humor

A LITTLE BIT OF EDUCATION…

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This is an excerpt from the book “Pathways” which will be released in mid-November.

I have joked to my classes that I went to the the only elementary school, called a primary school back then, that had a student parking lot. I did, but it was because I went to Indian Land School where kindergarten through twelve was housed in the same building that had just one parking lot. A long low brick building similar to all that were built in the late Forties, it sat on the top of a small hill overlooking Highway 521. The primary school was housed downstairs on one end while the junior high was up the stairs above it and separated from the high school by huge double doors. For my first eight years the only time we ventured into the realm of the upperclassmen was the occasional trip to the library or auditorium and daily, having lined up like Clementine’s little ducklings, when we quietly marched to the cafeteria for lunch. The only sounds allowed were the taps and clicks caused by hard soled shoes on the highly polished hardwood floors.

In order to meet the needs of a modern world, a gymnasium was built adjacent to the high school wing. Other buildings had been added to accommodate such non-core classes as Ag, shop and band, and to house sports facilities in the form of football and baseball locker rooms. These rooms surrounded a cannery that was opened in the summer months and used by all of the families… make that all white families in the area.
There was no kindergarten during those years either. In those days, parents were still responsible for teaching basic ABC’s, numbers, and colors and such – things that kindergarten teachers are now saddled with because parents are way too busy to teach them.

My kindergarten education was year-round and administered not only by my parents but also by my grandmother, Nannie, who was an exacting taskmaster. Even during the summer months between sessions of school my education continued. While other children frolicked, romped, hither and yon seemingly doing nothing educationally, a bookmobile would show up at Pettus’s Store. Every two weeks, like clockwork, my grandmother would take me by the hand and walk me down to Pettus’s Store “to meet the bookmobile,” a vehicle which looked a lot like a converted school bus of a great age. Inside, instead of seats, there were shelves with rows and rows of books on every subject. I would pick out three books that interested me and Nannie would pick out three books that she thought might interest me. Of course the books she picked were of some type of educational value like say Einstein’s Guide to Quantum Mechanics. That gave me a total of six possible books to read over a two week period.

There really wasn’t anything possible about it because I did not seem to have a choice. Sit your self down under yonder shade tree and read or walk yourself out to yonder hot sun and corn row and pick up a hoe. There did not seem to be anything to debate so I became an avid reader and still have not found a hoe that comfortably fits my hand…not that I am actively looking. At any time, while sitting under that shade tree, I might be called upon to read aloud and could expect to be quizzed with a Moon Pie as a treat instead of a carrot strung onto the end of a fishing pole. I did not realize how much I would appreciate that later…much later. During the winter months, activities might be changed due to the weather but still were focused on the three R’s and a healthy dose of Biblical study that went on 24/7 it would seem.

Because all children did not have the benefit of my grandmother and because “Some Children Are Left Behind”, regardless of what a former president might have passed into law in the far distant future, we could have had an elementary school with a student parking lot because the concept known as social promotion was several years down one of those pathways in South Carolina. That’s right – no social promotion! The good side of that equation was that there was no compulsory attendance rule either. Good side? I have been on both sides of the coin. I was a student when there was no social promotion or compulsory attendance and then a teacher under both systems. So which do I prefer? Unh-Unh! That is my secret but there are reasons why South Carolina’s education system ranks so low today and why we had no social promotion or compulsory attendance rule at the time.

Those reasons are connected. We are still trying to shake off and remove the cobwebs from the years when I was a public school student and cotton textiles were still king in the New South. I am not implying that it was the intent of mill owners or their politicians, held firmly in owner’s pockets, purposely to keep the state “stupid.” Well, maybe I am. One did not need a particularly “globally aware” or educated workforce to produce the raw materials and finished products associated with textiles. Remember, an educated workforce might actually ask for a raise or, worse, mention the word—union. You really did not need to know your multiplication tables to do most jobs in a cotton mill although I did, in fact, have to use a slide rule in one. Yeah and I still have yet to use Algebra in the last fifty years. I keep hoping my education was not for naught!

Textiles also provided the ultimate “alternative” school. Where does a “left behind” fourteen-year-old sixth grader go when he decides to drop out of school? In my day, they became solid, tax-paying citizens who labored in the lower recesses of the cotton mills doing those jobs that were highly repetitive, back-breaking and lower paying until they taught themselves something else that would elevate them to another highly repetitive, back-breaking but higher paying “low paying job.” Understand, these low paying jobs still provided a higher level of poverty than the rest of the world enjoyed. We were still taught that education was important and that a high school diploma was the only way to get the “better” jobs in the mill. The problem today is that we do not have that “alternative” school any more and there are only so many shifts at “Mickey Dee’s” or the like.

WHEN LITTLE JOHNNY WAS A REAL PERSON AND NOT A JOKE AT ALL

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If you are a teacher you have heard Little Johnny jokes. Enjoy.

For some reason a teaching friend of mine decided that her Self Contained Special Education children should have access to the Industrial Arts lab and to the same experiences as any other student. This was very progressive thinking for the Seventies and inexplicably the powers-that-were agreed with the special education teacher, much to the chagrin of the Industrial Arts teacher. Also inexplicably I was somehow convinced to lend another pair of eyes to help monitor the proceedings. It did not begin well.

I am sure many of you have heard of the little Johnny jokes. They may have been created specifically with this young man in mind. Johnny was not just little, he was scrawny and I am sure underfed. Johnny was also unkempt. Longish “bed” hair stuck out in all directions framing a narrow face with a narrow hooked nose that was a very prominent feature. Dressed for the month in jeans and a well-used tee shirt, he was not an attractive young man. He was also not very bright or sweet. After receiving instruction, the class’s task was to build a blue bird house which would require everyone to use a table or band saw. Johnny did not want to use either and was very vocal about it. In his slow, whiney drawl he loudly stated, “Ain’t gonna use the damn thing! It’s too damn loud!” After much cajoling from his teacher, Johnny finally strode over to the band saw, turned in on, placed his measured one by six in position and with some forethought cut the end of his index finger off. Proudly showing his bloody nub, he said, “Told you I didn’t want to use the damn thing! It is too damn loud!”

Several months after school had adjourned for the year I drove to the gym to do my summer weight room supervision and was met by an unusual sight. Resting on the hill overlooking the baseball field was a hang glider. Not something you see every day or even once in your lifetime on a high school campus. Buckling himself into the contraption was Johnny “the nub” from Industrial Arts fame.

