Graduation

As graduation night approached, Grandma realized that we had a problem.  The previous year my mother had ordered a suit for me out of the catalogue.  It was a two-piece made out of off-white nubbed cotton material.  Unfortunately, I never liked it because it came in the mail just when I was terribly sick with yellow jaundice.  She thought it would make me feel better to see my new suit so she showed it to me when I was so sick I wanted to throw up on it—and the suit and especially putting it on reminded me of how sick I had been and made me queasy.

That was not the real problem.  The problem was that I had grown so much in six months that my arms and legs stuck out of that suit two or three inches.  There was no way it could be altered.  Fortunately, the folks had sent money for clothes and Grandma had bought a grey worsted suit with a zippered jacket for me in the fall.  The legs and sleeves were only about an inch too short.  Grandma let them down as far as she could and, with a white shirt and necktie, we made that do.

I can recall graduation night in great detail because of some mementoes that Grandma Stanley saved and passed along to my mother.  They are a copy of that night’s commencement program with the notes I used on the podium hand written on the back, and the little table paper original manuscript of my valedictory address in my handwriting.

How Grandma got them was that I had folded them up before I departed and left them in the secret “safe” I had made in my bedroom by cutting a hole through the wallboard and inserting a square metal can.  I used a photograph if Lindberg’s Lockheed Orion float-mounted monoplane to cover it.  I was embarrassed to admit to Grandpa that I had cut a hole in the wall so I left the little papers there and secured the photograph to the wall over it with gummed paper tape.

There was a total of seventeen of us in that graduating class and the church was filled with family and friends.  Some had to stand up in the back.  I was very sorry that my mother and father could not be present but Grandma and Grandpa were in the front row.  The class was seated on the raised platform behind the lectern that was used for the pulpit during church services.

My Uncle Claud Frieze, an elder in the church, rendered the invocation, then there was a song and after that Mary Neil delivered her salutatory address without making a mistake or being prompted.  I was sitting with sweaty palms hoping that I could do as well.  She was followed by County School Superintendent James Becker from Walnut Grove who made the commencement address.  I did not really hear a word of it as I was concentrating too hard on what I had to say.  After another song, it came my turn.

I approached the lectern with my kneecaps jerking but then, as I laid my page of notes before me and looked at the upturned familiar faces, something happened.  I felt good about being there and I addressed them in a clear, confident voice to deliver the following rather pontifical but sincere address that I had written.

“Friends, teachers, and classmates:  We, the graduating class of ’37 of Bona High School, are standing tonight in a period of transition.  It is that period in which we leave our happy pasts behind us and step out to meet our futures in whatever way may be our destiny.

“The success of the future, which is as yet unknown, depends—in a large mearuse upon the foundation we have laid for it in the past few years we have been sheltered in these halls of learning.

“We have been guided all along by our teachers to whom we owe a debt of deepest gratitude we can only attempt to repay.

“Ever since we entered the sphere of their influence we have been looking eagerly forward to this even which will be the second most important milestone in our lives.  We considered we had reached the first when we sat in this place two years ago.  Now that the event has come again we welcome it with the realization that it is with a definite sense of sadness we gather here tonight.

“We have paused at the turning of the way and as we look out from the shelter we have always had onto the problems of the future, we realize how very insignificant we are and how important we falsely thought we were.  But still we must realize that others will drop out of the scheme of things and we must be prepared to step in and play our part—however small it may be.

“Parents and Friends: We cannot leave this stage of life’s action without thaniking you from the bottom of our hearts for the start you have given us.  We realize that if it had not been for your guidance we would never have made the start we did and would not have overcome many of the obstacles we have succeeded so far in in surmounting.

“You, as well as our teachers, have guided and sheltered us from the problems of life we were incapable of meeting alone; and when we were seemingly adrift and off course, you provided the beacon that guided us safely back again.

