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Roberto
The Ethical Will of Donald Armstrong, Part 12
For an explanation of what an ‘Ethical Will’ is, please see my previous post, ‘I Leave to You … Whatever Wisdom I May Have Gained.’
When I began my education in a public kindergarten — with equal measures of excitement and trepidation — the Keithsburg school district served a town of less than a thousand residents, as well as the adjacent farmland extending several miles to the the north, east and south. On the west, the city limit was the Mississippi River. (The schools of carp and catfish that populated the river were not part of the Keithsburg district — although I suspect that some of their members occasionally joined us for lunch.)
At the time, classes met in two red, brick buildings, located close to the downtown business district. The previous comment is a bit of a truism: when you live in a community with less than 1,000 inhabitants, everything is ‘close to the downtown business district.’ The elementary school was an older, two story structure on the north side of Washington Street. During fire drills, the fifth and sixth grade students on the second floor escaped the building through a metal, tubular evacuation slide. We looked forward to fire drills with great anticipation!
High school students met in a newer building on the south side of Washington Street. The…