St. Francis of Assissi School

My old school… 1957-1965. St. Francis of Assisi, Philadelphia. Carved up wooden desks with ink wells, nuns with rulers, venial sins, warm soft pretzels at recess and a half block walk from home.

Sometimes we had to hide under our desks from the Russians but we were never worried about us all getting shot to death.

The building had a candy room, a pretzel room, a Boy Scout room and a very nice auditorium in the basement where we had student assemblies and shows. We had a lot of fun playing in that schoolyard at recess and before classes. Then the bell rang and we lined up.

There was no cafeteria in the building. Students all went home for lunch except for a handful of kids from Nicetown who ate in a classroom every day.

The main staircase was extraordinary and very beautiful. I loved walking up the stairs adjacent to those front widows. The building was torn down a year or so after I graduated because it was perceived as a firetrap. The replacement building was very mundane and nothing at all like our school.

We lived a half a block from the school and we could see those two towers from our backyard overlooking the neighborhood. The church next door had a large bell tower that rang the angelus every day and let us know when it was time to run home for dinner.

Every year there was a carnival in the early summer that would set up in the schoolyard for a week with rides that included a big ferris wheel. It was one of the highlights of the year.

In the aerial picture our house and backyard are in the very lower left corner.