The End of an Era

This is the H.T. Wing School in Sandwich was built in 1927 and then various additions over the years.  The below pic is the old part.  Back when I was growing up, everyone K-12 fit into the one school.  In the fall of 1976, a new high school was opened so this old high school reverted to the elementary school.  It closed down a few years ago because it's old and needs so much work that the town is kicking around tearing it down either in full or in part, keeping the original 1927 brick building.

When I found out that there was going to be a holiday market in the cafeteria, I seized the opportunity to get inside and take pics of our old school before it's torn down.

When I went here, the high school kids entered in this area, and we entered a little farther down.

That box in the hallway was built to accommodate my growing 2nd grade class.  I started the year 1971 in a classroom down the hall.  When I returned after Christmas, in January of 1972 I was one of about 15 kids that got reassigned to a different teacher and put in this room.  Beyond it is the door to the library which was built in about 1974.  That boxy classroom originally had windows that faced the playground before the library was built.

This is the original wall tile in the bathroom.  It's been there since I went to SES, and that's coming up on 50 years now.  I admit I was completely shocked that this school wasn't renovated and upgraded over the years.  I now see why it's past the point of no return as it relates to renovating it now.  

When I refer to places in this school, it's as it relates to my memories of it.  Hallway from the high school part to the elementary school.

This actually was my first grade classroom. Dry erase board now instead of chalk, different chairs and tables but it's as I remember it for the most part.  

Lobby looking towards where I had my 5th grade year.  The school office is on the left, and the entrance to the cafeteria is on the left past that table.  The cafeteria was originally the 2nd and smaller gym for the little kids while the high school had the run of the big gym up the hall.  But they converted the small one into a cafeteria around the same time as the new high school was being built. There used to be marble tournaments in the lobby in the early 70s.

This little garden area hasn't changed one bit since I was there except it's more overgrown.

Looking at the doors to where I had 5th grade.  The school thought it was a good idea to combine the classrooms into giant spaces separated only by bookcases.  In 5th grade (74/75), we were lumped into that room with one 6th grade class and two 4th grade classes.  The following year we were moved into yet another new addition called 'Cluster 6'. 

Looking at the front doors.  It was always so pretty at Christmas with the tree in the lobby and in class we'd always make decorations and paper chains, colour Santa Claus pics and paste cotton for beards.  Making simple gifts or decorations in art class.  And the class party on the last day before break.  

The cafeteria that was the elementary school gym.

The stage where a couple Lions Club Minstrel Shows were held in 75 and 76.  My dad sang in the chorus and did a couple of solo songs.  

Exact door with exact window and signage as when I was there.  

The high school's lobby and their office.

Mr. Zion was a beloved teacher and coach in Sandwich.

This was the high school's gym during school hours, or places for assemblies, chorus concerts, school plays, basketball games and various and sundry town gatherings like a white elephant sale I remember going to when I was about 8.  

Words cannot describe how much I dreaded the rope climb.

Love the street signs.  Nice touch.

This would have been the corridor to the high school rooms and also the school nurse.  There used to be lockers along the walls and bare, dim bulbs hanging from the ceiling and this really weird smell that I could never quite pinpoint.  The walk to the nurse was very long and very scary for a little kid.

A teensy chair in the hall way.  I put my bag there for scale.  Actual chairs we used in the 70s.  I never realized how small they were at the time of course.

Looking back down the hall through the door that leads to the elementary school lobby.

This old radiator.  A real surprise to see it.  I assumed these were long gone.

That was my kindergarten classroom.  

 Entrance to the elementary school that we used when we got off our buses.

Looking towards my old kindergarten room.  Except there was no a/c unit in the window!

I'm really lucky that we had the chance to explore it one more time before it's closed down for good.  I hope they don't tear it down but I get why the town is pushing for that option. I think one of the best parts of this night for me is that Russell has the exact memories of going here that I do, since he was only 2 years ahead of me.  Hopefully the town will compromise and at least keep the 1927 building.

Sandwich at Christmas, Part 1

A couple of weeks ago, I was on my way out the door to meet up with my girlfriends for lunch.  As I was getting ready, I grabbed my camera as kind of an afterthought.  I hadn't intended on shooting anything but every time I don't bring it, I end up regretting it.  We had a great lunch at Uno's Grill in Hyannis, and on my way home, I drove through downtown Sandwich.  There is construction up on the bridge that has traffic crawling for 4 miles on the highway, hence the trip through town.

