SIMPLICITY 

KG Report Card

My Kindergarten Report Card from 1958

We boomers started out just like our parents did and just how the next generation did, we had to learn the simple things of life. We had to learn our colors, our phone number, our birthday and harder things too.  We had to learn how to share and how to tie our shoes. 

What all of these things have in common is that they all started us on the road to learning the art of how to be a human being living in community.

Now I don't really remember a lot about KG but I do remember that the first day I came back I told my parents; "Boy I am glad that is over."    I truly was surprised when they insisted that I return the next day and even the next and the next day for another twelve years.  

I learned exactly two things in Kindergarten.  First I learned that it was hard to be the type of human being that the nuns wanted you to be.  Second I learned that Jesus loved you no matter what.  Both of these lessons are still incomplete in my life.  Through all of the boomer years I still am learning how to be a human being that is loving, kind, willing to share and to color inside the lines.  I am also still learning about the great love Jesus has for me, and not how I will be but how I am right now.

In KG we had lots of things to do, some of them important.  There was milk and cookie time and after that we rolled out some mats and we had nap time.  I don't think I ever slept during nap time but I did lay down and rest.  That too was a lesson.  Life could be divided into four parts.  Working, eating, playing, and sleeping.  That is how simple life really is and just think, this boomer learned it early.  The problem I had later on was putting it into action. 

When life gets you down, when trouble piles on top of trouble, remember life is simple.  Work, eat, play, and sleep is all you have to do.  Get enough of each and you can be happy too. 

Grampa

Many years ago, I had a person in my life I called "Grampa."  His actual title of course would be "Grandfather."  His name he answered to at least to the outside world was "Frank."  I never would call him that and for the record, while I was a child I don't think that I ever knew what his name was.  My mother called him "Pa" and my father called him "the old man."  

Grampa loved his grandchildren, of course that is what Grampas  are supposed to do.  In my early years, up to June of 1959 I lived in Bridgeport, an area on the Southwest side of Chicago that was the stomping ground of Mayor Richard Daley (the father, and REAL mayor of Chicago.)  I lived on Loomis Street near Archer Avenue just on the other side of the B and O railroad tracks.  It was a quiet neighborhood with not too many children.  I had one friend, a girl that lived at the end of the block named Coleen. She was a bit of a tomboy and so it was like playing with a guy.

Grampa would come over to visit his daughter, my mother Violet and to take me either for a walk or to the playground that was nearby.  I always asked him to take me to the Boiler Works that was a couple blocks away.  He could never say no to me and more often than not off we went.  We got to front of this building with a large opening and inside there were men using torches and pounding metal with hammers, the noise was magnificently loud and as usual it scared me and I would start to cry.  Grampa would take my hand and we would turn away from the fascinating and somewhat scary factory and we would make our way to the playground.  

In my teen years, which were near the end of his life, I would visit with him and we would play cards and he would play the harmonica for me.  I recorded one of the concerts and still have that tape in my collection.   I think God decided he could not be everywhere so he gave us grandparents. 

Chicken Soup for A Winter's Day

Today I look at winter with older and perhaps (just perhaps) wiser eyes.  But let's face it, I've experienced sixty winters already and I think that I've experienced most of what nature can throw at us when the sun is pointing more directly south of the equator.  Now when I was young, winter held no terrors for me or my sisters.  One time we went to the side of the overpass by McKinley Park on Chicago's southwest side.  It was the best hill around for using our sled.  We spent hours there and we were just a bit chilly when it was time to go home.  We started the long trek, about two and a quarter miles as the crow flies, but then again we were not crows.  We walked and walked and got colder and colder.  Now, I was the big brother and my sisters were really in bad shape.  In my pocket I was carrying a fortune, almost a whole dollar that I had saved up. We were about half way home when I knew Janice and Sandy could not go another step.  Then it hit me.  I had to do something.  On the corner was a greasy spoon sort of diner where the bus drivers would stop and get lunch or coffee or a coke or what have you.  I brought my sisters to into the place we went and sat at the counter and I ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup and three spoons.  The three of us sat there and shared the soup and warmed up so we could make it the rest of the way home.  The sight of three kids sharing a bowl of soup for some reason caused smiles to appear on all of the other patrons of the restaurant, at the time I wondered why.