We went to grade school at the Bailey School. In a recent search of the internet using www.google.com, I discovered that Bailey School has been closed, for how long I have no idea. Apparently Bailey School was closed due to it being an older structure and the changing location of grade school children. East Lansing has grown quite a bit since I was a kid as now it has ten schools and a population of about 50,000.
There were two grade schools in East Lansing and the kids went the school as determined where they lived. If you lived west of Abbott Road you went to the Marble School. Those living east of Abbott went to Bailey School. Now if you look at the map above you will see that we lived about 8 blocks from the school.
In those days, kids walked
to school, probably because East Lansing was such a small town we didn't need buses. I
can remember, or think I can remember, the first day of school in East Lansing.
Remember, I was about 8 years old and Jim was 9.
My parents carefully showed us the school before we went and the route to get there. It was easy getting there, all I had to do was follow Jim. One small problem, when school got out that day, Jim was no where to be found - his class got out ahead of mine! So I was on my own as to getting home. I had a generally idea of the direction but, sadly, I had failed to note major landmarks on the way. So I figured I would more or less take the direction I thought I had come from and hope to find a familiar landmark on the way. Fortunately, I did remember my street, Grove Street, and as luck would have it, I had walked in that direction and "fell across" a street with that street sign on it. I was saved! I then knew the way back home and from that day on I learned my way back home from school.
There are only a few things I do remember about grade school. One was the day that my parents took me to school even though I told them I was sick. Naturally, they couldn't determine if I really was, i.e. no temperature, etc., so off to school I went. The school called my mom a short time later to tell her to come and pick me up as I had thrown up in the class room.
Another incident happened with my bike. Yep, like all kids of my days, each of us boys had our own bike. I still remember the day my day brought home my bike. It was a beauty - tube tires, blue in color and I believe a horn on the strut going from the handle bars to the seat. This was a heavy bike, nothing like the bikes of today. But to me it was the best bike in the world as it was all mine. All the grade school kids rode their bikes to school and parked them in the school bike racks just outside the school's front door. You have to remember that this was in 1939-1940 in a small town so there was not much traffic on the town streets, especially the side streets during school hours. Jim and I rode together. Why I don't remember Tom riding with us I am not sure.
Tom would have been about 12 years old and not yet into 7th grade so he would have been going to the same school as Jim and I. Anyway, we had several ways to get to school, one of which was to cut through a vacant corner lot that had a path through it, obviously made by many kids riding through there. One day as we were going through the lot, Jim was ahead of me and going pretty fast. The next thing I knew my front wheel hit a small tree or branch in the path. The bike stopped but I didn't. I was able to maintain balance and tried to get my feet down on the ground. But, being a rather small boy, both feet could not rest on the ground at the same time, resulting in my hitting the strut between the handle bars with legs on both sides of the strut. Needless to say, this left me moaning and groaning on the ground for sometime to come. Naturally, Jim considered this quite funny. It did take a bit longer to get to school that day.
