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How I Became a Millionaire Teacher

I spent several weeks at the beginning of summer vacation reading old education textbooks as I sat along the Intracoastal Waterway in Dulac. This water highway hugs the Gulf of Mexico coastline and connects to many inland water routes. I perched at the end of a shell road on a small cliff obviously cut by water erosion, but just how unknown to me until the first big offshore supply boat roared by. These big commercial boats have enormous multiple engines powering huge propellers. The wake generated by such force creates an enormous wave I didn’t appreciate until one knocked me right out of an old aluminum lawn chair.  I had my nose buried in a text book, a fishing pole in the other hand, and didn’t see the wave coming. Never made that mistake again. I also desperately wanted to avoid even worse mistakes I’d made as a classroom buffoon.

While my self-study program worked well and led to good scores on the National Teacher Exam (NTE) I was required to pass to keep my job, I was absolutely certain waving my NTE scores at kids like Marvin would be even less effective than the futile efforts I’d made previously. Marvin repeatedly tumbled my world far more than any wave did, and I sought a means of survival far more complicated than stepping back a few feet. As for which force scared me more, I’d give a big nod to Marvin and crew. Continue reading “How I Became a Millionaire Teacher”

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Smart on Stupid

Her intelligent brown eyes glowed, letting anyone watching know very little would go unobserved. She used them like pointers, keeping her hands still on her lap so that her expressive face would not be distracted.

It was her face, really, that started this, a vision of many nations reflecting America’s oft mentioned melting pot, but now pushed aside for the more politically correct salad bowl.

“I’m a mutt,” she told me as I tried to comply with another ridiculous call for labels and tags, in this case a form asking for ethnicity and gender breakdowns in my journalism classes. With Mona I had no choice but to ask; I could see so many imprints across her attractive face that a random guess was bound to fail. Continue reading “Smart on Stupid”

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Underwater Living with Hurricane Juan

Stormy weather never frightened me until I lived in Louisiana and finally realized it could be lethal. You get a lot closer to God during a hurricane and/or its close companion, the tornado, both we’ve lived through. Bad weather is especially frightening in a trailer, often euphemistically called a “mobile home” but literal in the sense that these things will become mobile quickly given the right circumstances that have nothing to do with truck transport. I’ve grown to believe only idiots voluntarily ride out hurricanes if they have any other option, which we had but failed to capitalize on after two false alarms and most uncomfortable nights sleeping on what we called “the railroad tracks.” Continue reading “Underwater Living with Hurricane Juan”

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A New York Yankee in Cajun Country Part 2

Sharing any abundance was a Cajun norm shown me countless times and in many ways.

Gifts of food were so common I’ve long forgotten the bulk of them, but one shrimp haul I do remember well came from a family that only had a small boat, often called a Lafitte skiff, a boat only used in the more sheltered areas and not out in the open Gulf of Mexico where the larger trawlers the kids called “steel hulls” plied the open water. The smaller wooden boats were commonly hand-built by the fishing family or a local who specialized in that sort of boat building. Lots of good welders and ship fabricators inhabited the area and I often saw the welding sparks fly as another steel hull was being built along Bayou Grand Caillou. Continue reading “A New York Yankee in Cajun Country Part 2”

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A New York Yankee in Cajun Country Part 1

She was barely school age in her bright white dress, ether going to, or more likely as I was, coming back from church on one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. On that warm Easter in a Winn Dixie parking lot I waited for my wife to exit the big grocery store in Houma with our Sunday favorite, fresh from the oven French bread done no better anywhere else. Eager for the weekly treat, one so tantalizing in expectation I played Pavlov’s Dog after the bell rang, I didn’t know I would soon get something far better than bread, spiritual soul food that still makes me smile decades later.

By this time, I’d restored and moderately hot-rodded a 63 Karmann Ghia and installed a nice cassette deck and high-fidelity speakers. I’d just popped in a Little Richard tape not expecting to connect so deeply to Richard’s southern roots, and was tapping my fingers on the steering wheel to “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” when I looked out at a dance exhibition I sparked about 10 yards away. Continue reading “A New York Yankee in Cajun Country Part 1”

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Jimmy Haynes and the Great Shotput Massacre

I first met Jimmy Haynes when he came down the school hallway on battered crutches in January, 1980. Jimmy wore a broad smile punctuated by a couple of bad teeth and navigated minus one real leg. Since he was never too careful attaching his prostheses, his right foot commonly angled 45 degrees opposite of his left one.

“Jimmy Haaaaynes,” he drawled in Mississippi English. “Welcome to Grand Caillou School. If you need any hep, come see me.”

