November 2017 – Page 3 – Sage Telling Your Story

Stories like this have been told endlessly by endless numbers of people just like you and me. But my story is unique because it is my very own.
I don’t know if the Riverside Central School still stands as I remember it. Then it seemed a monumental structure in the late 19th Century style known as Richardson Romanesque. A flight of wide stairs led up to what seemed like a huge semicircular arched doorway. The spaces within were dedicated to 4th and 5th grades and the auditorium where they held Friday all-school assemblies.
A later date addition housed the primary grades and the most wondrous fantasy world (depending on your age; I was 5) called “Kindergarten”.
We lived just up the block, but I imagine I was accompanied by my mother to get to school, for as many times to get my confidence established enough so that I could make the morning journeys on my own. Armed with my half pint of orange juice in a little canvas bag lovingly sewn by mother we walked. She even put my name in cross stitch embroidery on the tote bag.
Kindergarten was truly a marvelous adventure for everyone. There were two nice ladies there to help us find the right things to play/work with. I later learned that they had the titles of teacher. If there was any sort of rudimentary instruction going on, I cannot recall because I was having too much fun.
The real learning experience was the process of what is now called “socialization”. Put 14 or 20 four to five year olds together and there’s got to be some kicking, screaming, and tears as well as happy laughter.
Mid-morning was orange juice time and a short lie down quiet period.
Then it was back to activities of one sort or another. When I discovered oversized wooden building blocks, I was well on the road to becoming an architect. This was so wonderful until the teacher introduced us to the make-believe grocery store. So much for an introduction to our capitalist consumer centered economy. (Get them started early!)
There probably is a lot more to tell you about my kindergarten days, but honestly I’ve let you take a peek at the best part and I can’t remember any more anyway. Besides all of this transpired some 85 or 86 year ago and we have to allow as how foggy nostalgia can be given to time, source, and age of that tiny tot with his little canvas orange juice bag.

About the Author

Following a fifth grade public humiliation in art class, I decided I could not draw figures. I was slightly interested but never liked what I drew after that. In seventh grade I signed up for wood shop to be in class with my best friend Keith. The only thing I actually liked in that class, besides cleaning varnish brushes (I liked the way twirling bristles full of soap felt on the palms of my hands), was drawing and wood burning a design onto the bookends I made. I should have signed up for art but I just knew I wasn’t an artist.

Due to my responsibilities in religious education I organized art programs for children. One teacher taught figure drawing. She made sure it included things like crosses and globes so the parents would understand why. Mostly I was interested that children grow artistically (music, drama, and visual arts) seeing them as religious expression, skills they would never forget from their childhood years in church.

Eventually I knew I needed to draw, so I bought a book on how to draw in a natural way, a large drawing tablet, and a set of art pencils. I worked at it and learned. Still I wasn’t a strong drawer. When I later signed up for a drawing workshop the thing didn’t get enough enrollees. I kept at my own figure drawing, even used my slight skills in my work.

Figures of speech were much more familiar to me. I had learned speech and some rhetoric in college and graduate school, wrote many papers to satisfy my professors, used the assigned topics in my own way in order to do research related to what intrigued me in the classes, preached a bit and eventually wrote professionally (probably a figure of speech itself although I did get paid for my work). I wasn’t a strong speaker, but I did enjoy turning ideas into written pieces.

Important figures in my life, you know those special people known or read about, include: my parents and grandparents, Lakota leader Sitting Bull, local minister W. F. Lown, a family friend who took me to powwows, The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Professor James Van Buren, several other profs, two music performance teachers, late-in-life art teachers, Myrna Hoyle my long-time wife and mother of our children, a few other partners in my gay life, many authors, some editors, the late Winston Weathers, and now some creative writing teachers.

I figure it has taken a village of thinkers, writers, musicians, and artists to make me into what I have become these days. I celebrate them and the many, many people who have put up with me in the home, work, friendships, general community, and of course, in the SAGE Telling Your Story group at the GLBT Center of Colorado. And I add; these last tributes are not just figures of speech, but rather, real live influences and personal realities that I appreciate and revere.

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general, he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

Month: November 2017

School, by Ray S

Figures, by Phillip Hoyle