Tales of Oxford Elementary School 1949-1955

By Jimmy Dean (Oxford elementary class of 1955, Garfield Junior High 1958, BHS 1961)


Rationale: these brief tales or anecdotes are things I remember, or seem to remember, from the Oxford days--stories that I hope may resonate with others who attended Oxford in the 1950s.  With the stories--Tales of Oxford--I try to present a "slice of life"--my life--with the hope that others might recover some of their own experiences.
 

Earliest Recollections

Oxford for me was truly a neighborhood school.  My mother walked me from my boyhood home to kindergarten each day.  By the time I was in first grade, I walked myself to school.  I used several routes to get from my home on the corner of Spruce and Rose.  One route I liked was down Rose to Oxford , past Scarich's Grocery and up past the Church of the Cedars to Eunice, where the Traffic Boys helped me to cross to the northwest corner of Oxford and Eunice.  I walked past bushes thick with red berries.  I would pick handfuls and throw them, one at a time, from the cache in my fist.
 

Kindergarten

Kindergarten was a blast--no worries, no stress!  Humongous wooden blocks, and nap time with whole milk in cartons.  My recollection of the Kindergarten room was that it was vast, with big south-facing windows and lockers for our nap-rolls and blankies.  I had no trouble separating from my mother because I wanted to play with those huge blocks.  Around Christmas the teacher taught us all how to cut a string of Christmas trees using scissors and green paper.  I somehow got things backward, with holes rather than trees.  Every Christmas there was a huge tree in the first floor foyer, outside the Principal's, Mr. Boyack's, office.  I wasn't a church goer but I liked gathering around the tree in a circle and singing "Adestes Fideles" and "Silent Night."  Mr. Burgess, Alethea and Blanford's dad, was the Santa each year.  The nurse's office where our eyes were tested and where we received the polio vaccine in little paper cups was opposite Mr. Boyack's office.
 

First Grade

We read Dick and Jane in first grade .  The lives of Dick, Jane, and Spot were very comforting to me, the product of a divorce.  I didn't have a brother or sister, but in certain ways I could make connections with the fictional lives of Dick and Jane.  In any event reading Dick and Jane was a painless way to learn to read.   Shortly after my success with the Dick and Jane readers, I invested heavily in comic books--but only the blandest and most banal kind.  Bruce Duncan was reading far more interesting stuff.  Two drawers of my chest of drawers (with underwear and socks) were heavy with comic books.  I liked Disney and Looney Tunes.  Irony was lost on me.  When I was very young, I went to the Saturday cartoon festivals at the Oaks Theater on Solano, near the Alameda.  We often went in packs of kids.  The cartoons went on for hours, interspersed with Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges episodes.  Eventually, though, I was gaga for 3-D comic books and movies, which we would view with the cardboard green and red glasses.  My all-time favorite 3-D movie was Fort Ti, which I also saw at the Oaks Theater.  A huge cannon came right out of the screen toward us, and then it went off.  I ducked.  Sometimes I went to the United Artists theater on Shattuck or even to downtown Oakland once for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  But my neighborhood theater was the Oaks.
 

  The Split-Level Playground

I loved the Oxford playground .  I forget when I took to kickball--probably pretty early in my Oxford career, during recesses.  I wanted to play kickball for a living when I grew up.  Remember "Slow and bouncy"?  For reasons that are not clear to me now, we could demand certain kinds of pitches--pitches that we could then whomp into the "fields."  One kickball area was near the west entrance.  The bigger area was the softball field at the southwest corner of the lower playground.  My favorite subject in school was recess.  For a while I brought little matchbook-type cars to play with on the sloped dirt and bush areas on the northern parts of the lower terrace.  Billy Gatewood, Roger von Seeburg , and Kent Rasmussen perhaps brought their cars as well--I know a bunch of kids did.  However, I kept on with that play far longer than I should have--so long that I became self-conscious about it.  One day at the tetherball court, Norm Randolph pronounced what I regarded as a swear word.  I think it was "damn."  It might have been "hell."  I was scandalized, much to Norm's amusement.
 

