From the Bob Willard Collection, Volume 1
June 2, 2020 First Edition
The last day of elementary school in 1962 was Thursday, May 31st. Every boy and every girl in all the classrooms on all four of the floors were excited and eager! It was simply impossible to sit still. It was always impossible to sit still on the last day of school. In every classroom, on all the floors, young, squirming eyes watched the second hands on the school clocks click, click, click, click… Counting. Waiting. Expecting.
Meanwhile, dark clouds the size of mountains congealed outside and scolded tightly into a black storm. A constant rumble of thunder shook the ground.
At the end of the 2nd lunch period, with the clock’s hour hands nearing 1:00p, we all jumped at a sudden bright flash and an explosively loud KABOOM! and then the instantaneous downpour of cold rain and cold sleet. A huge storm arrived at Henry M. Teller Elementary.
For it to rain on the last day of school was unusual. The sky had been sunny and the air warm for every previous last day of school. Yet, still, as Dennis Blum correctly recalled:
Leaden clouds hung low.
The storm stayed until 2:30p and then began to soften and move away. The sky overhead slowly lightened in cadence with the ticking clocks. Every kid had one more class period to endure!
With black eyes and blue eyes and brown and green and gray eyes and hazel frozen on the classroom clocks, at 3:10p, right on time, the year’s final school bells clanged loudly throughout the long hallways. Our shackles were unlocked. The clanging bells never sounded so sweet. Then, as if we had practiced it for days, every kid screamed out in excitement, at the same instant, as loud as their lungs could screech. Just like every year. Crazy. Hallelujah. Teachers covered their ears. Students screamed louder. ‘Summer vacation! Summer Vacation! SUMMER VACATION!!‘
We all had our final report cards in hand, in sealed envelopes, to be opened by our parents once we arrived home. We had all done it before. Many times. Each of us could do it in our sleep. Every single one of us. We all knew the drill. And we all knew our individual situations…
But as it was the beginning of summer vacation, many of us had other things on our minds… like playing with our friends each day. Beginning early when the mourning doves cooed and ending when the red and purple and white frosted tulips folded their petals for the night.
On this last day of 5th grade, with our report cards clutched tightly, Frisell and I flew down the iron stairs from the 2nd floor to the 1st, and exited the school by bursting through the front door. It was through those large, tall, heavy oak doors that faced Steve Irwin’s house directly across Garfield Street. The air filled with the rich redolence of blossomed roses misted by ozone.
Miles Kubly and Tim Crow were already outside. The four of us quickly agreed to play baseball at 9:30a on the school playground the next morning. Friday. June 1st. We divided up lists of other kids to call to round out the lineups.
With baseball plans in place, 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 to flash in the distance and thunder continued its boom, and echo, and boom. The gutters on Garfield were swollen with rushing rainwater, heading from 11th Avenue down to the storm drain at the end of the block on 12th.
Then, suddenly, Frisell and I both saw a paper boat floating precariously down the gutter toward us. It was moving quite fast.
‘Hurry. Before it gets by,’ I shouted.
With natural speed, Frisell snapped the paper boat out from the rushing current. It was like watching Poseidon pluck the Argo out of a turbulent sea. Together, we unfolded the paper boat, only to discover that it wasn’t just a paper boat. It was Big Bob Willard’s year-end report card headed to a watery grave.
With C’s and a D printed on the inside of the paper Argo, we carefully refolded Big Bob’s final report card back to being notably seaworthy. We understood what we’d seen, nodded to one another, gestured, and then Poseidon bent over and placed the paper Argo back into the raging torrent, sending it on its travels, down toward the storm drain which was now a rushing waterfall that dove into the black darkness below.
And then, like all the other years, Frisell and I continued home… anxious to play baseball on the first day of summer. Neither of us were surprised by the report card that became the Argo. It epitomized Big Bob. Even back then, as elementary school aged kids, we admired his daring and his lack of shame and his constancy to go against the rules. Those things of Big Bob that never changed. He had his own way. And he was one of us; a close, close friend whom we cared for and loved deeply. He was family. It remains so still.
Cantations 