LAST DAY OF 5TH GRADE

From the Bob Willard Collection, Volume 1

August 5, 2025 Second Edition Enhanced

The last day of public elementary school in Denver in 1962 was May 31st. It was a Thursday. Excitement for the upcoming summer vacation had begun to crescendo in all the classrooms many days in advance of that last day. It’s all anyone could talk about. Or think about. Or wish for.

So it wasn’t surprising that the instant the kids stepped onto the school grounds that last day of school, they could not contain their big elastic smiles. Not even sourpuss Bobby Vesa.

In seven hours, at 3:20p, the school year would officially be over. Every grade from kindergarten thru 6th would be done for the year. No more school. Summer vacation was about to happen. Finally! We had been waiting a long time.

Henry M. Teller was a handsome, exceptionally wide, three-story tall red brick elementary school. It spanned nine of the twelve houses directly across Garfield Street. Willard, Frisell and I counted.

Most of the Garfield Street houses were also constructed of red brick, similar to the school. Although there were a few blonde brick houses sprinkled in, too.

Shade trees with umbrella canopies capped both sides of the street: Chinese poplars with waxy yellow leaves, crowned blooming white ash, and thick-trunked oaks with caterpillars climbing up the bark.

Inside the school, the height from floor to ceiling was twelve feet. The tall hallways running down the center corridors on each floor ran parallel to the houses across Garfield Street and carried on for what seemed like forever… and kept on going.

At the far, far ends those central hallways turned 90º and continued. It was a large school, even for 5th graders eager to become 6th.

Peeking into the classrooms that last day revealed squirming students bouncing uncontrollably in their seats. Teachers had their hands full trying to maintain order. It was impossible to sit still! It was always impossible to sit still on the last day of school.

Kids closely monitored the second hands on the clocks tick, tocking, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock… Counting. Waiting. Expecting.

Meanwhile outdoors, clouds as large as the Rocky Mountains began to darken the morning sky. Black and dark gray thunderclouds forced their way down the face of the Front Range. It was an atmospheric invasion. The clouds fisted together and ominously gathered into a fierce storm. You could watch it happen from the school. Rains would be coming. Lightning flashed continuously, unchecked.

It wasn’t long afterward when atomic thunder rattled the windows of the school library and gym. It also rattled the windows in Mrs. Joy’s music room. A tuba fell and crashed onto the tile floor. It was Latham’s tuba. No one else played tuba. Just Latham.

Latham was the kid who was one full year younger than the rest of the kids in our grade. He wasn’t good on the playground with kids his own age. He was too big. It wasn’t safe for the kids Latham’s age to play with him.

Tetherball presented a special danger playing against Latham. One of the smaller kids almost choked as the tetherball cord was wrapping around his neck. Mr. Brown, our gym teacher, saw Latham smash the ball and witnessed the noose forming around Terry Reagan’s fragile pencil neck. Mr. Brown rushed to save Terry’s life. And recess, too.

Mrs. Francis, our principal, was immediately notified. She snapped an impromptu meeting with Betty, our school nurse, and Mrs. Fink, her trusty aide. Nurse Betty was Red Cross approved and wore white canvas tennis shoes to school.

I visited the nurse’s office a couple times that 5th grade year because of stomach bugs. She even had a bed in her office. She tired easily.

Following the emergency meeting between the trio of female legislators, Latham advanced to our grade the next day.

Even in 5th grade we had pride in our school.

‘There’s no way they’re gonna let a kid get beheaded by a tetherball rope,’ boasted Big Bob Willard. He was right.

When they moved Latham up to our grade they said he was ‘big-boned’ which even then we knew was code for ‘fat’. They also said that he tested good which all of us knew was 100% horse hockey. Kids know other kids better than the teachers know the kids. Latham couldn’t test his way out of a paper bag with instructions and practice.

