Revisiting my days in elementary school in 1950s Brooklyn

October 2, 2020 William A. Gralnick

The eighth-grade PS 217 graduating class of 1959 or ’60. That’s Bill Gralnick, right-hand side, fourth row up, fourth boy in. Photo courtesy of Bill Gralnick

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It was a long walk for short legs to get to school. About a block away, I heard the hum. It sounded like millions of bees hiving together. I gripped my mother’s hand — tightly.

We approached the schoolyard, which opened up to a sea of bodies from which that hum was coming. I’d never seen so many kids in my life. The schoolyard was wall-to-wall children — literally — with some adults thrown in. And I knew not one. The sidewalk seemed to turn into wet cement; it became more and more difficult each time I put a foot down to pick it up again.

There were signs everywhere. It looked like the political conventions I’d watch with my parents on TV. Each sign, rather than announce the site of a state delegation, was a grade and class. My mother, quite good at such stuff, found my place all too quickly, said her goodbyes, and let go of me, or tried. I stuck to her like a suction cup to a board and cried like, well, like I’d never see her again. But, unlike me, she was made out of strong stuff, peeled my hand off hers, hugged me goodbye, and disappeared into the human ocean.

It’s amazing how isolated one can feel amidst hundreds and hundreds of bodies. The terror I felt was only slightly ameliorated as my class, now lined up and moving like ducklings, followed the teacher into the red brick building with massive metal crime deterrents covering the enormously tall and wide first-floor windows. So, there we were, thirty small bodies with a kindly, excited, young teacher, Mrs. Kimmel.

And education began.

Rumors abound in school, “fake news,” to scare the new kids. One at PS 217 was that you never wanted to get sent to the principal’s office. She was, it was said, at least as old as the school, dressed in black, hard as steel, and had this stare that nailed the ‘staree’ to the wall. It wasn’t long before I would be called to her office. I found that Miss Bildersee had earned her reputation well.

The reason I was there was not shared with me. Someone opened our class door, went to the teacher, and the teacher announced, “Billy Gralnick, report to the office.” My heart stopped. I was given a chunk of wood, “the pass,” and led by the executioner’s assistant to “the office.”

I was seated on a bench that gave new meaning to “hardwood” and looked like it had been installed right after the doors were first opened. There I waited. And waited. And waited some more until a woman appeared from the office to announce, “Miss Bildersee will see you now.” Jell-O that had taken my shape moved into the office and then to the inner sanctum.

What I saw and what was actually to be seen could not have been the same. What I think I saw looked exactly like the rumors, but more so. I remember what appeared to be a small, stern woman dressed like a Sicilian or Spanish mourner, all in black, complete with a black veil over her hair.

Through the veil came a voice that inquired, “Are you Billy Gralnick, the one summoned to death by my hand?”

I replied, “Yes, Ma’am.”

The voice said, “Your record says that once a week you will be late for school for a doctor’s appointment. Is that correct?” I replied, “Yes, Ma’am.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Aaaa-llergies, Miss Bildersee.” Pause.

“That will be all. And don’t forget to take your pass and give it back to Miss Kimmel.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

I trembled my way back to class, sat down, realized I still had the pass, had to get up, walk to Ms. Kimmel’s desk with thirty pairs of eyes on me, return it and walk back to my seat. I felt the eyes shift position in their sockets as they followed me.

School, it seemed, was not going to be fun.

These teachers knew their stuff. They were not social workers. They were not police personnel. They were not your friends. They were your teachers, and you respected them or you went to see Ms. Bildersee, and if that didn’t work, you went home with a note, and if that didn’t work — again, honest to God — during Assembly your name was called, you rose from your seat, and did a perp walk in front of the entire school, marched up the stairs to the auditorium stage where waiting for you was the assistant principal — with a canoe paddle. That usually worked.

I remember all my teachers, that’s how amazing they were. But some were more amazing than others. Miss Diehl, Ms. Nelly Ennis, and Miss McNulty. One taught social studies, one English, and the other math. But it wasn’t what they taught, it was how they taught it.

And then there was Max Proshan, a character unto himself, who taught general science.

