My Fifth Grade year will be my best so far at Woodbury Heights Elementary. Straight A's! No ifs ands or buts, I'm one of the smart kids now, and I've got the report card to prove it. My brother Carl is another story, but he doesn't care, he just wants to get by, and that's all he does.
One of the best things we did in Fifth Grade was to go to Philadelphia on one of our class trips. We didn't go to a museum or the zoo or even to the Liberty Bell. We went to a movie. They took us to see "How The West Was Won", in one of the big movie theatres in the city. I think it was the Boyd Theatre. It was one of those new Cinerama movies, with the picture split into three sections, and a really wide screen, so you felt like you were actually in the movie. There was a buffalo stampede, and the buffaloes ran towards you and then jumped over your head. We got to go see the movie because we had been studying early American History, so I guess it was OK to go see a movie about it. My favorite part of course, would be the Civil War part, but I was disappointed because it was only a few minutes' worth out of the whole picture. It wasn't a great movie, but it was exciting to go see it in the city, and the big screen and all the noise from the super sound system was unlike anything we'd experienced at the Wood Theatre back in New Jersey.
I will miss Fifth Grade. I think Mrs. Nolte was the nicest teacher I ever had, including Mrs. Lee. She made us all work hard, but she was a very calm lady and our classroom was a very comfortable place to be.
This will be our last year in that old familiar building. Our Sixth Grade will head over to the St. Margaret's Catholic School while they put a new addition onto Woodbury Heights Elementary. St. Margaret's is on the other side of town where one of the Southwoods housing developements is, so I've got a mile walk now. I'll be riding my black Rixe bike a lot when the weather is nice, and now that Mom has learned to drive, I won't have to wonder which neighbor will get me to school in bad weather anymore.
I'll leave Fifth Grade with a new best friend in Steve Kay, and I'll still have a crush on Susan Burns. It will be three months before I can capture her again in our games of Team Tag in the playground.
Summer will be strange for me this year. I won't have Whee-Zee to run with, no more faithful companion at my side.
My new bedroom will be built up in the attic, and Carl and I will decide to continue sharing a room.
We hear that the new high school will be called Gateway Regional High School, and it will be built in the fields behind our house, the fields that are part of Mr. Rizzuto's farm. Mr. Rizzuto lives on the Deptford side of Egg Harbor Road just a little ways down the street from us. The woods I've played in all my young life belong to him, and now that will be owned by the new school. My last chance to spend time there. My world of imagination will be behind a chain-link fence, another wall going up, so I'll have to use the woods around the lake and up on Freund's cliff from now on.
I can't wait for summer. Non-stop days of playing army and swimming in the lake. Mom can drive now, so that opens up a world of possibilities. Dad says he might take us to Gettysburg to see the battlefield, so I've got that to look forward to.
My little sister will be a year old in August, so that means two birthday party cook-outs this summer.
I'll have more jobs to do too. I won't be feeding the dog anymore, but I will have to start mowing the lawn on a regular basis. I've gotta take out the garbage and burn the trash, and help do the dishes, and anything else I'm told to do. I've heard stories about kids getting an allowance. An allowance? Not yet. Mom and Dad reward good behavior, but there's nothing formal. My father had to haul water from a stream every day when he lived in a two room shack in the woods in Maryland. You think I'm gonna ask for an allowance? Yeah, right.
I just hope they don't ask me to watch my little sister too much. She's almost past the diaper stage, and once was enough for me.
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