My year at Craigflower, 1943-44 (the students from Cordova Bay were moved again the following year) was good, in fact academically it was quite successful as I received an award of merit at the end of the school year. It was the book Bambi which has remained one of my treasures to this day.
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| 1943 - 1944 Craigflower School Grade 2 and 3 class |
Although much of the school year remains shadowed in the fog of age, I do recall that two grades, two and three were together in the class. I also recall that we were at tables rather than desks and that there were two class rooms on the second floor of the school There was a large playground and games of skipping and hopscotch kept us moving at recess. Because it was wartime, many of our skipping songs were based on the war, in fact I often wondered who wrote those rhymes.
There was an occasion when we were invited to a farm owned by the parents of a student for an Easter egg hunt. The family raised chickens on their farm and had hidden hard boiled eggs around the property for us to find. It was a wonderful day and someone made sure each of us got to take home one or two eggs, it was the first time I had ever heard of an Easter Egg hunt.
At Cordova Bay, a new family took over the grocery store across from McMorran's and they had a daughter my age so at last, a nearby girl as a friend. She had a white persian cat which one day produced a litter of beautiful white kittens, I remember seeing those little balls of white fur curled up on the sofa.
Walking through her family's grocery store and into the residence I noticed some of the products displayed on the store shelves, Rinso (as in the commercial of the time Rinso white, Rinso white) Duz (Duz does everything) and so on. Oxydol was a leader in sponsoring the daytime radio shows or soap operas as they became known with their long lasting program, Ma Perkins.
