A LOOK BACK AT THE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL

We were brought to the East Bridgewater Intermediate School for the first time on a tour from the town’s Central School during our final days of the third grade. Built in 1912, the building had originally been constructed to be the suburban Massachusetts farm town’s high school, but as of the 1970s had long since been used as an upper elementary transitional school. In order to make the trip to the Intermediate School, we were assigned partners before being led on a walk through the center of town. My partner that day was Jack Condon. Jack was required to go on the tour despite the fact that he was moving to the nearby town of Hanover before the start of the next school year. I remember it being a warm summerlike day walking to what would become our new school the next September, perhaps a sunny indicator of some of the good times we would have while attending the Intermediate School.

The Intermediate School had just enough academic space to house the fourth and fifth grades during those years. The interior of the school was antiquated with classic architectural features including high ceilings and dark wood trim. Classrooms were painted colors that you might expect to see in a school for younger kids with walls of orange, red, light blue, and yellow. The school did not have a designated library. The school’s librarian, Mrs. Curley, was given a normal room on the lower floor of the building filled with shelves of books and a few tables with random chairs where students could sit and read. Books available in the school’s library included selections from the Encyclopedia Brown series, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, and various titles by authors Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary. Entire classes would be entertained by Mrs. Curley reading poems like “Hungry Mungry” or “Sick” from Shel Silverstein’s book, Where the Sidewalk Ends.

The Intermediate School’s gymnasium was typical for turn of the century construction, an addition to the main building with a short connecting hallway and a small descending set of stairs. The gym had a stage with a heavy curtain to be used for formal events. The basketball court had very little room behind the backboards attached to each side of the gym, a characteristic that came into play during youth basketball games held at the school during winter evenings. The unique design of the gym required basketball players to cut a serious angle in order to successfully complete a layup. Otherwise, you were likely to run directly into the wall after scoring two points.

Mr. Kenney was our gym teacher at the Intermediate School, a young teacher who made an effort to connect with kids in order to make classes fun. Gym class sometimes involved using special equipment like a parachute, attempting to climb ropes hanging from the high ceiling of the gym, or jumping on a trampoline. Mr. Kenney allowed kids to bring in record albums from home that could be played on a portable record player while we engaged in various athletic activities. Cary Whitmore, who seemed to be on the cutting edge of virtually everything even as a fourth grader, brought an album into school from a new band called Boston. Although Boston had already received significant radio airplay at that point, the young Whitmore enthusiastically attempted to warm members of our gym class up to the idea of listening to this new band, as if his efforts to convince us that their music was actually up to snuff was going to make a difference whether Mr. Kenney allowed him to play it or not. As the one who brought the record to school, Cary was allowed to go up on the stage and place the album on the small record player setting the needle down on the LP with the small device blasting out songs like “More Than a Feeling” and “Peace of Mind” as we all raced around the school gym. Of particular note, I recognized and respected the way that Mr. Kenney made a point of taking classmate John Wales under his wing during our gym classes at the Intermediate School, providing the kind of adult attention that our late classmate deserved and must have appreciated.

Arriving at the Intermediate School each morning meant gathering as an entire group before the bell that officially started the school day. During warm weather months, students got together on the playground behind the school. During winter months students gathered in the cramped cafeteria in the school’s basement. Kids would arrive in the cafeteria wearing their winter coats and hats with whatever books, materials, or specific lunch boxes they might have with them sitting at long tables that would later be used for lunch. Michael Doherty arrived each winter morning wearing his Pittsburgh Steelers coat and hat. Bruce Denneen usually came in wearing his youth hockey team jacket, his name embroidered in gold on the arm of the decorated maroon coat. The school’s cafeteria had panelled walls and small, ceiling-level windows. This large space served multiple purposes for the school. The cafeteria was home to occasional chorus classes, was used everyday to serve lunch to students, and was also the place where large groups of kids were brought to watch special movie presentations like Mulligan Stew, an entertaining film series from the early 1970s that preached both ecology and nutrition.