I was on Rte 130 and as I approached my old elementary school, the weak winter sunlight was lighting it up in such a way that I had a flashback to the 1970s when I went there.  The decorated & lit tree in the lobby (back in the days before "political correctness" robbed schools of that cheerful holiday tradition) that appeared after Thanksgiving break.  Teachers setting aside time for us to decorate our classrooms.  The Christmas gift or ornament projects we worked on in art class. The end of year class party with gifts and cupcakes and cookies and punch.  That excited buzz as we boarded our buses in the dark afternoon, high on sugar, clutching our art project ornaments and gifts for the last ride home till after New Years.  Yeah, I had to stop and take pictures.  

H.T. Wing was built in 1927, and it held grades K - 12 in one building, up until 1976 when the high school was built.  The front part of the school was K-6 and this part seen here was the high school.  When I attended, the only times I ever entered this part of the school was to go to lunch or the nurse's office.  There were 2 separate gyms too, till 1975 when one was turned into the elementary school cafeteria and stage.  

Those arched windows are in what was the old cafeteria and stage area.  It was ancient.  There was a bit of insulation that showed in the ceiling and the older kids teased the younger ones that it was the rat or mouse stuck and could drop on your table at any minute.  Everyone, and I do mean everyone, I grew up with remembers this. 

Those are the doors that opened into the old cafeteria.  We lined up against them to get our food.  Opening them was forbidden but it always happened, especially on nice days.  One time there was a bloodcurdling scream that silenced everyone at the tables.  The heavy door had shut on a classmate's fingers which were in the hinged side of the door.  He damn near lost his fingers and was rushed to the hospital.

This was the entrance to the high school.

This was the elementary school.  My kindergarten and first grade classes were within those rows of windows.  This is also where the buses dropped us off.

This house is right next to the school.  

To be continued...

The Outsider

My readers and friends know I'm from Cape Cod. Any native Cape Codder can point to their town simply by raising their arm into a muscle. I'm from up near the shoulder.The towns on the Cape are quite large, and within the towns are Villages, and I grew up in East Sandwich. My childhood home is so far east, that I could walk to the Barnstable town line within 5 minutes. It remains one of the most rural areas in Sandwich. My parents owned 2 acres, and their home backs up to thick woods (owned by a neighbor) that extend all the way to the salt marshes. Across the street from my parents' house is a cranberry bog and train tracks. The rest of the area is mostly woods or smaller cranberry bogs. That was my world.

Sandwich Village, Forestdale and South Sandwich are more densely populated, with a lot of neighborhoods and homes. The rest of the land area is taken up by Camp Edwards and Otis Air Force base, which border Bourne to the west and Mashpee & Falmouth to the south.


One of the byproducts of being in touch with classmates on Facebook is that I get to see their old photos, which I do enjoy viewing. However, it just drives the point home to me about how much of an outsider I truly was. I firmly believe that the experiences you have as a child really do form what kind of person you are as a teen and adult. And my experiences as a child, feeling like I was a nothing, made me decide at a very young age that, as soon as I could, I was going to move far away, where nobody knew me. Where I could be myself without being teased. To the west coast where life would be better and happier. I'd watch the sun set out the back livingroom window, and hear the sports announcers saying, "stay tuned for 60 minutes, except on the west coast" and that would make me feel even worse.


Mine was a very lonely, solitary existence when I was in grade school. H.T. Wing Elementary was in Sandwich Village, and I, like most of the kids from the other parts of town, was bused in from East Sandwich. Only the 'town kids' were able to walk to and from school. While there were definitely other children in East Sandwich, we were cut off from each other due to geography. The homes were far apart, the roads were desolate and lonely, and any get togethers required planning through our parents. Still, I had a few friends from my part of town, thanks to taking the bus every day with them, and because most of us girls belonged to the same Camp Fire Girls Troup, through 6th grade. Back then, elementary school-age kids didn't talk on the phone like they do now. Besides, my dad was self employed and the lines needed to be kept clear for his accounts to call (this became a source of many arguments once I hit my teen years and spent HOURS on the phone).

