9th March 2012
Dear Cassi,
If I recall correctly in my life history it
is time for me to talk about middle school. If my calculations are right I first
attended Katherine Edwards Middle School in the summer of 1991 taking three
classes as a means for acclimating to the idea of having more than one teacher.
Katherine Edwards, from what I recall, was
a nurse in the First or Second World War. I do not believe she had any relation
to the area of the school for which she was named. The school was an old set of
buildings set by 605 Freeway. This location denoted it as a school servicing
the poor communities as the homes by a freeway have less value.
I know they built on to the school at some
point and then added a few “temporary building” for good measure. It was a
modest school for folks of modest means. I recall the front glass windows being
replace with those of all sorts of colors some misted and some blue, some glass
and some plastic gone more diverse as the windows moved closer to ground
level.
That’s kind of how that place was, just a
patchwork of passable bits. You look at each bit on its own then the bits are
okay. They are what they should be, but when you look at them together you get
a malformed hash.
My middles school was populated but students
whose parents didn’t care. When the parents stop caring about their children
the teachers follow. What we were left with was little more than a zoo for wild
children who thought they were grown.
So far as I can see, a youth is like a
rosebush. If a rose is never looked after it grows knotted thick and ugly. The
longer it lives in neglect the harder it is to return the plant to its noble
glory. The rose is a great survivor but its wild self is not so well off as its
tamed. Children are like that, the need looking after, and at my middle school
that was something they never had.
Stray safe, little sister
Richard Leland Neal
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