Jack the Talking Crow and Other Tales

On Surviving School and Learning a Little Along the Way -- Pardon my self-indulgence. It’s Funny how things come back to you while you are doing something else. I was writing on an entirely different topic when I took a turn and ended up here. I guess sometimes things have to break out of your head and land on paper. This is a rambling autobiographical account of my early days in school back in the “Leave it to Beaver” era.

I was one of those students that, if in elementary school today, would be spending quality time with the school psychologist and probably diagnosed as having some degree of attention deficit disorder.  Somehow I learned that putting words on paper was fulfilling at this early age. Kids at this age are looking for something that they excelled at and I was a champion reader. I read early and often so I became familiar with how ideas were expressed on paper. Conversation was sporadic and disjointed but when an idea was committed to paper it had to be clear and complete. I can actually remember learning about the period and experiencing one of those light-bulb moments when it became clear that when someone was trying to communicate an idea they had to do it before the period showed up. Periods and commas did not just appear at random.  I also figured out that before you can really be a writer you need to have something to write about. Luckily, there was so much going on in my world that the normal school work of arithmetic and cursive writing were an intrusion.

In first grade we had Jack the talking crow who would come and sit on our class window sill and entertain the kids and aggravate the teacher. The windows were at ground level and Jack would just walk up, like crows do, and peer in the window. If it was warm and the windows were open he would hop in and walk up and down the window sill. Jack was wild and big and the girls were terrified -- which made his visits to first grade so much more enjoyable. The school legend was that Jack had been captured by a neighborhood ne'er-do-well and had his tongue split and somehow he learned to talk. We hung on every word but he wasn't much of a conversationalist.  My first grade teacher went nuts (literally) and had to leave about two-thirds of the way through the school year. Maybe Jack had something to do with it.  We could see it coming; she had been going downhill for a while and the Christmas vacation must have sent her over the edge. She hung on for a few weeks but eventually she “went to Chicago”.   As a result, we were parceled out to other classes like refugees for the last few months of the school year. Each classroom develops a culture after a few months so we were alien beings in our new surroundings and Jack the Crow couldn’t seem to find us. The other kids were crow-deprived and had no experiences with Jack and figured we were as crazy as our old teacher.  

In second grade my teacher was a rookie straight out of Little Rock, Arkansas. We only understood about half of what she said (I swan!). We liked her mostly due to the novelty of her approach to English. We all sounded like southern aristocracy after a couple months. She seemed very young even to us. She couldn’t have been over twenty-five.  We liked her a lot. Since we had more tenure at the school than she did we could stretch the rules and she didn't know any better.

The novelty of second grade got even better because my school caught fire and burned down during the Christmas vacation. The students were farmed out to local church basements where tables and a few salvaged desks were arranged around portable blackboards.  I actually had nothing to do with the fire but I recall having my picture taken in a triumphant pose next to the smoking ruins. I suspect that there were a lot of similar pictures of other kids. They said it was faulty wiring up in the attic that started the fire. The school was old and decrepit but it was better than the church basements we had to report to in January.  The teachers and students struggled to keep things moving ahead but conditions were terrible.

Those years spent in the church basements I count as my missing years.  I spent most of my time concealed behind the blackboard copying lessons that everyone else copied ten minutes earlier. I was too busy at the time but was expected to catch up and to this day I’m still running about ten minutes behind. Sometimes the blackboards flipped so I was back there trying to copy the lesson upside down. I was right side up…the lesson wasn’t.  Sometimes there were several of us back there and it was great fun until the teacher figured it out.

Third grade was a total loss. We were in the dungeon at the local Missionary Baptist Church. I didn't know churches had dungeons and if they did I was sure that mine, being a semi-rural, hard-rock Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, would have a doozy plus some torture equipment. But my experience among the Baptists was bleak and foreboding. I remember it as dark with bare light bulbs and no windows and I really needed windows. My third grade teacher was a hatchet-faced lady who was always in a bad mood. I have to give the teachers credit because the working conditions were terrible and I'm sure (now, being much older) that they tried very hard to keep us on track. Some of our text books were water damaged and smelled of smoke so no one even wanted to touch them. Everything was makeshift.  In third grade I don't even recall having recess. 