“My, my Johnny that is a fine hang glider. What are you going to do with that thing?”
“Gonna fly off Glassy Mountain.”
“Johnny, you are a long way from Glassy Mountain, I don’t think you can fly that far.”
“Coach Miller, I gotta practice to fly off from there.”
“Johnny, I am sorry. You can’t practice here. Ms. Koon (our principal) would have both our butts if I let you fly off here.”

I should have been a little clearer about what ‘not here’ meant. An hour into my supervision I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. As I looked out over the baseball field, motion to my right caught my attention. To Johnny, ‘not here’ meant that he should move to the hill that the football stadium was built into, and I was too late to abort his takeoff. To add to the excitement, he had drawn a crowd of football players and band members who decided to cheer him on. I took off at a ”sprint”, yelling all of the way. Johnny just grinned, waved and took off on his own sprint and then leapt into the sky as he got to the beginning of the hill’s decline. It was pretty anticlimactic. With feet tucked up under him, his toes might have been two feet, ten inches off of the ground. I estimate this because the field restraining fence was three feet tall and his toes did not quite clear it. With toes hung on the fence, forward momentum was changed to downward momentum causing the nose of the hang glider to “staub” up into the ground with Johnny’s toes acting as the fulcrum. By the time that I got to him he was out of his harness and painfully jumping from foot to foot, softly saying “oh, oh, oh, oh!” I don’t know if Johnny ever got to fly off of Glassy Rock. Since I have heard of no fatalities, I would guess not.

“I HEAR OF TEACHERS CRYING ON THEIR KITCHEN FLOORS”

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This was an article that caught my eye earlier today. If you are interested you can read if you so desire at the following link. https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/%E2%80%98i-hear-teachers-crying-their-kitchen-floor-because-stress%E2%80%99

Being a retired teacher it would be natural that this headline might catch my eye. I can say that during my forty plus years teaching I never cried on my kitchen floor due to stress…I would be more likely to pass out on my kitchen floor from stress. Hey, Jack Daniels would be a great reliever of stress if it wasn’t for the health and emotional issues of alcohol addiction…and those blinding headaches.

What have we done to our teachers? It would be natural to think that this was some poor first year teacher who really wasn’t cut out to teach. It would be reasonable to think this but that wasn’t the case. We were all first year teachers at one time and I assure you many times during my first year, and during the next forty, I wondered if I was cut out to teach or to coach. When I stepped into my first class, I was a blank slate. A clean canvas, blanker and cleaner than the freshly erased and washed chalk boards located in my classroom. I wasn’t much better the second year when a relative of mine congratulated me for “graduating” from teaching junior high school to teaching senior high school. No I didn’t attempt to explain it to her.

I am going to discount my six weeks of student teaching and my first year of actual teaching because I learned little until my second year of teaching. That year I learned that young teachers get the classes that older, more seasoned teachers are glad they don’t get. For about ten years that seemed to be pretty unfair…then I started getting the good classes and it seemed infinitely fairer. I was fortunate to have had a lot of help becoming a better teacher. Great mentors and great people. I remember walking into Nita Leatherwood’s class at the beginning of my free period early my second year. Just so you non-teachers know – THERE IS NOTHING FREE about a free period. It is actually known as a planning period, though because of department meetings, teaching team meetings, conferences or a dozen other meetings, it is actually a time in which teachers get to do little planning. If you are lucky you have time to grab a cup of coffee and a quick trip by the “facilities.” I really believe that my bladder issues occurred because…anyway, I digress.

As I walked in to Ms. Leatherwood’s classroom, I found myself amazed at how well-behaved her class was. My classes resembled cats on amphetamines until I was able to calm them down. That usually took about fifteen minutes longer than the class itself. I tried to use the technique of boredom to put them to sleep but that didn’t work either. Her class was talking quietly and she was joining in. Books and notebooks were open and displayed on their desks, pencils poised at the ready. You could almost hear them thinking, “What are you waiting for? Teach Meeeeeeee!” More amazing, she was smiling to, wait…she was even laughing at something one of her students had said.
Sometime early in my first year, a coach or teaching peer advised “Don’t even think about smiling until after Christmas and then only do it infrequently!” This led to a developing philosophy called the “Vince Lombardi/Attila the Hun” school of instruction…and coaching. Not much fun for my students or for me. Ms. Leatherwood gave me what would become the first step of my teaching philosophy staircase when I asked about her classroom management and how it related to smiling. “You do realize this is an upper level chemistry class and not the barrel of monkeys you teach. It’s taken me twenty years to get a reputation…and classes like this. They came in this way on their own.” I didn’t believe her but then she asked me, “Are you teaching who you are?” My confused look convinced her to continue, “You have to teach within your own personality, not someone else’s’.” It took a while but I did get that one down. Later that same year Jay Lunceford, our head coach, punched me on the shoulder and said, “Quit yelling so much!” Before I could ask why, he added to my philosophy by explaining, “If you yell all of the time how do they know you are pissed off? Besides, you are going to give yourself a headache…and everyone else.” Between the two of them I put the “Lombardi the Hun” philosophy of education to bed…for good.

I’m not sure you get to teach “who you are” in today’s educational landscape and if I were in a position to be a mentoring teacher, I’m not sure I would have the time to tend to anything other than my own “beeswax.” I am also unsure that I would be able coach and teach if I were starting out today. It’s all about the bottom line…the gospel according to TEST SCORES and how to improve them. My last year of teaching was spent trying to figure out how to teach to a test that was kept under lock and key in the deepest recesses of a locked vault, heavily guarded, eight million lightyears away in a parallel universe. Get it. You are attempting to play a game you have never seen and have no instruction in and the only rules are to make sure you are kept in the dark. Although you have meetings several times weekly to try and figure it all out, the people who you are meeting have no more of a clue than you do. I have never seen teacher moral at a lower level than that last year. Thankfully “No Child Left Behind” is being left behind. Unfortunately, I don’t know what is going to replace it and sometimes a known evil is better than an unknown one. Common Core?

