I started elementary school at Sumner Grade School in Syracuse, NY in January of 1949. This was an old two story brick edifice with a rectangular footprint and I'm guessing it dated back to the 1880's. (I've been searching the archives for the actual year that it was built but can't find it.) It was an imposing two story building with four entrances, one in the middle of each of the four sides, with a narrow gravel playground in front and behind and a large playground at one narrow end. I call it a playground, but it was basically nothing more than a large open area with trodden, mostly dead grass. There was no play equipment that I recall except the balls that were taken out with us during recess. Each of the four entrances had a specific designation. The one at the playground end was for the kindergarteners and the two kindergarten rooms were opposite each other at that end of the building. The door at the middle of the back was the entrance for the boys, the entrance set in the middle of the front of the building was for the girls, and at the far end, on the street corner of Basset and Hawthorne Streets, that more exalted entrance, approached by several substantial steps, was the door labeled 'teachers'. Each entrance was labeled above with its designation, carved into stone, i.e. "Teachers," "Boys," "Girls" and "Kindergarten." Clearly that is the way they did things in 1880 and it was a tradition that persisted. No one ever dreamed of going in the 'wrong' entrance.

My mother was the only single, working mother in the neighborhood, but I remember that she took off from work for a day to take me to register for kindergarten and introduce me to my teacher and classroom. As I said, the two kindergarten classrooms were opposite each other at one end of the hallway of this aged building. When we visited the classrooms, one contained a slide and the other, across the hall, had a jungle gym in it. I was assigned the one with the slide and carefully memorized that so I would go to the correct room.

When the start day arrived, there was undoubtedly snow on the ground because we are talking January in central NY. Mother arranged for me be walked to school by Mrs. Clark and her son Allen, who was in the middle of first grade. We lived at the edge of the area served by Sumner Grade School, so it was a half-mile walk to school. The Clark's lived on Westmorland Ave in one of only two houses, half way up a very steep hill. This was across the "back lot" behind our house. I suppose Mrs. Clark walked around to my street rather that cutting across the empty, snowy lot.

The kindergarten rooms, directly across from one another, were identical in my five year old eyes except that one had a slide and one had a jungle gym. When I visited with my mother before starting school I took special note of my classroom assignment by remembering which equipment was in MY classroom. When I arrived that first day they had switched the slide and jungle gym, but I knew they had done that. They couldn't fool me that easily!

As for the rest of the school, each classroom was basically the same, containing a wooden floor with rows of desks neatly lined up, chalk board on two walls with a space above each for large examples of the printed or script alphabet, depending on the grade, large tall windows and a cloak room with a row of hooks adjoining it. (Note they were called 'Cloak Rooms' and not coat rooms - again a vestige of long held tradition.) The desks all had inkwells which, trust me, were not for show but were functional. Once we got beyond about the second grade we substituted straight pens for our fat pencils. We were not allowed to use fountain pens or those fancy new cartridge pens until possibly Jr. High and I don't remember when (or if) we were ever allowed to use ball point pens.

As I said, this was a very, very old building. There were two floors for classrooms with a gymnasium/auditorium that was down several steps from the main floor taking up part of the back of the rectangular footprint. There had been a major addition to the school in 1909 when the several classrooms and the auditorium/gym were added. Electricity was installed in several classrooms just before that, in 1908 and, according to the newspaper at the time, iron stairs were installed with concrete platforms, apparently a first. This was a great source of pride.

The stairs lead both to the second floor and to the basement. Again, there was a boy's side and a girl's side going to the bathrooms in the basement, even though they were right next to one another. The girl's bathroom consisted of a large room with stalls on two sides and sinks on a third. By the time I got there, there was only one stall that still had a door. All the girls tried to be the one to score its use. The first person down there got the door. I'm assuming the boys bathroom had a similar setup but, of course, I never got to see it.

As I advanced in grade, our class moved up to a classroom on the second floor, perhaps for the first half of 3rd grade (which would have been January to June since I was part of that odd class that started in January.) Over the summer some of those upstairs classrooms, the ones above the gym, including mine, were condemned. To compensate, they created two classrooms in what had been the auditorium/gym and I probably finished the next year down there.

Not too surprisingly they decided to demolish the grade school, much to my horror. I truly loved that old building. It had such character and history. We all moved over temporarily to what had been Nottingham High School, now replaced by a new building a mile or so away. The "old" Nottingham, now temporarily renamed Sumner-Levy, was the same building where my mother attended HS there in the '30's. The Junior High kids were moved over to the new HS during the time it took to rebuild Sumner.

The change of buildings, although sad, was very convenient for me as it was half a block from my house. No cloak rooms though, no inkwells and not my beloved school. The new Sumner School was a low profile modern building. My class finished 6th grade there, starting in the fall and "graduating" from elementary school that January. We got to sing at the building dedication, performing "Bless This House." Then we were on to Jr. High and back to the same building we had just left, now renamed T. Aaron Levy.

I truly missed that old school. As it was being demolished I snagged a piece of the old red brick and that ruminant stayed in my jewelry box for many, many years as a treasured talisman. Someone going through that box would have wondered what that chip of brick was doing among my necklaces and bracelets, but it meant the world to me.