“To our Teachers we must also extend our earnest thanks.  None of us realize how very often in the years to come we will look back and then begin to really appreciate the help you gave us.  Doubtless there will be times when we will wish with all our hearts that we could return to the shelter of that guiding hand.  But you have started us on the road to success we long for and have pointed the way to completion of the journey of our lives with an efficiency we can only hope to attain in our works as we go on.

“And may you ever be proud to point us out as products of your workmanship.  I am sure that if at last we achieve the success we long for we will not take all the credit for ourselves, but will give a large share to those to whom it belongs—our teachers.

(I turned to the class.)

“And thus, classmates, we linger at the crossroads, the parting of the ways, in that last sad parting so long looked forward to.  Our race together is almost run and we are nearing the end of the course where we must go forth, each to battle for himself.

“Doubtless, while we linger in this period of our lives, we all dream of great deeds and high positions in life, but—let us not hope for too much as we all realize that it is much better to fill a small job or position to overflowing rather than to be lost in a job too big for us that someone else might fill.

“By all means we must retain our ambition and dream of those bigger things in life, but let us not ruin the life we are destined to lead by grasping for that beyond our reach.  As Malloch says in his immortal poem, ‘be the best of whatever you are’: ‘If you can’t be a pine of the top of the hill, be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub by the side of the rill.  Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.  If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of grass, and some highway happier make.  If you can’t be a muskie, then just be a bass, but the liveliest bass in the lake.  We can’t all be captains, some have to be crew, There’s something for all of us here.  There’s big work to do, and lesser to do, and the task you must do is the near.  If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail.  If you can’t be a sun, be a star—it isn’t by size that you win or you fail, but the best of whatever you are.’

“I thank you all.”

I returned to my seat to gratifying applause from the audience, the faculty, and my classmates.  Grandma and Grandpa were beaming proudly and Grandma folded away the written copy of my speech.

My address was followed by the presentation of diplomas by Mr. John Hembree of Stockton.  The benediction was then given by my grandfather, C. B. Stanley, in that incomparable sonorous voice that he used for recitals at community gathers and to render the morning prayer at church services.

My years a Bona School were finished.  Now I was finally ready to leave the Ozark hills.

Competition for Valdectorian

I wish I knew which was Mary Neil.  My dad is in the back row leaning against the door frame on the left.

The school year was going fast and I had been letting tomcatting around with Roundtree on weekends interfere with my studying.  After I cut that out, I buckled down to it especially after Mary Neil had made 100% on a history test and I only got 96%.

Soon my fifteenth birthday came and I knew that Mr. Mitchell would have to say who the valedictorian would be before long as graduation was only a month away. (The length of the school year was different then.  I believe it was adjusted so that the older children would be out of school in time to help with spring planting.  Anyway, our graduation was scheduled for the evening of April 2^nd at the Bona Church.)

An example of flour sack dresses during the Great Depression

A few days later during a nice spring afternoon, at the end of the school day when he dismissed us, Mr. Mitchell quietly said, “The rest of you are excused but I would like for Conrad and Mary Neil to stay for a little while.”

The others filed out casting knowing smiles at us.  They had known all along that it would be between Mary and me.  I looked sidewise across the room at her.  She was sitting very straight with her hands folded in the lap of her faded cotton print dress and with her chin set determinedly.  She turned her head to look at me so I quickly looked away and stared at the picture of Sir Lancelot and his horse on the wall above Mr. Mitchell’s desk until he said, “Come up here, both of you.”

We stood side by side in front of his desk waiting.  Mitchell reached into a drawer and took out two slim books—one red, the other blue—and laid them on his desk.  The title of the blue one was “Valedictories” and the red one was “Salutatories”.

Mitchell studied us and said, “Relax.  I want you to know that I am really proud of both of you.  You are, without a doubt, two of the best students I have had in my classroom and I know that you will both go far.  The competition was good for both of you and forced you to do your best.

“I will not keep you in suspense any longer.  Mary you did better than Conrad in History, a little better in Geography, and you were dead even in English.  Conrad had a definite edge in Mathematics and Science.  It was close and I congratulate you both.”