Miss Diehl:

Like most of the teachers in school, Miss Diehl was short, stocky, and had gray hair. She was tough as nails, hard as steel. There was one way for things to be done: her way. She liked having “pets” and it was definitely best to be her pet and not in her doghouse. Pets clapped erasers, made sure the garbage was in the can, and most importantly, were exemplary students in every way. Susan Dickey was her pet and my first schoolgirl crush.

Aside from being adorable with dark hair and freckles, always impeccably dressed, Susan wore Mary Janes, black patent leather shoes that gleamed like tempered steel. Miss Diehl loved them. Ms. Diehl loved her.

“Snooty” would be a good descriptor for Susan, and clearly, if I was going to even be looked at, I needed to be a young version of an Eversharp razor commercial: I had to look sharp and be sharp.

Looking sharp, albeit for a somewhat goofy lookin’ kid, wasn’t easy. That was my mother’s job. Being sharp? I was on my own. I had to shine in class just like Susan’s shoes. Then came my chance.

I was always a good reader, ahead of my grade. I read fluently and clearly. My handwriting was atrocious, but what came out of my mouth off the written page was another story — usually.

Just not in this story.

We were reading about the agricultural history of America and the invention of the cotton gin. As the reading assignment went from one student to the next, up and down the rows, I would count ahead to see which paragraph would be mine. While others read, I practiced in silence. I was in the middle of the last row by the window. Miss Diehl would call out each student’s name with a sharpness that was bracing. The student had to stand up straight, face the class, and read in a loud, but not too loud voice, enunciating clearly. As I stood, I was facing Susan, whose scrubbed face must have blinded me.

Suddenly, I was nervous. I did not get off to a good start, but I was in there, moving towards the groove, when disaster struck. I had come to the inventor’s name, Cyrus McCormick. In my clear, not-too-loud voice I proudly enunciated “Cries McCork.”

And Miss Diehl cried out, “CRIES McCORK?!? William Gralnick, who on earth is that? READ IT AGAIN!!”

I did. Perfectly. But the damage was done. Smoke poured from Miss Diehl’s furnace and there was a smirk on Miss Shiny Shoe’s face, a smirk that lasted until eighth grade — and this was only fifth.

Miss Ennis:

I don’t know if any of these women were married, but we addressed them all as Miss, so I guess it wasn’t any of our business if they were. Miss Ennis was to English as Miss Diehl was to social studies. The only difference was, instead of gray hair, hers was yellow, like corn.

The New York City School System, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that students no longer had to learn how to diagram sentences. The only problem was, they didn’t ask Miss Ennis what she thought of the idea. Her thought? That such a ruling was just short of insanity, the ruination of future culture and civilization. “Students not knowing how to diagram?” She never added another sentence. Furor took over, which produced a “Harumph!” It didn’t take too long for people to stop asking what she thought.

Her second pet peeve was pronunciation. Her students had better know where the accents went in a multi-syllable word, or there was a payment to be exacted. The payment was a look of grave disappointment, like you had let her cat die because of some failing on your part. The other payment, of course, was on your report card.

To this day, I remember the student who had in her class the same experience I had in Miss Diehl’s. The word was grimace. Today it is acceptable to everyone, except me, to pronounce that word exactly as it is written, “grim’ace.” Back in the day, the accent was on the last syllable: gri-mace’. To this very day, I can only say it that way, and when I hear someone say “grim’ace,” I honor Miss Ennis’s memory by making a gri-mace’.

That’s what I call a teacher having a lifelong impact on a student.

Miss McNulty:

“Bones” McNulty was in a category by herself. Miss McNulty taught seventh grade math. She had gray hair, but she was so terrifying to look at, her hair could have been puce and I’d not have noticed.

Miss McNulty was about five feet eleven inches tall. She looked to weigh about fifty-three pounds. Her fingers were as long as yardsticks, all boney with protruding joints, and blue veins coursing along her skin. When she wasn’t happy, she pointed a finger at you and lightning flamed from its tip, burning holes right through your shirt into your chest.

She was often not happy. The only thing I learned in seventh-grade math was to duck.

Mr. Proshan:

With the accent after Pro, he was a sad but almost comic figure. A veteran of WWII, he was, in the parlance of the day, “shellshocked.” The manifestation of that was when he heard a sudden, sharp, loud noise like the backfire of a car, he would blurt out “Woowoo!” and then go on teaching as if nothing of the sort had come out of his mouth. The science classroom window overlooked four-lane Newkirk Avenue. Need I say more?