That second year of teaching, my first at Mauldin, the guidance department did me no favors when they put together my sixth period class, the last period of the day each and every day. The Class from Hell? No it was the Vampire Killer Clown Class from Hell. I went to my principal quizzing her about what I should do. They couldn’t read a Dick and Jane book or do basic math and had an attention span the size of an amoeba’s penis. I know, amoebas do not have that particular accoutrement and my class had no attention span. I had one child that could not write his name. How could I teach him science? You know what she said? “That’s where you start.” “Your lesson plans should reflect teaching him to write his name.” Not sure you would get that advice today and if a teacher can get that done and raise test scores, that teacher is an exception and not the rule. By the way, Earnest finished the year able to write his first, middle and last name and I felt like a master teacher.

According to Jim Henson of Muppet fame, “[Kids] don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” I hope he is right and I hope these new teachers are remembered for more than crying on kitchen floors and teaching to a test. Good luck my former compadres, known and unknown.

TEACHER CREATIVITY GOES AWRY

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Sometimes teachers can be more creative than they intend to be and sometimes their best laid plans do go asunder. There was one student teacher from Bob Jones University who had her students create flash cards to assist her student’s review of material for an upcoming test.

Questions were written on one side with the answers on the other. This is something that most teachers do to assist their students as they learn new material. I only mention that she was from Bob Jones University, a fundamental Christian university, because quite a few of their student teachers were not very…well…worldly. Most became exceptionally good student teachers once they realized the games that high school students sometimes play.

This one student teacher may have been worldlier than she let on, but from all accounts she was not a particularly good student teacher. As she held an in-class review, the student teacher asked, “This American activist crusaded on the behalf of the mentally insane in the late 1800s, who was she?” After giving her students time to search for the answer, she then asked, “if everyone had their Dix out?” Okay say it slowly and aloud. “Do you have your Dix out?” If you burst into laughter, you now know what her class did.

Early in my career I also tried to be creative. I tried to be creative late in my career but was smarter about it…. Well not; I just remembered making a pickle light up, blowing up hydrogen balloons and demonstrating a potato gun. One of my favorite demonstrations was to show the behavior of metal sodium when placed in water. As I look back on this time, I realize it might not have been a smart thing to do because the reaction produces heat and hydrogen, along with a caustic base, and there is a potential for an explosion and therefore some danger.

I would drop a ridiculously small, bee bee sized amount of sodium into a lab sink with a small amount of water. Everyone would be wearing safety googles as we watched the sodium spark and smoke as it ran around on the surface of the water like a “scrubbing bubble.” If we were lucky, the spark would ignite the hydrogen and would cause a small “pop” that might get a few people wet. All of this was strictly monitored by yours truly.

I had to quit doing this demonstration when a group of student lab assistants decided that they would recreate this demonstration in the sink located in the chemical storage room. Using the logic that kids and not so bright adult, Southerners sometimes employ, if a little is good, then a lot would be great.

Instead of dropping a bee bee sized amount of sodium into the water they dropped a golf ball sized amount. As the reaction progressed all was fine until one of the other science teachers walked in on them. To cover up their crime, they pulled the plug in the sink to dispose of the evidence and this is where the dangerous fun began.

All plumbing fixtures in a science lab are made of glass to prevent chemical reactions involving corrosive acids and metals. They are also connected to each other. When the sodium hit the trap, it had nowhere to go and exploded. Luckily, no one was injured but the same could not be said for many of the interconnected glass traps. Also, a few students standing near to lab sinks got unexpected baths in what could be described as a toxic brew of water. While no one was injured, the old saying that “it is all fun and games until someone loses an eye” still applied.

Another of my favorite activities was the end of year “water rocket” project. Who knew that a two-liter soft drink bottle with fins and nose could fly so far? Filled with water and pumped with a bicycle pump to eighty or so pounds of pressure, we had one fly from the front lawn of the school, over said school, and to the far side of the football stadium. Granted, there was a stiff wind blowing but the designer was smart enough to cut his fins in such a way to impart spin. It flew and flew and flew.

Most didn’t. Quite a few just barely got into the air, which was the one requirement to receive a passing grade. Get off the pad for a ‘D’! For a dozen or so well-designed rockets, you might have thought of the movie “October Sky.” Because we flew them from the front lawn during the late day classes, parents waiting to pick up their kids in the car line were given a show, and many left their cars to have a better view. The parents loved it and the flights became an unexpected public relations coup for me as they praised my creativity and innovation.

They would stand in groups, applauding every liftoff and cheering for those who cleared the launch pad. Most of the good ones flew a hundred or so feet and then crashed harmlessly onto the lawn or at worst the top of the school. That was until a change in wind direction brought them crashing down into the car line. I don’t think my parents realized that they could move so fast, and the scene reminded me of film from World War II. Well, so much for scoring the public relations coup and all my creativity with it.

Excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing….” which can be downloaded on Kindle or purchased on Amazon at http://goo.gl/UE2LPW

STUPID MAN TRICKS

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Excerpt from the book FLOPPY PARTS which may be purchased at http://goo.gl/XdazVA

RJ was a bit of a thrill seeker. He would have been a perfect fit to play the Tom Cruise character in the movie Top Gun because RJ always “felt the need for speed” whether it was fast women or even faster cars. Since this was before a desire for fast women, RJ would satisfy himself by climbing the highest tree or swinging out the farthest on the school swing before ejecting himself for a crash landing. All of this would serve him well. When I left for Newberry, RJ left for the Navy, specialized in avionics and anti-submarine detection before retiring to a very high paying private sector job in avionics. This would lead to his obtaining a pilot’s license and an airplane. I feel sure the airplane came first.
The trouble began when we watched Roy giving chase to the bad guy who beat Roy over the head with his tommy gun before jumping in his car and racing out of town. Roy, now conscious but still stuck on a second floor balcony, whistled for Trigger and with nary a grunt jumped onto Trigger’s saddled back, saving enough time to chase down the bad guy and shoot out his tires. RJ was mesmerized. “That was great! I’m gonna do it.” I was mesmerized to but for a different reason. Roy did all of this without losing his hat and despite a loaded Thompson sub machine gun on the seat next to the villain. Immediately I pointed out that we had no horses and I knew of no second story balcony except the Nesbitt mansion and it was too far to ride to on an imaginary horse.
Not to be deterred, RJ had a plan– otherwise known as a “stupid man trick” and the reason bicycles should come with warning labels. When we played “Cowboys and Indians” we always pretended our bikes were horses. RJ decided that his bike would be his horse and that I would be his faithful Indian companion who would make sure his steed remained upright and in place. Can you visualize “Kemo Sabe” jumping off of the barn loft and into the saddle of his bike? RJ would then peddle off after imaginary desperados. It did not quite workout that way because for at least once, Kemo Sabe meant “dumbass” white boy. RJ actually missed the first time and landed butt first in the piled up hay we had used to help break his fall. We should have piled up hay on his bike saddle because he didn’t miss the second time. Who knew someone’s eyes could get that big and that your “floppies” were somehow attached to your vocal cords. He landed upright but didn’t remain that way. With his eyes as big as pie plates, his breath exploded from his lungs and he toppled sideways with his hands cupping his…you know. For the next fifteen minutes RJ was struck mute. When he finally found his voice, the first words that came out of his mouth were “If you ever tell anyone about this I will beat your ass.” Well RJ, it’s been over fifty five years and you are welcome to try.
I went to Wally World today and found myself in sporting goods looking for a new rod and reel. I did not find what I wanted but I also did not find any warning labels on their shiny new bikes that I stopped to look. I doubt there is one on my bike either but there should have been one and it should have read “Warning: Jumping into the saddle from excessive heights may render you sterile for life and speechless for fifteen minutes.” I will let you determine what is excessive.