But Latham didn’t mind any of this on that last day of school. He was still beaming having just won the ‘Hot Dogs and Campfire Beans Eating Contest’ five days earlier at the Congress Park Hot Dogs and Beans Festival.

There were balloons for sale at the festival that cost five cents and if you wanted your balloon inflated, it cost another two cents. Basically a functional balloon cost 7¢. But toddlers got their balloons for free. Toddlers didn’t have pants pockets and they didn’t have money and they couldn’t count and they’d cry if they didn’t get a balloon.

Balloons weren’t the only things for sale at the Congress Park Hot Dogs and Beans Festival. Cans of pop were also for sale. The cans were kept in a big ice bucket the size of a pony’s trough. Some lady running the canned pop stand just let you grab your own can right out of the trough. Whatever kind you wanted.

She didn’t hand the pop to you and she didn’t even watch you get your own. It was the first time that an adult that didn’t even know you trusted you to do the right thing. It was memorable… and surprising.

Hot dogs and beans were available from the concession stand right next to the pop stand. The full combo cost 25¢. You got a can of pop – a hot dog and bun without sesame – and a Dixie plate of Heinz campfire beans.

It all came with a plastic fork and two packets of yellow mustard. You didn’t need to bring your own fork from home. They were organized. They used a ‘plan-ahead’ strategy and you could see it working. They were cheapskates on the napkins, handing out one napkin per order even though we were messy kids. We didn’t know how not to get messy holding a Dixie plate of beans and mustard. One kid got mayonnaise all over himself.

Latham ate 11 hot dogs and three plates of campfire beans which was all he needed to take 1st prize. He didn’t have to pay for any of it. Food was free for the contestants.

Winning the ribbon meant nothing to Latham. He won the same contest last year, too. He was just practicing for the upcoming big hot dog contest up in the mountains later in the summer.

About ten seconds after Latham received his second 1st Place blue ribbon in two years, his face turned purple and then he leaned to his left and barfed onto more than a couple of feet of the newly assembled awards ceremony stage. He stood motionless on the Congress Park Hot Dogs and Beans Festival brand new awards ceremony stage.

Latham didn’t even try to get off before he barfed. At least it didn’t look like he did. He just froze. Parents turned to one another and wondered why he hadn’t moved away first. It turned out that the Congress Park Hot Dogs and Beans Festival new ceremony stage was a one-time use only.

To his credit, Latham didn’t get any hot dog juice or campfire bean remnants on anybody. Just himself. A little on the front of his shirt and a little more than that on the toes of his Keds. He wasn’t wearing good shoes or anything like that. There was no dress code for being a contestant in the hot dogs and campfire beans eating contest.

Bill Frisell was a neighbor of mine who lived only five houses up Cook Street. He was my best friend as we’d been walking to school and back together since 2nd grade. We did everything kids do together growing up.

We played. Competed. Had sleep overs. Drilled holes in wood. Hammered nails in trees. Sawed. Built stuff. Figured out the world. Did a lot of other stuff. Cracked jokes. Talked about the Rainwater family. Stole candy. Counted VW bugs, convertibles and busses that drove by on 8th Avenue. Ate at each other’s houses a lot of times. Bought baseball gloves. Bought baseball cards. Bought brownies. Went to tons of movies and stuff. Rode bikes. Trick or Treated. Bought slingshots. Shot bb guns. Got shot by bb’s. Got haircuts on 8th Avenue. Watched sports on color teevee. Watched Bonanza on Sunday night. Went to the same pediatrician. Thumbed through MAD Magazine.

Frisell ordered a baby alligator from the inside back page of MAD and it was when it got delivered to his house that his mom found out. We were playing Parcheesi in his basement at the time. I had the red pawns and was drinking a Duffy’s pop. Frisell controlled the black pawns but he wasn’t drinking nothing because he said he had a sour stomach. We both already had two pawns reach home.

