The school year is or will soon be starting for kids across the country. Remembering  my early school years may not be totally accurate or chronologically correct, but most certainly they are nostalgic.  We had no school food service, which meant we went home for lunch.  Maybe march home would be a better description.  We would assemble outside in groups by neighborhood and ‘march’ two abreast on the sidewalk till we reached our home where we would ‘fall out’.  Discipline was administered by a patrol leader assigned by school staff, usually the meanest kid in the neighborhood.  We straggled back to school.  At the end of the school day the march home was repeated.

A good bit of  recess in first grade was spent trying to avoid a girl who almost daily gave me  candy and chased me incessantly  in attempts to deliver a kiss.  The next year we moved across…