The job started in
the middle of the year. It wasn't until later that I realized it was because
they had already lost so many teachers that year. It paid $2000 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 convinced 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 A&M grad himself. He invited me to share his trailer. I
went along with him to lots of his games. His senior boys 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. His junior boys
showed promise, and the girl’s teams were fair.
I was nearly out of transportation, having problems
with my old Ford. The fuel pump shut down on me on University Avenue in Little
Rock one day, and a cop showed up and helped me get it towed back to a station.
Fortunately, my brother Harold, who I had bought the car from for several cows,
had saved an old fuel pump in the trunk. Said it would work in a tight. Well, I
was in a tight. I had it put on, and Harold was right. It did work in a tight.
Long enough for me to get back to the spot where the first one quit, and it
quit too. As soon as I got a
paycheck, I sold it and I headed to town to decide between a 1966 Corvair and a
1966 Mustang. Wouldn't you just know it, I picked the Corvair, brand new,
$2,300.
Teaching went
pretty well, everything considered. I had a hard core group of hillbilly boys
in my PE class, but I was a hard core hillbilly too. Some of 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 2-3 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 OK. 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, 20 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.
St. Paul is a
long way from Watson. Almost all the way across the state. But I went to see my
girl, Barbara, every weekend I could, which means every weekend I was invited.
I began to realize, her daddy didn't have any rules for this 17 year old girl.
She was on her own. I didn't understand that at all, because my dad was very
strict. My sisters didn't date at all in high school. Over a period of time I
learned why Barbara had the freedom she had.
One weekend, her
parents and all the rest of her family still at home, except Barbara, were
going to her sister Frances' house in Little Rock for the weekend. But, Barbara
invited me down anyway. "No problem, Daddy won't mind." Well, this sounds
like I'm laying the groundwork for a really good part of my story here. I
thought so too. But, when we got back to her house after the movie, she soon
let me know it was time for me to head out.
I didn't have any arrangements made, so I drove over on the levee,
crawled into the back seat, and me and the delta mosquitoes had a big party,
all night long. Enjoyed more by them than me, I'm sure. Put simply, her Daddy
and Mama just trusted this girl completely. And she never gave them reason not
to.
Time for the
senior play was coming up, and, as the senior sponsor had already been ran 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 several 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 Barbara 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
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 21 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.
Now, I was good
at not wasting money when I started to college. Can't waste what you don't
have. But college had honed that ability even more. I had $310 per month take
home during that teaching semester, lived, made new car payments, and still
saved $800 that semester
Midway through that second year, I brought my new bride to
St. Paul. It had taken me a year, almost to the day, to persuade her I was the
one, 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. There were no neighbors,
except in the graveyard across the road. She quickly decided that box in town
was not so bad, after all.
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