Part 1: Going to School

"Paaaauuuuul!" my mother called from the bottom of the stairs. "Get a wiggle on now." It was Monday, a school day, and I was due in Mrs. Murphy's third grade classroom at LCM in about an hour.

Actually, I was awake already, had been since my brother Bill had gotten up to get ready to head off to Marin Catholic. I'd lain there in my bed listening to the sounds: the rustling of papers being folded, books sliding off his desk, coins clinking as he gathered them off his dresser and slid them into his pocket. The activity sounded purposeful and directed, grown up somehow, and I admired, even envied him for that. Then he was gone down the stairs, and I went back to reading the Uncle Scrooge comic book I'd fallen asleep on last night.

After Mother called me, I finally got out of bed. In an uncharacteristic act of spontaneous neatness, I stuffed Uncle Scrooge away in my nightstand, atop the stack of other comics in there: Bugs Bunnys, Little Lulus, Pogos and the rest. Eventually I'd have to scramble under my bed to clear out all the others that had accumulated after sliding off night after night.

Saturday, Mother and I had taken the Greyhound bus up to San Rafael to go shopping, and at Wards she got me a new pair of P.F. Flyers. That was interesting, wearing shoes that had my own name, sort of. P.F. Flyers; P.F. Penna. That would be fun to point out to the other kids at school, I thought. As it turned out, it was a big mistake.

"Paul Francis, I told you not to come pounding down the stairs like a herd of elephants," Mother scolded me as I scooted up to the kitchen table. I surveyed the cereal boxes she'd arrayed for my perusal. Leaving the Kix, Rice Krispies and Wheaties for another day, I poured out a bowlful of Cheerios and drowned them from a quart carton of Lucas Valley milk. Lastly, a huge amount of sugar, enough so there'd be a layer left in the milk at the bottom I could scoop out. I liked to call it "honey." I waited until the Cheerios were nice and soggy. Kix always needed more time. Nabisco Shredded Wheat took forever.

Father had already left for work downtown at Ernie's, or more formally, the Rainbow Market. Across the table were still the remains of his unvarying breakfast: half a grapefruit and a bowl of Kellogg's All-Bran mixed with Corn Flakes and warm milk. After Mother loaded my lunchbox, she sat at the table with a cup of last night's coffee, reheated to near-boiling in a pan on the old trash-burner gas range, and started in on a crossword puzzle. "Better get along now," she told me, not looking up.

I made the usual perfunctory effort at brushing my teeth with some tooth powder and attempted to comb my hair. Making a reasonable part in it still eluded me. "It looks like a crooked road along the side of your head," Bill told me once. The early spring mornings were cool, so I zipped my blue jacket all the way up to my neck, strapped on my fur-lined leather cap, grabbed my lunch box and scooted out the back door.

After taking the lower steps of Arch Street two or three at a time, I slowed along the sidewalk portion of it to look over the cars in Mr. Probert's used car lot. They'd just stopped making Kaisers and Frazers, and he'd switched to DeSotos and Plymouths. A couple left-over Henry-Js were parked in the lot, along with a tiny little used Crossley and the big black 1930ish sedan that had belonged to a German lady who lived up the Canyon, one of Mother's friends. Mother said Mr. Probert had talked her into a push-button automatic transmission for her new Plymouth, and it had somewhat flummoxed the poor woman, who'd been used to wrestling with that gigantic old boat's stick shift for decades.

As I crossed the street at the entrance to the Canyon, I saw that the city had just repainted the crosswalks. My eye was caught by some little piles of glittering whitish stuff caught in Madrone's characteristically rough surface. I picked some up and saw they were tiny glass beads, just slightly bigger than grains of sand. They'd spread it over the wet paint to give it reflectance, and some had spilled over. What wonderful stuff! I'd have to come down later and collect some of it before it all got blown away.

The creek was still pretty full after the winter rains, and though it had lost its brown, muddy color, it still made a pretty impressive roar. I saw that once again, someone had broken the big white glass globe on one of the two light poles mounted on the bridge railings. Why would anybody do that? Probably some of those eighth-graders, I imagined.

Just across the bridge was the storybook cottage that made me think of illustrations in Wind in the Willows. A twisted-wire fence ran along the sidewalk, and on the other side, the perfectly-tended rose bushes were just coming into bloom.

Crossing West Baltimore, I looked over at the houses along the east side of Magnolia, and remembered trick-or-treating the previous Halloween. Several of us kids had approached one when the door suddenly opened, and from the darkness came a blood-curdling howl that set us all to shrieking. Then we found out it was just a vacuum cleaner the owner had rigged up to scare us and we came back to collect our treats.

There was still some runoff in the deep gutters along Magnolia, but nothing like during one of the winter rainstorms, and anyway I didn't have my galoshes on, so splashing through them was out of the question. During the rain, though, my favorite splashing site was just across the street from the corner of Alexander and Magnolia. There was no concrete sidewalk for about a half block before Park Way, just dirt, and across it each winter would rush a mini-streamlet you had to cross. I suppose I could have jumped over it, but I always chose to ford it instead. Several times, usually.

The gas station across from LCM, just before the crosswalk, stocked candy and gum, but for some reason I never went in there. Instead, I waited for the crossing guard to stop the traffic, then headed off to class in my spiffy new P.F. Flyers. Later, I wished I'd kept my mouth shut about them.


-- Edited by Paul Penna at 19:11, 2007-04-11