The sky opened in fourth grade. We were no longer in a church basement but were in a funny looking asbestos cardboard type of building. It had lots of windows and was full of all kinds of cool stuff like bird nests and hornet nests and fossils and some real stuffed animals…never mind the asbestos. We had class pets and terrariums and pen pals. This was heaven and the teacher was an angel. I have friends from that period who stayed in contact with that teacher well into adulthood. I was finally inspired to write what was bouncing around in my head and some of it was good. My life behind the blackboard ended and I was welcomed with open arms back into the society of fourth graders.

As luck would have it, they rebuilt the school and we finally moved back in at the start of fifth grade. This was my first male teacher. I didn’t know they came in that variety.  Up until this time I figured all teachers were women...except for the music teacher who was a little bit odd and peevish and was easily provoked into spasms of rage.  

The new school was a disappointment as it looked just like the old school. Our teacher was a part-time Baptist minister whose day job was trying to teach something, anything, to ten year olds. I was a little wary of the Baptist minister connection because I still had haunting memories of third grade. As it turned out, he mostly enjoyed having the little girls sit on his lap.  The boys were free to do anything that wasn't too disruptive. I was a budding scholar by this time and was beginning to get the idea that if I was going to learn anything useful I was going to have to teach myself. Unfortunately, my interests didn't always coincide with the classroom material. I would write letters and ask people to send me information. I wrote to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and got a large bundle of material on King Tut, Luxor and Giza. My parents had an old Crosley radio with a shortwave band that I used to listen to English language broadcasts from Paris and (God forbid!!) Moscow. I wrote off to the Paris broadcasters and received a bundle of information and ended up on their mailing list for several years. What they sent was very technical and way over my head but it was still cool getting mail from France. I had a pen pal in England and we sent letters back and forth for a couple years.    

This was 1957 and the floodgates had opened and we didn't have time for this mundane school stuff. Everything was cool. Cars had huge fins and soon the Edsel was introduced. Elvis was on the television...or at least his upper half. This was the International Geophysical Year for heaven's sake! Sputnik was flying around overhead. I managed to be sick (wink, wink) the day the USA tried to launch our Vanguard rocket in an attempt to catch up to the Soviets. I was tuned in on the old Crosley when they launched it and the sucker blew up on the launch pad. I was mortified because I was sure I could hear Sputnik’s little beep-beep on the shortwave laughing at us.    I remember when a kid smuggled the first transistor radio into school and we had to attach the wire aerial to a chain link fence in the schoolyard to pick up anything and then you could only barely hear it. We still had a classroom schedule but it was often interrupted by TB patch tests, fire drills, tornado drills and atomic bomb drills.  This was the year I joined the school band.

My band career was relatively short lived. I struggled with the clarinet for two years. We still had the same old music teacher and he served as our band director. He was even more high-strung when working with the school band. His nerves were shot and he was beginning to hold grudges. If you did something wrong you were on his list forever. We only performed one piece of music, "Our Director March" by F. E. Bigelow. We made no attempt to learn anything else and I can still hear it in my head. Even at the Christmas assembly we played the Our Director March. One day I managed to get tangled up in several music stands and caused a racket and the music teacher suffered a melt-down. I had apparently been on his list for some time already and this was the last straw. We were both yelling and somewhere along the way I told him what he could do with the clarinet. That was the end of my music career.

In my elementary school, sixth grade was the “senior” class. The teacher that year was a nice lady with hairy arms who meant well but had no idea what was going on in class…or should I say out of class.  All the boys seemed to have weak bladders that year and we tended to congregate, one by one, in the boys’ bathroom several times a day. Our classroom and the bathrooms were on the second floor. If one was so inclined, one could climb out the boys’ bathroom window and walk sideways on the ledge, flat against the brick wall of the building, and peek into the girls’ bathroom (much to the delight of any of the girls who happened to be there). One could also go the other direction and peek into the classroom window.  I’m not sure what the local neighbors thought about kids being on the second floor ledge during class time but they apparently never called the school to report it. At one point the teacher noticed that most of the boys were missing and had been gone for quite a while. She decided to investigate and stormed into the boys’ bathroom.  As eleven year olds, we were scandalized that she would dare to enter this male sanctuary. In spite of our protests, we were frog-marched back to class…all of us except for the kid out on the ledge.  It never occurred to her that someone would be out there. That episode put a damper on our ledge walking for a while.

