Rereading Bill Kidd's memories of the West End School today brought a host of memories to this old brain. Driving past the site today, overgrown and littered, it seems much too small to have ever been the location of a school and playground.

I went to the Clarke School, now a church parking lot, with everyone else from the "Frog Pond" section of town, and walked to school with Chuckie Avakian every day. It was a great time to be growing up. Imagine, we took toy guns, baseballs, bikes, and everything else imaginable to school. Miss Lunt taught 1st grade (taught my parents, too); Miss Healy was the 2nd grade teacher, and Miss Dermody, ( daughter of an East Douglas funeral director) led us through the 3rd.

I got "sent home" from school for the first time in Kindergarten ... something about fooling around during opening exercises ... thanks, Miss Dory; threw up into a wastebasket; wrote "I will not talk in class" thousands of times during recess; and proposed marriage to my 3rd grade heartthrob (fortunately, Jeanne had the good sense to laugh at me and wait for "Doc").

All of this makes me feel sad for today's kids who will never experience the freedom of spirit and place that we all took for granted. They will probably never put pollywogs in a jar, or clothes pin baseball cards to bicycle spokes either.

 Just few random thoughts on a rainy Florida morning. Thanks, Bill, for bringing it all back.