Lincoln's Birthday!

Today is Lincoln's birthday, and each year on this date I think back to my days at Fort Dearborn Grammar School, which I attended while growing up in the South Side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago.  I was not crazy about school, and it was therefore a great joy to have Lincoln's birthday as a day off, and then just 10 days later, Washington's Birthday, too. These days, of course, those two holidays have been combined into President's Day, depriving students of one of their holidays. What a ripoff. Of course, that change happened during the Nixon administration, but just the idea of it still makes me mad. And yes, I do have a long long memory. By the way, I took the photograph on the left of Fort Dearborn when I went back to visit the old neighborhood in 2010, holding a photo I took of one of the Kloak kids years ago on the way home from school.

The photo on the right I have used quite a few times on this blog. It shows Mrs. McCormick, my teacher at the time, as well as the inside of a Fort Dearborn classroom back in the early 1960s. She actually caught me taking this photo, and warned me never to take another. However, she did not confiscate my camera, thus allowing this historic photo to be saved for posterity. I was sitting in the middle of the classroom that year, but my favorite spot was next to the window, where during the first half of June, I would listen to the lawnmowers, feel the warm breeze, and count the days until classes were over. And the last day of school before summer vacation? Talk about wonderful.