Here is a little Missouri story that has no effect on the current state of the world. It is memorialized here not because it is a great story; but rather, as time takes its toll on my brain, I may forget all about it. So if I write these thoughts down now, when the television screen in my head goes to black, perhaps I can revive this story and enjoy it again.
In 1928 when I was six years of age, I was enrolled at the Forsyth Grammar School in Clayton, Missouri. The Forsyth School was given that name because it was on Forsyth Avenue. The Maryland School was named after the street it was on, just as the DeMun and Bellview Schools were named after the streets on which they were located. The Clayton school system took a very practical approach in naming its grammar schools. Some schools are named after dead educational heroes, but I suspect there were no such heroes in Clayton, so the street name became the name of the school.
In 1928, the Clayton School System offered no kindergarten classes. I can’t remember when such classes were offered, but when I started to school, the first grade was where it all began.
The Forsyth School had been built in the 1880’s, but it was well kept with janitors who seemed to care. It had wooden floors and walls. In today’s world, I suspect that the Forsyth School would be considered a fire trap, and maybe it was. But for more than 50 years, it got the job done.
Miss Brantley taught first grade. She was a real lady. She wore dresses and sensible shoes. Blue jeans were unknown then and if they had been discovered, Miss Brantley would have had no part of them. Miss Brantley was single, as were all the teachers in that school. When a teacher married, she left school teaching. That seems like a silly rule to me, but that is the situation that prevailed at least until 1940 when I graduated from Clayton High School. At age six, I was not much of a judge of women’s ages, but I suspect that with gray hair, Miss Brantley was pretty close to 50 years of age.
In looking back on that situation, I am convinced that Miss Brantley sensed that I was not one of the many rich kids in that class. As I recall it some 73 years later, she was very good to me.
There was an occasion when, being unable to read, I wandered into the girls restroom. Nature called and I simply took the first restroom that came along. Within a minute or two, Miss Brantley found me and gently guided me to the boys restroom. She made no fuss about the incident and I was never embarrassed about it. As I say, she was very good to me.
Shortly after the first grade classes started, Miss Brantley taught us a song. It went:

Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
We’re all in our places
With sunshiny faces,
Good morning Miss Brantley,
Good morning to you.

A little song that sticks with you for 73 years can’t be all bad.
While all of this was taking place, I was a red hot St. Louis Cardinal baseball fan. In 1926, the Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees in the World Series. It was the first trip for the Cardinals to the World Series. The mighty Yankees had been there many times. The series went seven games with four of those games being played in Yankee Stadium. The final game was played on October 10, 1926, which is just 75 years ago.
Jesse Haines pitched into the seventh inning. Jesse used the knuckleball quite a bit. By the seventh inning, his fingertips were bleeding, and after he got two men out, he found the bases loaded. The next hitter was Tony Lazzeri, one of New York’s most feared hitters. Rogers Hornsby, the St. Louis manager called for one of his oldest pitchers, Grover Cleveland Alexander to relieve Haines. Legend has it that Alexander was suffering from a head splitting hangover. Legend or no legend, Alexander struck out Lazzeri and the Cardinals went on to win the game and their first World Series. St. Louis went wild that night.
My brothers, who were much older than I, made such a fuss about the Cardinal victory, that this is my first memory at age four, of anything. I don’t know if Alexander struck out Lazzeri with a fastball or a curve. I just recall there was such joy in our house, that I remembered that incident from 1926 and I remember it to this day.
The incident that forms the recollection for this story happened when I was seven or eight years of age. If my memory is anywhere near right, the teacher in second grade at the Forsyth School, promoted me ahead of time in January, 1930, so I was in a third grade class with kids who were six months older than I was. In Clayton, classes were divided so that children born before September first started in the fall semester and children born later entered school in January. So every class had an “A” and a “B” group. Everything seemed to go well with the third grade work, but apparently I did not say much of anything during the class. This had to do with my shyness and the thought that I might make a mispronunciation in speech. My parents were not good role models because they often mangled the English language. So, I sat back and watched.
Another reason for my silence probably had to do with intimidation. Clayton was a wealthy town. The merchant class of St. Louis had their residences there. Lawyers and doctors who practiced in St. Louis resided in Clayton. The kids around me were affluent beyond my wildest dreams. When it rained, mothers or chauffeurs would pick up the students. On the other hand, I still had a three mile walk to my home whether it was sunny or snowy or rainy or close to zero or anything else. That’s just the way things were. Other poor kids had trouble dealing with the weather, so I was no different. If anything, I felt sorry for the kids from the orphans home. They really had a tough row to hoe.
One incident of intimidation sticks out after all these years. Several other boys were discussing bathing. One of them said he took a shower every day. The others said that was their schedule and some said on hot days, they took two or three showers every day.
Water cost money at our house. The gas required to make the water suitable for bathing had to be paid for. Showers were out of the question. We did not have one. Instead of a shower every day, we had a bath once a week. And often to conserve water, I had to bathe with my father. So maybe you can see how talk of showers and baths would make me feel inadequate and promote silence on my part. Intimidation can be a powerful force in a young child’s life so I had little to say.
Soon someone of the teachers concluded that I was deaf. I am not sure why they came to that conclusion, but I was told to take a note home to my parents which asked for permission to send me to the Central Institute for the Deaf, located on Kingshighway Boulevard in St. Louis. The teachers at the Forsyth School could do no wrong, so my parents concluded that I was hearing impaired – with no evidence to support that thought – and gave permission for me to go to the deaf school. Through this whole procedure, I said nothing, which is probably what got me into the deaf school in the first place.
