A Hundred Year Story, Part 27

By Elton Camp

For the second grade, my teacher was “Miss Helen” Gilbreath. She was a spinster
who lived into extreme old age. We had old-fashioned desks with hinged tops to allow
access to supplies. On the right upper corner, the top had a circular opening where an
inkwell had once stood. Of course inkwells had been out of use for a very long time so
those desks must’ve been antiques. Her room was the only one in the school that had
them. Books could be placed on a shelf underneath the back of the desk. The seat was
hinged so that it could be raised when the desk wasn’t in use. Over the years kids had
defaced some of the desks with deep grooves made with pencils. That was my first
encounter with vandalism. Later, my father recited an adage that I still think of when I
see such graffiti: “Fools’ names and monkeys’ faces are always found in public places.”

One cold, cloudy winter day, Miss Helen announced, “I’m keeping my fingers
crossed that it’ll snow today.” I’d never heard that expression before. Most of us went
the rest of the day with crossed fingers. It did no good. Snow didn’t fall.

Miss Helen was fun and a good teacher. We did quite a bit of class singing. I
recall Reuben and Rachel, Barnacle Bill the Sailor, and The Jolly Little Eskimo as being
among my favorites. Looking back I can identify those songs as outrageously sexist or
racist but that was before the days of “political correctness.” While they instilled
stereotypical thinking, I’m sure that wasn’t her intent. It was in keeping with common
practice in the mid 1940s.

This was the year that we learned to write script rather than continue to print. A
girl named Iris already knew how to write beautiful script. It was fun to watch her do it. I
sort of strung the letters together to simulate script since the time of teaching penmanship
had long passed. Miss Helen taught us how to write a capital letter “G.”

“I doubt anybody will know how to do that except maybe for George,” she said.
He was my enemy from first grade, so I hoped he really didn’t know. I was surprised at
how different the letter was from a printed “G.”

The day the class started Roman numerals, I was out sick. As a result, I didn’t
catch on to it and still haven’t until this day. It was the first thing I had any academic
trouble with in school. Roman numerals never came up again until Maria had it at some
point in her education. Delorise had to help her. I seemed to have some sort of mental
block as to Roman numerals. I still can’t read or write them except for the ones that
appear on a clock.
My third grade teacher initially was Opal McCain. She and her husband had lived
in a duplex with us when I was a tiny baby. Mrs. McCain lost her baby sitter and had to
quit to take care of her own child. As a replacement, we got Mrs. Riggs, a very poor
teacher as well as fat and ugly. I deeply disliked her.
 We were to produce some sort of play in the room so Mrs. Riggs made the role
assignments.

“Elton will be the dwarf.”

I was stunned. I didn’t want to be a dwarf. Anything but that. A dwarf was
short, humped, ugly, and had a long beard in my conception.

“Just leave me out. I don’t want to be in the play,” I protested.

During the year she often sent my best friend, Keith Findley, and me to the
cloakroom to build something. This was often during math instruction for which I
actually needed to be present, but what kid’s going to turn down a deal like that. That
was when long division was taught so I didn’t learn it well. I still hate long division,
especially selecting trial divisors. Calculators are such a wonderful invention.

At some point during the year, some kid stole an item in the room. Mr. Tidmore,
the principal, came to the room to determine the culprit. He tried the usual threats to
make the criminal confess, but to no avail. He had one trick left.

“I’m going to give out pieces of paper to each of you. List something you’ve
stolen and your name. Everybody has stolen something, so don’t leave it blank.”

I had a tendency to be obedient to an authority figure and so finally recalled

It was the opposite of what he’d said only minutes before. It came too late for me
since he had my “confession” in hand. I was so mad at his treachery and wondered if I
would be in trouble for saying I’d stolen hairpins. Mother told him what happened and he
laughed and laughed about it. It wasn’t funny to me.

That year the school decided to buy Venetian blinds for the classroom windows.
The project was to be financed by having each child’s family “contribute” a set amount.
Some of the families wouldn’t or couldn’t give. The principal came around often to see
how the fund collection was going. “Any of you who haven’t given the money for the
blinds, hold up your hands,” he commanded. The demand was intended to humiliate the
children whose parents didn’t come across. Maybe they’d cough up the money if their
sons and daughters got embarrassed enough about it. Of course we gave our share so it
was no problem for me personally. I felt very bad for the ones who were put on the spot
about it.
 A personal embarrassment came when Keith Finley and I were assigned to walk
to North Town to buy cotton to go under the class Christmas tree. It’d now be
unthinkable to allow two seven-year-old boys to make a long walk like that, but things
weren’t so dangerous back then. I carried a small cardboard box that contained the
money, but somehow it fell out on the way. We retraced our steps, but to no avail. The
money was gone.

“It’s okay. I have some money of my own. We can use that the buy the cotton,” I
assured Keith.

A much bigger problem was that I hadn’t ever seen a Christmas tree up close.
When told to buy a roll of cotton, the picture that came into my mind was what came in a
small box of medical cotton. If Keith knew that was the wrong choice, he didn’t say
anything. The class groaned when we revealed our purchase. “They bought the wrong
thing,” one of the girls mocked.

Turning to something that was fun, the City School had a loose stone on the left
side of the building. It concealed the entrance to a tunnel about six inches in diameter
that extended a foot into the wall. The secret was poorly kept, but still it was a terrific
place to hide things. The tunnel’s still there, but the rock that hid it is long gone.

On the playground, during third grade, we often did a shameful chant that went
“Teacher, teacher, don’t whop me. Whop that nigger behind that tree. He stole money
and I stole honey. Ha, ha, ha ain’t that funny.”

No black children attended white schools anywhere in Alabama at that time so the
racist words didn’t directly offend anyone. To my mother’s credit, she told me that I
shouldn’t be saying things like that. The word wasn’t used at home.

In fact, I only vaguely knew what a “nigger” was. The few I’d seen looked
exactly alike to me. I wondered how they told one another apart. I saw a stereotype, not
actual people.

The school sponsored a fund-raiser put on by adults in the community. That was
the first and only time I saw a “Negro minstrel” put on by whites in black face with white
painted lips. I saw and heard it from the hallway since it required an admission charge.
The room was crowded with adults who laughed and hooted at the crude racial parodies.
How unthinkable such a thing would be now.

One of the biggest honors for a kid was to take out the garbage and dust the
erasers. I got to do that with some regularity. One time Keith and I went together.
Alongside the garbage dump, we found a pool of water that contained dozens of dark,
swimming creatures. “I think they’re tadpoles,” I ventured. “They turn into frogs
somehow.” Since that day, I’ve never again seen tadpoles in the wild.
 Keith had a silver colored cigarette lighter that we modified to contain what we
regarded as a secret compartment. We stuffed it full of treasure. To my delight, Keith
gave it to me. It’s still around somewhere. I’ve seen it during the last several years and it
still contains our treasure trove. Remove the lighter from the case and unscrew the two
screws at the bottom. The treasure will fall right out. I wish I knew where it is. I’d open
it right now.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)