Kerns Public School

I did time here. It was a jail that I happily checked into daily. Often, the bars on the windows didn't work.

[This is a series of poems, short vignettes remembering my life and compiling a memoir of my life. Many scattered in this substack, many still asleep in my notebooks.]

Kerns Public School
must have been 1969 - 70
September something and
I was introduced to Mrs. White’s class,
the last portable where the gym is now,
a city boy 10 years old and
fresh from the streets of
Jamestown, Etobicoke, Toronto,
leather jacket, long hair, full of bravado.
Recess came and I sat by the door steps
eyed by all the farm kids who
one by one came up and
took their best shot at taming the city slicker.
I spent the rest of the day in the principal’s office
every now and then Mrs. Love
patting me on the shoulder
telling me it would be alright.

Kerns P.S.
Eight rooms, one for each grade
full of farm kids and bluster
and a small gym for rainy days
and of course,
the principal’s office where daily
we had to forgive our trespasses.

The Lord’s Prayer began each day
then God Save The Queen
then O’ Canada and then
we got to share “news” and I’d
always stand up delivering a report
about the latest world happenings
based on my late night bedroom sessions
with the AM radio I built from Radio Shack
connecting me with the world,
of late night radio - WBZ, WLS.
My classmates loving it —
it ate into our math class.

The girls were so big.
We were all scared of them
but secretly dreamed of life
someday, one day, with one of them.
I guess this is how the concept of a “goddess” began.

I still wonder how anyone learned anything
so occupied we all were with recess
lunchtime and of course the center of the universe
the ice hockey rink, always active and full
every evening, giving birth to many NHLers,
the box stove in the ice shack red hot.
Me, a tiny guy but strong from milking
a million goats each day and night
only getting a chance to be on the ice
because the Brazeaus and Jibbs needed
someone in goal to shoot pucks at —-
and I had no fear though
each shot hurt like a sledgehammer blow.

Mr. Drury, I forgive you for making me
2 weeks straight come in early before class
and write my letter “p’s on the board.
You never fixed them and I love them like they are.

Mrs. Bowman, six months pregnant
working diligently each day in grade 6
I am sorry for the day we drove you
out of the classroom, throwing paper
and shooting spit balls.
Forgive us, we were kids.

Everything was about winning and being number 1.
And also getting to town, if you won.
Laps around the parking lot, our track and
my beginnings of athletic glory and pretention.
Public speech contests; mine about “Guerrilla Warfare”
based on a book about the life of Ho Chi Minh
I found at home, left by some of the hippie crowd.
All the students laughing after my speech,
making fun of me with monkey calls and shrieks.
They genuinely thought I was talking about “gorillas”.
I forgive them too.

I loved being at school. It was a safe place despite
the fights, the shenanigans, the mock violence of kids.
If the bus didn’t come ‘cuz of a weather day
I’d hike the 6 miles on backroads there on my own,
the few teachers at work not knowing what to do with me.
One day, a “freezing rain” day,
I remember strapping on my skates
avoiding the rocks sticking up from the sideroad
and skating the whole way there to Kerns.
Can’t remember how I got home.

Grade 8, we all cheered on the final day of school
when Doug Brubaker put down Mr. Hollsworth
in the teacher vs student armwrestling contest.
It was a good send off. Then it was
graduation, suits that were only good for
a few months, so fast we were growing.
I won for highest Geography mark.
A foreshadowing of my travels later in life.

Later, 15 years old
I worked for a construction company
and helped build the new gym.
Every time I now drive past there
I marvel at my own contribution
to this school set in a farm field
surrounded by cows and crops on one side
a gravel road on the other
and the memories of many students
who once called it home.

Highway 65 running past Kerns P.S. on the far right.