He picked up the two thin volumes and handed the blue one to me and the red one to Mary.  I must say that she took it without wincing.  She touched my arm and said softly, “I’m glad for you, Conrad.”  There was just a trace of moisture in her pale blue eyes.  At that moment I almost liked her.

Mr. Mitchell said, “Don’t memorize any of the sample speeches in those books—they are old fashioned.  Just get the idea and write your own.  I would like to see them next Monday.  You can go home now.”

The other had all gone so I walked the mile to Bona with Mary Neil.  She didn’t say much, maybe because she was not used to walking with boys.  I was happy as a turkey gobbler in a polkberry patch, but somehow, I could not lord it over her.

She had a threadbare sweater over her well-washed print dress.  I knew that the Cook Neils did not have much.  In fact, Cook Neil was one of the regular loafers at Grandpa’s store.  I do not know how he kept groceries in that little shack, much less clothes.

I felt sort of guilty somehow.  I said lamely, “You sure are smart for a girl, Mary.  Maybe you should have won.”

She smiled wanly and answered, “It doesn’t matter, Conrad—I’m used to sucking hind tit.”

“Hah,” I scoffed, “you won’t always be.  You know what I bet?  I bet that when our graduate from Dadeville High School in a couple of years you’ll get a scholarship and go on to teacher’s college or something.”  I grinned at her.  “I won’t be here so you won’t have to worry about me!”

Dorthea Lange Photo

By then we were at the crossroad in front of Grandpa’s store.  She laughed and, unexpectedly, held out her small hand to shake hands with me.  “I hope you have good luck out there in Washington,” she said, then she turned and marched down the hill clutching that little red book.

Hijinks with Roundtree

As the school weeks went on, Mary Neil was making it really tough for me.  I would see her going home from school as she came through Bona with her sisters, then down the hill to their shack carrying an armload of books every day.  During spelling bees, we remained about even.  I could best her handily on math tests and in science, but she was a whiz at history and geography.

I often wondered how Mr. Mitchell rated us.  When we were all furiously working on a test, I would sometimes see him with a half-smile on his face watching first me and then Mary Neil to see who would finish first.  All too often it was almost a dead heat.  I knew that he would never play favorites and would judge us purely on academic excellence.  I always worded my essays carefully and made sure that I got all the answers on the tests right.

One problem I had Was that I was now old enough to go out on Friday and Saturday nights and I got to running around with Roundtree Lindley who was my age and was allowed to drive the family pickup.  He thought he was pretty hot stuff and that he was worldly wise because his family had lived for a while in a big city.

Roundtree and I had been good friends and were usually seatmates all during our years in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades.  I am pretty sure that Mr. Mitchell knew that Roundtree got some of his answers off my papers but he never said anything about it.

Roundtree and I would sometimes go in the pickup to the movies at Ash Grove up toward Springfield.  Grandma and Grandpa did not like that much because they had heard that Roundtree was getting to be something of a hell raiser, but they indulgently allowed me to go until I sawed it off on my own.

We started out for Ash Grove on Saturday evening and Roundtree stopped at the Sac River Tavern over beyond Tarrytown where he knew they would sell him some beer.  We got a couple of bottles—all we could afford and still have money for the picture show—and drank them under the trees near the tavern (they would not allow us inside).

It got late so when we finished the beer we tossed the empty bottles into the brush and Roundtree zoomed off up the highway too fast.  I guess he was really feeling that bottle of beer.  We came up behind an old farmer and his wife in a rattletrap Model A Ford that was chugging slowly along.  Roundtree speeded up and said, “Let’s give ‘em a scare!”

As he passed the Model A, Roundtree swerved toward it deliberately.  He overdid it and I ducked as he sideswiped the old car, knocking the door handle off the pickup on my side.  That made him swerve the other way and I knew there was quite a drop-off on that side.  I scrunched up and shut my eyes but he got the truck under control and slowed down.  I looked back and the Model A was still coming so we figured they were all right.