The baby alligator came in a box that had small holes drilled into it. You could see the baby alligator motionless in the box and then Frisell opened the box and shook the thing out onto his bedspread. The thing was about five inches long nose to tail and it was green and prehistoric. Once it landed on the bedspread, it kept mechanically opening its mouth and closing it like that was all it knew how to do. And it was impressively silent doing it.

Frisell was allowed to keep the baby alligator for an hour and then he had to flush it before his father got home. The cover of the box it came in said ‘No Returns’. I watched the baby alligator wiggle to avoid going down the bathroom pipes but then it disappeared. Frisell didn’t get that attached to it. He didn’t give it a name or anything.

Frisell and I both played clarinet as did Charlie Wagner. Denny Blum and Wayne Matsuda? Trumpet and cornet. Wayne’s eye glasses improved his ability to get the notes right.

Frisell was better at 16th notes on his clarinet than I. Even back then. We both tried out for Citywide Band and when we checked the results of the tryout tacked onto the messy cork board with tons of handwritten notes plastered all over the place, both our names were included in ink. We had both made Citywide Band!

Frisell was awarded 1st chair and I was assigned to chair #5. Which was fine since chair #5 was at the start of the 2nd row of clarinets on stage, right behind Frisell and his 1st row. At least I wasn’t buried in the woodwinds behind the Citywide Band bassoon player. That kid was bigger than Latham. If I had been assigned chair #4, I’d be invisible. I’d never know I was there.

We were sitting at lunch on that last day:

Frisell said: ‘Greg Jones told me that he watched cartoons in Mrs. Somma’s English class. I have her English class next period. Wouldn’t it be amazing to just watch cartoons on the last day of school?’

Big Bob Willard the expert: ‘Yeah. I know. It was a double feature: 15 minutes of Bugs followed by 16 minutes of Porky. And then they have to rewind the all the film for the next class.’

Frisell to Big Bob: ‘How do you know about the cartoons? You don’t have Mrs. Somma until period six.’

Big Bob Willard: ‘Linda Hart told me yesterday that they were gonna do it. I guess Mrs. Somma is getting so old that she can’t teach one more day. Maybe those big black things sticking out of her neck are killing her. I’d prefer 30 minutes of straight Porky. You can keep your Bugs.’

Frisell: ‘You mean 31 minutes. 15 minutes and 16 minutes is 31 minutes.’

Big Bob: ‘Hell, I’d take 25 minutes of Porky over whatever this school has to offer!’

And there it was.

Big Bob was the first kid in our neighborhood to swear. It started with the ‘h-e-l-l’ word right there and then: Teller’s lunchroom the Last Day of 5th Grade in front of me and Frisell. He didn’t use the ‘f’ word or the ‘s-h’ word that many people assumed was the case with Big Bob. He used the ‘h’ word.

Big Bob was a lifelong close friend. I had a bunch of them. Crow. Kubly. Blum. Charlie Wagner. And, of course, Frisell.

Big Bob was my primary Cub Scouts partner in crime. He was a trouble-maker at school and a trouble-maker in Webelos. He had cherry bombs and M80s hidden in his drawer at home when he was seven. I had one old Black Cat at nine and I was afraid it would blow my fingers off.

Big Bob was also the first kid in our neighborhood to get the hang of lighting matches. Sometimes he’d show off and light the whole matchbook ablaze. And he could light wooden matches on his pants.

Then… a flash of lightning and another explosive thunder reverberated outside. The storm was real close now. Aimed right at us. The Last Day of 5th Grade crept by under such weight and atmospheric conditions. Lightning flashed repeatedly. The wind began to heave and the flag on the flagpole fluttered straight out before Mr. Brown took it down. American flags aren’t supposed to get wet.

At the lunchroom table next to ours, I heard tow-headed Billy Snyder cry out, ‘It’s going too slow!‘. Billy talked a lot in social studies, often out of turn, usually interrupting someone else, and never realized that no one ever cared what he said. His plan was to grab the attention of the girls by doing wheelies up and down Garfield Street on his shiny green Stingray bike. Billy Snyder wasn’t much of a student. No. He was much less than that. Big Bob would say Billy Snyder was ‘dumb as a box of rocks‘.

