Everybody I know has definite feelings and thoughts about going to school. People hated school, loved it, was bored by it, didn't learn anything in it, was scared half to death by it.
My first school experience was the Pittsburgh Public School System; I was five years old and going to kindergarten at Roosevelt School on Murray Avenue. The building stood, covering a whole block, an aging and ancient pile of brick and twisting staircases, housing kindergarten through sixth grade. To a five year old child it was a madhouse of ringing bells, hundreds of feet clattering down stairs, and big loud teachers.

Fortunately for all the children in our neighborhood, we had to spend only one school year there; a new school had been built on a piece of empty waste land on Lilac Street. To us it was as if heaven opened--a small building where the fifth and sixth graders were segregated and kept away from the little kids, a building that even smelled new. It was called John Minadeo School in memory of a brave boy who, acting as a crossing guard, darted out into the street to save some children but lost his life.

I loved Minadeo School, as did my friends who lived on the Extension, because walking to it saved us from what seemed "a fate worse than death." Lilac Street plunged steeply downhill on the way to Roosevelt School. In winter it was a nightmare. Sometimes it scared me so much that I sat down on the icy sidewalk and slid down to school. But the new school was closer and we were able to avoid that hill.