Steve Zeman:
CLASS OF 1978
Thomas Edison Elementary SchoolClass of 1978
Moorhead, MN
Kingsley Elementary SchoolClass of 1982
Waterloo, IA
Steve's Story
I attended Kingsley Elementary in Waterloo,Iowa and Thomas Edison in Moorehead/Fargo, and Marnie Simons in Hamburg Iowa.
I began Kindergarten in Waterloo with a teacher named Mrs.Kness (I think). It seems like my first grade teacher's name was Mrs. Beauford.
Memories of Kingsley: Climbing ropes in gym class, playing with the parachutes, playing dodge ball on the playground. Building with big red cardboard bricks in kindergarten,
listening intently to a young female teacher's assistant play guitar for our class then,
doing flash cards with teachers.
My friends were Jamie Freshwater and Gerald Becton,
but I don't recall if they attended Kinglsey (in Waterloo, IA). Jamie passed away at 12 from cancer after I had moved away. Also, knew a boy named Doug who like to play baseball. One day at recess, Doug oddly dared me to give his scabbed up elbow a lick and after that I didn't hang around with the kid anymore. Girls: I seem to remember I was fond of an Amy and also seems like there was a Keri. Anyway, just when the puppy love was beginning to blossum, the apple of my eye abruptly hurled at recess one day and threw up all over me. It wasn't really what I was expecting as a young recess Romeo(!) There was also
a German exchange student in class named Renee that I was
very fond of, but I can't remember if she was
truly my first kiss or just sort of my first kiss wish(!) She
moved away before I figured out what
it all meant anyway.
My nemesis at Kingsley was an ornery little blond haired rascal named Joe Hole who was in first grade with me in Mrs. Beauford's class and used to spit in my trusty bottle of Elmer's glue paste because--as he explained-- it "made it stickier." One day at recess I got fed up with old Joe and his antics. I didn't have the gumption or know how to fight him in a outright dust up, so one day when we were down at the point of our old triangular school yard, I sneaked up just as the recess bell rang and promptly shoved him into some serious sticker bushes and ran like crazy back into the building. I thought my stealth had worked until I was abruptly pulled into an office by a teacher who had seen the whole thing afar off from her classroom window.
There was also a popular young black fellow in my class named Kevin, of whom we were all
very fond. He was a bit stocky, lively, had a good sense of humor, and used to wear a scratch and sniff sweatshirt with a big pizza decal on the front. When you scratched the decal, it smelled just like pizza. We all
thought that was incredibly cool. Kevin was a fun, rough and tumble, all around good guy.
A weird thing that happened a few times at Kingsley was that at recess all of us kids would routinely get mooned by some incredibly fat assed individual who would somehow manage to shove his billous, elephantine, white bum out the window of a light blue VW beetle that would come roaring down the boulevard when we least expected. We'd stand there dumbfounded on the playground while the VW and hippo like derierre would come roaring by, squeaky little VW horn erraticly tooting an earnest, cheeky greeting. Teachers would frantically tell us to please turn around and try very hard not to observe the obvious. It was ridiculously, utterly jaw dropping. What it all meant, we had no idea. An early lesson in the twisted chaos of life on earth, it simply was what it was.
My favorite song from that time was "You're Sixteen," by Ringo Starr. I thought it was a very heavy, heady,
love ballad just dripping with inuendo for those just old enough to know. There was also an (awful), syrupy, mello-dramatic pop ballad out then called "Run Joey Run" that the radio stations played obsessively over and over. ("Daddy please don't, it wasn't his fault, he means so much to me...etc..were some of the lyrics). Rhinestone Cowboy by Glenn Campbell was popular, and some early John Denver and Wings songs (Sunshine and And Across the Water) were on the air playing. At the roller skating rink, we all skated to "Popcorn" and the"Rubber Band Man." "The Hustle" of course was the cadillac of disco music at that time, and once a gym teacher even played it during gym class to try to teach all of us gyrating little kids how to dance.
Lastly, I can't forget the indelible memory my parents formed by pumping up a particular disco song on the car radio as our family sped into Waterloo on our first day in town--what else but "WATERLOO" by ABBA. It was utter magic, and music to a pair of young ears.
Batman and Charlie's Angels, Shazam and Land of the Lost (the dinosaur show) were the TV shows we watched, and at night, the horror/mystery show, Kojack--Nightstalker. Benji, King Kong, and Superman were some of the movies I saw at the Waterloo Mall, where my dad ran the Woolworth's store.
We lived right across from St. Edward's Roman Catholic Cathedral on Kimball Ave.