ENEMA, SC

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Excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” available on Kindle at http://goo.gl/1afw3c
ENEMA, SC
“There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign on a big old rusty tractor.
You can’t miss it, it’s the first thing that you see.
Just up the road, a pale-blue water tower,
With ‘I Love Jenny’ painted in bright green”
“My Town” by Montgomery Gentry

Lockhart is a relationship that, fortunately, I did not get to foster. You see, Lockhart is a small town in Union County South Carolina and not a person. I have been there twice and intend not to go there again if possible. It was a mill village in the heyday of textiles in South Carolina named for either James Lockhart, a miller who established a grist mill, or because of two sets of deer antlers that had been found locked together after both animals had perished. Today there are many more deer than textiles left in South Carolina and even fewer people left in Lockhart. If Some Town, SC, were to be called the armpit of South Carolina, then as far as I am concerned, Lockhart is where you would give South Carolina an enema. I am sure there are many good people in Lockhart, it is just I never had the opportunity to meet but a few of them. In forty years of coaching, no team of mine was ever treated as badly as we were treated at Lockhart High School. We were not treated badly by the players or coaches, the fans though were another kettle of fish entirely.

In 2001 I was in year one of a seven year tenure at Tamassee-Salem. For the previous thirty-one years that Tamassee-Salem had baseball, it had been an endeavor in frustration. Tamassee-Salem had not one winning season or trip to the playoffs in their history. I was so cocksure of myself that I thought that I could turn it all around with nothing more than hard work. Try as I did, there was nothing I could do to change the losing climate that was in place in year one of my stay there. We were in the latter third of the season and had not taken one game past the fifth inning “mercy” rule. For those of you who are not baseball fans, the high school mercy rule states that a baseball game is over if one team is ahead by ten runs after at least four and one half innings. Instead of preaching about winning I was more concerned about getting us into the seventh inning. I cannot describe how bad we were those first couple of years but I can tell you that in my first off-season workout, I hit four fly balls to three kids and all four balls found human flesh instead of leather. In our first game we went down eleven runs before we had an opportunity to bat and I had broken two clipboards in frustration. Most of the teams we played tried to keep the score down but for the most part it was a futile effort. I had to ask one coach to stop trying to bunt the ball back to the pitcher in an attempt to make outs. We could not field the bunts.

In addition to being bad there was no way to get anywhere easily from Tamassee-Salem. We would travel south to play Dixie, Ware Shoals and McCormick. To the southeast there was Christ Church in Greenville and Thornwell in Clinton. As we traveled toward the rising sun, we went first to Landrum and then on to Blacksburg. Once past Spartanburg we turned again to the southeast to Jonesville and finally on to Lockhart. Landrum was the shortest at just under an hour away, followed by Christ Church at just over an hour. The rest were far, far away, with Lockhart being the farthest. Because of the way that we played, most of our road trips ended in the wee hours of the next morning.

Lockhart school was typical of what had been built in the nineteen-forties or fifties in South Carolina. The Lockhart architecture consisted of one long brick building with an entrance framed by high columns that reminded you of the Parthenon (except the Parthenon’s columns were in better shape). In the spring, the outdoor athletic facility was a football field that doubled as a baseball field. In dead centerfield was a press box with bleachers that extended into left and right fields. Both sets of goal posts were in play as were several light posts that ran behind the bleachers. The right field foul line actually split the goal post which made them in play. The infield was placed off of what would have been the actual football playing field but dimensions were going to be strange. Somewhere near four hundred feet down the left field line, nearer to five hundred down the right and a mere two hundred fifty feet to dead center if you hit a ball over the press box. What really bothered me was the water spigot with the bucket turned over it in center field and the hole filled with tires beyond the right field goal post. The coach had used more chalk to lay out the out of play areas than he had used to line the field. During the longest ground rules meeting in the annals of baseball, I was told that if a ball rolled into the hole filled with tires it was a ground rule double. I was more concerned with what happened if my right fielder fell into it. This game was a tort liability waiting to happen and I decided the best thing for me to do was to put the outfielder I could most afford to lose in right. Sorry, Casey.

As we waited to begin the game, it became apparent that we were the social event of the week. Our dugout consisted of a portable bench on the first base foul line. There were no bleachers so everyone in Lockhart sat behind us in lounge chairs. Before the game everyone was the amiable Dr. Jekyll but as soon as the umpire yelled “Play Ball!” they all became the very hostile Mr. Hyde. There was one particular gentleman directly behind me who rode me like a fine cutting horse. I usually don’t mind this as it usually keeps the cretins off of the kids. He was dressed to impress, wearing bib overalls over a discolored “wife beater” tee and tipped the scales at least one hundred pounds over what would be considered healthy. Graying brown hair stuck out of his mesh cap in every direction and it was hard to discern where his mullet ended and his back hair began. Every time he tried to get under my skin, I tried to wise crack back. I did take offense when he yelled across the diamond to the umpire: “Kain’t you keep that fat son of a bitch in the coach’s box?” When I came back over after our at bat I pointed out that there was no coach’s box and I really wasn’t that fat. After the fifth inning, I asked him what was going to give his life meaning after I left to go back to Salem. He must have gotten depressed contemplating our separation because I heard nothing from him for the rest of the game.