The Cafeteria

They say smells bring back memories.  I can still smell the persistent cole slaw odor wafting from the cafeteria before lunch.  The smell was so strong that it lingered for hours after lunch.  I hated cole slaw, particularly the Oxford elementary school cole slaw.  I detest cole slaw to this day.  Daily milk may have been mandatory.
 

The Jungle Gym

The jungle gym was on the upper playground near the girls bathroom entrance.  Girls would sometimes lurk around the jungle gym to kiss the boys--or rather to try.  I don't recall whom else they wanted to kiss.  I don't even remember who "they"--the girls--were.  I did know that I didn't want to be kissed.  We would make our getaway by running all the way to the boys' bathroom, which was near the cafeteria.  The girls never followed us into there but they would chase us right to the door.  I would have been outraged if they had dared to enter the boys' bathroom, which was a sanctuary.
 

The Equipment Room

We would get kickballs, baseballs and bats, basketballs, and other sports equipment (for recess and after school) from the equipment room, which was located just west of the cafeteria.  There was a little wooden walkway and, when you went inside immediately to the right, a special room, with a dutch door, with the athletic equipment.  I think we had to leave something as collateral to get equipment for after school activities.  We also saw movies in that room (the bigger room).  I remember one afternoon we watched My Friend Flicka in that bigger room.  The movie was really boring but getting out of school to watch a movie was quite exciting in its way.  Mary Yarwood performed "I don't know why she swallowed a fly" in that room to great applause.
 

Rainy Day Basement

When it rained we couldn't have recess outside.  On rainy days we went to the basement near the boys' bathroom and under the northwest wing of the school.  We were encouraged to share stories and jokes.  I learned some incredibly lame jokes involving "time flying," chickens crossing the road, and morons.  I thought they were hilarious at the time, and the tellers unimaginably daring.  In the south wing we had air raid drills where we learned to bend down with our butts in the air and cover our heads with our arms--in case of nuclear attack.
 

Bruce Duncan's Cartoons

Bruce was a unique personality--very imaginative, good hearted, with a fine (if somewhat twisted) sense of humor.  He was a brilliant cartoonist. He drew haunted houses that featured all kinds of deaths. One walked into the house--all of this in the clever drawing/ cartoon--and immediately fell through a trap door on to, say, an axe blade. Then one proceeded to a cauldron of boiling oil; and so forth. I loved those cartoons and took to doodling them myself rather than listening to the teacher, especially if we were discussing math, which I hated. To this day I count on my fingers.  (For more on Bruce's artistic talent, see Ray Wootten's Memories .)
 
 

Birthday Party

This vignette also stars Bruce Duncan, arguably our most memorable graduate.  Every year my grandmother rented the swimming pool and party room of the Berkeley Women's City Club, a fine old Arts and Crafts style building on Durant near Ellsworth.  (It is now called the Berkeley City Club.)  Every year I would invite all my male classmates to my party, which was an event.  After swimming we would gather in the party room for cake, ice cream, and present opening.  One time we were all in the party room but no Bruce Duncan.  My mom went down the hall of this austere, refined building and called out in the general direction of the dressing room, "Bruce, we're all waiting for you.  We are about to have the cake!"  Bruce responded, "Do you want me to come right now?"  Mom: "Yes, right now!"  Bruce, dressed only in his jockey briefs, strode down the hallway to the party room, much to my mother's horror.  Bruce was the only one in the room not embarrassed.
 

Amador Avenue

Amador runs vaguely east-west between Shattuck and Henry streets.  It was a special street because so many cool people lived on it or very near it.  Norm Randolph lived on the east side of Shattuck virtually at the entrance to Amador avenue. Carroll Sinclair lived on the north side near Shattuck.  Jerry Strong and Billy Tregea lived down toward Henry Street, near the junction of Amador and Mariposa.  Joey Mueller lived at the bend of Shattuck just north of Walnut.  Shireen Mayeri and Dorene Lindstrom lived somewhere around there too, on Shattuck.  In the autumn, when the leaves fell off the trees on Amador street and were raked into piles, and when it rained, the street was lovely in a melancholy way (see the picture of Amador street below).  My mom would bring me to Amador street for Hallowe'en trick or treating.
 

