From 1968 to 1981 – from kindergarten to my high school graduation – I attended twelve different schools. Some of these educational institutions were different buildings in the same school district, as kids matriculated from grade school to middle school. Others were caused by familial relocations or my desire to live somewhere else. I sometimes joke that I moved around so many times, my local newspaper was USA Today.
I could remember eleven of the twelve schools without any trouble. Slingerlands Elementary, Clarksville Elementary, Greenfield Center Elementary, Corinth Elementary, Patrick F. Lyndon Elementary, Veeder Elementary, Christian Brothers Academy, Sand Creek Junior High, Lisha Kill Junior High, Abington High School, Street Academy of Albany. That’s eleven.
One school, however, escaped my memory bank. It was the fourth school, a small little school in the upstate New York town of Corinth.
Background.
From the summer of 1970 to maybe the middle of 1971, my family lived in a trailer at the Alhambra Mobile Home and Trailer Park on Route 9N in Greenfield Center. For the 1970-71 school year, I attended second grade at Greenfield Center Elementary School.
But during the school year, the trailer was hitched up and relocated to the Howe Road Mobile Home and Trailer Park on Howe Road in Corinth. By the way, you can tell who’s a new resident of Corinth in how they pronounce the town’s name. If the emphasized syllable is “RINTH,” they’re out-of-towners. All the locals pronounce it “CORE-rinth.” And in case you’re wondering, it’s BURR-lin, KAY-ro, and it’s the town of Ren-suh-LEER, which is in REN-slr County. Take notes.
Anyways, we moved to the Howe Road Mobile Home and Trailer Park, which meant I had to attend a new school. The school bus drove up Howe Road, the kids got on the bus, and we all road down Route 9N to the school building.
I really don’t remember much about the school building, other than there was a hill adjoining the school; and those of us who had sleds and mini-boggans slid down that hill for as long as our recess periods would last.
By third grade, although I was still eligible to attend that school, I was relocated to Corinth Elementary School – school number five on the list of The Twelve.
Over time, I would attend several more schools in both New York and Massachusetts. Some of the schools held great memories, some were just a different type of madness. And one day, when I tried to chronicle all the schools I attended over the years…
I couldn’t remember the fourth school.
And it was driving me nuts.
I made some trips to Corinth, trying to retrace my steps and see if I could locate my past. The Alhambra Mobile Home and Trailer Park doesn’t exist any more. Neither does the Howe Road Mobile Home and Trailer Park; the only thing left on that site are some old broken electric meters that once allowed Niagara Mohawk to connect electricity to the various double-deep double-wides.
I eventually found two of the schools – Greenfield Center Elementary (#3) and Corinth Elementary (#5). They looked almost the same as they had in the past – both had long driveways where the buses would drop off each collection of neighborhood kids, a roof-protected bus stop slash livery station.
But where was the fourth school of my childhood? I couldn’t find it.
I stopped into Corinth Elementary. Surely they had some information on the different schools in the area, since the fourth school was part of the district.
The receptionist had nothing available – I mean, we are talking at least 40 years ago – and she suggested I visit the Corinth Free Library, where more information could be gleaned.
I went there. The Free Library did have some yearbooks available, and I leafed through a copy of The Corinthian ’72 to see myself in third grade. No, I didn’t smile in the picture. I don’t think I ever smiled in a class photo. Still, despite finding this elusive nugget of information, the background on the missing school was still tantalizingly out of reach.
The librarian gave me the telephone number of the Corinth town historian, and when I got home I gave the historian a call. She explained that since I was living at the Howe Road Mobile Home and Trailer Park at that time, I may have attended what was then known as the South Corinth Elementary School, which was in the hamlet of South Corinth. Yes. Not only was there a Corinth, there was a South Corinth as well. Essentially, keep driving up Route 9N from Saratoga Springs to Corinth, and take a left when you should take a right.
Well, this was definitely a closer step. Was it enough?
I needed to take another road trip.
Sunday. May 15th.
Let’s Go, Cardachrome – next stop, a possible piece of my missing past.
I drove up Route 9N through Saratoga Springs and Greenfield Center, as the road wound up and back and down and around. On the right – a wooden sign. Corinth. Gateway to the Adirondacks. Then I saw a smaller sign. “South Corinth,” with an arrow pointing left.
Left turn I went, down a small, sloping roadway. And as I arrived at the bottom of the roadway, I instinctively turned left. I don’t know why I did this. Muscle memory?
But then I saw it. On the hill. A red-white building with a long paved front walkway.
School number four. It was indeed South Corinth Elementary School.
And in a heartbeat, memories gushed back in. I remembered all the recess periods and the slides down the hill – first by riding other kids’ mini-boggans, then eventually getting one of my own. I recall our classroom was in the school basement; kindergarten and first grade were on the upper levels of the school, second and third grades were down a narrow staircase to the basement. I think my second grade teacher was Miss Palmatier. I know she was ONE of my second grade teachers, whether she was at Greenfield Center Elementary or South Corinth Elementary, I just don’t know.
I also recalled that one of my classmates was the daughter of one of the teachers, and I always wondered whether in class did my classmate have to call her “Mom” or “Teacher” or “Miss….”
There were some other things I remembered. There was a general store at the last intersection I passed, and kids would sometimes run and get penny candies or stickers with whatever lunch money or loose change they had in their pockets.
I would have included a picture of South Corinth Elementary School in this blog post, but the building is not a school any more – it’s now a private residence, and in this instance I chose privacy over proclivity. If I find an old picture somewhere of the building when it was actually a school, I may post that in the future.
But for now, I’ll just take a memory picture.
And in doing so, I finally brought some more closure to an unclosed portion of my past.
Chuck The Writer 