Commentary –

August, The Melancholy Month

By Jean Sands

When I was a girl growing up in Newtown, August was a melancholy month. The weather was still hot enough to make me believe summer would last forever, but in my heart I knew September and the classroom were just a drop of sweat away.

For me, school meant confinement, sitting behind an uncomfortable desk, first at Hawley School and then at Newtown High, while some teacher tried to pound facts into my addled mind. It meant exchanging the armloads of novels I lugged home from the white-shutter and brick library every week for textbooks that made me yawn. It meant adhering to someone else’s schedule and marching to bells instead of lounging under the maples with a frosty bottle of Coke and a spellbinding story.

 But like most things, school of course had its good side too. Despite my reluctance I learned enough in Newtown schools to steady me on life’s path. Because of Miss Brenner, I can type my copy instead of writing it longhand. Mr Fox taught me to write a check and balance my checkbook. Mr Los showed me how to read the clouds so I’d know when to come in out of the rain before it started. I learned to drive a car and name every engine part. I changed a tire, baked a cake, sewed a dress, studied Latin, played soccer, explored South America via a scrapbook, learned America’s history, and dissected a frog. I played first violin in the school orchestra/band (NHS was a small school then), painted a picture, and most important, learned to love words.

 Miss Kilgore, my eighth-grade teacher, introduced me to Shakespeare and forced me to play a part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream during a classroom performance. She also insisted that I was capable of writing the class Thanksgiving play, could help direct it, and carry the turkey on stage in a walk-on part. Bless her heart.

  But senior class advisor Kay Dolan was the teacher responsible for my love of theatre. She explained Romeo and Juliet line by line before taking the whole senior class to see it performed at the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford. Under her guidance I boarded my first train for my first trip to Manhattan to see my first Broadway show (My Fair Lady).

 That wonderful teacher also supported my interest in writing by rejecting the first essay I wrote for her (“Your assignment is to describe a sunset.”) because she thought I could do better. In doing so, she taught me about revision. She loaned me books of poetry and encouraged me to write verse – something I had done to win first place in the school’s annual Morris Essay Contest when I was a lowly sophomore under a class of truly brilliant seniors. She selected me to write the class prophecy for our yearbook and allowed me to stand out among my peers today because some of my predictions were plain silly – Jim Paproski a race car driver?

As August began to fade it wasn’t school’s pleasures that filled my mind but its repetition and tedium. And like many kids today, I took its gifts for granted.

August was also the month to buy new clothes – autumn-colored cardigans, wraparound wool skirts, Bobbie socks and saddle shoes. And that was the part I liked best. Mom would drive me down to Bridgeport where she’d buy me several new outfits at Holland’s Department Store. Then we’d walk over to Kresge’s, get a bunch of new pencils and pens, a three-ring notebook, and a stack of writing paper punched with holes. Finally, we’d sit at the counter and enjoy a turkey dinner complete with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a slice of pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream – Thanksgiving dinner three months early – before heading home, where I’d model my new clothes for Dad.

But then school opened. The early mornings, the loud bells, the structured classes, the insistent teachers – all pricked the balloon of my summer freedom. Except for my friends and the few teachers I loved, I hated school.

Of course, it could have been worse. When I stepped off the bus each afternoon my mother was standing at the door waiting for me, unlike today’s latchkey kids. This was truly a blessing but by the time I reached high school it felt like a curse. I was a typically defiant teenager who wanted to spend my after-school hours my way, not doing homework or helping Mom in the kitchen. My way meant grabbing a Coke from the fridge, flipping the TV to Dick Clark’s Dance Band, or giggling over cosmetics and boys with my friend Joan Eslinger who lived next door.

When Joan and I did manage to get together, our mothers kept close tabs on us, afraid we’d get into some type of mischief. And of course we did. But it was innocent mischief by today’s standards and the most daring thing we did was sneak a smoke and cough ourselves sick vowing never to do it again.

We were kids who got off the bus in June thinking summer would last forever and were surprised to find its heat and humidity follow us back into the classroom come September.

A lot of things have changed since I went to school, but what probably never will change is that some kids like school and others don’t. Some, like me, wish they could escape the brick boundaries of their classrooms. Like me, some wish they could turn their attention from the blackboard to the stories in their minds, the stories they too might write some day. For them, August is still a melancholy month.

(Jean Sands grew up in the Botsford district and has fond memories of her years in Newtown. She is a freelance writer living in Harwinton. She may be reached at writerswork2@hotmail.com.)