One of the first expressions I ever heard came from Big Bob. I learned lots of expressions from him over the years. ‘Dumb as a box of rocks‘ was my introduction. I’m not saying he invented that expression. And I’m not saying that he invented any of his expressions. And I’m not saying that he said he invented any of them. But he had a lot of them. They were his weapons. They might as well be swords.

Even so, I couldn’t do half the things on my own blue Stingray bike that Billy Snyder could do on his shiny green one. He was an aerialist on his green Stingray. He could have performed in a circus. ‘Dumb as a box of rocks‘, but he could have traveled around small town America sparkling in a fancy circus suit. One guy’s toast is another man’s bagel.

We all really thought Billy Snyder could join the circus. What else was he gonna do? Well, it never came to pass. And he never did impress any of the girls to his advantage.

At the end of the 2nd lunch period, with all the hour hands pointing at 1:00p, those of us still in the lunchroom horsing around jumped at the sudden lightning flash followed by an explosive loud BOOM! And then a harsh downpour and deluge of cold rain and cold sleet.

The biggest storm of the spring arrived in full force at Henry M. Teller elementary. Eight-foot long fluorescent ceiling lights spit and flickered and crackled, and struggled to stay on. It was the first time that it ever rained on the last day of school. And it was a dark, cold blanketing downpour. A deluge.

The sky was normally sunny and the air naturally warm for each of the five previous last days of school. As Denny Blum popularized years later:

Leaden clouds hung low.

The storm thrashed outside until 2:20p; savagely pelting the windows with raindrops the size of water balloons, rebounding off the sidewalks, shining the streets to reflection, and forming pools in the playground sand pits. Then, like magic, the storm softened and mushed, and moved slowly to the south and the east. The sky lightened in cadence with the school’s ticking clocks. The storm was moving away as quickly as it had come.

Every kid had one more class period left to endure. Just fifty minutes until freedom!

With blue eyes and brown eyes and black eyes and green and gray eyes and hazel all hypnotized on the classroom clocks, at 3:20p the final school bells clanged loudly up and down the long hallways. Right on time. It was deafening and sweet.

As if we had practiced all year, every kid screamed out at the same instant ‘Summer vacation! Summer Vacation! SUMMER VACATION!! SUMMER VACATION!!‘ Teachers covered their ears.

Outside the sun was in full shine.

We each had our final report cards in sealed envelopes to be handed over to our parents once we arrived home. We had done it before. Many times. We all knew the drill. And we all knew our individual situations…

With our year-end reports clutched tightly, Frisell and I flew down the iron stairs from the 2nd floor to the 1st, and made our final 5th grade exit by bursting through the front doors. It was through those large, tall, heavy oak doors that faced Steve Irwin’s house directly across Garfield Street. The air was filled with the ozone rich redolence of the passing storm.

As we had reached the end of the school year, we all had similar summer plans… playing with our friends. Each day. All day, beginning early when the doves cooed on the telephone wires and ending when the red and purple and white frosted tulips folded their petals for the night… and street lights began their glow.

Miles Kubly and Tim Crow were already outside when Frisell and I burst through. Together, the four of us quickly agreed to play softball at 9:30a on the school playground the next morning. Friday. June 1st. It would be our first summer activity! And a good one, at that. We divided up names of other kids to call up to round out the lineups.

With the groundwork laid for the summer’s first game, Frisell and I left Miles and Tim and passed the enormous pink and white snowball bushes guarding the school entrance. Glancing up at the soaked American flag drooping from the top of the glistening flagpole, we tiptoed around the reflective ground puddles as we approached raging Garfield Street.

