Forever A Hillbilly: Learning While Teaching

Forever A Hillbilly: Learning While Teaching:  THE JOB STARTED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCHOOL YEAR . I had just graduated from college in January, and I felt very lucky to find a teac...

Forever A Hillbilly: Forever A Hillbilly:

Forever A Hillbilly: Forever A Hillbilly::  Learning While Teaching      The job started in the middle of the year. I had just graduated from college in January, and I felt ver...

Learning While Teaching

 THE JOB STARTED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCHOOL YEAR. I had just graduated from college in January, and I felt very lucky to find a teaching job at that time of year. It was at Saint Paul, Arkansas, deep in the Ozark Mountains near Fayetteville.  It wasn't until later that I realized it was because they had already lost so many teachers that year.

     It paid two thousand dollars for the semester, big money to me. It was sort of a bits and pieces job, just fill in where a teacher had been destroyed and quit, where a senior sponsor had been run off, where another just couldn't take it anymore and walked. It didn't seem to matter that the subject didn't match my degree, my area of expertise. But really, at that point I had no area of expertise, although I was pretty well convienced I knew it all. I did get one physical education class, in my field, and that actually turned out to be my salvation at St. Paul.

     I knew the coach, Billy Max, an old Arkansas A&M grad like me. He invited me to share his trailer. I went along with him to lots of his games. His senior boys basketball team was very short, no good, and would pass up a layup any day for the glory of gunning a thirty foot shot. Just quite naturally, they won no games that year.

     Teaching went pretty well, everything considered. I had a hard core group of senior hillbilly boys in my PE class, but I was a hard core hillbilly too. These guys, I   knew, were at the forefront in running off teachers, so I put in a little segment on distance running right off. Since I had just came from being a college distance runner, I led them out on a 3 mile route. They were determined to not let a teacher outdo them in anything physical, and they kept up until they just, one by one, collapsed. They respected physical things much more than teaching ability, fortunately, and we got along pretty good. One of my boys collapsed to the point that I had to load him up in my car and take him to the doctor in Huntsville, twenty miles away. We were late getting back, he was still pretty much out of it, so I drove him home and milked his goats for him.

     Time for the senior play was coming up, and, as the senior sponsor had already been run off, I was the man. When we started having practice at night, I soon realized I had my hands full. Sometimes, some of them would just not show up. Those that did had not been studying their lines. I knew a disaster was in the works, and I was right. When the big night came, I posted lots of prompters around behind the curtains. It really was not a matter of prompting, often they just had to read the whole line. And sometimes, the wrong actor grabbed onto a line and just ran with it. Halfway through, a very loud alarm clock that some junior had hidden in the couch on stage went off. I still have that clock. You just can't believe how loud that clock was.

     Oh well, all's well that ends well. When it was over, they called me out on the stage, told me how much they appreciated my hard work, and presented me with a brand new fly rod.

I was returning from seeing my girl one Sunday night, well after dark. I cut through the mountains. When I passed a new Ozark National Forest sign, I saw it was on fire. I grabbed an old rag and was trying to put the fire out, when an old, beat up station wagon drove slowly by. I got the fire out and went on to St. Paul. The next day, a kid brought me a message from his grandpa. Grandpa said, “Don’t be messing in my business again.” This was along about when the Forest Service stopped allowing locals to run their cows up in the mountains. I guess grandpa had a grudge about that.

     The end of the school year rolled around. Time for the senior trip. I was again the man, with a lady out of the community agreeing to go along to watch after the girls. She really didn't do much of anything, I think she was just on vacation. I drove the bus to Little Rock and booked us into a big hotel. These mountain kids were totally awestruck. I began to realize most of them had never been to a city before.  Many of them just wanted to ride the elevator, up and down, as long as I would let them. Some of them were older than me, and a few of the girls were pretty and flirty.  A twenty-one year old guy just really should not be responsible for them, that long. But my do right mechanism was turned on and kept me in good stead.

     We went on to Hot Springs. We went for a ride on a party barge. I had never driven one before, but I was again the man. As I came into a dock, I tried gracefully to shift into reverse. It would not go. I tried again, desperate this time. No luck. I yelled to the kid up front. “Hold it off, Max! Don't let it hit!” Well, I was giving an impossible assignment to that little boy on that great big barge. BOOM! Everyone came running out of cabins, and from everywhere. I had to cough up several bucks to get out of that.

