I have wrestled with the inclusion of
this story. It is disturbing to me as a
woman and a daughter. I do not fault my
eleven-year-old father for not interpreting the scenario (although a modern day
boy might), but I am grieved that fifty years later the same misogynistic views
of 1933 colored his re-telling of it. If
it serves no other purpose, perhaps like the story of Black George earlier, it
may spark conversation and assessment of how far we have or have not come.
Mr.
Hardesty, who preceded Mr. Mitchell as principal of Bona School, was not the
same caliber teacher as Mr. Mitchell and very firmly believed in corporal
punishment. He kept a long paddle, perforated
with holes on the business end so that it would sting more, propped in a corner
behind his desk but plainly visible. It
was no idle threat—he could wield it mightily when it was justified.
I
recall one case that Hardesty had to deal with.
In 1933 a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl came from a city somewhere
to stay in the area with her aunt. Her
name was Blanche Irene Mitchell (no relation to Mitchell the teacher who came
to Bona later on). Blanche was a husky,
nubile girl with carrot-red hair and—as it turned out—an obsession with
sex. She had a kind of obnoxious
personality and none of the boys were very strongly attracted to her. I do not believe that she had any real
girlfriends wither. On Valentine’s Day
she got more nasty comic valentines than anyone else.
The
rocky, dusty country road that ran through Bona and past the schoolhouse was
upgraded to a “farm-to-market” road in 1933 or 1934 and there were quite deep
ditches bordering the gravelled road along the school grounds. One recess one of the teachers walked out to
the road and caught Blanch Irene in the ditch “nursing” one of the kids from
the Little Room. That, of course, was
scandalous and intolerable conduct and Blanche was informed that she was to
stay after school and see the principal.
That
afternoon Mr. Hardesty procured a new limber slat of wood from the coal shed
and sat all afternoon at his desk whittling a new paddle. It was about three feet long, two inches
wide, and was quite thin. He finished
drilling some holes at the end just before school let out.
Of
course word had quickly gotten around and everyone was curious to know if
Hardesty would whip Blanche Irene. To
our knowledge no girl had ever gotten a whipping. Blanch had sat in fear and trembling all
afternoon watching Hardesty whittle on that paddle. It was my brother Richard that found out what
went on. On the pretext of cleaning
erasers and blackboards, Richard tarried after school and managed to hide in
the Middle Room behind the moveable partition so he could hear what went on.
Richard
reported that Mr. Hardesty simply said, “Well, Blanche Irene, you know that
what you were doing was dead wrong. I am
going to give you a choice—you can either take a proper whipping that you
deserve or, if you don’t, you will be expelled from Bona School. It is up to you.”
Between
sobs, Blanche said miserably, “I can’t take a whipping, Mister Hardesty, so I
guess I am expelled.”
We
learned later that Blanche Irene had come to Bona to stay with her aunt and go
to school because she had been expelled from a city school when she got caught in
the furnace room having sex with the janitor.
I have no idea where they sent Blanch Irene next but that was the last
we saw of her in Bona.
I
have sometimes wondered what Mr. Hardesty would have done had he known about
the times Blanch let some of us boys look down the neck of her dress to see if
her boobs were real (they were) or, especially, if he knew about the times on
the way home from school that Blanche Irene sneaked into an old corncrib about
half a mile from school with Keith Carnes or one of the other older boys. The ones she had done that with were relieved
when she left town because she was always being sweetly coquettish around them
and they were afraid she would wind up pregnant. None of them wanted to be Blanche’s beau and
they sure did not want to be trapped into marrying her because she got herself
knocked up.
I have so many problems with this
episode of my father’s memoir that it’s hard to know where to begin. Although he seems to reflect on what if Mr.
Hardesty had whipped Blanche and what if Blanche “had gotten herself knocked up”
as though she alone would have been responsible, even writing fifty years
later, he does not reflect on what might have caused Blanche’s behavior. Promiscuous children, almost without fail,
have been sexually molested by a trusted adult.
We don’t know Blanche’s back story except that she had been expelled
from a city school for her behavior. Had
a father or a step-father or an uncle or friend robbed her innocence? My father writes that Blanche had no real
friends and was finding “love” and validation in all the wrong places. Fifty or seventy years later, a school
councilor would have gotten Blanche so help.
We can only speculate on what went on to happen to her, but my heart
aches for that girl as I cannot imagine a good outcome for her.