Traffic Boys

It was not Traffic "Persons" in those days. Sergeant Paul Hurych of the Berkeley Police Department made us--fifth and sixth grade boys--very proud to wear the red cardigans and yellow caps marking us as the Oxford school contingent of the Berkeley Junior Traffic Police. Fifth grade boys were corporals (two stripes); sixth grade boys were sergeants (three stripes). Sergeants got to call out the cadence as we marched in best military fashion off to our posts.  Officer Hurych impressed on us the importance of escorting our tiny charges safely across the streets. The coolest squads got to go to the corner of Walnut and Shattuck or Los Angeles and Shattuck (perhaps Shattuck and Spruce), because these were the semaphor squads (large STOP signs on sticks).  Traffic Boys departed from their posts on the Shortcut .  Officer Hurych trained us to march in formation and to do about-faces, smartly swiveling on our toes. Each year he held a "Simon Sez" competition on the lower playground, with parents as onlookers. Officer Hurych had to say "Simon Sez" before an order, such as "Right face!" If we turned to the right without his saying "Simon Sez" first, we had to bow out of the competition, executing a brisk about-face as we exited.  You couldn't flinch the slightest bit, but of course there was considerable sly cheating in that.  Officer Hurych could just tell you to depart if he caught you flinching and you didn't take yourself out. In 1955 it came down to Dave Gordon and me.  I had a slight little flinch early on, when Officer Hurich bellowed "About face!!!!"  But I felt it wasn't enough of a flinch to constitute an error (or at least an error that anyone caught).  And I really wanted to win; I wanted to beat Dave Gordon because he always bested me in the other competitions like spelling. But I lost. I couldn't stand the pressure and had a huge, unmistakable flinch at a command lacking "Simon Sez."  I made a humiliated exit to the ranks of the other traffic boys while Officer Hurych pinned a star on the already over-decorated (in my mind) Dave Gordon.
 
 
1954 Oxford Traffic Boys
1955 Oxford Traffic Boys

George Comozzi's history of the Traffic Boys


 

Kissing Miss Swain

Miss Swain was a rock or anchor in my elementary school education.  I loved her like a mother.  I once told Billy Gatewood that I wanted to kiss Miss Swain.  He said that was a great idea and he would do it too.  The problem was how to do this so she wouldn't know.  Eventually we settled on the scheme of kissing our hands and then gently patting her.  I think Billy got away with it somehow but I didn't.  Miss Swain asked me what I was doing, and I confessed the truth very quickly.  I think she was touched by our devotion.  I didn't try anything like that ever again.
 

Tommy Kocher's TV

Tommy Kocher lived in the single-family army barracks-style homes near Berryman Path . Tommy moved to Orinda before long, so his name will probably not be recognized by Oxford graduates reading this. Tommy's family had a big TV in their living room. My mom and I didn't have a TV yet, so I would go over to Tommy's house just about every late afternoon to watch "The Howdy Doody Show." I had a crush on Miss Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring, an Indian maiden. We booed and hissed at Phineas T. Bluster, the bad guy. Of course we wanted to be part of the "Peanut Gallery." Everybody loved Clarabell, a clown who never spoke but who honked a kid's bicycle horn he wore at his waist. One day we played "taxi" and Tommy shut the car door on my hand. I lost a fingernail and it was very painful. Tommy liked to wrestle and he was very strong. I got stronger just trying to defend myself from Tommy, who ended up playing football for one of the valley teams. Tommy dared me to throw myself in a bush of poison oak that was on Berryman Path. That was when I got my first bad case of poison oak.

