2. Childhood Beyond The Schoolroom
Lloyd Johnson, c 1936 Toward the end of my kindergarten year at the Nathan Hale School, Ma summarily announced that I wouldn’t return there in the fall, supposedly because my first-grade teacher was “deaf.” Her rationale escaped me then, but at age 4 who was I to question her decision. Since then, I have come to think that, from Ma’s point of view, “deaf” meant that that teacher was wearing a hearing aid. She declared that I would start the first grade at the Louis Prang School on Washington Street near Dudley Square. Louis Prang was a Boston printer [...]