Mesa Musings:

I grew up in a “Leave it to Beaver” neighborhood in Eastside Costa Mesa and graduated from Lindberg Elementary School, on Orange Avenue and 23rd Street, in 1956.

My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Coxen, seemed ancient — she was probably in her early 50s — and my class met in a stand-alone, World War II-era wooden bungalow.

The bungalow had a walk-in cloakroom in the front, and boys’ and girls’ restrooms in the rear. I remember that Mrs. Coxen had finely tuned olfactory senses. She frequently detected classroom odors.

“OK, who did that?” she’d exclaim, interrupting her lesson. No one, as far as I can remember, ever ‘fessed up. “We have restrooms in the back of the classroom. Please use them!” It’s my suspicion that she was actually getting a whiff of a backed-up septic tank.

At the front of the classroom, behind her desk, was a large — what we called in those days — blackboard. Above the board were two sizable portraits of Presidents Washington and Lincoln. Several weeks into the fall 1953 semester I discovered that, no matter where you sat or stood in the classroom, Washington and Lincoln appeared to be staring directly at you. It was eerie. Their eyes penetrated your soul.

Even when Mrs. Coxen wasn’t looking — or sniffing — the Father of our Country and the Great Emancipator made certain that I stuck to the straight and narrow.

Mrs. Coxen loved to have her students deliver memorized monologues in class. She favored me because I was an enthusiastic orator. I remember delivering a Pinocchio speech — outfitted with proboscis and lederhosen — and later reprising it for Back-to-School Night.

Mrs. Coxen picked me to play a Scandinavian Father Christmas for our 1953 holiday show. It was my job to walk across the stage in green tights and an itchy, spun-glass beard, lugging a sack of toys. I had no lines. We sang sacred hymns.

My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Ballreich, yelled a lot. I remember once being sent to the principal’s office. The principal, Mr. Bruns, though intimidating, seemed ever so much kinder than my teacher.

One afternoon in 1955 we watched a light plane from Orange County Airport — whose engine was loud and sputtering — crash in a field several blocks east of the campus. We all ran beyond the blacktop to try to get a better view, though we were still several blocks from the site. Teachers showed us back to our classrooms.

Our fifth-grade basketball team upset the sixth graders in the annual fifth-sixth basketball game, in front of the entire school. Our team wore T-shirts dyed black by our mothers, with pink numerals. I was a bench warmer, but got in for the final two minutes and hit a pair of shots to score four points. I felt like a hero at the after-game party in our classroom.

My sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Gilbert, was a tall, powerful man with a spring-loaded middle finger. If he caught you looking up from your test paper, or preparing a spit wad, he’d come up behind you and flick you on the back of the noggin.

We took a field trip to the “Back Bay” and walked across the dike to the eastern shore. It was like “Land of the Lost.” We expected to find dinosaur bones — or pirates. East Bluff didn’t exist (it was all Irvine Co. land), and not a single structure stood on that side of the bay.

As a sixth-grader, I served as a crossing guard. We manually raised and lowered “stop signs on poles” to control street traffic as students crossed 23rd and Orange before and after school. As “head” crossing guard, I blew the whistle alerting the other two guards when to lower and raise their poles (one blast to lower and raise, two to indicate when students should cross).

A single metallic whistle served the needs of numerous crossing guard teams throughout the school year, and was “sterilized” in a coffee can containing an inch or so of rubbing alcohol. The taste of that whistle defied description, but we safety officers were consumed by a single purpose: Duty, Honor and Playground.

In June 1956 I graduated. The following September, I enrolled at Everett A. Rea Junior High on Hamilton. That’s another story for another time.

JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays.