I had always had difficulty sleeping before the first day of the school year, so I woke up that September morning in 1952 a little tired but feeling a familiar tingle of anticipation. Perhaps this year I would find a new class that I really liked. Maybe I would find a friend. That would be a change for the better! As I biked the two miles to school that Wednesday after Labor Day I enjoyed soaking in the cool, crisp air and the warmth of the brightly shining sun. I believe my bicycle knew the two-mile route to the school so well it probably would have gotten me there without my conscious thought, so I was able to let my mind wander and think about what I would be doing that fall.
I was an only child and often wished I wasn’t, so I could have a brother to play with. Actually, I hadn’t always been an only child. I had had a brother, Tommy, who died in a boat accident when he was 17 and I was 7. I don’t remember much about either my brother or the accident, for we never talked about him in my family. There was a picture of him on top of the piano, which must have been taken shortly before he died. Occasionally, when she didn’t think I was watching, Mom would take down the picture and just look at it or clutch it to herself, crying quietly. I knew enough then to leave her alone.
I was entering eighth grade that year, my second in Junior High. Outside of school I had a pretty busy life. I worked two afternoons and one evening for the Meadowview Public Library as a Page. That’s a fancy way of saying that I put books back on the shelves and occasionally helped somebody find a book they were seeking. It amused me to be a Page in a library full of hundreds of thousands of pages.
Other than that, my life was mostly music. I had sung in the city’s Episcopal Cathedral boychoir since fourth grade. As a soprano I had two rehearsals a week plus a voice session on Saturdays for the soloists. I wasn’t that good, rather a second string soloist. We had had one boy in the choir, three years older than I, who had an amazing voice. He was a bit of a juvenile delinquent and the choir master had taken him under his wing. He was cocky and brash, but goodness was he good! I think I had a crush on him, without knowing what that meant. Last spring he had left the choir having developed a huge adolescent crack in his changing voice. My voice never developed a crack but gradually went down. That year I was going to sing baritone although I would much rather have been a tenor because, even then, I knew that tenors were the stars. Now I would have just one Friday night rehearsal a week plus Sunday morning before the service which would free up my time some, but I was going to miss the Thursday rehearsals and the Saturday sessions which were just for the boys. The only good friends I had were in that choir, and most of them had left when their voices changed. When I started out I was paid the grand sum of 25 cents a month. I had gradually moved up to $5 a month, which was the maximum, and I had earned a silver choir cross for musicianship and leadership. I was very proud of that cross. Among the sopranos I certainly did not have the best voice, but I was most likely the best musician. By the end of my first month in the choir I could find my way around in an octavo format and read the music easily. When I made a mistake, I usually knew it instantly and corrected it the next time through. Sometimes the choir director asked me to work with a few younger boys on their parts and reading. I enjoyed that and it made me feel I had a special role in the choir.
The rest of my musical life was centered around piano lessons. As a big fish in a small pond I thought I was very good. I loved to play and spent many hours after school, sometimes practicing and sometimes just amusing myself playing and singing Gilbert and Sullivan and other songs from musicals, like “Oklahoma,” “Brigadoon,” and “South Pacific.” Sometimes while walking down my street I enjoyed singing opera arias. I used to listen to the sound track from “The Great Caruso” and try to imitate Mario Lanza, who I later decided wasn’t as good as I had thought he was. My parents had recently bought me a Mason and Hamlin parlor grand piano which I loved. It had a wonderfully sensitive touch and a mellow, rich bass, a great improvement over the old upright I had started on. My piano teacher was at the conservatory in the city. I enjoyed her, for not only was she a good teacher, she had a good sense of humor and we got along well.
When I arrived at school that morning, I parked and locked my bike in the shed behind the school. I said “hello” to a few kids whom I knew, mostly boys, but we didn’t have any conversations. As I said, I didn’t have any close friends there, although I didn’t have any real enemies either. Generally I just went about my business without paying much attention to anybody else.
I suppose I was a good student. My parents never pressured me but I knew they expected me to do my best. On report cards I usually got all A’s, with a very occasional B+ thrown in. I enjoyed English and history but struggled a bit more in science. Math was really my downfall and I wasn’t looking forward to it. We also had to take typing that year, which would be taught by the school secretary. I wasn’t quite sure why we had to take it. I had never heard of another Junior High requiring it. I didn’t think I would ever be working in an office so I couldn’t see what use it would be to me. But it was required, so I supposed I would try to learn, probably practicing on the old beat-up typewriter we had at home.
In the middle of August I had received a letter from the school with my schedule, the name of my homeroom teacher, Miss Walters, and my locker number and lock combination, so when I went into the building I looked for my locker, finding it on the second floor near my homeroom. The lockers were in two levels, each leveI about two-and-a-half feet tall. I put down my bag of school supplies, bent to my locker on the lower level and began fiddling with the lock, trying to remember whether I should start with a clockwise turn or a counterclockwise one.
In those days I had three recurring bad dreams. The first was that I would forget my locker number and the school office wouldn’t tell me what it was. The second was that I walked into class one day to find that we were having a test on a book I had never read. The third was that I was playing the piano in a recital and totally forgot the piece, panicking and trying somehow to stumble through to the end. Those three dreams would haunt me all through college and even for many years thereafter. The first two, of course, never came true; the third unfortunately did on more than one occasion.
As I was trying to work my lock, somebody leaned over me to get at the locker above mine. Looking up I was stunned to see a coffee-colored boy staring intently at his lock. Meadowbrook was an entirely white town except for the occasional live-in maid or chauffeur. I had never seen a Negro in my school; nor had I ever talked to one. I froze for a moment, not knowing what to do. Then I reached my hand up and said, “Hi, I’m Peter Bradley. You’re new here aren’t you?” Instantly I knew that was a stupid question. If he was the first Negro I had ever seen in school of course he was new!
He looked down briefly, scowling, but did not take the hand I had offered. “Christian,” he mumbled and went back to working at his lock.
“Well, welcome Chris!”
Christian slammed some books into his locker, scowled furiously, and growled, very quietly but very firmly, “It’s Christian. Don’t ever call me Chris!”
“OK,” I replied, not knowing what else to say. I shrugged, thinking to myself, “What’s his problem?” But finding no answer, I finished with my locker and went into my homeroom, where Miss Walters greeted me a little too warmly and told me to choose a seat. The room began to fill up. Just as the bell rang, Christian finally entered still scowling, took a seat in the back and slammed his books down on his desk.
Not a good beginning!