Page 45 - 1st Anthology 2011

because we always used to get hungry towards the afternoon around three or four. We
took some home, eat some on the way home.

Violet Crowchild, she was a janitor. She used to come in when everyone leaves and she
used to clean up. It was a really nice school. We had Christmas concerts. Everybody used
to come to the old Bullhead hall and we would have a tree.

One thing I’ll tell you about this place is that I got to read. I was not a good reader. I also
learned how to write, and I learned my arithmetic, and I also learned about science and
social studies stuff. This was in grade one, two and three. I knew my timetables. Now
today if you take a child out there and he’ll be in grade three. He still won’t know how to
write his name. What they teach them, I don’t know. They call themselves teachers. If
you’re a teacher you’re supposed to teach them all these basic things.

I used to be a substitute teacher for culture and language, and I used to ask the children
to write their names down on their paper. There was this one child that was chewing on
his pencil. I asked him are you going to eat the pencil or write your name. He said to me,
I’m sorry to say Mr. Meguinis but I don’t know how to write my name. I asked, doesn’t
your teacher teach you how to write your name and he said nope. Then I said okay if she
can’t do it then lets do it.

It took me two days to get him to write his name. I taught him how to write his name,
and the child was so proud of it. He said to me I know how to write my name and you
taught me. I said well that’s good.

The years I was in school was during the 1950’s, and I remember that I was in grade seven
and it was 1963, why I remember that is because Kennedy got shot. That’s what you think,
where you were when he got shot. That’s what I remember. I was in grade seven at St.
Augustine’s. We just broke, and what happens is that when we take a class, the teacher
stays there but we all move to different classes. The buzzer went on and then all of a
sudden there were no classes.

I noticed that there were a lot of young girls in the hallway crying and I was wondering
what the hell happened. I asked one of the guys, and he said Kennedy just got shot. I was
like what, yeah he just got shot. Right there, there were no more classes, and there was an
assembly, and it was a Catholic church so everybody just started praying. Not even fifteen
minutes he was being pronounced dead on the television. It was telling what happened,
and it kept replaying.

After that the schools were laid back, and there wasn’t that much classes. It was a really
big thing. Everybody was really into it too. He was really important for him to reach into
Canada like that. To be assassinated, he must have been doing something right that
people didn’t like. I mean he was getting somewhere. So my way of thinking, they just

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