For the Duration: The War Years (3 page)

I love going to Miss Leah's Dancing School every Saturday. The only thing is that it means I can't go down to my grandparents' store in Wallingford to help out Tom and Nana, like Dad and Buddy do. But since we go to Tom and Nana's house every Sunday, I still get to spend time with Tom. Tom is really my best grown-up friend since Dad is working two jobs—his regular job during the day at the State Office Building in Hart-ford and at night at the New Departure War Plant. Tom is the one I talk to about things that worry me, like the war.

This spring I am allowed to go downtown to Dancing School all by myself on the bus. The South Meriden bus driver on Saturdays is Mr. Al Comeau. Al and Mrs. Comeau are good friends of Mom and Dad and they live just down the street on Baldwin Street. They have a house that is just about the same size as ours. They also have a couple of kids who have their own bedrooms (not like us—Buddy and I have to share). But they go to Hanover School, not King Street, so we don't see them much, except in the summer when all the kids from all the streets in the neighborhood play together. In the Comeaus' house there are two very fancy statues on the mantel of the fireplace. One is a lady wearing a dress and apron holding a big bunch of wheat, and the other is a man in overalls with a big hay rake over his shoulder. They are painted very bright colors, and I bet they cost a lot of money!

To get downtown, I'd walk down Fairmount Avenue to Highland Avenue. Then I'd go up Highland to where it met Columbus Avenue. That was the bus stop. Some of the houses I walked by had flags with a blue star in their windows. The government gave these flags to the mothers if they had a son or daughter fighting in the war. I see more and more of these flags every day. Some houses have two or three flags. Mom told me that Aunt Kate will get a flag with a gold star on it because Cousin Blackie was killed. The gold star means that the mother's son or daughter gave his or her life for the country.

If I was a little late for the bus, and Mr. Al Comeau was driving, he'd wait for me. The bus cost one dime or a token. You could get three tokens for twenty-five cents.

The bus would go down Columbus Avenue, which was a long hill, to Hanover Street to Cook Avenue. Then it went up Cook Avenue (another hill) and turned down West Main Street.

The bus passed the YMCA, then the Palace movie theater where I saw all the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney musicals. Across from the Palace was Lamphier's Paint and Art Supplies store. I liked going in there to look at all the oil paints, water-colors, pastels, and books on how to draw. There were lots of other stores, too: Katz Brothers Sweet Shoppe, where all the high school kids went after school; Woolworth's Five- and Ten-Cent Store, which always had the best Halloween stuff; Connecticut Light and Power Company, which looked liked the picture of a Greek temple I saw ander's Candy and Pop-in a book; Growers Outlet Grocery Store; Christian Fox Music Store, where you could listen to records in little booths before you bought them; Alex corn store, where Mom got me popcorn so I wouldn't be carsick on long trips; and the Vienna Bakery, which always had decorated cakes in the window. There was a traffic tower that stood in the middle of West Main Street and Colony Street; Molloy's Stationery, which sold beautiful fountain pens; a couple of shoe stores; and the Alling Rubber Sports store, where Mrs. Anderson's husband worked. (Mrs. Anderson played the piano at Miss Leah's.)

The bus would turn the corner at Schulte's Smoke Shop, and there was the bus depot. The bus ride took thirty minutes.

Today I got off the bus and walked as fast as I could to Miss Leah's to find out what the surprise would be. I crossed the train tracks that went right through the middle of downtown to get to the Hamrah Building. That was one of the biggest brick buildings in all of Meriden. It was very old and a little spooky. Miss Leah's Dancing School was on the top floor. The stairs were very wide and went up and up and up. It had a lot of dark corners and hallways on every floor.

But Miss Leah's Dancing School was bright and shiny, with big mirrors on one wall so we could watch ourselves practicing. There was a room called the “waiting room” where sometimes Miss Leah's mom, Mrs. Grossman, sat at the desk. Mrs. Clar ence Anderson was the piano player. Her piano was in the big room with the mirrors. There were ballet bars along the walls, too.

Carol Morrissey, Patty Clark, Billy Burns, and I were the only ones in the advanced class that year, so everything we did was in “partners.” Carol and Patty went to King Street School with me. Carol, who was my partner, was in first grade. Patty was in my second-grade class and her partner, Billy, went to a different school.

When we got to class, the first thing we did was to warm up with simple tap steps, like “up-back-down,” “slaps,” and “time steps.” Then we would do our “travel steps,” going across the floor one at a time. As we got better, Miss Leah added turns and harder things like that. She taught us to “spot out turns,” which meant that we'd look at a spot on the wall, start to turn our bodies, then whip our heads around to look back at the same spot before our bodies got there. If you did it right, you didn't get dizzy.

Then we'd start working on our “routine” —the dance we would do in the recital. Every week, Miss Leah would give us some new steps to add. We would finally do all the steps to the music. I loved it! Mom wrote down all the steps for me in a little notebook so I could practice every night at home.