Ceredo Grade School sits empty now, the brick one-story village school teaching only 199 students when it closed in 2018. Ceredo still owns the building, though, and plans to use it for overflow elementary and adult fitness classes.
I walked past the building a couple of summers ago when my niece graduated from Ceredo-Kenova High School and couldn't help thinking about my first grade teacher, a vaguely blonde woman who didn't approve of my too-high reading level but made sure I looked good for picture day. This odd conflict between responses made no sense to me then. All I wanted was a teacher who liked me, and I did whatever I could think of to make that happen, with smiles and laughter and contriteness. She took me in the classroom bathroom once and spanked my bottom because of my chatter--or at least I thought that's what it was--and I was so sorry so sorry so sorry, even though I really didn't know what I'd done wrong.
On picture day, my sister Colleen let me ride to school on the back of her bicycle, not because she wanted to, but because our mother wanted us both to bring home good photos, and biking to school meant less time in the hot sun and more curls leftover from that sleepless night wearing wires in our hair. I guess they weren't really cylindered wires, but those rollers secured with bobby pins cut into my scalp so much I counted the dots on the wallpaper just to cope with that barbed fencing poking into my brain.
Of course, that morning that started out sunny didn't stay that way. Instead, we rode into a wall of rain between the IGA and the school, leaving our curls looking more like mops when we sloshed into the building. Colleen left me in a hurry, rushing off to her fourth grade class. And I dripped my way into the first grade room hoping for a towel or extra shirt to dry me. Much to my surprise, that teacher who didn't like me met me with a hair dryer and a curling iron, stopping class to dry my hair before the photographer arrived. She probably did the same for all of the other girls arriving wet after the rain. But I just remember her singling me out, taking the time to make sure that page of photos I took home to mom looked fine.
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