I asked Roundtree how he was going to explain about the broken door handle and a dent in the door to his father.  He just airily said, “Oh, I’ll just tell him it got sideswiped in the parking lot while we were in the show.”

Roundtree was one of those grinning, fast-talking fellows who could sell iceboxes to the Eskimos and he got away with it for a couple of days.  He got it in the end, however.  After all, it was a backwoods community and there were not too many blue pickup trucks around in those days.  The old farmer described the truck to the sheriff who tracked it down to Joe Lindley.  Old Roundtree did not get to drive the pickup for a while and, thinking about the close call with the drop-off, I flatly told him that I would not go drinking beer with him or ride with hi to Ash Grove when he could drive again.  That pretty much ended our close friendship which was fine with Grandma and was fine with me as the smart aleck was not my type.

"I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way"

Those years of 1935 and 1936 when I was thirteen and fourteen were very pivotal years in my young life.  Events seemed to occur at an accelerating pace.  With puberty my voice cracked then deepened so that I no long sang boy soprano at church but could handle the baritone and even some of the bass parts.

I moved up into the “big room” at Bona School into the ninth grade.  Under the tutelage of J. B. Mitchell, I was doing very well indeed.  I always liked school and was never tardy.  I was also never absent except for that time in Arcola when I had diphtheria, then a few days early in 1936 when I came down with yellow jaundice.  I guess it was a form of hepatitis.  I still remember how very sick I was.  My skin got yellow and my eyeballs turned brown for a while.  It stayed with me for the rest of my life, too.  In the Navy and afterward, when I listed childhood diseases I had, they would stamp “Yellow Jaundice” on my health record and I still am not allowed to donate blood.

My grades were always good and there was no subject that I disliked or that was hard for me.  Regardless of the subject, I was nearly always at the top of my class.  It may have been partily because Richard was also a top student and I was determined not to allow him to outdo m e.  Whatever the reason, I always felt foolish if I failed to get 100 percent on any examination.

The only other student in my class of seventeen at Bona School that came close to me was a slip of a girl, Mary Neil.  She was one of Cook Neil’s several daughters.  They lived in a shack just down the hill from the church on the west side of Bona.

I did not particularly like Mary Neil.  She had straw colored blonde hair, was not particularly pretty, and could be snippy if not downright nasty at times.  I respected her, however, because she was smart as a whip.

Almost invariably when there was a bell-down it would be Mary and me that were the last two up there.  I felt foolish on the occasions when she spelled me down.  I never heard in later years, but I expect that Mary Neil got a scholarship and went on to be a teacher.

It was in 1935 that I got baptized and joined the Bona Church.  I am not sure to this day why I did that.  I was much too young to make that decision but, at the time, with several of my contemporaries going forward and joining the church, it seemed like the thing to do.

It happened during one of the series of revival meetings held by the gentle minister I described back in Chapter 4.  Since I cannot recall his name I will call him “Brother Thompson” because that could well have been it.

I did not really feel any sudden calling but I was there one evening when Brother Thompson preached a good sermon aimed at we younger people.  There in the soft yellow light of the acetylene fixtures, Thompson’s deep voice was almost hypnotic and he could be very persuasive.  During the invitational hymn at the end, my cousin Mary Catherine, Claude Todd (the two of them later married and he is not an elder in the Bona Church), Clarence Lee King, and some others went forward.  On an impulse, I got up and went with them.

It is regrettable that no one took a picture at our baptizing the following Sunday afternoon.  It is not done in an open stream any more.  These days Bona Church as a baptism tank in the church.  In those days, however, it was done in a river or creek just as Christ was baptized two thousand years ago.  The Church of Christ believed only in total immersion and members criticized Methodists and others that simply sprinkled a little water symbolically.

Our baptizing took place in a deep pool of the branch on my Uncle Claud’s farm.  Fortunately, it was in the summer so the little creek was fairly warm.  All we boys had on clean overalls and the girls wore print dresses.  Brother Thompson was wearing the first set of waders that I ever saw.  I figured that was all right as he was already baptized and he had to be in the water the whole time.  No point in his getting his preaching suit wet either.