Jeff Adams' TV

When Tommy's family moved, I needed another TV. So I went to Jeff Adams ' house on Saturday mornings to watch the Buster Brown Show, Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, Wild Bill Hickock, Victory at Sea, and whatever else came on the tube. The Buster Brown show featured an evil but most entertaining frog named Froggy. He always made a striking entrance at the top of a grandfather clock.  Andy Devine would intone, "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!!!" There was this sound like a huge rubber band going "b-o-y-oy-oy-oy-i-n-g," a puff of smoke, and out would pop Froggy from the top of the clock, cackling "Hiya kids, hiya, hiya, hiya! Ha, ha, ha!"  Kids loved Froggy because he was incredibly naughty to adults and because they knew Froggy was on their side. There was also a cat named Midnight.  Each week there was some bombastic guest--an actual person rather than a puppet--who would lecture on some boring subject and be victimized by Froggy.  One episode I remember starred a chef as the victim.  He tediously explained how to make a chocolate cake, but Froggy would interrupt him (as he did all the dreary guests).  The chef said, "You take some of this chocolate . . ." and Froggy finished his sentence for him, "and you put it all over your face!"  The chef said, "Yes, you put it all over your face," and then put the chocolate all over his face.  Froggy laughed his evil laugh--"ha, ha, ha!"--and Midnight licked his chops and said, in a falsetto voice, "Nice!" In those days we didn't know that TV could stunt our intellectual growth, so we watched a lot of it.
 

Jeff Adams' Little Brother

Jeff Adams's brother Bill was the Evel Knievel of our neighborhood--before any of us knew about Evel Knievel. The Adams family owned the little apartment buildings on the northwest corner of Rose and Shattuck; so they also owned the parking lot west of the apartments. This parking lot was not paved but was gravel. Jeff's brother would construct elaborate ramps in this gravel parking lot and then drive his soap-box racer off the ramps at full speed. It makes my hair stand on end even to remember what he did. He was always getting banged up, particularly his knees and elbows. Jeff and I and Bill would sometimes lob water balloons over the ivy-covered slope from the parking lot to the cars passing by on Rose Street. We thought this was hilarious, but at least one driver who suffered a direct hit on his front windshield did not think that was so funny. His anger put a damper on our glee.
 
 

Cowboys and Indians

We boys played cowboys and Indians a lot.  We had fake cowboy pistols, sometimes with elaborate holsters, cowboy hats, and bows and arrows with rubber tips.  For a while there the craze was Davey Crockett because of Fess Parker's television show.  Eventually, though, I went over to the side of the Indians.  I decided that the Apaches were a lot cooler than the cowboys and cavalry.  I worked on my silent creeping and sneaking up on cowboys for months.  My mother made me an Apache wig from an old mop, which she dyed black.  Then I wrapped a rag around it for the true Apache look.  Once when I was playing at Live Oak Park some adults saw me and laughed and laughed.  I can remember even to this day exactly where I was when the adults laughed at me.  We faced down wily posses and such .
 

Love's Variety

The east side of Shattuck was a cool place in the early 1950s.  There was a huge Lucky's store (supermarket) on the corner of Rose and Shattuck.  You could read magazines on the floor for hours and nobody minded.  I bought comic books there.  South of that was a soda fountain with a purple motif and a jokebox.  I hunt out there later, in junior high.  But earlier I spent a lot of time in Love's Variety Store, which was sort of a mini-Woolworth's near Vine on the east side of Shattuck .  It had many cheap toys.  In those days "Made in Japan" meant flimsy.  You had to watch out for those toys.  Around Hallowe'en the store would stock plastic and rubber masks.  On Vine street just down from Love's, Roger Von Seeburg's dad owned a hobby store.  How cool was that?  The barber shop was just south of Vine on Shattuck.  It had a revolving barber pole outside.  The barbers cut out hair with electric razors rather than scissors (for the most part).  Later on we all got flat tops so it didn't matter.
 