Everybody who batted got a good dose of fan ridicule. Some of it was the good natured, “You swing like a broken gate” ribbing but a lot of it was personal and most of it focused on body features or types. Todd Oliver became the focus of two young men standing near the concession stand and every time he came to the plate they began to chide him with comments about the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Michelin Man. Todd was somewhat rounded but I really never considered him terribly overweight. I wondered if these two fans actually owned or had ever looked in a mirror. To be honest, had they been a couple of inches taller they would have been round. Both boys would have dressed out at about two seventy five or three hundred pounds and they only stopped yelling when stuffing their faces with hotdogs. I thought about bribing them with food to shut them up but I realized I had not brought enough money for the food they might consume. With hands on hips, I fixed them with my steely glare from the third base coach’s box, in hopes it would draw their attention away from Todd. That simply got the woman who sat with them questioning what I might be looking at. I assured her that it was not her. Maybe if she shaved…her chin. I know…sometimes my mouth should have a locking brake.

At some point I asked their coach if it was always this bad. He studied me a moment and smiled, “This isn’t bad; you should be have been here when we played Jonesville.” I asked if he had ever tried to do a little “fan training” on the accepted methods of taunting and he laughed as if I had told the best joke he had ever heard. “What gives?” He calmly explained: “You did notice that I am black and that this is Lockhart, right?” He went on to say that the only reason he had the job was because no one else would take it and that he was riding out the season. This would be Lockhart’s last baseball season as they consolidated the following year with Union. The people of Lockhart were upset. I was not.

The game itself was the best we played all year. Not only did we get it past the fifth, we held a seven to six lead going into the bottom of the seventh. In my mind I knew that the baseball gods would not shine upon us that day. I could only hope that somehow, someway we would stumble into a win. Their best hitter tripled to right field. I tried to will it to land in the hole filled with tires but he actually hit it over the hole. He scored on a sharply hit ball that skipped through the infield in to right field. As the batter tried to stretch his hit into a double, Casey’s throw got by the five players who should have fielded it. It bounced over the third base foul line and rolled into out of play territory. The umpires deemed that the runner had made third and awarded him home and the game. I really don’t blame them. The umpires had absorbed a great deal of fan abuse and were ready to go home. As I left the field, everyone had turned back into Dr. Jekyll again. They were such gracious winners. One older gentleman came up to me as we left the field and apologized for the conduct of the fans. I started to say that it was okay but decided that it wasn’t. I simply thanked him for his concern.

Tamassee-Salem baseball survived the trip. I tried to build on the positives and soothe sore and bruised pride. I also tried to explain why I felt everything that went on at Lockhart was wrong and how we could not let the fans get under our skin nor would I allow us to stoop to that type of strategy. Getting into our heads was what the Lockhart supporters wanted to do, and by allowing them to distract us, had contributed to our loss. Nietzsche taught that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It must be true. We played every remaining game into the seventh inning and found ourselves ahead in the seventh inning of our final game of 2001. As we faced our opponent’s last batter I had a different feeling than the one I had in the Lockhart game. We were not going to have to try to stumble into a victory and find ourselves falling short. As we recorded the last out, I reacted to the victory but no one else did. As I jumped to my feet and pumped my hands over my head in jubilation my team looked at me as if I had lost my mind. It was their first victory in two seasons and the team was stunned into a silence reminiscent of funerals and libraries. Our kids had not won in so long that they did not know how to celebrate. It did not take long for them to figure it out. Players, parents and fans were soon chest bumping and high fiving. I am sure, had there been champagne; everyone would have been spraying it as if we had just won game seven of the World Series. I found it particularly satisfying to see the huge grins on the faces of Todd Oliver and Casey Wood. Both of them had played such prominent roles in the Lockhart game and the 2001 season as a whole. If either one of those smiles had been a power source, I am sure it would have lit up Oconee County. I was smiling pretty broadly myself as I thought, “If you could only win one game, the last one should be the one.”