I was unable to get together with other children after school and on most weekends. I didn't really know any better and it didn't bother me at all, at the time. I started reading before I was even in kindergarten. I explored the woods and cranberry bogs. I walked on the railroad tracks and put pennies on them. My stuffed animals became my closest friends and I talked to them about my day and so forth. I would do my homework, play with my toys and stuffed animals, read, watch some TV. I lived in my head a lot too, and had a very active imagination and fantasy life. There wasn't much else for an only child, in a lonely neighborhood, to do.


I absolutely LIVED for February, Spring, Summer, Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations, because that's when my cousins Diane and Sharon would come up to stay at their grandparents' house (my aunt & uncle), just a 5 minute walk from my house. I wanted to spend all my free time with them, and they with me. We were very close then, and remain so today. They consider me their middle sister. We played our western-themed 'game' in the woods with our cowboy regalia on. We'd play in the field behind my parents' house. We'd swim in their grandparents' pool in the summer, build forts in the winter, ice skate on the bogs or at the rink in Bourne, do crafts, go to the movies and minigolf, sleepovers in the Coop, go out for ice cream and many, many family dinners. My calendar literally revolved around the next time Di & Sha would be up from Long Island. We are so close that I really am like a middle sister, because my personality is less easygoing than Diane's, but more easygoing than Sharon's. The rest of my childhood memories are made up of trips to see my relatives in Yonkers, NY and spending time at Spring Hill Beach where my parents owned a cottage & which they rented out to my many cousins.


It really was an idyllic childhood. It was safe, it was quiet. East Sandwich was a great place to grow up.


The downside to my life between kindergarten and 6th grade, and even a little bit into junior high, was that I was not well liked by the Town, Forestdale, Lakewood Hills and South Sandwich kids. I was bullied a little; but I was picked on & teased a lot. I have never had athletic prowess so I was always the last person called in gym. And when I didn't do well on the gym team, I took a lot of shit from the other kids. I would cry to my parents that nobody liked me. No one would talk to me. They were mean to me and teased me. How I hated this girl or that girl because they were just so mean. Kids are just plain cruel. My one & only foray into real team sports was when I joined our junior high softball team in 7th grade. Besides the humiliation of riding the bench the entire season, the girls on the team didn't treat me like a teammate, but as a pariah. One of them stole my denim jacket out of my gym locker. Crushed, I never joined another team again.


As I got older and into junior high and high school, I actually did have a lot of friends. I sometimes remember those times as my being 'friendless' but Diane once gave me a reality check. She exclaimed, "What the hell are you talking about? You had a TON of friends. Go look at your yearbooks! They are full of signatures of people who say what a great person you are!" I did actually review my yearbooks after Diane said that, and saw that a couple people even wrote, "to the girl with a million friends". It's funny how you remember things differently than other people. However, it needs to be noted that, while I did have a lot of friends in high school, most of them were in the Classes of '80, '81 and '83. Not so much from my own Class of '82. I used to say that I'd never go to my own class reunion, but I'd love to go to the 1981 or 1983 reunions. By the time I was a senior, I was only hanging out with 3 people from my own class, and all my other friends were from Barnstable High School. I spent K-11 doing my best to stay off everyone's radar and by senior year, I just didn't give a fuck anymore. I dressed in my army jacket covered in punk pins. I used blue hairspray in my hair. I listened to the Sex Pistols and the Clash while everyone else was listening to REO Shitwagon and Loverboy. I hung out at Wave Records in Hyannis on the weekends, with Liz & Joey, while everyone else was partying hard. I purposely alienated almost everyone in the class because I was just sick and tired of taking their shit. I was sick and tired of Sandwich. I didn't go to my junior or senior prom. For one, I wasn't even asked, but for another, I knew I wouldn't have fit in with everyone else at the prom. Fine, you wanna make fun of me? I'll give you something to make fun of. You wanna fuck with me? I have plenty of friends in Barnstable, including several members of punk bands in their mid-20's, who will be more than happy to set you straight.