Rose Grocery

I lived two doors east of Rose Grocery , which I always knew as "Scarich's Grocery" because the owner, Ed Scarrich and his family, was known to the community and lived on the premises (just behind the grocery store).  It was dark within the store; and the Scarich's didn't speak English very well.  But they all knew my mom and me and would keep a running account of hat we bought (a monthly "tab").  At the old house--1332 Spruce Street--we had milk delivered in bottles.  We would have to scrape off the cream on the top.  At Scarich's, when we lived on the corner of Spruce and Rose (1338 Spruce), we bought milk in quart cartons.  My favorite thing at Scarich's was Eskimo Pies: ice cream on a stick covered in brittle chocolate.  I would start out sucking on the top, but soon I would need to bite into it.  Then little flakes of chocolate would get on my lower lip or fall to the ground.
 
 

Live Oak Park

My Oxford friends and I spent a lot of free time hanging out in Live Oak Park .  The Park sprawled from Oxford street to Shattuck, with Walnut in the middle.  There were gnarled old oak trees and a creek that went from the Berkeley Hills to God knows where eventually.  That same creek, officially Codornices creek but locally known as Live Oak creek, flowed right by the Burgess household on Spruce street.  Several times I walked in this creek through the culvert tunnel at the Church of the Cedars to Live Oak Park.  It was very dark in that tunnel.  Tommy Boyden and I would dam up the creek by moving around the large boulders.  I would roll up my levis but by the time I got home everything was soaked, especially my Keds.
 

Keds

In those days we all wore a type of sneaker called " Keds ."  We all went through them at a fast clip, much to the despair of our parents.  They are sort of dorky shoes by today's standards (Adidas, Nikes, etc.), and they didn't help us leap higher--at least I never developed into a leaper.  I hated going shopping for clothes.  Still do.  My mother would try to sell me on some item of clothing that made me look like a complete dweeb.  She was aided and abetted by the salesman, who would say "You will like this--all the kids are wearing it."  Once I heard that, I knew I was doomed.  Whenever the salesman said everyone was wearing something, you could be sure nobody was wearing it--except me.  At least that was my experience.  My mom always got Levis a couple of sizes too big for me so I could "grow into" them.  I would need to roll the bottoms up to keep from tripping on them.  In those days everybody rolled them up outwards so you--or at least I--had about a 12 inch cuff.  Mom grew up during the Depression.
 
 

Religious Education

We could get out of other kinds of school by attending Religious Education. Buses would roll up to the west entrance to the lower playground perhaps one day a week (I can't remember). I also don't remember who sponsored these forays into Judeo-Christian education. There must have been parental controversy over this; and probably there was an element of proselytizing as well. I don't recollect much about the education I received in the buses except for colorful maps. I've always enjoyed talking about religion. In fact I now teach a course called "Biblical and Classical Literature."
 

Hallowe'en Windows on Solano

The merchants on Solano invited Oxford kids to draw things on their windows. I thought I had quite a good idea (a witch, with a huge nose wart, on a broomstick), but it was pure crap when transferred to the merchant's window in a store near the Oaks theater. Art work always seems better before it is actually executed. I felt sorry for my merchant. Other students managed to create some fine window dressing.
 

Billy Gatewood's Art Work

Billy Gatewood had transcendent gifts in arts and crafts. He was wonderful with colors. In the sixth grade Billy Gatewood and I were chosen to compose a colorful mural outside of the classroom. Billy selected a jungle scene; his work was on the right-hand side. I of course copied him, and my contribution was on the left-hand side. It was painfully obvious to me whose work was better (and, more to the point, whose contribution was a pile of horse puckey). My dad, who didn't show up to too many things, managed to sneak a look at the mural, and he proclaimed my art very good. I knew better. For some reason many of my most vivid memories of Oxford were from the sixth grade. I don't think this is because it is closest in time. Grades seven and eight, for example, could be characterized as the "lost years" since I recall so little about them.  (For more on Billy and his artistic genius, see Kent Rasmussen's " A Remembrance .")
 
 

Tommy Boyden's House

The Boydens--Professor Boyden of the UC Berkeley Music Department, his wife Ruth, and their sons Tommy (eldest, my friend) and Richard--lived in an astonishing craftsman-style house --a Maybeck house--on the west side of Shattuck near Eunice. The house was made of redwood, and there were all sorts of angles and nooks and odd things about the house, including medieval hasps and door locks. It had splendid, intricate rafters and bannisters in the living room, and coal chests in a little attached room off the north side of the house. Two years ago I paid a visit to the Boyden house and was disappointed to see it had been subdivided up as a student house.
 

