I turned up the street on my normal route bringing Suzy to school a few days ago, and I heard the unmistakeable crunch of my tires crushing nuts that had fallen from the trees…
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I went to Gaylor’s for grades 1, 2 & 3… before entering Hamden Hall in grade 4. Gaylor’s was a tiny private school that was a throwback to the 19th century. It was a one room class room… now granted there are probably a few of these schools still kicking around today in the rural parts of our country. And while New Haven isn’t a huge metropolis, it is still called home to 150,000 souls. So a one room school for Grades one thru six had to be a bit of a novelty.
Why was I there? I have no clue. I think my parents thought that I would do better in a small environment… I would stay there thru grade six and then I would enter Hopkins… where Paul had gone to school.
I can remember just 2 boys from Gaylor’s… and only because they also moved over to Hamden Hall with me in grade four.
The school was in this old Victorian home and I don’t think there were more than 50 students in the entire complement (that’s grade 1 thru 6). The backyard of the school was the outside play area. No grass to speak of. A graveled drive, and this huge horse chestnut tree dominated the entire space. I remember falling on the gravel (it seemed more like rocks to me) and scraping my hands, ripping the knees of my pants, and cutting my knees.
In the fall, those huge chestnuts would litter the backyard. The nut themselves were enclosed in yet another shell that had bumps and made me think of corn fritters or sea mines. If you stepped on one of the fallen nuts by mistake you knew it… you would practically twist an ankle. But there was an special crunch to tromping on the nuts and grinding them into the gravel rocks. The nuts were also good for throwing. There must have been some prohibition against using them as missiles; but I can’t help but think that it would be awfully hard to keep 3rd grade boys from heaving them at one another.
I remember little from those days. A vague outline of the school, the interior of the room itself; but most significantly, that huge tree, fall days and running around the yard amongst the gravel and the horse chestnuts, hand and knees scraped.
I think my mother told me that it was lack of an adequate play area that convinced my parents that I had to go to a different school. And since Hopkins didn’t begin ’til the 7th grade… a school would have to be found for 4, 5 & 6.
I was accepted to Hamden Hall (along with Steven Hardy and Duncan Moffitt); but I had to be tutored in math that summer before entering. It turned out that in addition to lacking “gym facilities”, Gaylor’s was not particularly good at instructing the “3 Rs”.
I guess it is convenient for me to think that my less than sterling academic career had its genesis at Gaylor’s… and being distracted by the sounds of mashing horse chestnuts under foot.