A School Project That Went to the Dogs

Young Carol Giuliani was excited about her school project and put her heart, soul, and endless evenings into crafting it – especially portraying her favorite crop, corn. The result was spectacular, until disaster struck. Giuliani shares her childhood memories in “From Our Readers.”

I was so excited that day in the fifth grade in 1952, I thought I would burst. I ran into the house waving the paper from school describing the project assignment, which was due in December, two months from then. We were studying farming and agriculture and how we got our food supply. I did not know much about this type of supply and demand at 10 years old, but I knew I loved farming and plants and vegetables and always wondered where and how they grew.

I showed the paper to my parents who were always so invested in both mine and my brother’s schoolwork. I remember sitting with them at the small Cape Cod colonial kitchen table in Bellerose and putting the paper assignment on the table. I told them I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this school project, as I had a vivid picture already in my head. I described how I wanted to build a farm showing how corn grew with apple trees and tractors.

Our household budget was tight and I knew that, even at 10, so I told them I wanted to build it with clay. I wanted to show the vegetables all in a long row, how the tractor plowed. I wanted to show the beautiful colors of the farm as the crops were maturing.

Visions of corn

However, for me the main focus was always the corn. I have always loved corn, the way it grows, the look of the stately corn stalk. The maturing corn from an empty field where it grows so majestically towards the sky, spreading its husks out as though it was a bird flying. There was always something magical to me about corn, even though some societies view it as food for the animals. As a child I viewed it as the best part of summer along with watermelon and ice cream. So, my parents and I sat down and did what we call today a deconstruction.

My father decided that what we needed was a 12-by-12 piece of plywood, which he just happened to have in the garage. My father had everything in that garage. It was like a magic little house where he was able to bring out everything so that he could fix and repair anything in a second. There was nothing he couldn’t mend if broken, nothing he couldn’t make better, and nothing he couldn’t fix.

Then my mother asked what colors I wanted to use. She said we could buy blocks of clay which are cheap but have a lot of different shades in them. However, it will mean that you will have to roll out and press each piece one by one. I said that it was fine as long as I had the supplies to work. I wanted this to be perfect. I could use water paints for the base where I could not use the clay.

Embracing her extensive school project

My parents were so helpful, and the next day we went to the store and bought all the supplies. The following night we took the plywood down to the basement and placed it on the basement floor. It looked brand-new. My father had sanded it and polished it so it was ready for my project. He also promised to help me take it into school as it was way too big for me to carry myself.

So here I had in front of me this beautiful blank canvas of plywood on which I was about to build my sprawling farm with all the different gifts from Mother Nature displayed.

This was the month of October and it was due in December. Every night I would go downstairs and work diligently on this project. I would roll out the clay the same size for each piece of corn, depicting it in each stage that they were growing. I’d line them up all in a row: bright, bright-yellow kernels against vibrant green husks made out of the same clay. I had about 12 to 15 rows in various stages of growing.

I made apple trees and I used dark brown clay for the bark, and my mother suggested taking a sharp edge and peeling the clay to give it a smoother look and then making some lines in the bark so it would look more realistic. I put apples on that tree … the reddest apples I could possibly make, and it was just beautiful and looked good enough to eat. I had apples scattered all over the farm for effect.

I made a tractor with a little plastic man (that was my brother’s and I don’t think he knew I took it) to sit in the tractor. That was difficult, but we decided that the wheels would be black licorice, and I have to admit, my dad did help me with that one. You have to understand, for a fifth grade girl working on this project, it was an all-encompassing passion.

I just loved it. I would look forward to working on it every day. At night this is what kept me busy instead of watching television.

The finished product, and a surprise

Finally by December it was done. It was sitting on the basement floor all finished and I was so proud! I stood up, stood back, and looked at this 12-by-12 project, and my parents praised me for what it looked like.

I remember finishing it on a Friday night in the basement. I went up the stairs with a smile on my face. My dad said he would drive me to school on Monday to help me take it in.

Oh, by the way, I failed to mention that we had a French poodle named Ginger. She was a big standard French poodle and she wandered around the house and was just always around. Not a very friendly dog – she really was my mother’s dog but she was always around.

Saturday afternoon I walked down to the basement to put any finishing touches on my project. What I saw literally drew the breath out of my 10-year-old body. It looked like a tornado from the movie “The Wizard of Oz” had come through the basement. It seemed like the whole state of Kansas was destroyed right before my eyes.

My beautiful clay was scattered all over the basement, the corn was smashed down to ragged pieces along with the apples and the downed trees. There were pieces of the former farm everywhere I looked, and the more I looked the more my screams got louder and louder.

My parents rushed down to the basement thinking that I was bleeding to death and they didn’t know what happened to me. All I could do was scream, cry, and point to the destruction which was once my dream!

The sadness brought my brother downstairs also with a startled look on his face. We couldn’t figure out what happened.

And then walking out from the backroom near my father’s workshop came our dog Ginger with my beautiful farm pieces hanging out from her teeth, clay all over her face and a clay apple stuck to the fur underneath her jaw!

I felt like my whole world was destroyed. I was screaming “What happened! What did you do? Oh my goodness, what are we going to do?”

It looked like the destruction of a rural farm, but it was more the erasing of my creativity and hard work that I had put into it for two months. Basically this was my fifth grade trauma.

So what did we do? My father always looked for solutions and usually had them. He scraped the board as clean as he possibly could and sanded it down again. On that Sunday, my mother and I worked really hard to make something similar, but it was not even close to the first one I made. It was smaller, it was sparser, and it did not have my heart in it.

I don’t know who left the cellar door open or how Ginger got down there to eat it. However, that was the first time I knew what it felt like to build something and have it destroyed. This was something that I put so much of me into just to have it ruined. Remember, I was in the fifth grade, and perceptions and crisis are different and relevant to your small world.

However, my family and I did learn a lesson. Make sure to close the basement door. I never worked with clay again after that!

Carol Giuliani is a Licensed Registered Nurse and a former of professor of nursing for a college on Long Island. She has been a nurse for over 52 years and her career has included working as a nurse in a prison, pediatric psychiatry, and Director of Adolescent Programs for a private hospital on Long Island. Since her retirement, she has found an outlet in creative writing, which brings her great satisfaction. She loves writing about nostalgia and the years growing up in a very happy household.

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