                                                                                                                                                               

       I had made another big mistake. I passed out everyone's meal money for the whole trip the first day. Max, and some others, were big spenders – for about a day. Then they begged and starved the rest of the trip.

     Coach Billy Max resigned, and they offered me the coaching job for the next year. I took it.

The most noteworthy thing about my coaching time at Saint Paul was getting a personalized insult from Frank Broyles himself. After a particularly bad practice by the Arkansas Razorbacks he told newsmen, “We looked like Saint Paul out there today.” Well, I was the only coach Saint Paul had, and as I looked around to see if maybe he aimed that insult at somebody else, I didn’t see anyone but me. Ironically, a couple of years later, I was coaching at Fayetteville, and two of his sons were on my football team. What goes around comes around.

     I was good at not wasting money when I started to college. Can't waste what you don't have. College had honed that ability even more. I had three hundred ten dollars monthly take-home during that teaching semester, lived, made new car payments, and still saved eight hundred dollars.

     Soon after, I brought my new bride to St. Paul. It had taken me a year, almost to the day, to persuade her I was the man, even though I had known it the first time I saw her. I took her around, showing her the housing possibilities up there. The first was a small box, right in the middle of town. She said that just would NOT do. So, I took her way up in the mountains, five miles off the blacktop, to show her the second possibility, up close to the Orval Faubus birthplace. The only neighbors were in the graveyard next door. She quickly decided that box in town was not SO bad, after all.

     When I first arrived at Saint Paul it was midwinter.

Those hardwood forests were drab and dreary. Now, spring had brought to me bright green leaves and a brand new bride, completely changing my world. We found a new, beautiful spot in those mountains to picnic almost every day. A wonderful start to our fifty years together.

Forever A Hillbilly:

 Learning While Teaching

     The job started in the middle of the year. I had just graduated from college in January, and I felt very lucky to find a teaching job at that time of year. It was at Saint Paul, Arkansas, deep in the Ozark Mountains near Fayetteville.  It wasn't until later that I realized it was because they had already lost so many teachers that year.

     It paid two thousand dollars for the semester, big money to me. It was sort of a bits and pieces job, just fill in where a teacher had been destroyed and quit, where a senior sponsor had been run off, where another just couldn't take it anymore and walked. It didn't seem to matter that the subject didn't match my degree, my area of expertise. But really, at that point I had no area of expertise, although I was pretty well convienced I knew it all. I did get one physical education class, in my field, and that actually turned out to be my salvation at St. Paul.

     I knew the coach, Billy Max, an old Arkansas A&M grad like me. He invited me to share his trailer. I went along with him to lots of his games. His senior boys basketball team was very short, no good, and would pass up a layup any day for the glory of gunning a thirty foot shot. Just quite naturally, they won no games that year.

     Teaching went pretty well, everything considered. I had a hard core group of senior hillbilly boys in my PE class, but I was a hard core hillbilly too. These guys, I   knew, were at the forefront in running off teachers, so I put in a little segment on distance running right off. Since I had just came from being a college distance runner, I led them out on a 3 mile route. They were determined to not let a teacher outdo them in anything physical, and they kept up until they just, one by one, collapsed. They respected physical things much more than teaching ability, fortunately, and we got along pretty good. One of my boys collapsed to the point that I had to load him up in my car and take him to the doctor in Huntsville, twenty miles away. We were late getting back, he was still pretty much out of it, so I drove him home and milked his goats for him.

     Time for the senior play was coming up, and, as the senior sponsor had already been run off, I was the man. When we started having practice at night, I soon realized I had my hands full. Sometimes, some of them would just not show up. Those that did had not been studying their lines. I knew a disaster was in the works, and I was right. When the big night came, I posted lots of prompters around behind the curtains. It really was not a matter of prompting, often they just had to read the whole line. And sometimes, the wrong actor grabbed onto a line and just ran with it. Halfway through, a very loud alarm clock that some junior had hidden in the couch on stage went off. I still have that clock. You just can't believe how loud that clock was.

     Oh well, all's well that ends well. When it was over, they called me out on the stage, told me how much they appreciated my hard work, and presented me with a brand new fly rod.

