| Mary Lou's Father
Teaching
School in Venedocia
L:
And then, after you graduated from college, you became a school
teacher for a while, didn't you?
Si: No, I stayed out of school between my sophomore and junior
years and taught country school for one year, and then went
back to Park. When I left Park, I went immediately into YMCA
work.
L: Did anything interesting happen while you were a school
teacher?
Si: Well, just like all schools at that time, it was the McGuffey
readers and I had students from five years of age to 21, and
the primer before that for the five year olds. And they had
one little fellow, he was sharp, he came across the word cream.
And he couldn't figure it out. And I said, "Luther, what does
your mother find on top of the milk when she goes out to the
milk house every morning?" He paused a moment, and he said,
"Ants."
Yes, in the olden days, it was customary to toss the teacher
out of the window during the school year, especially if it
were a man teacher. And my sister came home from church in
tears one night, and said, "They're going to throw Clarence
out of the window." And she was scared. I thought a lot about
it during the night, "Now, how I was going to handle this
thing."
So, I got a letter during the few minutes before I went to
the school, and there was a letter from some whiskey company
with a coupon in it, on She Was Bred in Old Kentucky Whiskey,
with a coupon of a reduced price. It was yellow colored,
a yellow color. And I held that card up when school started,
and I said, "I got a peculiar correspondence from the county
judge, and he told me that if anybody raised any trouble in
school, and I wanted to bring charges, all I had to do was
bring this, and they would certainly see that they were punished."
And there was nothing done. I wasn't tossed out.
Then, one kid came in, and he threw his dinner bucket at the
window sill. He came in late, and did that. I paid no attention
to it. Nothing happened. I wasn't thrown out, and it was the
first time there wasn't a teacher thrown out of that window.
Si:
I don't remember what I said.
L: We were talking about the switches.
Si: In country schools back in those days, it was customary
to have young fellows as old as 21-22 coming to school after
the harvest. They wouldn't start in the school until some
time in December. And, they would probably not do much of
anything, except mathematics. That was their big subject for
the kids in those days, for the older ones. And some of those
fellows used a little roughness in their school. The teacher
got disgusted one night, or one day, and he sent one of the
fellows out to the willow patch near the school to bring back
some switches.
He brought back a dandy looking bundle. The teacher grabbed
one of them, and struck it across the kid that he wanted to
punish, and it cracked. He grabbed another one, and the same
thing happened. He grabbed a third and a fourth, and they
all cracked just about a foot from his hand. And he examined
the bundle, and every one of those switches had been cut by
a knife around it so that nothing would happen. And every
time one of them cracked, why it was a nice chance for the
students to encore the act. The teacher was very much disturbed
and I've forgotten the punishment he gave that fellow, but
he gave him, I believe it was extra hours. He had in conference
[? tape unclear].
L: You say the emphasis was on mathematics for the older boys?
Si: Yes.
L: How far did you go in math?
Si: Oh, they went to algebra. Just to algebra, yes.
L: [inaudible]
Si: The fellow who did this knife cutting later developed
into a very fine dentist. Probably had some practice on wood.
[Laughter]
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