From age about one, until we moved to Syracuse, my parents, Betty and I lived across the street from a public school,
P.S. 70. I remember spending hour after hour looking out the window, watching the kids in school, wishing I could join them. Of course, I hadn't counted on this
sit in a chair all day and pay attention and stop squirming thing. Anyway, I went to kindergarten there, and had six excruciating weeks of first grade, before we moved to Syracuse. In those six weeks, we had gotten up to the letter "M". I had already been reading for years, so, given my natural inability to sit still and pay attention anyway, school was torture. When we moved to Syracuse, they were reading sentences from Dick & Jane readers (literally), so at least that part was improved. Though we still were expected to just sit there. And the other kids made uproarious fun of my "accent" and NY culture. For example, I said "can" instead "kyenne", "Syracuse" instead of "Saracuse", and "see-saw" instead of teeter-totter.
In this photo, the place I'm standing is now the Cross Bronx Expressway (on the right in the Google Maps picture below). Our apartment, which I'm standing in front of, was torn down to make way for the highway. I think of this picture as me looking more like the adult I became than I do in other pictures of me at that age.
You can see from the modern pictures below that this is still a public school, P.S. 70, at the corner of Weeks Avenue and 174th St. 98% of the kids get food assistance, so this isn't any richer a neighborhood than when we lived there. (Click photo to see where I borrowed this thumbnail.)
Google maps street view doesn't get any closer to the school than this.
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