I was returning from seeing my girl one Sunday night, well after dark. I cut through the mountains. When I passed a new Ozark National Forest sign, I saw it was on fire. I grabbed an old rag and was trying to put the fire out, when an old, beat up station wagon drove slowly by. I got the fire out and went on to St. Paul. The next day, a kid brought me a message from his grandpa. Grandpa said, “Don’t be messing in my business again.” This was along about when the Forest Service stopped allowing locals to run their cows up in the mountains. I guess grandpa had a grudge about that.

     The end of the school year rolled around. Time for the senior trip. I was again the man, with a lady out of the community agreeing to go along to watch after the girls. She really didn't do much of anything, I think she was just on vacation. I drove the bus to Little Rock and booked us into a big hotel. These mountain kids were totally awestruck. I began to realize most of them had never been to a city before.  Many of them just wanted to ride the elevator, up and down, as long as I would let them. Some of them were older than me, and a few of the girls were pretty and flirty.  A twenty-one year old guy just really should not be responsible for them, that long. But my do right mechanism was turned on and kept me in good stead.

     We went on to Hot Springs. We went for a ride on a party barge. I had never driven one before, but I was again the man. As I came into a dock, I tried gracefully to shift into reverse. It would not go. I tried again, desperate this time. No luck. I yelled to the kid up front. “Hold it off, Max! Don't let it hit!” Well, I was giving an impossible assignment to that little boy on that great big barge. BOOM! Everyone came running out of cabins, and from everywhere. I had to cough up several bucks to get out of that.

                                                                                                                                                               

       I had made another big mistake. I passed out everyone's meal money for the whole trip the first day. Max, and some others, were big spenders – for about a day. Then they begged and starved the rest of the trip.

     Coach Billy Max resigned, and they offered me the coaching job for the next year. I took it.

The most noteworthy thing about my coaching time at Saint Paul was getting a personalized insult from Frank Broyles himself. After a particularly bad practice by the Arkansas Razorbacks he told newsmen, “We looked like Saint Paul out there today.” Well, I was the only coach Saint Paul had, and as I looked around to see if maybe he aimed that insult at somebody else, I didn’t see anyone but me. Ironically, a couple of years later, I was coaching at Fayetteville, and two of his sons were on my football team. What goes around comes around.

     I was good at not wasting money when I started to college. Can't waste what you don't have. College had honed that ability even more. I had three hundred ten dollars monthly take-home during that teaching semester, lived, made new car payments, and still saved eight hundred dollars.

     Soon after, I brought my new bride to St. Paul. It had taken me a year, almost to the day, to persuade her I was the man, even though I had known it the first time I saw her. I took her around, showing her the housing possibilities up there. The first was a small box, right in the middle of town. She said that just would NOT do. So, I took her way up in the mountains, five miles off the blacktop, to show her the second possibility, up close to the Orval Faubus birthplace. The only neighbors were in the graveyard next door. She quickly decided that box in town was not SO bad, after all.

     When I first arrived at Saint Paul it was midwinter.

Those hardwood forests were drab and dreary. Now, spring had brought to me bright green leaves and a brand new bride, completely changing my world. We found a new, beautiful spot in those mountains to picnic almost every day. A wonderful start to our fifty years together..

Announcing The Winners!

THE WINNERS OF THE SIXTY YEAR PROMISE BEST FAMILY STORIES CONTEST ARE - 

First Place - Linda Hatcher - The Dog Days of Summer

Second Place - Jonnie Sue Willis - Polio Hits

Third Place - Cindy Buford - My Story

Fourth Place - Jackie Leffingwell - A Love Story

Fifth Place - Dorothy Starnes - Artie Mae and Dorothy Bell

The winners were determined by the number of reads each had in three days on Foreverahillbilly.
All were well written and very interesting. Thank you for entering! You guys are just really good!

     

Forever A Hillbilly: Moving on South

Forever A Hillbilly: Moving on South:       At Andersonville, we spent some time at the Civil War POW Camp. That was a nightmare place. Not enough food, bad water, little cover...

