As my grandchildren headed off to school recently, I reminisced about my own school days. I went to a four-room country school with eight grades in four classrooms. There were boysí and girlsí restrooms, but no teachersí lounge or cafeteria. We ate lunches brought from home at our desks, as did our teachers. On nice days we took our bags or pails and sat outside.
Each teacher taught two grades and every subject in them. The students were divided by grades down the middle of the room. The instructor would teach one session to the fifth graders, for instance, then move across the room and teach the sixth graders. The students not ěin sessionî would spend their time studying.
The 7th and 8th grade teacher ó and the school principal ó was Mr. Fiske. Three woman teachers taught the other grades: Miss Horton, Mrs. Keir and Miss Kump. School maintenance was handled by Mr. Herrick, who also drove one of our two buses. This cast never changed during the six years I spent there.
I rode on Mr. Herrickís bus. He was a gruff but kind man, with a harelip and its associated speech impediment. He tolerated no monkey business. More than once on our way home, the rickety vehicle would come to a grinding, gravel-throwing, wheels-locked halt on some back road. Mr. Herrick, his face beet red, would stand up, turn around and yell, ěOut! Out!î to the rowdies. And out they would go. The rest of us would turn in our seats and, snickering, watch them in the rear window as they faded in the distance, trudging along in the dust toward their respective homes. We knew full well that farm boys late for chores would catch it again later.
Mr. Fiske was a very tall, spare man, perhaps 6í4î and barely 200 pounds. When I read Irvingís ěThe Headless Horsemanî some time later, I thought that Mr. Fiske would be a dead ringer for Ichabod Crane.
He boarded at a farm about a quarter mile from school and putt-putted a Model A Ford coupe back and forth every school day. On weekends, he took the Model A home to his small village about 50 miles away.
He was ěFiskeeî ó behind his back, of course ń to us children. In other times and circumstances he might have been a doctor, lawyer or professor in a great university, but I am absolutely convinced that he loved his motley collection ó the children of prosperous dairymen, poor tenant farmers and those of modest means ó and his work with them.
This is not to say that he suffered a great deal of nonsense from us. He kept a rubber hose at the ready in a desk drawer and used it, albeit sparingly, for particularly bad offenses.
Don was a big, freckled, curly haired boy from a dairy farm about two miles from ours. He was the strongest boy in my class and would hit towering home runs during our recess and lunch time softball games. He also discovered that he could time the right pitch and pull it foul down the left field line ó and into Fiskeeís classroom window.
The glass shards would barely have settled on the classroom floor before Mr. Fiske would stride out of the building and lead Don by the collar back inside. Don, Mr. Fiske and the rubber hose would adjourn to the boyís room.
Don was a husky boy who had shoveled a lot of manure and thrown many hay bales. He could have given Mr. Fiske a tussle had he chosen. He never did. He would take his hosing without a holler and return to the classroom, red faced but smirking.
The old school is gone now. We never turned out a governor or senator, but we contributed some darn good dairy farmers, mechanics, teachers, soldiers, sailors, ń and citizens. No small accomplishment.
A few years ago we had a reunion of my 8th grade class. Don, sadly, had passed on some years before, but of the 11 remaining members, eight showed up. The three who werenít able to make it sent us their blessings and expressed regret that they couldnít join us. All present or accounted for, Mr. Fiske.
Chuck Thurston is retired and lives in Kannapolis, NC. His email address is cthurston@ctc.net.