The house we moved into at Glen View (a suburb of Crab Orchard) was much better than our old house at Jenny’s Gap. The rent was $35.00 pre month. It had twice as many rooms – six! Hot and cold running water. And a bathroom! A gas heater in the living room provided heat. We no longer had to carry coal and tend the fire. Jim and Eunice Cragett lived about a quarter of a mile up the road from us. Mary Cragett was in the fourth grade like I was. Mary told me the time the school bus ran and told me to stand by the road. I thought I had hit the big time. I was able to ride to school.
When we got to the Old Crab Orchard School, Mary introduced me to Haven Clay, the principal. I gave him my grade card from Acord Mountain School and told him I was in the fourth grade. He asked me how old I was and I told him I was seven years old. He didn’t believe me. He gave me a form to fill out – name, address, parents, etc. One of the lines asked for my telephone number. I wrote the phone number that was on the telephone in our living room. The previous renter had a telephone, but it had been disconnected before we moved in. Well, Mr. Clay called that number and reached a restaurant that had recently been assigned that number. Mr. Clay didn’t know what to do. He gave me a test. I don’t know if it was an IQ test or some other standardized test. After I finished the test, he graded it and said I could be in the fourth grade.
There were two fourth grade classes. Mrs. Lilly taught one and the other one had two teachers. That’s the room I got. Mrs. Sadie Wender, the jeweler’s wife, taught half a day and Mr. Clay taught half a day. When the bell rang at the end of the day, I didn’t realize that we had to hurry to get everything put up, get our coat, and get in line for the school bus. Mary Cragett kept telling me to hurry, but I didn’t. By the time we left the classroom, the other children had marched down off the hill, boarded the bus, and started home. We did get to see the black smoke boiling up around the back of the bus as it went out of sight. We walked home that day. It was only about a mile, but Mary didn’t like it.
The next day, I understood what had to be done at the end of the day. As soon as the bell rang, I grabbed my coat and got in line with the other students from my room. Mrs. Lilly, the other fourth grade teacher, patrolled up and down the lines trying to maintain order. I’ll be kind to her and say she was an extremely grouchy woman. As she came by me, she grabbed my arm and slapped me hard in the face. “Get in the second grade line where you belong!” That would never do these days, but that was then and not now. I meekly walked to the line of second graders and marched down the hill with them. Mrs. Lilly hunted me up the next morning and apologized to me. I suppose somebody told her that I was a fourth-grader. I wish she had let me slap her, but that option wasn’t offered to me.
The playground had swings, “monkey bars”, and a merry-go-round. Jimmy Cragett became my pal on the playground. He was only two months younger than I was. Jimmy was a better marble shooter than I was. I ate lunch in the cafeteria. Some of the food was good and some wasn’t. For twenty cents a day, it was a pretty good deal. Extra milk cost three cents.
The spelling bee was a big event. The newspaper printed lists of words that participants would be asked to spell. I think there were three groups – fourth grade, fifth and sixth grades, and seventh and eighth grades. Daddy told me that he would buy me five hundred marbles if I went to the regional finals. Diane Stover was the winner and I was runner up. I spelled “chief” wrong. I forgot “i before e except after c”. Daddy missed a day of work to see me spell at the next level. The spelling bee for the Beckley area was held in the evening at Woodrow Wilson High School. That building would later become Park Junior High School. There were thirty-five contestants. I was the seventeenth one to be disqualified. I knew how to spell “quarrel”, but it came out with an extra “e”.
Marbles were sold in packages of twenty-five. Daddy bought me twenty packages one Saturday. I counted them as I opened the packages and found that I had 512 marbles. I loaded my pockets with marbles the next Monday morning hoping to win more marbles at school and increase my new-found wealth. I was not a good marbles player. I lost a lot of marbles. Jimmy Cragett came to our house one Saturday and we played marbles in our driveway. He left with 125 of my marbles. Within a few days, I had no marbles.
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