Lightning continued a silent dance in the distance, and then thunder boomed distantly, and echoed distantly, and boomed even more distantly than the last time. The gutters on Garfield Street were still swollen with rushing rainwater heading down from 11th Avenue up to our left, to the storm drain near 12th at the end of the block to our right.

Suddenly, Frisell and I saw a paper boat racing wildly toward us down the raging gutter.

‘Hurry. Before it gets by,’ I shouted.

With a gifted natural agility, Frisell snapped the paper boat out from the rushing current. Together we unfolded the center-masted paper canoe only to discover that it wasn’t simply a wet paper boat. No. It was more than that. It was also Big Bob Willard’s year-end report card skillfully folded up heading to a watery grave.

There were some unflattering grades in red ink on the inside of Big Bob’s paper boat final report card. Personally, if I had that report card, I wouldn’t even go home. Big Bob wasn’t even supposed to open it. It was for his parents. I didn’t open mine. And Frisell didn’t open his, either.

It didn’t take Frisell or me even seconds to realize the situation with Big Bob’s report card. We carefully refolded it back into ship shape. Understanding what we’d seen, Frisell bent down and gently placed the little schooner back into the raging torrent, returning it to its voyage toward the storm drain down on 12th Avenue, which had become a rushing waterfall that dove into the black darkness.

Jack and Thelma Willard never did see their son’s 1961-1962 Year-End Report Card. Nor did they learn of Big Bob’s exceptional paper folding skills. It’s like Big Bob was a sailor. His report card boat was a beauty. I’d say Big Bob Willard could fold a piece of paper into as good a boat as anyone ever could.

And then, like each of the previous last days of school, Frisell and I walked home, shimmying as far as we could on that low railing that followed alongside part of the sidewalk… anxious to play softball on the first day of summer. On the way, we stopped by our favorite candy store on Madison Street and bought two Duffy’s Gabby Grape pops. I was told that in some eastern parts of the United States it was called ‘soda pop’. Or just ‘soda’. Too bad for them.

I didn’t understand what the ‘soda’ part was referring to. Then again, teenage kids working behind the counter that made root beer floats and coke floats and ruined the milk shakes were called ‘soda’ jerks. I instinctively knew that the ‘jerks’ part referred to the teenage kids. I never figured out what the ‘soda’ part was all about. Some of the teenage kids that made the floats had red dots on their faces. It looked like they got the measles. But they didn’t have measles. The druggist said they had pimples, which I guess is measles for teenagers.

After opening our Duffy’s Gabby Grape pops we emptied our pockets of last day change and bought a few candy bars. And one three-foot long rope of red Twizzler licorice. And a handful of Bit-O-Honey. Maybe two handfuls. Frisell also bought one of those large 5¢ waxy red lips. Maybe it was his way of celebrating the last day of school. I didn’t know. I thought he was just wasting a nickel. I mean, I knew he was.

Frisell ended up thinking so, too. He hadn’t had the waxy red lips more than two minutes before he chucked it in the trash. Gone. 5¢ waxy red lips thrown away. He had looked at it, put it in his mouth, bit into the paraffin, made a pushy face and tossed it into the trash. One toss, two points.

Neither Frisell nor I were surprised by Big Bob’s Year-End Report Card. We weren’t surprised he had converted it into a gutter-faring boat. It epitomized Big Bob. Even as elementary school kids we admired Big Bob’s daring and we kinda admired his questionable deeds and his lack of shame and his constancy to go against the rules.

It had long been those things about him that never changed. He had his own way.

And still, he was one of us; a close friend whom we cared for and loved deeply. He was family. It remains so to this day; years after Big Bob began what he would have called his final ‘dirt nap‘. That’s another common Big Bob Willard expression: ‘Dirt nap.’ Feel free to add it to your vocabulary. He won’t mind. He’d like it if his brain hadn’t become worm food the past few years.

Big Bob died peaceably at age 69 due to a cancer-ravaged body from a life of poor choices.

I was proud to be his friend.