Detectives in Togas

The very first book I "owned" was DETECTIVES IN TOGAS.
Fourth grade had been a very hard time for me. My parents were in the middle of one of their on-again, off-again things, and that meant changes of address and schools.
It was also a time when I was coming to terms with how I felt about Eugene, my father.
From TV, I had put together a vision of what I wanted my life to look like....ponies, big fluffy dogs, and long-term, secure everything.
It was a vision that I didn't want to let go of...but it was all on a slippery slope.
Eugene kept increasing the angle of descent on the downhill run, and I began to realize that there weren't going to be any ponies.
I got my hands on DETECTIVES IN TOGAS at Thomas Jefferson Elementary. I had already been to two schools that year, and here I was in Mrs. Keith's combined class of fourth and fifth graders.
Mrs. Keith was a short, very thin woman, and her brown hair was as short as she was.
That teacher was one tough woman!. She may have been the toughest woman I had ever run across.... She had to be strict to teach two different classes at once and not have the whole thing be a zoo....
She pushed us hard.
I loved that woman...a lot, and I was sure she loved me. She loved all of us....I'm sure of that.
Our class was like one big extended family, and Mrs. Keith, her husband, and her older son were all part of it. Many of us needed that, and we needed her stories about her son and her husband....and what they did together.
What was Mrs. Keith's was ours for the taking...a life that we could be a part of.
Well, it was springtime and the school library was unloading a lot of books, and Mrs. Keith brought us to this storage room full of boxes. Everyone was allowed to take something that looked good.
Mine was DETECTIVES IN TOGAS, and I have absolutely no idea what drew me to it.
Rich kids in ancient Rome who attended a private school and were taught by a Greek slave...nothing like anything I had run across in the Irish Channel, for sure. Maybe the only thing I could identify with was this pack of boys ratted the streets of Rome the same as I ratted the streets in the Channel.
These little Romans were smart, curious, and brave...even solved a murder.
When school ended that year, I prayed that I would be back with Mrs. Keith for fifth grade. Over the summer I read DETECTIVES IN TOGAS over and over again....through my parent's screaming fights.... through the New Orleans heat....though a drawing back from Eugene....through a growing hate.
Over and over again... It was my connection to Mrs. Keith and the rest of my school family.
Miracles of miracles, my mother and I managed to stay near enough to Thomas Jefferson Elementary for me to be there with Mrs. Keith....again.
There were Bubba, Joyce, Johnny, Alice, Wayne, Peanut, Bruce, Alvin.... Long-term and secure.....
Mrs. Keith had taken a trip around the world with her son that summer, and on the first day of school, there were small presents for each of us....with our names on them.
One of the things I got was one of those Japanese ceramic spoons.
And there were stories and pictures of all that they had seen. (Seeing Mrs. Keith on a camel was a trip!) We were there, in each place, with her.
She was planning on us being back with her! She knew because we were her children....