My Childhood Memories of Saigon

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The first schools My kindergarten school was located in the alley that I went in for the banana plants. The alley was later called “Thanh Long” (Blue Dragon) after the name of a local printing shop. It was a small dirt road; cars would have a hard time passing through. The school had probably no more than three classes with about 50 children altogether. I don’t remember the cover of my “Vần Quốc Ngữ” (ABC National Language) but only its first few pages. The letters were printed in big black block characters. I learned to write with chalk on a tiny slate that could be easily broken into pieces if I inadvertently dropped it. I was told that I was at that kindergarten school for only a couple of weeks and went on to Hong-Bang to finish the school year. My new school was on Aviateur Garros Street, about two kilometers from home. My first experience with writing on a notebook was at this school. There was no ballpoint pen then; all pens came with steel nibs. Before I wrote, I would dip the pen nib into the inkwell. One day, I dropped my pen on the brick floor and the nib was bent. As the teacher kept asking her students to write the letters she wrote on the blackboard, I just sat there, worried and petrified until she came down and helped me fix the pen. Father and the Vanguard Youth Father rushed home from somewhere and talked briefly with Mother. He then climbed up the roof, took down his sword, and left. I hadn’t seen Father for a while. I was too small to understand what was going on. I stayed home with Mother, aunt Sung, brothers Vinh and Hung, and my maternal grandmother. Mother had a stall selling wool and fabric at Saigon Market. She would leave home early in the mornings and come back home in the late afternoons. Sometimes, my aunt went with her. Saigon Market was the biggest market in the capital. One afternoon, I didn’t know why people living on both sides of the street and in the nearby alleys threw away what little they had on the street: beds, armoires, tables, and chairs. Eventually, I knew that they wanted to slow down the advancement of the French troops who came with armored vehicles and tanks.

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