I thought Jimmy would be more in place standing next to a rusty pickup filled with chickens, and while I verbally welcomed his offer, I decided silently on the spot not to take him up on it. But he also wanted a favor. Jimmy needed someone to officiate the intramural program he organized and directed, a program refereed by my predecessor. “Ahhed do it myself, but I don’t git aroun’ so fast,” he explained, gesturing to his false leg, as if I hadn’t noticed. “Beeen like thet since I was born,” he added. Saying no to a cripple I found unwise for a guy in my position, so I reluctantly accepted the new duty. I soon found out which one of us was really crippled. Continue reading “Jimmy Haynes and the Great Shotput Massacre”

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Drowning in the Classroom

“Rodney Verdin! Get your carcass to the office. Your soul may belong to God but your body belongs to Mr. Hebert. Get your chew down here boy!”

Principal’s announcement at Grand Caillou School. Winter 1980

Had kind and most skilled veteran teachers not come to my rescue, I would have quit teaching in a matter of weeks. Two years later in the classroom across from mine, three different teachers did quit in the same number of weeks, one right after the other. A fourth was hired but never showed up, most likely getting the same sort of warnings Mary gave me.  The fifth, a Nichols State football lineman built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, finally stuck and we became friends.

I’m not even sure if Emma Trosclair, my first savior, was a college graduate. The racist system bigots called “separate but equal” where she began her teaching career was anything but equal and didn’t require a four-year degree for teacher certification. When forced to integrate its schools, Louisiana granted black teachers already certified in the segregated system the same credentials white teachers had, but then tried to limit people of color to “work with their own kind” as much as possible. As you might imagine, Grand Caillou school had a high percentage of minority teachers, many of them exceptional. Continue reading “Drowning in the Classroom”

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Teacher’s First Day

I made my first visit to Grand Caillou School on a cold, rainy January afternoon in 1980. In spite of the winter weather, I parked my oil dripping red and primer gray VW Beetle across the street, as far back as possible in the shell-covered parking lot to avoid being connected to the wreck. From the front, or bayou side as the kids called it, the school looked fairly presentable: two brick structures for classes and another serving as a combination cafeteria/auditorium. I wasn’t assigned to any of these, though, and was directed to what was called “the back building.”

Grand Caillou itself seemed totally alien, a small fishing community just “up to bayou” as the Cajuns say above Dulac, the last outpost in Louisiana salt marshes before opening up to the Gulf of Mexico. The bayou in front of the school would have been attractive had its banks not been profusely littered by discarded junk. Broken refrigerators, half-sunken boats, old tires and even wrecked cars mingled with egrets, floating vegetation and more than an occasional alligator. In many ways I felt as if I’d just landed on Mars.    Continue reading “Teacher’s First Day”

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Tales of Route 22

“I’m a road runner, baby,” goes the old rock lyric, one we took to heart and lived as much as we could. Like most American teens, we sought freedom and liberation, a wide variety of old rusty clunkers our admission ticket to fame and fortune. The precise pathways were many, but I’d say none more frequently utilized than Route 22.

NY Route 22 meanders through all sorts of early settlements, many if not most going back to Colonial times, some much larger today, but quite a few not changed all that much over the past 100 years or more. Although at one time or another I’ve traveled over most of it, the section between Salem and Hoosick Falls comes first to mind, so indelibly etched I could almost navigate it blindfolded.

Some 22 sections almost invite high speed driving while other parts bend and twist so severely that passing even a slow moving tractor is insanity. The highway goes right through the heart of Cambridge and Washington County, the crossroad with NY 372 hosting our only traffic light, something outsiders frequently found amusing. Continue reading “Tales of Route 22”

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Cambridge Christmas Memories

The snowflakes were big and soft, gently caressing our faces as we walked from school after the annual Christmas concert, two drummers heading to an after-concert band party at Bobbi Boeker’s house on the road to Center Cambridge. It must have been a time neither of us had cars or licenses to drive them, otherwise we wouldn’t have been walking. Oddly, I remember nothing about the party or what we talked about on the long walk, but can recall the precise route we took through the village, the slippery surface of hard packed snow beneath our feet, the swirl of snowflakes and the Christmas decorations all over town, especially those along Main Street.

By Cambridge winter standards, the night was warm. I was most comfortable in my hooded jacket and ebullient mood produced by many factors, one of them knowing we had a long vacation ahead and lots of good times on the horizon, about as happy as I ever was as a teenager. There are many times I miss living so far from home, the Christmas season definitely one of them.

It’s challenging to find Christmas scenery any better than we had, straight off a Norman Rockwell print but even better in three dimensions and with all the senses stimulated too, the smell of pine, hardwood smoke, apple cider and hot chocolate mixed with laughter and Christmas carols. Powerfully emotive stuff for sure. Continue reading “Cambridge Christmas Memories”