The actor Nick Nolte used to attend Kingsley early on when he was a kid, and one of my friends in the neighborhood used to live in his old house. Up in Nick's old bedroom, we somehow found an antique skeleton key stuffed secretly away somewhere in his room, and boy did we kids sure want to find the treasure box that key went to. Did Nick leave us all a sock full of silver dollars hidden somewhere iin some forgotten closet or cabinet? We did some brainstorming on th...Expand for more
e possibilities but in the end we reluctantly had to move on with the rest of the day's adventures, like playing army and riding bikes.
During the summer of '76, a musician used to pull up at night in front of St.Ed's chapel in a shiny stretch limo, and after the dapper chauffeur would arrange a stool and guitar atop the front steps, a young musician would perch himself in the chapel's floodlights and sing "Bye,Bye Miss American Pie" out over our house's rooftop, up to the summer night stars above. We--the private audience of the neighborhood--marveled at these remarkable performances and I started to ponder that perhaps my mom was secretly Miss American Pie in alias because she was so beautiful, and charming, and such a wonderful mom, and because the singer on the church steps down below seemed to be seranading both us and her. Years later, after doing some research, I suspect the young singer was probably Don McClean warming up and practicing for a nearby concert. And that was the first time in my own life that I longed to be a musician and consequently ended up being one myself.
One summer a Big Foot movie came out, and we eagerly laid money down for that as well. A funny Big Foot song came out on the radio about the same time that we kids thought was cool. Finally, a touring
exhibition set up at the mall, showcasing the "Abominable Snowman on Ice." For a few bucks you could look down into a long block of ice and see a supposed caveman frozen solid inside. We just flipped in our sneakers when that exhibit came through.
About that time a circus performer attempted a net less trapeze act out at the mall and promptly plummeted two stories to the mall floor right before our young eyes. My dad ran out of Woolworth's and covered her with a warm blanket until the ambulance came. It was one of my first intimations that something was odd about life--namely a strange twist of mortality and a degree of roughness of life on earth. My other clue about it all was the legless Vietnam vet scooting around the mall in worn out fatigues on an
awkward skateboard he had fashioned. I and my
friends had skateboards of our own at that time,
but we still had legs to maneuver them with. And so
I had my first obscure encounter with war and its
consequences, although I never knew what in fact it
really was that I and my friends were witnessing. It was in fact the aftermath.
After Waterloo, my father was transfered to the Woolworth's in Fargo, so away we went.
Follwoing Fargo/Moorehead, my family relocated to Hamburg, Iowa where my father opened a dimestore. After the business closed, I ended up graduating in Kansas City before moving to Springfield,MO, where I attended college and X-ray school. I now live in Kansas City where I work as a nuclear medicine technologist.
At Thomas Edison in Moorehead I was in the choir during third grade. We performed live on the radio for the Thomas Edison anniversary concert.
We also sang "The Movies are Great Medicine" by the Statler Brothers. The lyrics went "The movies are great medicine, thank you Thomas Edison, for giving us the best years of our lives..." It was a good choir, and to this day I love to sing and am quite musical.
I wonder who the choir teacher was.
I attended Edison for one year and was in the 3rd grade in 1977 or 1978.
At recess me and the other boys played a rough football game called "Smear the Queer(!)" which was something like Rugby. I split my lip the first time I played. I was thoroughly smeared(!) In gym class, THomas Edison was big on soccer, which I was never much good at. The lunch's as I recall were awful.
The playground has a large fake missile that kids could climb on and pretend to ride. I actually think it was an actual missile because my father happened to have been a former missile tech from the service and he identified the thing and told me it was an authentic retired missile. Of course that's all to the best of my memory.
In the center of the school in the hallway, we had a terrarium with box turtles. I had a pet box turtle that I reluctantly donated to the terrarium, and it was so lonely and sad for me to have to give the little guy up and give him over to the school. I would stop by and see him whenever I could, but noone else knew that it was my pet turtle in there because I was the new kid and didn't talk much. I did okay in school and was
a cub scout out at Americana Estates east of town.
At school I was friends with a tall Asian boy named Luen Tu who was very kind but seldom spoke. I seem to recall a boy named Tony from Brainerd also.
My memories are a bit scant as I only lived in Moorehead for a year or so. My father ran the Fargo Woolworth's store.
Overall my time at Edison was a lonely span but considering my family's many moves that sort of came with the territory. I managed to cope in spite of it all and made the best of it. During the cold Minnesota winter, perhaps to teach us patience, my mother bought some cactus seeds and we grew them slowly at home in a tiny pot. To this day, one thing I remember vividly about my time in Moorehead was waiting patiently through the cold winter to see those silly cactuses shoot out in early spring and bloom.
And by gosh bloom they did--in spite of those frigid mornings I spent stomping about in at the bus stop(!)
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