School days began with a pancake and fried egg sandwich glued together with King syrup. We’d grab our dimes (Mom and Dad bought rolls of them at a time) from the lunch money drawer and head out the lane and across the wooden railroad bridge to wait with the neighbor kids for the big yellow school bus. Our stop was the last on the route; kids slid over to make room for a third person on the seats. Our bus pulled into a long line of yellow buses waiting to drop off the high school kids. The tall red brick elementary school was just around the corner. We climbed steep cement steps to wait in the noisy gym for the first bell to ring. Preoccupied teachers walked through clusters of students, making their way to their classrooms to prepare for the onslaught of the day. Energetic girls and boisterous boys…