When the weather was warm, recess was held out at the school’s back playground. Students exited the school through a large, heavy doorway on the side of the building. The playground was solidly paved, generally unsafe by today’s potentially overprotective standards, but despite the Lord of the Flies aspect of recess at the Intermediate School with mobs of students milling about and settling into loosely organized groups, it was the perfect place for kids to run around during the 1970s. Each year we could expect a broken bone of some sort while out at the playground, but breaking an arm or a wrist in those days was like an enviable rite of passage with that person lucky enough to end up with a cool cast that everyone could sign. The playground equipment was minimal, highlighted by a large swing set and a tall jungle gym. The majority of injuries were the result of falls from the jungle gym. An outdated basketball court stood between the back of the school and the perimeter of the playground area. Where the pavement ended just beyond the swing set, there was a descending hill that leveled out to a large dusty playing field below. This dirt field was usually filled with kids playing either touch football typically led by George Austin or a soccer game captained by David Floeck, Peter Larsen, or Wally Seaberg. The field was often crowded with multiple games going on at the same time. On occasion, a ball would end up traveling over the surrounding fence, requiring someone to jump over the chain link fence into the small trees and brush that separated the school’s field from the backyards of the houses along the steep hill of neighboring Union Street. With patrolling teachers assuming kids were always attempting to escape, jumping to the other side of the fence without permission involved risk. Students caught by teachers on the other side of the fence were normally disciplined, possibly involving a visit to the office to see Mr. Cabana, the Principal. I remember having to jump over the fence once to retrieve a ball thinking about how rebellious it felt to be on the other side of the fence and then the sense of relief I had when I was able to jump back onto the school property without teachers noticing.

By the time kids got to the Intermediate School, academics had grown significantly more challenging. When fractions were taught in Mrs. Spendley’s math class during the fourth grade, I could feel myself already shutting the door on anything involving math as a future endeavor. Mrs. Wolfreys was our Social Studies teacher in the fourth grade. Both Cary Whitmore and I also had Mrs. Wolfreys as our homeroom teacher. When the Whitmore family went to Disney World that winter Cary brought me back a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, something I still remember as an impressive act of kindness on his part. Mark Mason, another classmate and friend who went to Florida that year, returned with dramatic stories about Space Mountain. The room across the hall was dedicated to penmanship and writing, literally the repetitive practice of scripting letters in upper and lower case cursive, only occasionally responding to prompts with written passages. This room was the largest of all of the fourth grade rooms, and it was also the room where awards were presented to kids at the end of the school year. I distinctly recall Mark Mason receiving the Happy-Go-Lucky Award, and probably remember that award specifically because it required our teachers to carefully define what happy-go-lucky meant before Mark was handed the award.

The fifth grade represented another step forward academically at the Intermediate School, a grade essentially intended to prepare students for the more structured years ahead at the town’s junior high school. The beginning of our fifth grade year was ceremoniously marked by the end of the 1978 pennant drive of the Boston Red Sox. On October 2nd, a television, an extremely small television by today’s standards, was brought into Mrs. Kelly’s classroom during the final part of the school day. All of the students on our fifth grade team gathered in Mrs. Kelly’s room to watch the first few innings of the one-game playoff between the Red Sox and the Yankees. We watched Carl Yastrzemski hit a second inning home run off left-handed Yankee ace, Ron Guidry, putting the Red Sox ahead. Later that afternoon after racing home from school to see the rest of the game, I witnessed Bucky Dent’s infamous home run punctuating what would be the end of the 1978 season for the Red Sox. Mr. Bowen, our fifth grade English teacher, would hang student artwork up on the chalkboard behind his desk. I drew a picture of Dwight Evans, my favorite Red Sox player during those days, which Mr. Bowen promptly added to his collection of student-created work on the board. Mr. Bowen’s room was arranged traditionally with student desks in regimented rows, his class being the first time I ever noticed myself becoming physically restless while attempting to remain seated and focused for an entire class period. Old friend Steven Prygoda and I cleverly found ways to combat the daily tedium by picking up on double meanings in stories that the class was reading aloud, usually keeping each other in check with ridiculous references often communicated and commonly understood with just a glance from across the room. Ms. Miller was our fifth grade math teacher. The cold winter months meant that recess was held indoors, and in my case, in Ms. Miller’s room. I recall spending the winter quietly exchanging funny drawings with fellow student Mike Richard during indoor recess that year. For a block of time intended to be an energetic release for kids, it was commonly understood that Ms. Miller’s room was supposed to be silent, for the most part, and academically directed. Suffice it to say, Ms. Miller was not a woman who lacked the ability to control a classroom full of children.

After spending two years at the Intermediate School, we were more than ready to move forward taking on the new challenges of junior high school, while budget constraints soon made our class one of the final groups to leave East Bridgewater’s Intermediate School. In June 1981, the school closed its doors for good, a logistical victim of Proposition 2 ½. A quirky old building with plenty of flaws, the Intermediate School created an effective bridge between the town’s one elementary school and the more structured learning environment necessary at the junior high level.

Forty-four years after its closing it is interesting to look back at the potential value of preservation, the role that an old building plays in helping to hold a community together, and the lasting impressions that the old East Bridgewater Intermediate School still has on those who remember it.

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