Moving on South

      At Andersonville, we spent some time at the Civil War POW Camp. That was a nightmare place. Not enough food, bad water, little cover from the elements. Actually, It was just a big field with a palisade wall around it, teen age guards all around, trained to shoot to kill if anyone got within 10 feet of the wall. A creek running through it was the only source of water, and It was quickly contaminated with human waste. Thousands from the north died there.

     Our next stop was one of our inexpensive-type stops. My nephew Stan and Missy Arrington's  driveway. Stan had always been an outdoor, woodsy type guy. He was now a forester, and a dutch oven cooking expert. They had a fenced back yard, except at the back, which was bordering a bayou. They had a big, pretty white rabbit that had the run of the place. One day, Missy was at the kitchen window, and a large gator came up out of the bayou and gobbled the pretty white rabbit up. They have two children, Mandy and Thomas. Mandy was always all about horses, growing up, and she is now about to get a Masters degree in horse knowledge. I'm just not sure what that degree would be called. When we woke up the next morning, at daylight, Thomas, a small boy then, walked by our RV and disappeared from our vision. When we came out of the RV, later, he was just sitting up in top of a tall tree, just looking. Thomas went on to achieve, in college, membership in that group of nearly naked, painted young men that you might see at Mississippi State football games. He now seems to have matured, however, because he's about to travel to the Philippines and spend a good bit of time traveling up remote rivers, seeking unreached people for Christ. I would say he's being promoted, how about you? Missy is a big wig at Mississippi State.

     We toured Savanna, with its Forest Gump bench, where he sat with his box of chocolates on Chippewa  Square. But we forgot to bring our chocolates.

     Our next stop was at Mark Twain State Park, well out into the Okefenokee Swamp. The swamp was formed when the Swanee River spread out over a wide area, 50 miles across. It is a wild area that man was unable to successfully cross until well up into the 1900's. I had been here before, on one of my Pork and Beans Trips. Barbara had not. I wanted to give Barbara a real taste of the swamp, but before heading out in a small boat, I gave her the gator lecture. I told her it was wintertime here, the gators were cold, and would not try to come in our boat. But, we will be very close to many. If you come close to one, and jump up and run, you will swamp the boat, then we'll be right down in amongst' um'. Stay still. A ranger told of getting a report of a boat being swamped, people in the water. When they got there, they were still hanging onto the boat, surrounded by 40 gators. Just looking. I called up several foxes to a photo session with my predator call. Then it was time to head on down the road.

     We went down the west coast of Florida, and saw so many different birds and other animals at reserves along the way, I wouldn't even try to tell you about all of them. Sea Cows stood out. Very large swimming mammals, about the size of a walrus, but they had a habit of swimming just under the surface, and many got cut up by outboards.

     We left our RV at Miami, then drove on down to the south most point of the USA at Key West. The sunset was one of a kind, and everyone turned out for a big party at sunset. We spent the night in a B&B, then back to Miami.

     We toured the Everglades. A foreign guy was taking a little trail ahead of us, and he ran back, pointing, saying, “chicken! Chicken!” It turned out to be one of those big footed little birds, that walks around on lily pads. I didn't know the name of it either, so I really don't know what the purpose of that little story was. Certainly not educational.

      Barbara and a large gator were looking at each other. Barbara asked a ranger what was keeping him from just coming and getting her. He said, “He's sizing you up. If  he decides he's bigger than you, he will.” Well, they were a pretty good match, and she didn't give him time to make his decision. She broke for the car. Barbara just has something that makes big animals make a run at her, tame or wild. Not the least of which was a small grizzly bear.  I have heard that a Gator can outrun a horse for 20 feet, and I never believed those slow-seeming animals could really do that, until I saw one make a run for a bird once. They can come up on their toes and just fly for a short distance.

     We had seen both of Florida's coasts before, so we decided to head back up the middle. We drove through endless acres of Sugar Cane to Lake Okeechobee. We camped very near the lake on the south end. It is Florida's largest lake, though shallow. I have heard of fishermen out in the middle of the lake, seeing almost no land, swamping the boat, then going into a panic, until they realize they can stand up.

     That south end must sorta be like an elementary school for small gators, since they abound, and will crawl right up to the RV at night. One woman wanted to show Barbara how a gator would go right for her fishing lure. It did, she jerked it hard, and the lure flew back and slapped Barbara smack in the face. Barbara got away from that woman.