Looking at this old A&J from 1998, I think of my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Graham. Mrs. Graham sported pinkish hair, way ahead of its time, and drove a 1958 Oldsmobile whose color matched her hair. I kid you not. Mrs. Graham was kind enough, but she had a calm professional manner that did not instantly endear her to children of an age when favorite teachers all had a sweet side. But we 5th graders were growing up, and Mrs. Graham was the perfect teacher. She was the first teacher I remember who began to instruct us in the craft of writing. She introduced us to “themes,” which is what she called short essays. She encouraged us to reach, to think of verbs more descriptive than “went” or “said.” Mrs. Graham’s class was the first place it was noticed that I have a talent for this sort of thing, and Mrs. Graham did the noticing. I even worked dialog into some of my themes, complete with quote marks, and that had to be something she didn’t encounter every day. She even told me I had an ear for dialog. If she could see me now! I probably have not given her enough credit for her influence upon me.
92 responses to “The Lady in the Pink Olds”
12th
I was thinking of my alcoholic red haired witch of a senior English teacher and wondering should I mention her?
She was old, burned out and ALWAYS smelled of alcohol. She was my homeroom teacher. I had little to do my senior year so graded most of her tests and essay assignments. We were a small high school with barely a hundred students so she taught all four grades.
Think of her daily my entire life. Students claimed she was a witch. I remember her exact words.
“You have too much energy to burn. You need a good case of tired blood.”
I had a lot of good teachers in the different schools I attended. Trouble is, I can’t remember names earlier than one from Jr. High. She was the math teacher I had in 7th grade for about half the school year. Pretty redhead, good teacher I guess, but I was not good at math and didn’t have her class long enough to get anywhere. Her son’s the most famous weatherman in Alabama these days.
And in another school, can’t remember her name, but our algebra teacher blew a fuse one day over some guys talking through the class. Only time I ever saw one lose it like that, throwing erasers at the offenders and yelling.
Great science teacher senior year. Mr. Washington, friendly, kind and soft-spoken. Could draw you into the subject and was willing to talk about what interested us.
And Jackie, I recall your stories about digging in the old outhouse. Go to YouTube and search on privy digging. There are quite a few folks who made videos about that and what they’ve found. Check Exploring Alabama on YouTube too.
Dear emb, I wondered what had become of you, was rather worried; how are we going to find out when a long time Villager disappears? Glad to see you back among us again. Were you able to get out at all, for errands and the gym, and your volunteer work, or were you stuck at home through the bad weather?
Funny, in my years 1939 to 1950 at the Raymond NH Consolidated School (one large two-story building) I don’t recall ever being taught how to write well; as many of you folks have. Penmanship, yes — dialogue and such, no. Must admit though, I have always been such a know-it-all — and still am — perhaps I just didn’t pay attention. “I know all that stuff already, don’t need to listen to it.” I do remember fondly teachers, young, old, and in between, who were friendly and kind. Some read aloud to us; I loved it, and the other kids seemed to enjoy it. The other kids didn’t read at home, as far as I could tell. I grew up in a home with lots of books; most kids weren’t so fortunate. Anyhow, Mrs. Nutbrown read to us sixth graders “The Secret Garden.” We loved it, even though I had read it at home. Some teachers brought in books and left them somewhere for us to discover, a real treat! We didn’t have a school library. “Paddle to the Sea” I adored. Wonderful pictures, and so many of them!
In second grade I discovered the school library and read my way through it. Apparently I read at an adult level from the beginning, something my mother credited to COMICS.
My mother was never a reader but she saw that I had limitless books. No one ever screened them for appropriate subjects, I just read away.
Maybe that is how readers are, diving in without paddling in the shallow end.
Good morning Villagers…..
Oh, Miss Charlotte, good to see your post. I was worried about you. And I too have wondered about how we would find out about a MIA Villager. Like Smigz, where’s she at and I hope all is well with her.
Galiglo…she’s ok, I’m assuming…she’s one busy lady, but does drop in every now and then. Ain’t that right Gal 🙂 ?
GR and Jackie have each other, so I know they are well taken care of…they have the best prescription of all…love.
Time to move on…need to check out my LOL cats….
Later…..
Oh, I attended a Catholic grade school and two years of a Catholic High School…the only names I can remember are “Sister” 🙂
I wish I could say I remembered certain teachers for their kindness or encouragement. Alas, I cannot. The elementary school I went to was near a teaching hospital so my teachers all seemed to be waiting for their husbands to graduate so they could fulfill their destinies as rich doctors wives and thus were only teaching as a means to an end. We moved when I was in the fourth grade, and the little town we moved to was very rural and if you weren’t kin to everybody else and the teachers hadn’t known your family since Noah you were ignored. How I made it to college I’ll never understand. For instance: does anybody remember the Weekly Reader Book Club? Once or twice a year we could order books from them, so I ordered several books on Greek mythology. When the teacher opened the box to hand out the books she saw them and set them aside saying that it must be a mistake, and nobody in the class could have ordered those. I raised my hand and she said “oh. I should have known it would be you” in a rather sneering voice. I really didn’t like high school. Now, if you really want to hear me talk for hours, ask me about my college years. 😉
I never got to stay anywhere long enough to belong. Books are a refuge for people like us. We can live anywhere we like in books.
