At age 5, living in Tulsa, OK, recovering from severe tonsilitis, I accompanied Mother to a city clinic. The doctor recommended tonsilectomy, adnoidectomy, and circumsion in a city hospital. The clinic doctor and nurse made it clear to me that I was "a charity case".

Because of the circumcision I had to stay overnight in the hospital. One nurse objected several times about having to attend "a charity case".

These two experiences provoked me and I described them to the kid next door. "That's nothing, Sonny! Wait till you start First Grade. They'll put you in the class with the poor kids and the slow ones!"

Any one who has not lived under overt segregation (covert segragation is still rampant!) in America doesn't realize that segregation is not restricted to African-American and Native American citizens and their children. It also applies to "poor whites".

When you began elementary school in Tulsa, you entered Grade 1B (first semester); 1A (second semester) followed. And, in Tulsa, you were assigned either to 1B1 or 1B2 or 1B3. "They'll put you in 1B3 with the poor kids and the slow ones!"

This incensed me. "Isn't there anything I can do about that?" "Yes. If you can show them you can read and write and calculate on the day you start First Grade, they might move you up to 1B1." So improvised "Head-Start" meant survival to this 5-year-old!

I'd already started to parse out the letters and words in each Burpee Seed Catalog mailed to my gardner-father. I also worked with my mother's high school history book. I badgered every adult within begging distance -- including any passerby, as I sat with book on fence -- to tutor me in this or that.

So, on entering First Grade, at Kendall Elementary School, I could read, write, and calculate a little. In particular, I could scrawl my name on the blackboard. That's more of an accomplishment than you might think. I was christened "Herman Juvenis Hays". My father was Herman Huston Hays and he wanted to name me "Herman Houston Hays, Jr.", but his mother objected. Dad thought that "Juvenis" is Latin for "Junior". Wrong! "Juvenoris" is Latin for "Junior"; "Juvenis" is Latin for "Young". Sensible Grandmother nicknamed me "Sonny". (Later, before entering high school, I changed "Juvenis" to "John", the name of my paternal grandfather.)

So I was able to scrawl this impressive moniker:""Herman Juvenis Hays".

But I was still put into 1B3! And we were told we wouldn't have a reading primer for months. I raised such a fuss that I was locked in the cloakroom.

Fortunately, one of the customers of my dressmaker-mother was Mrs. Satgas (sic!), a teacher with considerable seniority at Kendall School. She made them test me, and I soon was put into 1B1 and given a bootiful Bobs-Merrill Primer (with that great story about The Gingerbread Boy). I (privately) completed this primer the first day.

Actually, my transfer from 1B3 to 1B1 was not as tranquil as I may have implied, due to my boyhood addiction to "showboating". On the first day in 1B1, to amuse a little red-headed girl, I stuck a crayon in each nostril and growled, "I'm a sabre-toothed tiger!" When Teacher whirled around, and I tried to remove and hide the crayons, I succeeded only in breaking them and embedding a stump of crayon in each nostril. While the School Nurse dug at them, I prayed, "Please don't let them send me back to 1B3! I'll try to be smart about being smart!"

A frightening experience in the 2nd Grade magnified my fear of segregation and discrimination. At that time, Tulsa elementary schools began "The Platoon System" in the Second Grade. Instead of doing all classwork in one room, you had a homeroom and took various classes in other classrooms -- as in junior high school. Kendall School was built in "The Greek Style" -- many one-story rooms linked in a "U" around the playground, with a roof over the "porched" lane in front of the classrooms. At either end of this rectangular structure were heavy-wire gates that were locked during school hours. When children, from 2nd to 6th Grades, changed classes, teachers stepped off the porch into the gravel to herd in the smaller kids, like sheep.

In the 2nd Grade, one of my classes was in "Health". One morning, Teacher remarked, "Of course, none of you children drink coffee --." "I do", I interrupted. The next thing I knew I was stripped to my underwear, lying on a cot in the sunshiny yard, drinking orange juice, along with the "Sunshine Kids", and the butt of classmate jokes. I tried to tell Mom and Dad about this, but, typically, they were unreachable.

The worst was yet to come. On the second day, about noon, an ominous-looking Suit showed up, saying, "Get dressed, and come with me!" I was transported down town, stripped of my clothes again, and locked into a gymn with some kids who didn't seem house-broken. I sat in a corner, crying. Then the Suit appeared again, saying, "Get dressed and come with me!" I was put back into my homeroom and left to ponder my Fate. It seems that some clerk at "Headquarters" had misfiled my card with "The Retarded Children". Yes, I was a very good boy after that episode -- for at least three or four days!

However, in 2nd Grade, I also found an extracurricular outlet for learning. Mother started working daily in a downtown shop and left me, early, outside the school gate. To occupy me after school, Mom arranged for me to take "Expression Lessons" from Mrs. Kimball. I recited at banquets, political rallies, on the "KIddy Hour" at the radio station, etc., and performed with other students of Mrs. Kimball in fairy tale and folk plays. Much of my theatrical activity, for the next two years, involved performing an a "Minstrel Show". (I didn't know any better. I did it. But I didn't did it!) I blackened my face, put on a "fright wig", dressed in a garish green-and-yellow suit, and, like a small Al Jolson, performed as "Endman", telling jokes, singing, and "dancing a jig", in various theaters in Tulsa and neighboring towns.

(This, incidentally, relates to the original meaning of "Jim Crow" -- "whites stealing the stuff of blacks", in music, in the theater, etc.. You see, in the 19th century, a former slave developed a dancing-and-singing act he performed on a "showboat" in a Crow costume, billed as "Jim Crow". A white performer stole his act, at better pay, and took away a lot of his billings. And did you know that one of the reasons for developing "Bebop", after World War II -- by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, xxx -- was to extend jazz into a style that only African-American musicians could then perform, in order to get more work?)

Next exciting episode, the son of miseducation of jonhays, or, why Ida Bell Brrrrrrr stomped my feet with her many-janes.

ROOSTER