figured out how to get himself and the rest of us in trouble. One time in fourth grade he learned a new word, and that word was “fuck”. He suggested I use that word to the teacher, I can’t remember what he told me it meant, and got a bunch of us into trouble with our class teacher, Miss Connors.’
The young Osterberg frequently earned the formidable ire of his fourth-grade teacher, Rachel Schreiber, who’d occasionally swipe his knuckles with a ruler, but his obvious intelligence, most notably his verbal fluency and impressive vocabulary, ensured he was regarded with some indulgence and fondness by the teaching staff. By fourth grade, Jim Osterberg knew how to make people notice him. The blue-eyed boy was often described as ‘cute’ and was precocious around his teachers, but his eagerness to prove himself top dog - his ambition, even, if you could use that term for one so young - didn’t hamper his natural charm. His manner was, says Brown, ‘flirtatious. Connected. He understood what socially works to charm people.’
‘Even at an early age, he was a character,’ says Brad Jones. ‘Always funny, always eclectic. But also very tortureable. We used to literally hold him down in class and tickle him and make him pee. You know, stuff that fifth and sixth graders do.’ In class, Jim was particularly absorbed by the stories about America’s frontier culture. They stimulated fantasies of being ‘Daniel Boone and Jim Bowie. Jim Bowie, as tall as a big oak tree; I can do anything, and I have to be out there on the edge.’
It was easy to make friends and charm people at Carpenter Elementary, with its classes of fewer than twenty kids, all of whom lived just a short walk from each other. Carpenter was the centre of west Ypsilanti’s social world. For kids, the school or the Leveretts’ farm were the main out-of-hours hangouts; for parents, too, the school was a great place to meet their neighbours, at square dances and other cosy, countrified, family events; Louella Osterberg was a familiar figure at them, helping out on cake stalls and rummage sales at school bazaars - no mean accomplishment, as she was the only mom most people remember who also held down a full-time job.
Already the centre of his own tiny universe, from the age of six Jim Osterberg entered a new, bigger social circle after his father enrolled as a teacher and counsellor at Varsity day camp, a summer camp for middle-class kids established by Irvin ‘Wiz’ Wisniewski at Cordley Lake near Pinckney, Michigan. But these more middle-class boys who met young Jim and his Ichabod Crane dad outside their natural domain remember a very different creature from the confident Carpenter child. ‘The counsellors would pick you up from your home,’ remembers Mike Royston, who attended from 1954, ‘and Jimmy would come with his dad. I remember him as excessively shy, and the picture that flashes in my mind is him cuddled next to his dad in the car, as his dad was driving us to and from camp. He was an unusual little boy with enormous blue eyes. Studying you, but in a shy, furtive way. He’d give you little side-glances. Did not maintain eye contact for very long. And his dad was excessively taciturn. Did you ever see the movie Cool Hand Luke ? Well, if you can recall the guy with no eyes, just sunglasses, that was Jim’s dad. He didn’t say much, just kinda directed traffic. I don’t remember ever seeing the guy smile.’
In subsequent years, Jim Junior would frequently moan to his new, more privileged schoolmates about his dad - his complaints were so vehement that most of them thought he was exaggerating. But in his happy, playful years at Carpenter, he stood out as an intelligent, charismatic, talkative kid. During summer evenings Wiz Wisniewski would often visit the family to spend pleasant hours at Pat’s Par Three, and he would sometimes spend more time chatting with the son than with the father: ‘Mr Osterberg was a somewhat reserved
The young Osterberg frequently earned the formidable ire of his fourth-grade teacher, Rachel Schreiber, who’d occasionally swipe his knuckles with a ruler, but his obvious intelligence, most notably his verbal fluency and impressive vocabulary, ensured he was regarded with some indulgence and fondness by the teaching staff. By fourth grade, Jim Osterberg knew how to make people notice him. The blue-eyed boy was often described as ‘cute’ and was precocious around his teachers, but his eagerness to prove himself top dog - his ambition, even, if you could use that term for one so young - didn’t hamper his natural charm. His manner was, says Brown, ‘flirtatious. Connected. He understood what socially works to charm people.’
‘Even at an early age, he was a character,’ says Brad Jones. ‘Always funny, always eclectic. But also very tortureable. We used to literally hold him down in class and tickle him and make him pee. You know, stuff that fifth and sixth graders do.’ In class, Jim was particularly absorbed by the stories about America’s frontier culture. They stimulated fantasies of being ‘Daniel Boone and Jim Bowie. Jim Bowie, as tall as a big oak tree; I can do anything, and I have to be out there on the edge.’
It was easy to make friends and charm people at Carpenter Elementary, with its classes of fewer than twenty kids, all of whom lived just a short walk from each other. Carpenter was the centre of west Ypsilanti’s social world. For kids, the school or the Leveretts’ farm were the main out-of-hours hangouts; for parents, too, the school was a great place to meet their neighbours, at square dances and other cosy, countrified, family events; Louella Osterberg was a familiar figure at them, helping out on cake stalls and rummage sales at school bazaars - no mean accomplishment, as she was the only mom most people remember who also held down a full-time job.
Already the centre of his own tiny universe, from the age of six Jim Osterberg entered a new, bigger social circle after his father enrolled as a teacher and counsellor at Varsity day camp, a summer camp for middle-class kids established by Irvin ‘Wiz’ Wisniewski at Cordley Lake near Pinckney, Michigan. But these more middle-class boys who met young Jim and his Ichabod Crane dad outside their natural domain remember a very different creature from the confident Carpenter child. ‘The counsellors would pick you up from your home,’ remembers Mike Royston, who attended from 1954, ‘and Jimmy would come with his dad. I remember him as excessively shy, and the picture that flashes in my mind is him cuddled next to his dad in the car, as his dad was driving us to and from camp. He was an unusual little boy with enormous blue eyes. Studying you, but in a shy, furtive way. He’d give you little side-glances. Did not maintain eye contact for very long. And his dad was excessively taciturn. Did you ever see the movie Cool Hand Luke ? Well, if you can recall the guy with no eyes, just sunglasses, that was Jim’s dad. He didn’t say much, just kinda directed traffic. I don’t remember ever seeing the guy smile.’
In subsequent years, Jim Junior would frequently moan to his new, more privileged schoolmates about his dad - his complaints were so vehement that most of them thought he was exaggerating. But in his happy, playful years at Carpenter, he stood out as an intelligent, charismatic, talkative kid. During summer evenings Wiz Wisniewski would often visit the family to spend pleasant hours at Pat’s Par Three, and he would sometimes spend more time chatting with the son than with the father: ‘Mr Osterberg was a somewhat reserved
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