In the 1940’s
I attended the Bigelow School which was a short walk from my home on West Fifth
St. in Southie. In those days there was a very popular radio program where
children from the Boston School system got together to compete in a spelling
bee contest. It was similar to more recent national Television competitions but
on a regional scale. I was chosen to represent the Bigelow school. The rules
were simple. For every word you spelled correctly you were given a small
monetary award which was yours to keep even if you didn’t win the contest.
It was a
little nerve racking since it was live radio and we were quite young. It took
some time to settle my nerves but once we got going it went fairly well. I didn’t
win but I did earn a couple of dollars which made the experience worth my
while. I managed to spell some fairly hard words but failed on one of the more
simple ones. Some 80 years have passed and I have never misspelled that word
again. This is the word “pretty.”
As the
program was coming to the end the announcer called on me to ask what I was
going to spend my money on. I suspect he was hoping I would say something like
flowers for my mother or a tool for my father. Unfortunately my nerves came
back and I blurted out that I was going to count out the money to make sure I
received all that I was due. Needless to say I wasn’t asked to come back the
following year.
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