle gym and playing kickball with red rubber balls. Some of us children would chant the popular-at-the-time Red Rubber Ball song by The Cyrkle as we played in our splendid replete. http://www.loti.com/sixties_music/the_cyrkle.htm Twice we had running races, which encircled the whole school. The teacher said that whoever won the race would get their name pasted into Barrett’s permanent archives. I wonder if that truly was the case.

One evening after school at Barrett, we were playing some baseball. The team I was on was called the Evening Optimist. I hit a hardball blooper into far right-center field and tried sprinting for a triple. After rounding second and trying to slide into third, I collided hard with the shortstop receiving the relay. I was knocked unconscious and both teams rushed over to help revive me. I’ll never forget dad standing there shaking me with encouragement, saying, “Son, you’ve just gotten the wind knocked out of you!” The only thing my young mind could fathom was, “If that’s only getting the wind knocked out of you, then what does really getting hurt feel like?”

The one week we didn’t have gym class in my four years at Barrett, was when the gym teacher set up a black and white TV on one of those roll-around stands in the cafeteria to let us watch the World Series played between Detroit and St. Louis. Sometimes for PTA meetings, we kids would perform acrobatic acts, including climbing ropes to the tippy-top ceiling of the gym as fast as we could to impress the parents with our super strength. It seems rather dangerous now, looking back. Nonetheless, I’m glad that Barrett did have a rigorous athletic program. Now I hear that children at many schools have limited recesses. That to me seems deleterious to children’s developmental skills. I hope that this is not the case at Barrett today.

Another sunny day, a folk singer came into school to entertain us. All of the classes sat transfixed by the quality of his songs in the cafeteria, which doubled as an auditorium. I thought perhaps the singer was Pete Seeger and wondered if anyone else out there remembered the captivating folksinger from that day. I suppose I could send Mr. Seeger an inquiry, since he is still strumming out songs of peace, love and understanding, although he probably played at such venues on innumerable occasions.

Barrett also had a stamp-collecting club. Two kind elderly gentlemen came in biweekly and told us kids about everything we might want to know about the meaning of stamps. Then they would give us a bunch of old stamps for us to happily press into our scrapbooks.

Recently my sister and I started corresponding about these days of yore in Arlington Forest. This led me to write another story about that area, which the Arlington Forester recently published in their great community newsletter

When we moved from Arlington Forest to Fairfax, My mom told me decades later that they feared that the ambiance of the place might change for the worse after the Washington D.C. riots immediately following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 1968 assassination. That however did not stop my sports-enthusiastic father from bringing me to the Washington Senators opening day game mere days after the tragedy.

Here is a box score from that game:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WS2/WS2196804100.shtml

Another mentionable item here is that the attendance for this game was 32,063. This was one of the few opening days that this stadium, which came to be known as RFK, was not filled to capacity.

After we moved to Fairfax, I attended Oak View Elementary. Last year, I wrote another story from those days called “Solid Oak View Memories” and recommend anyone interested in reading about those days access that story via either of these links:

http://greenvanholzer.blogspot.com/2006/11/january-13-2006-solid-oak-view-memories.html

http://greenvanholzer.blogspot.com/2007/06/tim-quietly-conquers-idaho-reminisces.html

The Solid Oak View story I sent to the principal of Oak View, after seeing that some other alumni had contributed letters to their website. They posted it online for a few months, until they redesigned their sites.

Looking back at it now, we grew up in a turbulent but also an enlightened time. As one of Barrett’s ancient alumni, I cherish those reminiscent days and am appreciative for the great jump-start the progressive instructors gave me for a long and remarkable life.