The more isolated I felt, the more I longed to get out of Sandwich. Get off the Cape and head west. I didn't want to live in a town where:

1. I could ever be considered a 'townie' which is a moniker I despise and which hits me in the face every time I go back to visit my mom because I end up running into people; and

2. No one wanted to be my friend anyway, so fuck 'em.


At this point in my life, I'd pretty much made my peace with the fact that elementary school was rough. Enter Facebook. Up to this point in time, it never even occurred to me that my classmates who lived in real neighborhoods with other kids, got together after school and on the weekends. When the school year started in September, they'd been playing together all summer. When the school year started in September, 95% of my class had not even seen me since June. And the other 5% who did see me were only at birthday parties for those girls born during the summer or at swimming lessons. I had nothing in common with my female classmates either. I am quite certain that the girls, who were the cruelest of all, did not don cowboy hats, adopt boys' names for 'the game', play with capguns, and go racing through the woods or build forts like I did with my cousins. They all saw each other at the town beaches, whereas I swam in my aunt's pool, or hung out on Springhill Beach, which is a private beach & only open to cottage-owners. Once we got older, a lot of my classmates from Lakewood Hills, Forestdale and the Village were hardcore partiers and I wasn't. For one, my parents kept me on a very short leash. For another, I had no interest in it.


The other night, one of my classmates, who I've known since 1st grade, posted a photo of a group of kids in our class. She didn't write when it was taken, but if I had to guess, I'd say anywhere between 5th and 7th grades. There are about 6 boys kneeling on the ground, and the girls are sitting on the boys' shoulders, with their arms around each other. Everyone is grinning or laughing. Instead of being delighted by the photo, I felt sad. Really, really sad. Sad about how much I missed out on because of living in East Sandwich. Sad about the way I was treated throughout school by many of those same kids. Sad because I don't have any memories like that of my own, other than the few times I would visit a friend on a Saturday afternoon or go to a birthday party. Sad because maybe I wouldn't have felt so compelled to flee the East Coast, had just one of those kids invited me over or spoken kindly to me.


I had always felt like an outsider when I lived in Sandwich, but seeing the photos of my classmates playing together drove home the fact that I was an outsider. They didn't like me, or want to be friends with me, because they didn't know me. I am sure that, to them, I seemed like a real oddball. It was easy to pick on me because they never got to know me. I also had no older brothers or sisters to pave the way. We didn't ride the same bus, we didn't play after school, I didn't see them for 3 months in the summer. They only ever saw me in the context of a classroom setting. And unfortunately, because most of my teachers lived in Sandwich, my father did their plumbing, so there was always an undercurrent of "teacher's pet". I mean the last thing you want is to stand out from everyone else in school, right? But when your teacher calls your name on the first day and exclaims, "Is your dad Johnnie Mendonza the plumber? He's worked at my house! He's a great guy! Tell him I said HI!" Meanwhile I am turning 6 shades of red, hoping the floor will open up and swallow me and feeling the eyes of my classmates burning holes in me. In 7th grade, I actually had a teacher come right out and tell me that, because of who my dad was, I didn't have to do any work in her class and I would still get an A. That upset me. It upset my parents even more. And it further damaged how my classmates viewed me. Oh and let's not forget how "adorable" my parents thought it was that my dad named his boat, "Joanne". Which boat was moored at the Sandwich Marina from first grade through third grade. In full view of everyone. Except the boat also had to show the town, so it actually said, "Joanne Sandwich". I took my lumps at school for that too. My god my classmates must have thought I was a spoiled little princess.


It's kind of a weird feeling for me to now be Facebook friends with some of my classmates, especially some of the women. There is one girl on there, who really gave me a ration of shit throughout high school. She was the kind of girl who will ask you a question with a smile on her face, but you can just tell she's making fun of you or waiting to pounce on your answer with ridicule. Yeah, yeah I know, "everyone grows up" and all that shit. But as one who was on the receiving end of taunts and shunning, it doesn't take much to open up old wounds. I almost unfriended her when all those long buried hurt feelings came boiling to the surface, but I haven't yet.


I have been chit chatting with the woman who posted the pic of the group of kids. She's really cool & nice, and she's someone that I wish I had been friends with all through school, but she was a town kid with her own set of friends. She actually was kind to me in the 2nd grade, but then our paths never really crossed after that. We have a lot in common, now. I told her the other day how I felt so isolated from everyone in our class because I wasn't a 'town kid' and she told me to count my blessings because the town kids were nothing but trouble. She told me I was lucky to have had such a quiet childhood in East Sandwich. I found that amusing. Sort of a "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" thing.

After I graduated from Sandwich High, I headed for college and never gave most of the Class of '82 another thought, except for my handful of friends. But I think about them a lot these days. It's amazing how things have come full circle over the past 28 years since I left SHS. Now that we are adults, maybe now some of these people will realize that I wasn't such a bad kid after all. But I'm still not going to our class reunion.