When I was moved by Mr. Capps and my mother into fifth grade without going to the fourth grade, I found myself in some difficulty at school. I couldn’t do the math the fifth graders were doing. I hadn’t even heard of multiplication or division but the teacher, Mrs. Bankhead, didn’t slow the instruction down or try to help me catch up in any way. My Mom set about to remedy my math deficiencies. She made up some flash cards and I began to learn the multiplication tables with her help.
At that time, we were selling milk to some of our neighbors. I don’t remember how many different families bought milk from us but I had the job of delivering two or three quarts of milk a day to different families. We had a small box that was painted blue and it would hold the quart bottles of milk. Mom would put the bottles in the box and then she would assign me one of the multiplication tables like “the 4’s.” By the time I got the milk delivered and came home, I was suppose to know 1 times 4= 4, 2 times 4=8, 3 times 4=12 etc. all the way up to 12 times 4=48. The next day I would get another number and repeat the routine. I don’t think I learned all of the multiplication tables in twelve days but I learned them pretty fast. If I had difficulty with a few specific ones like 6×7=42, I would deliver the milk repeating to myself all the way, 6×7=42, 6×7=42, 6×7=42, etc. By the time I got home, I had memorized that 6×7=42, never to be forgotten again. Once I had the multiplication tables memorized, then it was on to simple division with the flash cards again. The end result of all of this was that I didn’t flunk out of fifth grade. By the end of the year I had caught up with the rest of the class. I guess my success was such a disappointment to Mrs. Bankhead that she just up and died part way through the year and a new teacher named Mrs. Miller came in and took her class. Mrs. Miller was willing to help me so I survived. I have often wondered since what people thought when they heard me walking around town repeating to myself 7×9 is 63, 7×9 is 63 or 12 divided by 4 is 3, 12 divided by 4 is 3. Maybe only the dogs paid any attention.
I enjoyed the fifth grade once Mrs. Miller became my teacher. One of the most interesting subjects for me in fifth grade was geography. I had not had much, if any, geography before that and Mrs. Miller opened my eyes to the wonders of geography and different places. I can’t remember whether it was U.S. geography or world geography but which ever, I enjoyed it. Later in life I got to visit many parts of the United States and the world and I enjoyed that as well but it all started in fifth grade.
When I moved to fifth grade, I had to make friends with an older group of kids. Instead of the boys my age, I was in the class with Farrel Holyoak, Gary Duncan and Bill Batson. The girls in my class were Judy Brewer, Ann Patrick, Rosealynn Riedhead and Carol Sue Hollowell. The classes in elementary school were not large. There were usually only eight or nine students in each class up through eighth grade.