What do you remember about starting first grade?  (I’m assuming most of my readers didn’t have the option of kindergarten.) For me, it was not easy.  Those who know me now will find it hard to believe, but I was a shy kid.  To prove it, I will confess that I wet my pants one morning before recess rather than ask Mrs. Evans for permission to go to the outhouse.

However, I recently met someone whose first grade year made mine seem like a picnic.  At the age of six in September 1942, Claud Crook entered first grade in Hagerman School in Grayson County.  He remembers the three-story school building, with an auditorium on the top floor.  Even before he started to school, Claud had occasionally recited short poems for PTA meetings held in that auditorium. He wasn’t shy.  He had older siblings in school and they brought home literary pieces, which his mother would help him memorize.

So why do I think first grade was difficult for Claud?  Well, by the time he entered school the enrollment at Hagerman was pretty low.  In fact, Claud was the only first grader that fall. People were moving out of Hagerman because they knew that Lake Texoma would soon be rising over the banks of Big Mineral Creek, wiping out the town.

The Hagerman school remained open until Christmas Break in 1942, and Denison Dam was completed about the same time.  As the waters of Red River filled the new lake, not only was Claud’s school closed for good (and soon demolished), but in early January 1943, the Crook’s house was jacked up by house-movers, with all their possessions still inside.  They spent one more night in the house there in Hagerman (in the middle of a road). 

The next day the house was moved into the nearby town of Pottsboro, but still not placed on the lot their dad had purchased.  So the family slept in the house a second night “on the road.” 

There was another complication as the movers started to place the house at its new location in Pottsboro, on what is now East St.  The wheels of the truck hauling the house got stuck in some soft dirt.   Completing the job required help from a man who brought in a county road grader to get the house moving again.

Claud and his family were now residents of Pottsboro, and even lived near its school.  So in mid-January he joined a first grade class there.  Of course he had a different teacher and no pupils he knew.  It was like starting school all over again.

That’s why I think Claud Crook had it tough in first grade.  What was it like for you?

Jerry Lincecum is a retired English professor who now teaches classes for older adults who want to write their life stories.  He welcomes your reminiscences on any subject: jlincecum@me.com