Loved mythology, it funded my arguments with fundamental primitive Baptist preachers.
Living in a foreign country and out on a dirt road in Louisiana and going to private schools and skipping grades guaranteed you never belonged.
Ok- tell us stories about your College Years?!? Love to hear everyone’s stories, so many interesting folks here.
TJ,
For many high school is their purgatory between childhood and adulthood. I’ve never had the desire to attend a reunion.
Carry on, Trapper; certainly I’m not the only one who’d enjoy your college tales
I had several notable teachers in HS and college; not so much in grad school because one didn’t see the grad profs that much, especially the one who later won the Nobel Prize. In grade school, almost all the teachers were very good professionals, although the 5th grade teacher broke down in class once or twice before being replaced. The kids sympathized with her, but were in no position to help or even to soothe.
In HS, the cadre of math teachers was superb and they all fostered my innate interest in the various kinds of math. I am a very logical person, so plane geometry came easily; the world of algebra opened next, and I was amazed at what was possible to know just from studying the format of a given equation! Trigonometry was absolutely great and stuck to me immediately – so well that, two years later, I was able to walk into an exam [for testing out of taking the college course] cold, and manage a 95%. A little solid geometry twisted my brain into seeing things from different visual angles and then applying plane geometry ideas. We finished up with the basics of calculus, and yet another fascinating aspect opened to me and was absorbed. I do wish, in retrospect, that the calculus teacher had pushed a bit more.
Any wonder I went to college as math major?
In addition, I was blessed to have my homeroom teacher – also a science teacher – be a kindly, droll person who could explain basic electrical stuff clearly. My Latin teacher for all 4 years was as old as Cicero’s grandmother, but really knew her stuff and pushed me to a 3rd place finish in the annual New York City Classical Club’s city-wide competition.
My best professors in college were the two most senior chemistry profs. One was multi-learned as well as a moral beacon, with a touch of kindliness (when I slept through an announced exam during senior year – he forgave me!) When I reconnected with him around 2000, he said that he did remember me as rather an underachiever – he was correct. The other was my extremely learned professor of organic chemistry. We students claimed that the word “astute” was coined to describe him. What a fount of knowledge and non-flusterability! Those two were why I kept up a chem major along with my math major, and, eventually, attended grad school in chemistry [taking math graduate courses too, for amusement].
Over to you, Trapper….
For those of us who found math and chemistry a foreign language those classes would have been knee slappers.
I have never attended a class reunion at any level. Never will. Yet I am remembered as cute, funny, smart, sweet.
Wait, that’s today too. Still that perky petite blonde at 73, still swimming against the current.
Read first half of Rheta/Janis back story, stopping where she buys her own place in the country and leaves Jimmy.
I will finish it tonight probably.
Talk about insecure body self image. Jimmy writes and draws Janis with love but validity.
Were I Rheta/Janis I’d be appreciative of the way Janis matured and grew.
Mark i TT
Here is his first marble machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
If you Google “Wintergatan” you can see the work on Machine X
and his trips to the Speelklok Museum
continued:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3SecHzbN2E
continued:
A slew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blkdd-pPEcA&list=RDblkdd-pPEcA&t=21
Explain this to dad
https://twitter.com/i/moments/952646196912300032
Even better, a video
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Speeding-Car-Goes-Airborne-Plows-Into-Second-Floor-of-Building-469239663.html?amp=y
Dental office? Looks like they need an extraction!
Jackie, I’ve never attended a high school reunion, or wanted to, because I didn’t like many of my classmates or care what happened to them. One thing that will show you how clueless they were: I received a letter from the ten-year reunion listing all those classmates that they couldn’t locate, including Ed Begley Jr, who was starring in St. Elsewhere at the time. Checking his page on Wikipedia, I see that he’s exactly one day younger than me, but his picture from 2009 makes him look over a decade older.
I love the word “theme” for essay. I wonder when it dropped out of usage. I wrote lots of essays in school in the 70s, but no themes. Was it the 60s when themes ended?
Dave: Hadn’t thought of “theme” for essay in ages, so long I’m not sure when I last heard it. Probably in jhs or hs, maybe Freshman English at Cornell U. Not likely after that; there were essays and term papers in some science courses at Cornell [wildlife BS] and U. MI. [zoology degrees] and grad theses, and long [total 9 hr/9 questions, twice], but no “themes.” Was it only at Cornell that we bought special pads of “theme paper”, and only for Freshman English? That suggests that essays were called themes there. Poor profs had to read our handwriting.
Mine had become printing in jhs, and I suspect teachers were glad it had. For 36 yr. at BSU, students got to see my legible if not graceful printing on blackboards and eventually overhead projections. Loved those machines; got out before PowerPoint took over.
Peace,
A different take on redheads from Brookins & MacNelly: http://www.gocomics.com/shoe/2018/01/14 Perfessor living large. Thanks, Mark, for suggesting this back into my roll recently.