In 1939 and the first half of 1940, I attended seventh grade at the Davis Street School. This was the first year when everyone moved from classroom to classroom, having a different teacher for each subject along with a homeroom teacher.
Every student had to grow to like the system. Depending on how smart you were back then, you were part of a group. The smartest were put in Group A. For the next three years, I was put in Group B, the next group down.
Seventh grade at Davis Street School was a difficult one for me. I was sick for many days of the school year. This condition did not help my cause, and there was one teacher that I feared. In her class, she embarrassed and ridiculed me many a time in front of my classmates for my absences and for not always knowing the answers to her questions.
As a result of this, practical jokes, like finding gum and tacks on my seat, followed me throughout my school years. I was happy to leave that building for eighth and ninth grades at the Federal Street School’s north building, which was the junior high school at that time.
With everyone’s advice, I took the college prep courses, realizing that my parents would never have enough money to send me to college. Very few scholarships and no federal student loans were available at that time. I managed to get very good grades while working after school, studying late into the night until the war was upon us. Many of my classmates enlisted, but I graduated in 1945 and was later drafted.
During those years, Greenfield and Turners Falls had a very intense rivalry in high school football, as the two towns still do today. All the home games were played at Beacon Field. Oh, how I froze on many a Thanksgiving morning attending the games. Some years, there were early snowstorms. The field would be plowed, sometimes leaving light snow on the grass. Those players were really rugged to cope with the conditions.
At the same field, there was the toboggan chute. I never owned one, but friends would let me borrow theirs for a thrilling ride down the chute that always ended with my spinning around in a semi-circular bowl (similar to those at skate parks today) before stopping.
So many people of Greenfield and Franklin County as a whole enjoyed this wintertime activity. Skating at Highland Pond and going to Greenfield’s three theaters were other fun activities as children. I will always be proud of the fact that the early years of my life were spent in Greenfield. It was a great town and I hope it will always be that way.