The transition to what was then called “Junior High School” was a little stressful for everyone that had to go through it. Kids going into “middle school” today have similar experiences. The kids who were big fish in the little pond suddenly became average fish in a much larger pond in seventh grade. We all knew the kids from our local school….kids that had similar talking crow experiences and had spent time in Baptist church basements or on the ledge…but now there were kids from six other schools as well. It took some time to get this all sorted out and I was mostly a spectator. It turns out that there were some grudges between different schools and an apparent pecking order based on where you lived. We had to scamper from one class to another and there were gym classes and hallway lockers. Lockers were all we had as private space. That was where you stashed your copy of Lolita or Playboy or where you daily checked out that old banana until it turned into something else that defied description.

This was 1960 and it was an election year. Kennedy against Nixon and our school was split down the middle. Twelve year olds became highly partisan cheerleaders; a reflection of what was going on in society, and our school became a huge venue for political expression.  The school busses dumped us off in the morning and we came equipped with posters and signs promoting our favorite candidate and congregated in the gym until class started. We were two opposing camps waving signs and mouthing slogans.  I was a Kennedy man, partly because I just liked him but also because my Baptist missionary cousins flew home from Brazil and were tramping around the country telling everyone not to vote for a Catholic. We never saw those people before or since but they made a bee-line to our house that year to deliver the message. I figured that if Kennedy scared the Baptists that much he must be pretty good.

All during seventh grade we heard about the new junior high school that was going to open the following year. This was, of course, the baby boomer generation and we usually did things in huge groups. It was normal to have forty kids in a single class with one teacher (hence the ledge walking episodes in sixth grade). Apparently the district decided it couldn’t manage with only one junior high school anymore and built a new second facility to handle kids on the west side of the district. That was me and my friends – we, who had endured such hardships and deprivations, were going to be the first ones to inaugurate the new school that opened in eighth grade. Everything comes to those who wait. We were also shucking some of those no-account kids from the eastern provinces of the school district. Everything was hunky-dory…new school, new desks, new lockers, new gym, and new books. The place smelled new.  It was ours! I remember that they said that the school cost $2,000,000 to build so I looked around and took it all in. For a long time I used that as a yardstick of what $2,000,000 would buy. Unfortunately, this was in 1961 dollars and my yardstick became obsolete before too long. Eighth grade itself was fairly uneventful. Kennedy won the election so we were asking what we could do for our country. We had Civics class in seventh grade so now we knew all about how government worked. All of this was taking place during the Cold War and we were constantly having various drills. The school district had publicized plans of what they would do in case of a missile attack but these plans changed almost every year. We went from hiding under our desk to hiding in the windowless hallways and stairwells to, finally, being turned out of school to fend for ourselves. That was the last plan that I remember. All the kids would be “sent home” to be with their families…on foot. Since they estimated that we would have maybe twenty minutes advance warning and I lived about five miles from school I would be running five consecutive four-minute miles to reach my front door just as the bomb went off. I didn’t have much faith in that plan. 

Ninth grade…wow. I was in high school.  Talk about a crazy place!  Our high school was relatively new and was designed and built on a California campus model. We had eight or nine buildings with broad sunny sidewalks connecting the various buildings. This probably worked in California but in Missouri it was a living hell. One’s locker was probably in the 400 building while most of one’s classes were in the 200 building and one had only eight minutes between classes. One ended up carrying most of one’s books along with one’s coat and gym bag for most of the day because there was no way to make it to class if one had to visit one’s locker.  I learned to use “one” in ninth grade instead of the incorrect “you” (or the ubiquitous “yous”).

Ninth grade was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis…October, 1962. We would talk and think of nothing else for a couple weeks. I kept a cool head and was certain that it would all be OK in the end. I'm not sure why I was so confident and recent evidence suggests it was more serious than we thought at the time. I recall some girls who sat in class sobbing and the teachers were not much help. Some families were spooked so much that they took their kids out of school and sent them to live with relatives far from the city. In a couple weeks everything settled down but it was truly a scary time.

Our school had a smoking policy. Students could smoke only in designated areas. There was only one designated area and it was a fenced in space, maybe twenty feet square, out by the football field. Every morning, before class, students would shoe-horn themselves into that tiny corral so they could smoke a cigarette. It was very strange. Rain or shine…hot or cold…there would be a pall of smoke rising from the little fenced in smoking pit that was crammed with people. Not being a smoker, I never ventured into the pit but I’m not sure that smoking was the only thing that was going on but it was so crowded that no one could tell. As I said, we baby-boomers did things in groups.

