“When Can I Start School?” (October 6, 2006)

Joanie Barovetto Black and Nola (11/13/10)

I was three and a half when we moved to Davis in the summer of 1946. My brother, Mickey, was going to be five in November. The Davis School District’s rule stated you had to be five years old by March 31^st, so Mickey got to start school our first September in town. He was my closest companion and best friend, and he was leaving me behind!

“When can I start school?” I wailed. Mom softly said, “When you are older.”

Fortunately, my parent’s selected a great neighborhood; my new next-door neighbors, the Barovetto family, had two older boys and a girl closer to my age. Joanie, my new neighbor, didn’t turn five until April, so her brothers went off to school and left her behind also. We bonded right away. It was great to have a new playmate and best girl friend.

Throughout that school year, Joanie and I often played school; we talked about how wonderful it would be the next year when we could go to school too, just like our brothers. Having each other made the pain of being left behind much more tolerable.

The summer before school started in 1947, the Davis School District changed its policy on entrance to kindergarten. Instead of being five by the end of March, the new policy stated children had to be five by March first. I was twenty-five days too young to start school with Joannie. I was going to be left behind again

“But, when can I start to school?’’ I wailed. Mother said, “Next year.”  

“Next year? That seems like forever! What can I do this year?

I am sure the school year of 1947 wasn’t an easy one for my mom. I desperately wanted to be in school like the other kids.

 

Fortunately for me, my mother was a homemaker most of the time. She did have a part-time job as a society column writer for the Daily Democrat, the Woodland weekly newspaper. She wrote her columns at home, and she took me along when she went to interview people. I also got to ride along when she delivered her columns to the Democrat office.

Reluctantly, I did learn to play by myself; but, being a very active and social kid, I kept bugging my mom with, “How long before the kids get home from school?”

Mom and I had a lot of tea parties. She played Old Maid and other games with me, but she wasn’t much for playing dress-up or dolls. After all, she had housework as well as newspaper work to do. I jumped rope, played jacks and roller-skated in the kitchen.

I would sit down long enough to color a picture or thumb through my picture books, but I loved to be outside. I spent many hours on my swing in the backyard. My dad made it for me out of a small wooden board. He made two holes on each side of the board and strung very strong rope through the holes and tied it to our big hack-berry tree. I flew through the air with the greatest of ease on that swing.

No matter how many activities I enjoyed, I’m very sure my mom got sick of hearing, “When did you say I get to go to school?” When September of 1948 finally arrived, my mom was delighted to say, “Nola, the time has finally arrived; you get to go to school today!” “Hooray!” I said, as I grabbed my brother’s hand and headed out the door for the beginning of a wonderful new adventure.

Look Out, Ann Miller & Ginger Rogers! New Dancers on the Horizon (September 29, 2006)

It was a beautiful spring Zip-a-dee-doo-dah kind of day in 1950 when my best friend, Helen, and I ascended the old wooden staircase to the second floor dance studio on G Street in Davis. We were about to set out on our dancing adventure, just like in the movies! Jerry Curry, our dance instructor, had just arrived from Hollywood to foster enthusiasm for dance in Davis youth.

The studio was situated on G Street above Jerry’s Meat Market (no relation to Jerry Curry) and Styler’s Jewelry Store, between Second and Third Streets. On arrival, we found a large rectangular room. At one end several folding chairs were placed for folks watching or arriving to pick up the dancers after class. Mirrors covered the north wall and a long balance bar ran in front of the mirrors. There was a beautiful shiny wooden floor. Mr. Curry said wood floors were best for dancing; we thought so too because we sounded much better and louder on the wooden floor than we did on our concrete walk or our linoleum kitchen floors.

About fifteen eager new dancers gathered for our first class. We had one brave boy, Wayne Wooden, who joined the rest of us girls. Wayne was in our first grade class at Central Davis Elementary School. I don’t think Wayne minded that he was the only boy student. The teacher, after all, was a man, and I’m sure that helped Wayne feel more comfortable.

A week before class began, Helen and I went shopping with our moms to gather the dance attire we needed. We went to Rodgers Department Store, just down the street from the dance studio. We each got black leotards, white ballet shoes, and beautiful black patent leather Mary Jane-style tap shoes with black ribbon ties. In those days, they didn’t sell the shoes complete with taps, so we headed to the Davis Shoe Shop and got shiny metal taps for the heels and toes of our new shoes.

Thinking back on it, I don’t remember that we exhibited any natural dance ability, but we sure had fun! Mr. Curry had been a stage dancer with his wife in Hollywood. He brought pictures of them dancing in fancy dance clothes. Wow, were we impressed! He was a wonderful teacher and made dancing fun.

During our second year of dance class we got starring rolls in the Christmas school play of the Nutcracker Suite. Helen was a beautiful waltzing flower, and I was the Sugar Plum Fairy. When I shared pictures of me in my beautiful white ballet outfit with my husband twenty years later, he smiled and said, “Oh, you were the Sugar Plump Fairy.” We both roared in laughter.

Helen and I loved our dance class; however, after a few years, we left dancing to venture into new experiences. But we always looked back fondly on those fun classes.

In 1975, when our youngest daughter, Kate, was in elementary school, she asked to take tap dancing. What luck; Kate’s tap teacher was Jerry Curry’s wife, Julie!

In 2004, while attending a class at the Davis Senior Center, I saw a sign posted for a tap dance class. I called Helen and said, “What do you think? Shall we try tapping again?” Her answer was an enthusiastic “Yes!”