Joey Mueller's Curve Ball

Tommy Boyden and I often played sports at Live Oak Park , particularly when there was nothing better to do.  We sometimes played a two-man baseball game, but we used a tennis ball instead of a hard ball.  The pitching mound was in the southwest corner of the field near the Walnut Street tennis courts.  We made up the "ground rules" as we went along.  A hit over the tennis court fence was a home run; a hit against the fence in right field was a double; in center field, a triple; and so forth.  We had to agree on balls and strikes, and there was considerable room for dispute on close calls.  I protested calls more often than Tommy because I was a sore loser.  Sometimes we would just have to declare a "do-over."  Neither of us could pitch with any dexterity or speed.  We relied on what we called, misleadingly, our "fast balls."

One day when we were deep into our fantasy game (bottom of the sixth, two men on, two men out), Joey Mueller and a friend showed up and watched our game for a while.  Joey was not very tall and he was an underclassman, so I didn't mind as he watched the "big boys" go at it.  Joey then asked innocently if he could have a go at pitching.  We said "Sure, why not?"  Joey tossed his first pitch, and the thing was not only much faster than Tommy's pitches, the tennis ball also dived and--I swear--hissed as it swirled around my knees.  I flung myself out of the batter's box in terror.  He pitched a second (and final) pitch that had the same vicious properties as the first.  My exit from the batter's box was just as hasty and just as mortifying.  Point made, Joey and his friend retired for more sporting opportunities.
 
 

Jeff Adams and Penny Brogden

In 1955 or so Jeff Adams liked Penny Brogden . "Liked" was a euphemism for "had the hots for." When Penny didn't like Jeff back, he took it badly. We all had our less than couth ways of expressing disappointment in those days. Jeff's was to enlist me in a vengeful verbal campaign against Penny. We picketed her Walnut Street house while singing "Well, well, Penny can go to Well, well, Penny can go to . . . ." I don't recall whether Penny was ever aware of our futile gesture or what she might have thought of me for taking part in it.
 
 

Ruth Kuznets: May Queen

In the sixth grade Ruth Kuznets somehow became Queen of the May . This made a big impression on me, although I don't remember if she was elected or appointed. I certainly thought she was one of the cutest girls ever, at least for the sixth grade. Roger Von Seeburg, my good friend, asked her out to a movie. I thought I could do that too--and I probably had a bigger crush on her because Roger liked her--so I decided to phone her. But I had never done such a thing before. I memorized what I was going to say. I may even have written out my speech, which I postponed for at least half a day because I couldn't summon up the nerve to make the phone call. Finally I did but my memorized speech flew out of my head, and I said "Hello, Ruth? Do you want to go with me to the movie?" There was a long pause. Then, "Who is this?" I was so mortified that I could hardly wait to get off the phone. It set back my relations with the opposite sex for at least two years.  I believe we all danced around maypoles. I think the boys wore white shirts with little streamers coming from their belt buckles. We must have been a sight.
 

Hillside Cotillions

For some reason my mom thought I should learn to dance and be sociable with girls. Oxford didn't offer cotillions but Hillside elementary did, so Oxford kids would go to Hillside for evening dance lessons. We learned the "box step," square dancing, the hora, the bunny hop, and (vaguely) the waltz ("one two three, one two three"). One memorable evening the teacher got daring and put on faster music. I don't remember what song it was, but Ray Wootten demonstrated that he not only knew how to bop, he was really good at it. He had rubbery legs, and when his leg would bend like a pretzel he would tap the bottom of his shoe smartly.  All the kids were amazed at his agility.  I was plain envious both of his skill and his daring.  (For more on dance lessons and Oxford, go to Ray Wootten's Stories & Anecdotes and then to   Kent Rasmussen's Reply to Ray Wootten . Eleanor Wootten , Ray's older sister, has some remembrances as well, involving another dance instructor .)