Now there are more pluses than minuses in this equation. You will see why as we go along. To start, there is nothing wrong with my hearing at age eight to age seventy eight. I’ve had employment physicals, Army physicals, check ups and hospital stays. In none of those instances has anything been found wanting in my hearing. So I headed for the deaf school knowing that I was fine but telling that to the teacher or teachers who wanted to send me to the deaf school, would have fallen – so to speak – on deaf ears. (How do you like that bon mot Howard Davis?)
There was no such thing as being driven to the deaf school. My mother did not drive. If my father or my brothers took off from their jobs, they would have been docked or fired. Remember, this was 1930 and the depression was starting to take a bite out of everyone. So the school gave me a street car pass good on every street car. I gave it back after each trip to Central Institute for the Deaf and it was given back to me prior to my next visit. My recollection is that I made six or eight trips to the deaf school.
Kingshighway Boulevard is one of the main North-South streets in St. Louis. It was six lanes wide with street car tracks in the center of the right of way. From Clayton, leaving school, I took the University line to the Forest Park line which took me to the school. Getting off the street car was not a big problem as there was space before crossing the three lane North bound traffic on Kingshighway. The traffic people in St. Louis had placed large, permanent signs in the general vicinity of the street car stop, warning of deaf children using the stop. I suppose if a driver hit a deaf child on that street, it would not go very well for him or her, although there weren’t many women drivers back in 1930.
After alighting from the street car, automobiles would come to a full stop as the alleged deaf child – in my case – made his way to the deaf school. Knowing that we were deaf, drivers would signal that they were going to remain stopped while we crossed the big street. Some drivers waved and mouthed greetings. I can’t ever remember a car crowding one of the kids going to Central Institute. They usually waited until we reached the side walk before driving away. Getting off the street car and having cars stop for you and wishing you well was pretty heady stuff for an eight year old.
In the school, most instructors or teachers had tuning forks. Sometimes they would talk loudly or whisper from in front, on the side and from the back of our heads to see if we understood what they were saying, but mostly they used the tuning forks. They would ask the patient to shut his eyes or they would more often offer a blindfold. Then they would plunk the tuning fork near an ear, or I suppose on top of or in the back of the head. After it was plunked, the instructor would ask, “What ear did you hear that with?” I must have answered their questions appropriately because after six or eight sessions of about an hour each, it was concluded that they could find nothing wrong with my hearing, at least I got no treatment. So I was sent back by the Central Institute for the Deaf to the Forsyth Grammar School in Clayton with my alleged mysterious hearing impairment still intact. Or maybe Central Institute claimed that I had been cured. Nobody ever told me much of anything about my dreadful problem.
But now there was a real plus in this arrangement. Each year the Cardinals and the other major league team, the Browns, accepted applications for memberships in their Knot Hole Gang groups. I was equipped with both the Cardinals and the Browns groups. Generally speaking, not many games were sellouts and youngsters with Knot Hole Gang passes were permitted to sit along the left field lines near the bleachers. There were no night games in those days. Games usually started at two to three in the afternoon. I don’t know why the games started so late, but that’s the way it was.
Ordinarily, Central Institute would let me go around 2PM. Using my unlimited street car pass, I went back to catch the Forest Park street car being sure to wave at the cars that stopped as I crossed the street. A short distance away, the Forest Park line crossed the Grand Avenue line and soon I found myself at Grand Avenue and Dodier Street, the home of Sportsman’s Park where the Cardinals and Browns played. I saw most of the games from the second inning on. When I wanted to leave, I presented the unlimited street car pass to the Grand Avenue Line, the Forest Park line, the University line and then to the Kirkwood-Ferguson line.
My parents never had an overwhelming interest in my treatment at Central Institute for the Deaf. I told them about the tuning fork episodes and about the loud and soft conversations, but that did not take long. I did not tell anyone at the Forsyth Grammar School about my experience at the deaf school because I assumed Central was keeping the school filled in on my “progress.” And mostly I never told anyone about going to the ball games. I almost got caught a few times when other boys would discuss yesterday’s game. If I were to say, “He was out by a country mile,” they would say, “How do you know?” I guess that I was able to suppress my superior knowledge about the games I had seen, for to disclose it would have been a disaster.
Somewhere along the line, the teacher in the third grade said I would not be going back to the deaf school. I suppose she thought I had been cured. So I took my 20/20 hearing back to the classroom and no one ever mentioned Central Institute for the Deaf again. So you see, there were many pluses in my expeditions to the deaf school.
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A more recent thought about Grover Cleveland Alexander, the Cardinal pitcher. When Tip O’Neill was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he invited Ronald Reagan to lunch in his office. Reagan had recently been sworn in as President of the United States. In a tour of his office O’Neill pointed to his desk and said that it had been used by Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was one of Reagan’s predecessors as a President of the U. S.
Reagan said, “Oh yes. I know all about him. I played him in a movie about his baseball career.” O’Neill said he meant Grover Cleveland, the former President. Reagan dismissed him by repeating that he had a good time playing in the movie about Grover Cleveland Alexander. O’Neill gave up.
E. E. CARR
October 8, 2001
Essay 22
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Kevin’s commentary: This is the first essay I’ve published since Pop’s death yesterday. There is a lot that I would like to say on that subject but I’m struggling to write about that right now, so I’m doing this instead. Please bear with me.
About this essay itself — not only is it funny as hell and one that I certainly heard a few times growing up, it represents part of a bit of a hot streak that he was on with his essay-writing in 2001. By that I mean this essay was immediately followed by what he considers to be his favorite essay he ever wrote, which of course is worth checking out if you haven’t read it yet.