Column: A fourth-grade nothing turned into something good

It was the toughest year of my 17-year academic career.

The fourth grade.

It was the spring of 1953, and my family had just moved to Costa Mesa from my grandparents’ home on Balboa Island.

I fell in love with the community on the bluffs.

I transferred from Corona del Mar Elementary School at midyear of the third grade, to Charles A. Lindbergh School in Costa Mesa.

Lindbergh was located on 23rd Street and Orange Avenue. My third- grade classroom was at one end of the school’s rectangular main building.

In the fall of ‘53, I was placed in Mrs. Reichwein’s fourth-grade class at the opposite end of the building. Young and vivacious, Mrs. Reichwein was one of the most popular teachers at the school.

In the second week of the term, however, I was pulled from her class with two other students and sent to the principal’s office. We were told we were being transferred from Mrs. Reichwein’s warm incubator to another class — effective immediately.

What?

I went back to Mrs. Reichwein’s class, gathered my things, said goodbye without crying and walked to my new room. Suddenly, things began to move in slow motion as if it were a bad dream. I was staggered.

My “new” classroom was a dilapidated World War II wooden “bungalow” … no doubt a relic of the Santa Ana Army Air Base. It sat, disconsolate, at the edge of the blacktopped playground.

We were led up the front steps through a door and found ourselves standing at the front of the classroom, with 23 sets of eyeballs staring at us.

The lady who escorted us turned to the teacher and announced: “Here are your three new pupils from Mrs. Reichwein’s class.”

I wanted to turn around, flee down the steps and lose myself in the rutted backwaters of Costa Mesa. Except that I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed.

Our escort left the building.

We stared at our new teacher and she must have been a hundred years old — older even than my grandmother. She was no taller than I, and rather stout. Her hair was pulled back severely into a bun, and she tightly clasped a dangerous looking blackboard pointer.

She was Mrs. Coxen; and I wanted to die.

Where was the kind Mrs. Reichwein?

Mrs. Coxen opened her mouth and sounded like Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played Miss Gulch (the Wicked Witch) in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“All right children, find an empty desk,” she trilled. “Take out your history textbook.”

Ohmigosh. I had gone from heaven to the cruelest depths of Dante’s Inferno. My life was over.

My parents noticed that I picked at my food for days.

“Is there something wrong, Jimmy?” Mom repeatedly asked.

“No, ma,” I replied. I didn’t want to confess my devastation.

I’d lie in bed at night imagining scenarios with tears welling in my eyes. When I slept, I’d dream that I was in class and some lady would come bursting through the door waving a yellowed telegram. “There’s been a mistake,” she’d shriek. “Jimmy must at once return to Mrs. Reichwein’s class!”

No such luck.

Weeks went by.

Then, one October day, Mrs. Coxen called me to her desk.

Great cracking cheeks of Lear! She smiled.

“Jimmy, you do well with recitation. I’d like you to play a role in the school’s Christmas production.”

Umm, really?

One night in December, in a stuffy hall packed with parents, students and teachers, I was adorned in green tights, a green frock, a green hat and a long, white beard. I was Scotland’s Father Christmas. It was a life-changing moment.

In that same moment, I noticed a twinkle in Mrs. Coxen’s eye.

In the spring, she put me in a Pinocchio outfit — of her own design and manufacture — and I recited from memory, for the student body and later the PTA, an ode to Pinocchio.

At the end of the school year Mrs. Coxen wished me success in the fifth grade. “You’ll do well,” she assured me as she squeezed my hand. “You’re ready for the challenge.”

She had faith in me, and I’ve never forgotten her.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.