I went to kindergarten in 1954 when I was five years old in the Conrad Weiser school system. At that time Conrad Weiser was still spread out over several different communities and had not yet built its central school. The kindergarten class was held in Wernersville, PA in the basement of a church, but I don’t remember the name. The first one on the left when you drive into Wernersville on Rte 422 from Womelsdorf.

My mother mentioned it to our family doctor, Dr. Nagle, who was located in Stouchsburg, and he said he wished his son Allen, who was my age, could attend it as well. As Stouchsburg was within the Conrad Weiser domain, just barely, my mother offered to drive Allen along with me every day.

I no longer remember exactly what the driving arrangements were. I think sometimes my mother would pick Allen up and drive the both of us to Wernesrville; other times, I think someone (Allen’s mother?) would bring Allen to Womeldorf to Mrs. Rohrbach’s home (our kindergarten teacher) where my mother would drop me off as well, and then Mrs. Rohrbach would take us both to class.

In any case, I have vague memories of kindergarten, mostly pleasant. Mrs. Rohrbach would have us sit in a circle and she’d teach us things like all those phony myths about Columbus discovering America and Washington never telling a lie and Lincoln growing up in a log cabin. That last one is actually true.

There were monkey bars, and one time I was on the monkey bars by myself and somehow lost my grip and fell to a lower bar right onto my tummy. That hurt. Not all my memories are pleasant.

And Mrs. Rohrbach would play music. She had a 78 rpm record player (this was 1954), and she encouraged us to bring in our own records. I remember bringing one in called “Back in the Saddle Again” by Gene Autry. Can you believe it?

I have a very odd memory about that song. After Mrs. Rohrbach played it, we had a break of some sort where we could play on the monkey bars and other things, and then we came back to the circle at the end of the break. Mrs. Rohrbach told us that as we were coming back Allen had said to her that he was singing to himself that he was “Back in the Circle Again”. And I felt what? Resentful? Jealous? I had brought that record in. Why was Allen getting attention for it? Very odd how a five-year-old can experience emotions. And that I remember it after all these years.

Allen brought in a record called “Tubby the Tuba”, which l liked a lot. I think that’s why I still like the sound of the tuba so much. I asked my mother to buy it for me, but she couldn’t find it in any record store. I also vaguely recall seeing a cartoon based on that record. 

Now thanks to YouTube, I can listen to it all I want. If I want, that is. I could even listen to “Back in the Saddle Again”.