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING…

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THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING…
I was six months past my twelfth birthday and really wasn’t sure I would live to see thirteen. Oh there was so much I wanted to do someday. Drive a car, find a girlfriend, walk through those double doors as a high school freshman, find a girlfriend, see Mickey Mantle play at the “House that Ruth Built,” and finally find a girlfriend. But the Cold War was escalating. “Dad, why don’t we have a fallout shelter? Do you think we ought to start digging one?” As he looked up from his crossword puzzle and cocked an eyebrow he said, “Sure. Get started. I’ll tell you when you are deep enough.”
In October of 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis was at its height. Walter Cronkite showed me images of nukes found in Cuba; Kennedy sitting behind his desk in a special broadcast explaining why we were blockading Cuba; Castro and Khrushchev standing with arms raised above their heads holding hands…make that clasping hands. It sounds so much manlier. Uncle Olin and Cousin Hall were reservists and worried they were about to be called up. Some one used the propaganda catch phrase “I’d rather be dead than Red!” Wait just one dang minute! I want that car, that girlfriend and all the other stuff. I’m ten and I’d rather be any color other than dead.
Do you remember Khrushchev during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly banging his shoe on the podium and shouting in Russian, “We will bury you?” This was earlier in the fall of 1960 and on my black and white I could tell he was pissed. It was a reaction to England’s Harold McMillian…or to the Philippine’s Lorenzo Sumulong. Witnesses are unsure as to which. Short, with a close-cropped balding head, he had a large elevated mole around his nose. Despite these unflattering features, when he smiled and wore his reading glasses, he resembled someone’s grandfather. This day he resembled one of the devil’s minions. The scene was an iconic image of very angry person. His threatening statement sent chills through our collective hearts. It is a vivid memory but there are two problems. Problem one was that he might not have banged the shoe at all and his statement more closely translated to “We will outlast you.” The translator might have been a bit overworked at the time. The second problem? We bought into the iconic image and original translation because of our national propaganda machine. Consequently, most of the people from our generation remember it exactly that way. One of the first things I checked on my return to school the next day was the exact location of the yellow and black sign with the odd symbol designating the “Fallout Shelter.” I decided that I would be the first in line to enter.
I watched too much TV back then…still do! There was a short animated film shown on the Ed Sullivan Show called “A Short Vision?” Did you see it? If you have forgotten it or are too young, you still can see it on YouTube because I just did. In 1956 it traumatized an entire generation of children and kept their parents up at night wondering if this was going to be the night that the Soviets dropped the big one. I don’t know about my parents but one child it traumatized was me. Watching it today was almost as scary as it was sixty years ago. For months when a large airplane flew overhead I would shade my eyes and squint looking for red stars instead of white. At bedtime I prayed that “if I die before I wake please don’t let it be a nuclear bomb.” Shortly thereafter we had our first school “Emergency Drill.” That’s what we call them today, the old “duck and cover” drills. In my day it was “In Case of Nuclear Attack….” There were even posters, the kind you put on the wall of your school not the social media type, explaining what to do to insure your survival. I remember instruction one was to “Stand Clear OF Windows.” Two was to “Remove All Items From Your Pockets…” Somewhere down toward the bottom was Six: “Lean Forward and Place Your Head Between Your Legs.” When I got to college I saw a poster that some humorous someone had scrawled an addendum, “and kiss your ass goodbye.” Sound advice I should think.
In late October of 1962 we learned that I actually had a better chance of reaching the age of eleven than I did of finding a girlfriend…or being radioactive dust. The Russian Bear had blinked. They would remove their ICBM’s from Cuba. What our government didn’t tell us until later was that we would also remove our own weapons from Turkey. Oh life was good or, at least, it would go on for a while.
I should have picked better movies to watch. H-Man, The Blob, Godzilla and Rodan were all silly enough not to scare me even if they were made as statements against nuclear weapons. But then I had to watch On The Beach from a book by Nevil Shute. Later I even read the book. Characterized as a post-apocalyptic thriller, my question was “Don’t some people have to live for it to be a post-apocalyptic thriller?” No one survived the movie or the book. No one in the world. Not the stars, the costars, even the third grip died of radiation poisoning or took the easy way out. I would have taken the easy way…maybe. I had nightmares for months about the final scene of empty streets, sports stadiums and old newspapers blowing in the wind. I still have chills as I think about it.
Speaking of blowing in the wind. I wonder how the wind felt for Maj. T. J. “King” Kong as he rode his H- bomb down to its target in Dr. Strangelove. It would activate a Soviet Doomsday Machine causing nuclear explosions all over the world. That would be the actor Slim Pickens pretending to straddle the bomb as it fell to Earth. Little wonder the movie was described as a dark comedy. Yes, it was a real knee-slapper. As far as I know there were no Doomsday Machines but if they did exist, they are probably still around waiting for the North Koreans or Iranians to attack. Failsafe, in which we drop our own bomb on New York City, was another Cold War thriller that would come out the same year. It appears the whole country, or at least movie producers, were concerned about nuclear bombs being detonated. Apparently, no one “learned” from Dr. Strangelove’s sub-title “to stop worrying and love the bomb.”
Several years later I would find myself sitting in a freshman English class trying to translate the Old English of the Canterbury Tales into country redneck. I was having no success when the air raid siren in downtown Newberry began to blow. It was a test that was repeated every weekday at noon. My English professor, a sometimes not quite sober and always irreverent guy, looked out the window and stated to the class, “If the Rooskies have enough bombs to waste on Newberry, we are f@#$ed. Class is dismissed!”
As I think back I would have to agree and also admit that I miss the Soviets. We thought we knew who our enemies were back then, where they were, and how far we could push them. They wore certain uniforms and lived in certain countries. We knew that we were here and they were somewhere over there. It was our government against their government. Our ideologies versus their ideologies. We had theaters of war where an army would be on a particular side.
Then came Vietnam and the end of our “American Exceptionalism.” Even though the Russians were still involved and were our greatest enemy the environment began to change. Suddenly all uniforms were made of the same camouflage material that looked for the world like pajamas and camouflaged them to look like everyone else but us. We wore the same colors and hats we always had worn but in jungle camo. The fighting took place in a jungle where you could never be quite certain where or who Charlie was. Having said all that we started to sense a blur between the two sides and two sides became three…or more. It was harder to determine just who the enemy was and now the blur has become so exaggerated, it is extremely difficult to separate the “good” guys and the “bad” guys, even on our own side.
Today our governments set up factions to overturn other governments or groups of people in the name of democracy and for the pursuit of oil and other resources. Anyone remember the Shah of Iran? You might want to do a little research if you have asked why the Iranians hate us. Once we pull out, we leave a wealth of armaments which is scooped up by the likes of Al Qaeda or Issis. These arms are then used to destroy the very countries we tried to democratize. These people behead the Christian “infidels” and anyone else who does not submit to their sect of Islam. When you study how these radical jihadists were originally trained and funded by the US, you begin to understand the connection between us and them. And they are everywhere. They have no particular uniform or distinction or even a legitimate government. In a sense they are invisible unless they pick up an Islamist flag or yell “Death to America!” Or simply blow up a bomb somewhere. It would seem that the enemies that we made in the name of the Cold War and the Gulf Wars, and the people of the Middle East who we helped to militarize have very long memories of inequities that have taken place.
We cannot really look around and identify our enemies with any certainty with sleeper cells, pretenders, spies, and double agents. And we must not forget the US involvement in the formation and training of so many of these groups. There is possibly only one place where we can identify the real troublemakers…we can look in a mirror. To quote Pogo and his creator Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
At least back in the 60’s there were air raid sirens that let you know something might be getting ready to happen. If you were lucky enough to be near a bomb shelter, you has some small semblance of safety. You knew that the Russians were coming…and still might. Today, we do not know who, how, when, or what may happen. I think I liked the sirens better.
Picture is from https://anotherexistence.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/atom-piece/

THE GAME OF POLITICS

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I have seen right and left wing posts maligning each other. I have watched the circus they call debates. We haven’t even gotten to the campaign ad season and I am already gagging. It is Trump versus Carson…hell Trump versus everyone, the fiasco that is Hillary, Huckabee, Cruz…oh just pick and plug in a name. Part soap opera, part demolition derby. It would be hilarious if they weren’t playing with my life. It reminds me of a really bad athletic event, especially since each party and their supporters are trying to outscore the other without saying anything of substance. It’s awful because there are no rules it would seem. I have a great idea. Let’s make the election process like an athletic event…no, WE WILL make it an athletic event!