Another curious feature at high school was a rocket ship planted on the front lawn of the school. Our team name was the Rams…not the Rockets…but we had a rocket perched like a hood ornament in front of the school. Apparently, a few years earlier, one of the students entered an essay contest to win a fully operational rocket ship simulator from Kraft foods. Well, she won. This sucker was as big as a small school bus and equipped with hydraulics and impressive 1959-era bells and whistles. It really worked and was mounted on sort of a moving launch pad. It was big enough inside to seat four or five people but the cost of installing and operating it made it impractical for the contest winner to keep it…..so she donated it to her high school. It was an easy target for graffiti from rival schools during football season. It was surrounded by a fence but that didn’t deter anyone dedicated enough to climb over and paste a sign on it.  It was still there in the 1970s and may still be there for all I know.

In high school we were all back together again. Things were better because we were focused on parading back and forth between buildings and didn’t have time to interact much outside of class.  We had real teams to cheer for and common goals. The school band could play more than one tune and we had a school choir…actually more than one. We also had interesting, almost legendary, teachers. One teacher had been there so long that they named a building after her…and yet she stayed.  She couldn’t take a hint. We had a Coach that would eat students alive…or at least we thought so. He was built like a wrestler and apparently won a state or NCAA wrestling title of some sort. Nobody messed with him. Besides being a PE Coach he was required to teach health class. I was in his health class when the news broke that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. This man was transformed before our eyes into a caring and sensitive human being.  He calmed everyone down and tried to make sense of what was happening. We had a public address system and the school piped the TV news audio into each classroom while we waited for the news.  There was absolute silence throughout the school while Walter Cronkite issued news bulletins. Everything was confused because no one knew if this was some kind of broader attack or who was left to be in charge. I don’t recall classes changing that afternoon and I’m sure we just sat there for a few hours trying to sort things out.

I recall another teacher…not her name but just the circumstances.  She was our English Literature teacher and we spent the first couple months of the term listening to Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie records while she went on and on about how relevant and important this all was.  She would almost swoon over Bob Dylan.  One day we came into class and she wasn’t there and no one knew where she was.  Her record player was missing along with her records.  One of the biology teachers was also missing and it turned out that they joined forces and ran off to California leaving his wife and kids to fend for themselves. This was a few years before the “Summer of Love” so I guess they were the advance party. By that time some of us were feeling pretty groovy ourselves after listening to Joan, Buffy and Bob every day.  We then had a series of substitutes who expected us to actually know something about literature. They were not groovy. 

I had a couple years of Spanish. This actually started in Junior High but I stayed with it. I recall the language lab where we sat in little cubicles with headphones on repeating recorded Spanish words or phrases. Sometimes we would record ourselves and play it back so we could hear what we sounded like. I swear that I was a regular Antonio Banderas in Spanish class. I missed my calling.

Generally speaking I would say that I did not have a wonderful high school experience. I was a little bookish and very quiet. Although I dabbled in it, dating was not my thing. I recall going to school dances and at least one basketball game…my least favorite sport...and occasional football games. I still excelled in those subjects that I liked and hated anything that had to do with math.  Happily, I finally found a math teacher who made some sense out of Algebra…the second time around.  My writing was better than most of the other students and would be used as an example of what they should be striving for. I had mixed feelings about this. I was happy that I was a good writer…it felt good and I knew it was good. On the other hand, I was mortified that maybe the teacher would reveal my name when she used my writing in class. She never did. 

I was not active in sports or clubs. The high school was eight miles from home and any after school activity meant that I had to walk for about two hours since there was no other way to get home. We had a few clubs that met during school hours and I participated in some of that but never became involved in organized sports…something that I regret a little.

We graduated in June of 1966. By the time we finished high school one of our classmates who had already dropped out of school joined the army. He was sent to Viet Nam and was already dead by the time we got our diploma.  Our class song was “Blowing in the Wind”.  Some of us were thinking about college, some were thinking about the military (both good and bad) and some were thinking about wearing flowers in their hair.

So, in the end I went on to two years at the local Junior College where most people played cards but I found education (at last) and a better understanding of myself (at last). I finished up at a state college (now a “University”) in Cape Girardeau. This was my introduction to small town America and I liked it.   I managed to miss military service due to what I still consider divine intervention.  I never actually wore flowers in my hair, or at least not for more than a few minutes…or maybe I did and don’t remember.  I tried to grow my hair long but I had so much that it piled up and I looked like Albert Einstein…not the image I was striving for.   

And so it went. I still wonder what ever happened to Jack the talking crow.

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