We are now in our second year of Tap class with our wonderful and exceptionally patient teacher, Jeanine Jette. No, we aren’t now nor ever were any real threat to Ann Miller or Ginger Rogers. But we are sure having fun and keeping our arthritic joints jumping. Or, should I say, tapping!

Elementary School Years: Goldie & Silver Ride and Swim (June 6, 2008)

In the spring of 1953 my best friend Helen and I each got our first bikes. We loved riding them to school. I rode to her house every morning and we headed to school to attend our fourth grade class. We were looking forward to the summer, when we could also ride our bikes to the University Pool instead of walking. We were feeling very grown-up, and we decided to give ourselves special names to use while biking and swimming. It didn’t take us long to come up with names we liked. We selected Goldie and Silver.


We both wanted to be Goldie, but I said,
“My Grandma’s name is Goldie, so I should have that name.”
Helen reluctantly agreed, “Well, OK, then I’ll be Silver.”


Every June, the week after school ended, the University pool opened the doors to its Olympic size pool for public use. Most of the University students had left Davis for the summer, and the local residents happily flocked to the pool’s beautiful, cool blue waters to escape the summer heat.


I lived on Rice Lane, between A and B and First and Second Streets, and Helen lived a block away on University Avenue, between Second and Third Streets. By foot or bike, the pool was actually only about two blocks from our houses. We just crossed A Street, one block north of University Avenue, made our way across the vacant field just south of UC Davis’ Hickey Playing Field and we were at the door to the Hickey Gym. It housed the wonderful enclosed outdoor pool that made our summer afternoons fly by.


The pool opened every day, except Monday, at 1:00 PM for the general public. At 5:00 PM, it closed to the kids and only adults were allowed from 5:00 to 6:00 PM. On Mondays, the pool was closed for cleaning; but, being the eager swimmers that we were, Helen and I often biked over to the pool on Mondays, forgetting it was closed.


Except for our two weeks at Girl Scout camp that summer, we spent every day the pool was open swimming side by side. We saw ourselves as two mermaids, Goldie and Silver. We envisioned ourselves sparkling right along with the water in the glistening pool.


We especially liked swimming underwater and tried to emulate Easter Williams, the movie star, doing aqua ballet. I’m sure the onlookers were not impressed with our talents, but we saw ourselves as fish underwater,
“What talent, what skill!” we said to each other.


We decided that summer that not only were we excellent mermaids, but we felt old enough to spring from the diving boards at the west end of the pool.


“Hey, Silver, do you want to dive off the three-foot board and swim the length of the pool?” I asked.
“Goldie, why don’t you dive off that three-foot board and I will dive off the ten-foot board and we can race each other the length of the pool.” said Helen.
“You’re on, Silver; let’s go.” I said.


We did the crawl stroke just as fast as we could the length of the pool, usually tying at the shallow end of the pool and laughing our heads off. Next, we’d dive under water and head back to the deep end for more water ballet, telling each other what beautiful gold and silver gills we had.


There was a high tower board at the pool that we often considered ascending; but in discussing it just the other day, we agreed that neither of us had ever worked up the courage to climb the tower or face a dive from that high distance.


The pool was surrounded by rough gravel, in order to cut down on folks slipping on the pavement. The teenagers often would lay their towels on the rough gravel and spend their afternoons sun tanning. We thought they were crazy, but we didn’t mind because that meant the pool itself was less crowded.


Helen and I are still best friends. We live about three blocks apart now. She lives on Miller Drive and we live on Mills Drive. We often find ourselves reminiscing about those good old carefree days, when we raced our bikes to the University pool to splash away our afternoons as the two mermaids, Goldie and Silver.

Jessie Belle: A Very Rich Woman (April 18, 2008)

My husband's grandmother, Jessie Belle Lemon Haggerty, was one of the richest people I ever knew. She was not monetarily rich; in fact, she had very little money all of her life. But she was rich in living, loving and laughing, and in her ability to share those riches with everyone around her.

She loved telling me about all her adventures. She loved to dance. As a teenager, she would go to the barn dances and dance all night. She said she would dance so hard her feet were bleeding at the end of the night. She would then head right home and start her morning chores on the farm at 5:30 a.m. Dancing made her feel alive, and bleeding feet didn’t slow her down or dampen her love of adventure.

She loved to ride to town in the wagon with her dad. Her mom always said, “Wear a hat, Jess.”

“I can’t ma, the wind wouldn’t blow in my face or through my hair the way I like it.”

Jess never wore a hat. She had beautiful naturally curly auburn hair and fair skin. She had lots of sun burns growing up, and skin cancer all over her face and arms in her later life. But she said she would never have changed a thing about her life, even if she had known the consequences in her early years.

 

Jess only got to go to school through the eighth grade because she needed to work to help make ends meet for the family. She loved school and was an avid reader all her life.

Her education never stopped even though her formal classes did. She said, “I learn new things every day and love ever minute of learning.” Jess spent lots of time both reading and sharing personal stories with our four children as they grew up. If Jess was waiting for a bus to take her on a trip and she met little children at the station, she immediately would start a conversation with them. The next thing you knew, they were reciting their ABCs or singing along with Jess and learning a new song. Whoever sat next to Jess on the bus became a dear friend before the ride was over. Jess loved to fly, travel on trains and take the bus. She met new people and learned new things with every new adventure.