First, we need to pick an event that all of the politicians are good at. Lying or talking all day without saying anything is not a spectator sport. Maybe we should pick an event that they are equally bad at. Something like Australian Rules football…no, we need a game that is or was played closer to home…say …ULLAMALIZTLI! Never heard of it? Can’t pronounce it? Perfect! I would say none of our politicians have heard of it either.

Ullamaliztli is the ancient Aztec game that combined basketball,soccer, football, religion, politics and human sacrifice. I LIKE IT! One would really have to believe in his or her party’s platform to risk having their heart, still beating, ripped from their chest and presented for inspection to the gods. I am liking it even more and I am not usually this bloodthirsty. Wait, there may be a problem. Does Donald Trump even have a heart? Maybe we can get Dr. Carson to try to detect one…WITH AN OBSIDIAN KNIFE! Team members could be picked from the most ardent party members in the Senate or House. The winning team would have the right to put their president into office. There should also be a lobbyist or two on each team, picked at random. Since there is human sacrifice involved, we should get rid of that pesky log jam that both parties hold against the other.

Played on a sunken court with a one-hundred to two-hundred foot rock floor, it had eight to eleven-foot high walls that sloped down to the court floor. Walls…I’m having a vision of prison walls, but while Republicans think Hillary should be in prison for her emails, it’s not that kind of wall. Surrounding the court was a seating area where spectators gambled on the outcome. Skulls of sacrificed coaches and teams surrounded the spectator area and looked down on the contestants. Nice motivational tool and right down Hillary’s alley, I would think.

The goal of the game was to put a nine-pound rubber ball through a stone ring hung vertically and located at mid-court. Sounds easy except for the part about not touching the ball with your hands or letting it hit the ground. The game ended when the ball was put through the stone ring – a feat that sometimes took a day or two of continuous play to accomplish. The game was violent, leaving the contestants bruised and bloodied. I can’t help but visualize The Donald running down the court, the wind blowing through his comb-over, getting cross-body blocked by Hilary Clinton or vice versa. Bernie and Ben are way too soft-spoken to get into each other’s grill. That would not work, I guess, because as front runners, they would have to be the coaches. Okay, Pelosi and Boehner, or his replacement, could body block each other. The upside is that somebody is going to lose their heart…if, in fact, they have one to begin with.

The original game was both political and religious in nature. Wars between Aztec cities were known to occur over outcomes. In one instance a winning king was presented a victory garland with a choking cord inside. He was assassinated on the spot.

Again I feel a bit bloodthirsty but the best part of the closing ceremonies would be the religious sacrifice of the losing presidential candidate… I mean the losing coach and possibly the entire team. If incompetence is not a virtue, it would be the entire team. Stewed to the gills on drugs, the losing coach would be held down, chest split open and his still beating heart would be cut from his chest and shown to the gods. The Aztecs believed that if a sacrifice was not made the Sun would not rise the following morning. In today’s political climate, the “Sun” shines very darkly. Could the sacrifices take the place of term limits? In some accounts it might have even been the winning coach who was sacrificed, but who cares as long as “elbows to the teeth” replace the campaign process. Broadcasted live and in living color “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” would have new meanings as the Supreme Court Judges, dressed in black robes and masks, carried out the sacrifice.

Okay, I don’t want Homeland Security or the Secret Service to come calling. I am really just a harmless old coot who is fed up with our political process that is being played out like a cock fight between old moth-eaten hens with no brains…I mean heads. Or if it were football, the game that is our present political system would take twenty-five plays to score…against air. WAIT…BEER SOFTBALL OR BETTER YET, LIQUER SOFTBALL. That might be as funny as the candidates themselves….

AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY….

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Excerpt from Floppy Parts which may be purchased at the following link: http://goo.gl/GIssEq

In a previous story, in a previous book, in a galaxy far, far away…sorry, wrong book and movie. In a previous book I wrote about my belief that the creation story, as it related to Eve, was slightly wrong. Let me say that this is just for the sake of discussion and hopefully to impart humor. This should not digress into a theological argument. After all, my God is a humorous God who, for some reason only known to Him, decided to put our noses upside down over our mouths and gave men these wonderful floppy parts without any control to go with them. What really worries me is the part about being created in his image. Oh my, what if it is in her image? Okay, that is a different set of questions.

Genesis is just chock full of stories about all of our little friends, both male and female. There was a whole lot of “knowing” and “begetting” and “going forth and multiplying.” I am sure that the author of this great work, traditionally believed to be Moses, got the part about “going forth” correct, especially in light of the near eight billion people now residing on our little blue ball. That has been a lot of multiplying. It is the creation of Eve where I believe Moses went a wee bit off track. To begin with, there seems to be a great discussion as to when Eve was created. In Genesis 1:27 it is suggested that both she and Adam were created at the same time but in Genesis 2:20-22 it would appear she was created later. I tend to lean toward that later version because my wife has never been on time in our married life and will be late for my funeral.

Many of you remember the creation story or at least you should. God created the heavens and the earth, all the animals, birds, fishes in the sea and finally Adam on the sixth day. On the seventh day God rested, and after contemplation, realized Adam needed a playmate. Enter Eve. This is the point where, by my account, the story went off course. According to Moses, God crafted Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. According to Don, Eve was crafted from a large part of Adam’s brain. Adam was left with his vision, taste, and pleasure centers intact but little else. This would explain the ease with which Eve convinced Adam to bite the apple despite instructions from God to the contrary and why farts are so funny. To this humble male, saying it was a rib was quite understandable, but “that don’t make it true. “ Moses could not admit men lack the brain power to control our nether regions and that most of our thoughts are controlled by an area located south of our belts. It also explains certain other goofiness associated with the sexes and their little friends.

