More About Miss Grace Durrin

Miss Durrin was a legend.  She was ardent about her subject, Children's Literature, at a time when it was often dismissed as a lightweight field.  Her course was dreaded by many elementary teaching majors because it was not an easy course.  We were expected to go out of her class knowing something about children's literature, the more the better.

The big project for her class was a collection of children's poems, at least a hundred neatly typed and bound in a sturdy binder so we could use it in our classrooms.  I had been alerted to this project before I went to college by a woman I babysat for.  She offered me her book if I wanted to use it.  She was proud of the "A" she received on her selections.  She said she used her book a lot when she was teaching

I took her book though I intended to make my own choices since I have always liked poetry of all kinds.  I enjoyed reading poems and picking out my favorites but putting the book together was a major problem for me.  I was an terrible typist.

Another relic in the basement, my high school graduation gift from my parents.

In those days  the only three ways of correcting  typing errors were to use White-Out, a liquid bought in a bottle, or small  rectangles of paper covered with a chalky substance which covered up the error when typed over, or erasable typing paper.  She told us we were not allowed to use the erasable paper.  She wanted a neat collection with no errors.

I typed page after page, only to make horrible typing errors as I neared the end of the page. Then I got nervous and started making errors after typing only a word or two.  Finally, my blessed roommate took pity on me.  She typed most of my collection.  Many of the poems in my book are from the book of the woman I babysat for.

That project was one of the best projects ever required of me.  I still have the book. It's in the basement, too. The bits of white on the cover are from the label which fell off some time or another.

I used it in every classroom I ever taught in...first grade, third grade, fourth grade.

This is the first page of the four page contents list.

In Memory of Grace Durrin

She read what has become one of my favorite poems of all times in her Children's Literature course at Bowling Green State University.

The Night Will Never Stay

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million Stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.

Eleanor Farjeon

I found Miss Durrin's photo in one of those things I have saved because I have a big basement...The 1957 KEY...the Bowling Green State University yearbook.

Minor Remodeling in the Basement

Forty years ago, not long after we moved into this house, we decided we needed more storage space so Tom built this wall in the basement.

Tom decided built in couches would be nice since we often had friends and relatives who stayed overnight. The adults slept in bedrooms in the main part of the house and the children slept in the basement. We set up cots, too, so there were sleeping spots for four or five or six children. They could party downstairs while the adults partied upstairs. The children played with a variety of blocks and cars and trucks and dolls and board games or played dress up with the collection of old dresses, jackets, coats, hats, wigs, and Halloween costumes.

When Tom originally wired sockets on the wall, he put the sockets close to the floor. Over time he decided it would be better to have the sockets on the ceiling so there would be no danger of anyone getting electrocuted if the basement flooded. It does flood occasionally, though not most years.

On Monday, June 4, the  wiring was done.   Since Tom can no longer get to the basement, he asked a friend to do it.   And because Eric is young and agile, he volunteered him to help. Here is Eric pulling up the wires from the floor to the ceiling...the part of him that I could see.  Eric is six feet tall.  The black curve on the shelf below Eric is the wire that is in the process of being pulled up.  The plywood and 2 X 4 wall to the left of the photo is the back of one built in couch.






I got a better picture of him before he started pulling the wire up on the other end of the wall.






And here is Mark, on the other side putting up the sockets attached to the wires Eric pulled up for him.






When Eric came upstairs, he told Tom, "Grandpa, I'm glad you build strong shelves."

Basement Treasures...Sonja's Dog

After the one day basement flood in April, I decided that I would wash the floor down really well before replacing what I had had to move to higher spots. Last week the day came when I had a long enough empty spell in the day to wash the first section using a squeegy sponge mop and soapy water with bleach added.

As I was scrubbing away, I decided that this would be a good time to thoroughly clean and dump throughout the basement. I haven't done this for at least fifteen years. Periodically, I sort and dump in one section or another of the basement but, more has been added to the basement than has been dumped. I decided to allow six months for the job. That was being realistic. I moved everything to one side of my studio and started in.

I scrubbed the floor. That wasn't hard. But the next day I began sorting and dumping. Lots of paper items filled two wastebaskets in short order.

But then I started clearing off the library table Tom and I brought back after Tom's parents died. The table sat in their living room for all the years I knew them.

Cujo was still sitting on the table after I sorted through everything else.  Cujo has been sitting there for over twenty years. He was Sonja's high school Senior Science Independent Project. She boiled the remaining flesh off a decomposing dog found along the road and glued the bones together. The vet where she worked allowed her to use his burn barrel to boil the dog. She said the process was very smelly. I never checked out the process. I was glad the boiling wasn't being done in our backyard. She wrote a long paper on the construction of a dog skeleton and received an A on her project. Tom made the case. At the junior fair portion of the county fair that summer, she was awarded Reserve Champion.

She teaches high school science now. I'm hoping that she will someday take Cujo to school for a permanent display. Till then, he sits in the basement. I can't bring myself to dump him.