Dunbar Elementary School
Ms. Givens
Funny how you look back researching things, especially things long ago like in the 50 and 60’s, all you find is black & white images and old photos of everything (shows you how far we have come technologically speaking). But for me, images I see in my mind of all of the events that surrounded me back in the 50’s are in Vivid Living Color and are very much still alive in my head today… I was there… I remember some things like it just happened yesterday!
The 1st… was Ms. Givens… I don’t know weather it was the 1st or 2nd grade, actually I don’t remember exactly what grade it was… but I do remember that I fell absolutely in love with this lady from the 1st time I saw her, she was the prettiest lady in the school, at least to me… and I had to have her all to myself.
I actually got the whole class to get together and donate some money so we could buy here some candy… and we did, the other kids in the class (and this is a true story) gave me what money they had, after school I stopped at what we called the “school-store” on the way home (so now that I think about it I must have been in about the 3rd or 4th grade by now)… anyway, I stopped at that school-store and spent all of the money on some candy (penny candy)…
school-store
NOTE: This store was right across the street from Pulaski, this store was notorious for having a lot of fights to break out in and around this store from the students who attended Pulaski. Pulaski at that time was a Jr. High (7th and 8th grade)… when you finished Dunbar (which was just next door to Pulaski) it was expected that Pulaski would be the next school that you attended. More about Pulaski later.
Anyway, when I returned to school the next day I walked up to Ms. Givens desk and dumped all of the candy out of a bag onto her desk (must have been about 25 or 30 pieces of candy). I remember it clearly… the name of those candies at that time was “Green Apple Sticks”, we use to call them “wine candy”, and we though we where cool when we had some of those, because when we had some of those and ate them we thought we were drinking wine, because that is exactly what they tasted like… and so you ask, what and how would a 7 or 8 year old child know about how wine tasted, let me see if I can explain that to you. Now this is a true story… you see, most of our father where wine drinkers… at least mine was, he was a Steel Worker, all Steel Workers (then and now) where heavy drinkers, and I don’t mean some expensive wine, I’m talking about cold hard “SILVER SATIN”… one pint and you’re drunk as hell.
After giving Ms. Givens the wine candy, I stood at her desk looking at her, as she looked back at me puzzled because I was standing there so long, finally she asked me the big question… no it was not do you want to go on a date… she asked me if I would like some of the candy…. my eyes lit up…because there was no way I was going to leave that desk without getting some of that candy… that was then and still is today… my favorite candy. I said yes, she smiled and nodded for me to go ahead and grab some.
Now you would think that i did all of that just so i could get some candy, making the other kids pay for it… and I’m sure a lot of the other kids thought so too… and it was, I was scandalous, but too… I wanted to impress Ms. Givens.
wine candy
There was only one problem remaining… Mr. Adams (and these are those teachers real names by the way… I will never forget them)…