I shall not throw stones lest they bounce off and hit me. Many years ago I attended the annual school district pep rally, called a faculty meeting, but a pep rally none the less. Now that I have retired I can say it was a waste of time and taxpayer money. I was with my beautiful wife, Linda Gail. As I sat down I noticed a familiar form sitting in front of me. Residing in the seat directly in front of me was ex-wife number two; the blond ex-wife who is the mother of my daughter Ashley. We exchanged, umm, pleasantries although I did detect a bit of iciness even though it had been a number of years since our parting. Once this bit of uncomfortable interaction concluded I settled back into my seat and glanced over my left shoulder only to find a red-haired woman who looked remarkably like ex-wife number one. Oh, how could I be so lucky? It was “Number One,” and she was sitting behind me. Oh man, I should not have married three times but really should not have married three school teachers from the same school district. I remember my Father’s bent wisdom prior to my first marriage, “Son, this is going to be the most expensive piece of ass you ever get,” and he was correct times three. As guilty as I feel about my marital “tip toe through the lava flow,” at least I feel guilt even though I realize I am only one missed step from falling off of the matrimonial wagon despite my best efforts not to. I have several coaching friends who are totally unrepentant when it comes to their lack of control dealing with their floppy parts. Several are championship coaches, and there was once a running joke that the best way to win a state championship was to get caught diddling with a student, a married secretary or teacher, get fired and then rehired at another school. Over a three-year period, that actually happened three times. Ethically, this activity was not a good idea then, and with likely jail time involved today, an even worse idea despite the state championship.

At a club during the dreaded disco era, I remember sitting with Bob, a college friend, when we were joined by another coaching and college friend, John, and his wife. Later John’s ex-wife joined us. She was a woman Bob and I had also gone to college with and strangely enough I had dated. Finally we were joined by another really young lady I had never met before. If this sounds like it might be kinky it really wasn’t . . . at least it wasn’t from my corner of the table. As we sat there, my original college friend, Bob, whispered to me, “This may get interesting and you should be prepared to run.” We had just joined a strange love hexagon involving my friend and me, a second friend, his wife, his ex-wife and the woman he was having an affair with. Oh joy, the band was playing “Stairway to Heaven.” I wondered if there was a hidden staircase leading in the other direction. Okay for those of you who have to know, nothing happened. Well except that the ex-wife went off and found the true love of her life, another woman. The younger woman who John was having an affair with turned out to be the replacement babysitter who replaced the original babysitter who he had married after having an affair with…no, you’re not going to believe any of this so they all just lived happily ever after..

REDHEADS AND FLASHY CARS

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Seeing the trailer for The Quiet Man awakens a few memories. There stands Maureen O’Hara with her green eyes flashing. Those have to be real because I don’t think contacts had been invented yet. The memories triggered are not about green eyes, though, but about red hair. You see, my mother was a redhead. A real redhead, not the burgundy head that comes from a bottle, but what I guess is called bright red. She also had the freckles to go with her hair and the alabaster skin underneath that caused her to turn bright red after more than thirty seconds of exposure to the summer sun. I’ve heard that complexion called “peaches and cream”…or maybe “milk toast.” After being in the sun a little while, it was more like “peaches and strawberries.” In other words, she did not tan but went straight to burning and peeling.

I would not call my mother a classic beauty, mainly due to the presence of the Griffin’s nose which has a tendency to dominate one’s face. That proboscis would dominate the entire face of Mt. Rushmore. If I were going to compare her to a movie star of the “Golden Age”, it would be a redheaded version of Geraldine Page who, by her own admission, was a bit plain. Luckily, my mother also had the Griffin height making her a statuesque woman. If she were not my mother, I would also describe her as full-figured.

She was very shy; so shy, in fact, that she allowed her grades to drop enough in order to not have to give a valedictorian address her senior year in high school. Armed with all of this information I was shocked, appalled and quite amused to discover newspaper clippings of a local beauty pageant sponsored by Springs Mills as I went through a cedar “Hope” chest after her death.

Had I not asked myself the question, “Why did my mother keep this?” I would not have given it a second look. There was my mother, along with four other young ladies, and she was in…Gasp!..a two-piece bathing suit! The suit featured the Springs Mills logo “Miss Springmaid” – a pinup-style milkmaid, with a lot of cleavage and leg showing. I think the term “cheesecake” would be applicable and that would be the milkmaid, not my mother.

My shy mother was vying for the title of “Miss Springmaid” to represent Springs Mills, a company that made cloth for sheets and foundation cloth which an advertisement agency described as “for hip-harnesses and breast-holsters.” My mother’s suit bared her legs and midriff and accentuated other key attributes. There sure was a lot of skin being displayed! Thank God, I saw no belly button. Oh my, who was that young woman with the “come hither” look? Rita Hayworth or Lauren Bacall? She wasn’t even a redheaded Geraldine Page. Oh no! It was my MOTHER!

I guess that until that moment I had never thought of my mother or rather my parents as young people with the same drives and desires as any other young people. Even now I have an urge to blind myself for those thoughts but I don’t think it would erase them.

According to my Aunt Joyce, Eldora was quite popular and was pursued by many suitors until Ernest swept her off her feet. My parents romantic? I just can’t see it…but then again I was not adopted. At five-foot-six I find it hard to believe my father could have swept the floor much less Mom off of her feet. He did have a kind of dashing look in those photos from the Thirties and Forties.

I don’t even know how they met but would guess it would have been through friends or work. With no online-dating services or hopping music clubs, I don’t know how people actually met during those days. Church? What an interesting concept. In the same box as her clippings, I found the letters they had written to each other while Dad was island-hopping in World War Two. I’m happy that they knew the mail was being read and censored but the “R” rated versions were still “tres” uncomfortable. With silk kimonos contained in the same cedar chest, I am trying to purge the thought of Mom playing dress up as a Geisha girl. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh!

A family member related a story that made me both uncomfortable and thankful at the same time. While still in high school my mother and several of her younger female cousins were taken with a very, very distant cousin who was, like them, attending a large family reunion.

The young man was described as very attractive with piercing eyes and a strong jaw to go with a very charismatic personality and a rich baritone voice. There was a mention of a smile that would “make your knees weak” so I am guessing that this storyteller might have been smitten, too. According to her story, he also had “very wavy hair that appeared to have been styled.”

He was driving a very flashy red convertible. It might not have been red but red fits the story. This “flashy” young cousin was taken with my mother-to-be and asked if she might go for a ride with him. As you would expect during these times, he asked permission to take her for a ride in what I hope was his car. My grandparents, after some thought and discussion, refused to grant their permission citing that they felt he “might be a little too fast and flashy for Eldora.” It turns out this “flashy and fast” distant cousin would slow down and become the much beloved and revered “Reverend Billy Graham.” While he does have really nice hair, I’m glad not to be his son Franklin.