I attended grade school in a small town that might remind you of Andy Griffith's Mayberry. My father had a shop on Main Street, and he dropped me off at school every morning. There were two schools, for first through fourth grade and fifth through eighth grade, both also on Main Street and within easy walking distance of my father's shop. Afternoons, I walked along the sidewalk from school to my father's shop, being careful not to break my mother's back, and pausing at the town's single stoplight to wait for one of the town's two policemen to help me cross the street. I'd wait for my father to finish his work, then we'd drive back home.
