This was also the subject of Sibling Assignment #15 when I wrote about my undefeated basketball career in the Silver King gymnasium. You can go back and read it, here. For this assignment you can read InlandEmpireGirl's post, here and Silver Valley Girl's here. Their posts also have photographs of the snow crushed Silver King School building.
My mother taught the second grade, mostly, at Silver King Elementary school for about fifteen years. The school sat about a quarter mile north, downwind, from the Bunker Hill Zinc Plant. The air was foul. The creek that ran along the school's east side was too acidic to go near. It smelled like rotten eggs.
Mom has survived breast cancer. All but one of her fellow women teachers from that building died of cancer.
It was a lousy place to locate a school, but I was happily oblivious to its dangers when I attended Silver King in the first and second grades.
Each day after school, I waited for Mom. Sometimes I helped her move stuff in her rooms. Other times I ran down the linoleum halls and slid in my socks. I sometimes played on the typewriters in the stock room, my introduction to two different typefaces, Elite and Pica.
The Zinc Plant day shift ended at three o'clock for hourly laborers like strippers, the bull gang, cell repair, and many others.
Consequently, an intermittent line of cars came down Government Gulch and I enjoyed watching them.
One day, though, a car bothered me. It was a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air, turquoise over most of its body, with a white hood and rear end.
The Bel Air sped.
It was loud.
I rolled a large flat rock out in front of the 1955 Bel Air.
The 1955 Bel Air screeched. Out leaped a guy with a duck tail haircut, skin tight jeans, and a white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled in his sleeve.
"What you doing?"
"You were goin' too fast."
"You coulda killed me!"
"Oh."
"No more. You hear? No more rollin' rocks in front of cars."
"Okay."
"You hear?"
"Yeah."
I probably went back to the stock room and typed.
I don't think I ever told anyone about the day I decided to be on emphasis patrol on Government Gulch road in front of Silver King Elementary School when I was in the first or second grade.
4 comments:
This was a really good Sibling Assignment. I have commented on all three of your blogs. I think Silver King was probably the only school in the country in which asbestos in the structure was probably considered healthy compared to the rest of our environment. Enjoyed the recollections of all three of you. I could add some but why add paint to a masterpiece.
Where was I when you were on Emphasis Patrol? I was probably feeding the guppies or helping Mom make hearts for the Valentine Post Office. Great, great post.
What an interesting memory. I almost said something about the typewriter in the stock room, too. So many memories at that place.
Great post. I went to 6th grade at silver king and never thought about how polluted the whole area was. I remember the smell of the settling pond at the end of government gulch road.
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