By Vicki (Patton) Burke
Special to the Caloosa Belle
In September of 1946, about thirty 6-year old students either ran in to LaBelle Elementary School with excitement or were pulled in by their mothers (I fitted into the last group.) We were introduced to Mrs. Middleton, our first-grade teacher. We soon learned to hold up our hands when we wanted something and what to do when the bell rang and lined up accordingly. The girls brought dolls, jacks and jump ropes to play with at recess and the boys brought marbles. Sometimes they played cowboys and Indians, pretended to shoot while hiding behind oak trees and ran races all over the playground. By Christmas we had settled into school life and made lots of new friends. Nanny Collins ran the lunchroom, she knew all of us and our parents and was known to make the rounds reminding us to eat our collards and cornbread and drink our milk. We actually ate locally grown food. The first book we read was about Alice and Jerry, their dog named Jip. The first complete sentence we learned was “Jump Jip Jump.”