Mr. Proshan either had a closet full of brown suits or just one. In either case, that’s what he wore every day. And the same near-sighted tailor must have made them all. His pants were too short, and his sleeves were too long. The shirt was of no consequence. And he either wore the same socks every day or also had a drawer full of them. The sleeves, however, were another story.

These were the days of blackboards and chalk, erasers, and dust. By late in the day, the tray under the blackboard would be full of chalk dust. Mr. Proshan was a short man, and invariably, after writing on the board, he would sweep around to face the class, and in so doing, scoop up copious amounts of chalk dust between the jacket sleeve and his shirt cuff.

At that point, you could assume one of two things would happen. He’d either point to a student as he turned, or a car would backfire; he’d throw up his hands and go … well, you know. Either way, he would suddenly be enveloped in a cloud of white dust. Now, clearly, for dopey eighth graders, this type of daily comedy sketch was bound to test the restraints not already tightly laced into that age group.

One day they broke. It was report card day. Everyone was nutty with anticipation. I had been doing very well, and was expecting an A. I didn’t get it.

Poor Mr. Proshan was hit with a double whammy. While he was collecting chalk dust in his cuffs, a truck backfired. He spun around, and what happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. His sleeves, like Mickey’s in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, billowed out. His “Woowoo!” seemed to hang in front of his lips where it was enveloped in the growing cloud of white dust. There was a gasp, a moment of silence, and then some thirty-five students just fell out. It was mass hysteria. Tears rolling down cheeks, palms slapping desks … Had we been the audience for a comedy, it would have been wonderful. We were not.

Mr. Proshan went crazy. He turned a color I had never seen on a human being before. Roman candles shot out of his eyes and ears, and very un-teacher-like phrases exploded from his mouth. My best recollection is something like, “Laugh at me, will you? I’ll show you, you little bastards.” He scooped up all the report cards, a red pen, and proceeded to flunk the entire class. Having handed out the last card, he said, “Now get outta here and go home!”

Going home with an “F” in science was not a good thing. My mother sat me down in the kitchenette and, stone-faced, listened to my story. She then turned the same color Mr. Proshan had, with similar pyrotechnics to accompany the twisting of her face into a contortion of anger she didn’t match again for years. The Exorcist comes to mind. She was looking at straight A’s except for his “F” in the middle of the line. “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? WHAT ABOUT THAT PROJECT MR. COHEN HELPED YOU WITH??”

I explained as best I could. She was fuming, but fortunately not at me. She was sputtering mad and sputtered all night till morning when she said, “Get in the car!” Not only had she hardly ever driven me to school, she rarely ever saw numbers on a clock before ten.

This same lady who previously verbally assaulted a gang and promised to call in air strikes if they didn’t get off our block now parked her car and was headed missile-like straight for Mr. Proshan’s door with me in tow.

“HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? THIS IS A STRAIGHT-A STUDENT! YOU COULD RUIN HIS ACADEMIC AVERAGE!! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THIS “F” WILL FOLLOW HIM THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL?”

While this tirade was going on, I was under a desk somewhere wrapping myself in humiliation, or wishing I was.

The bell rang, she left, and I went to class and awaited with dread for seventh period. I walked in and sat down in a now deathly silent classroom. Mr. Proshan called on me and asked me to give the report I didn’t give on F-bomb day. He waxed rhapsodic, took back my report card, which had to be turned in with a parent’s signature, scrubbed out the star-spangled “F” and over it put a big blue “A+,” with no asterisks.

And the other students?

I was thankful it was the end of the second semester and the next year I’d be in the Midwood building. I was sure only greater numbers protected me from being assassinated by the kids whose grades weren’t changed.

We learned later, though, that Saint Mildred the Mother wasn’t the only complainant, only the most threatening. The principal investigated the “grade slaughter” and mandated all the grades be re-evaluated and re-posted. We heard through the grapevine the following year that the school was Proshan-less; he had retired.

Bill Gralnick is the author of “The War of the Itchy Balls and Other Tales from Brooklyn.” His writings can be found at https://www.williamgralnickauthor.com/.