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My schooling began at 8:30 on the morning of September 7th, 1944. My education began at recess a couple of hours later. Miss Jenny was my teacher and she was near 70 years old. That first day she explained the rules by which she ran the class.

#1 If you want to speak, raise your hand and you will be recognized.
("How's she gonna recognize us? She don't know any of us," whispered a boy next to me.)

#2 If you need to be excused, raise your hand.
#3 Do not take anything that does not belong to you.
#4 Put your coat on your hook in the cloak room and your lunch on the shelf above your coat.
#5 You will come to school with your hair combed and your fingernails trimmed and clean.
#6 You will bring a clean handkerchief every day.
"What if my nose ain't running," asked that boy again?
Miss Jenny frowned and said, "Charles, raise your hand if you want to speak and you know very well that I expect you to bring a clean handkerchief every day."
I'm sure there were other rules, but that was over sixty years ago and some things are a little foggy. At any rate, recess was highly anticipated during this period of my life. But, one just did not up and rush out to the playground when the bell rang. There was protocol to observe like lining up. We lined up to enter the classroom. We lined up to exit the classroom. We lined up to go to lunch. We lined up to go to recess. We even lined up to go to the rest room. We lined up to return to the class room when Miss Jenny rang the bell or had Margaret ring it.
I'll never forget Margaret. She was a snotty little blond who always had her hair in swiss braids that were pinned or wrapped around her head. (She was cute, I guess, but I didn't like her. Actually, I didn't any girls except my mama and grandma. I was into cowboys at the time.) The most obnoxious thing about Margaret was that she was the teacher's pet in training. It started the first day.
First of all she was a smart ass that could already write. So, Miss Jenny selected her to take names of all who misbehaved when she had to go out of the room and she got to ring the bell at recess. The bell was a good six inches across and about eight inches high with a polished walnut handle and it sat on Miss Jenny's desk when not in use. No one was allowed to touch it, except prissy ass Margaret, much less ring it. I wanted to ring that bell so bad, I could hardly stand it. Never, never got to ring the bell. Probably one

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