Last night I found myself fumbling through a collection of “stuff” that had been accumulating for years down in nether regions of my basement.
I’m sure it’s something we all do from time to time — rummage through weathered cardboard boxes of old photographs, love letters and school yearbooks cluttering our basements and attic crawl spaces. Some of these memories I had told myself to dispose of years ago and yet, here they still were.
I suppose it’s just as well. It’s always nice to remember the curious, artistic, naive child I once was am. To my surprise and delight, buried deep beneath the mounds of torn comic books, VHS tapes and musty notebooks filled with teenaged poetry, I found a ribbon. And not just any regular old run-of-the-mill ribbon mind you. This was a single, purplish-colored ribbon with the words “Porter School 1978-1979 – 1st” emblazoned upon it.
I tried to remember what huge endeavor I must have overcome 44 years ago to achieve such great glory. Fortunately, a tag affixed to the ribbon gave me the answer.
It was near the last day of fourth grade at Porter Elementary School – June 5th, 1979 to be exact. My elementary school had a fun-filled day planned at a nearby park to celebrate the end of another year of school and the pending arrival of summer. Kids competed with each other in many games of skill, like the egg toss and three-legged race – and to each victor there went a win, place or show ribbon!
This particular award I won by besting more than a thousand students in the Sack Race. Ok, that’s a bit embellished, but to a nine-year old boy who had never won anything in his entire life, it felt like I had just won a marathon.
This ribbon is also significant because it was the final year of school before they tore down Porter Elementary. A school that had stood for nearly 88 years in Easton’s south side but by this point had become obsolete and, truth be told, a bit of an eye sore. By fall of that year, I’d find myself being bussed across town to Palmer Elementary School and away from my typical routine of walking three blocks to school every day and making daily after school stops at Lucey’s for some penny candy. It was the first time in my life I’d experienced such a drastic change from my normal, comfortable schedule.
What’s ironic is that in my discovery of the 1st place ribbon, I also stumbled upon another award I had won. This one exactly one year to the day of my victory on the sack race grid-iron. It was a second place finish in the 5th Grade Silent Spelling competition of 1980. Yet through all of the other triumphs that would follow for me, nothing compared to that final end of school victory at Porter Elementary.
Busing to school quickly became the new norm, and I’d be introduced to school lockers, late bells, final exams, adolescence, girls, graduation…. you get the picture. Every year more and more responsibility and every year the Sack Race Award (much like its blue color becoming a dull purple) fading further and further into my memory.
Looking back all these years later, winning that ribbon was a wonderful achievement, and the award now sits prominently in my curio cabinet, which is on display to tell my life story. But I don’t think I kept it around after all these years simply because I won the Sack Race in fourth grade.
No, the real reason this ribbon still exists forty-four years later is because it will always remind me of an innocence I once had.
go.Jimmy.go 
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