Key West The Newspaper

by Kirby Congdon…….

The division between the races in this country began in first grade. But even Miss Brode, who taught it, did nothing about it. I told her that the problem was the Great Depression, but she didn’t listen. Well, it took me a couple of decades to verablize my advice. However, my third-grade teacher did speak up. She said that kids who could not come to school because they had no shoes were welcome anyway. I have gone without shoes so often at the beach that I can’t count them. But maybe walking down the streets of West Chester, Pennsylvania without them might be daunting. Couldn’t someone work something out? I’ve been told there was no work. Yes, when one is six some matters are hard to assimilate, aren’t they? Demonstration School at the State Teacher’s College suggested avoiding the complex. There were no students or teachers who had skins with complex tints. At Columbia College when I was a G.I., students with effeminate behavior were expelled. The teachers had learned to hide it. One must behave. To take on good manners confidence and stability, it helps to begin at six unless the laws of society can’t quite accommodate difference or even individuality or for that matter, forget the Great Depression. Life is easier if you just keep it simple, as with the native-born on the one hand or the colorless on the other.

Hey! Who’s that guy wielding a baseball bat coming my way?