There was not much to it.  All the people who had come to observe lined up along the bank and we baptizes got in a line.  One by one we waded out to the preacher who was standing in waist dep water.  He positioned us sidewise in front of him, said in that solemn deep voice, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”  Then he ducked us backward under the water and raised us back up.

When I waded ashore and was congratulated by people, to tell the truth I did not feel any different.  I expect that I went right on committing my little sins and I know that the other boys did also.  About the only difference was that we were now church members and could take communion.  Sometimes we were called upon to serve communion or help take up the collection.

My ideas about religion have gone through a long evolution over the years and I do not attend any church regularly now.  I will not go into that as it could be a whole separate book.  Let it suffice to say that I firmly believe in the Creator and Almighty and I believe I am on good terms with Him.  I sort of facetiously refer to Him as “The Boss” once in a while but I am sincere and He knows that.  Whatever power it is “up” there certainly took care of Richard and me during a shooting war and He hasn’t done bad by us in peace.  I will have more to say about that later.

High on the Hog

A better part of the fall was hog killing time (in the local patois—“hawg killin’ time”).  With no electricity, no one had a refrigerator or freezer so the winter supply of pork was laid in after the first frosts when the meat would keep until it could be cured in the smokehouse.  The bacon slabs, hams, and shoulders were usually salt cured; however, sometimes Dad would sugar cure a couple of hams.  Most folks did not bother cutting pork chops but simply trimmed out the long pieces of tenderloin—the choice part of the hog—which we ate fried in slices while it was fresh.  There was nothing better for a school lunch bucket than a slice of tenderloin sandwiched into one of Mother’s biscuits.

Nothing about the hog was wasted except, as the saying went, the tail and the squeal.  I never did care much for pigs feet although many folks thought them a delicacy.  The brains were cooked with scrambled eggs for breakfast, the fat was rendered into cooking lard, the ribs eaten barbecued, and all the scraps and leftovers went into the sausage grinder.  A good country sausage biscuit is the next best thing to tenderloin for a school lunch.  Some folks cleaned pig intestines and stuffed the sausage in them; however, we usually just made patties of the sausage.  Just about everyone had their own private recipe for making sausage, most of them delicious.  To this day I think one of the finest breakfasts in the world is biscuits with good sausage gravy and a sausage patty on the side.

To get back to the hog killings, everyone raised a few pigs just for winter meat.  Usually Dad would get together with Uncle Coy Tygart and Uncle Claud Frieze at one of the farms and kill and butcher hogs for all three families, probably two hogs each.  It was a devil of a lot of work and mostly us boys just stayed out of the way and helped to carry stuff.

Preparation was mainly digging a trench, placing a big metal trough over it, filling it with water (that’s where a lot of the carrying came in0.  Then a fire was built in the trench to bring the water to a good rolling boil.  When the water was ready each pig in turn was shot between the eyes with a twenty-two rifle and its throat was quickly cut to bleed the carcass.  The pig then had to be carried to the trough and lowered into the scalding water to loosen the hair on the skin.

Tripod for hanging hog

A pulley would have been rigged to a tree limb or an A-frame made out of timbers so the scalded porker could be hoisted up by the hind legs.  The hair was then scraped off and the pig gutted, saving the heart and the liver which had to be eaten in the next few days while they were fresh.  The carcass was then split, laid out on a trestle table made of timbers across saw horses, and the butchering done.

Scraping off the hog hair

The women and children would “man” the hand-powered sausage grinder where all the scraps went and someone had to tend the big black cast iron kettle set up over an open fire for rendering the fat into lard.  There was plenty for everyone to do.  The slabs of bacon, shoulders, and hams had to be cured with salt and/or sugar before they were hung up in the smokehouse for the winter (never knew of anyone to smoke any meat but we still called them the “smokehouses”).  The sausage had to have all the seasonings stirred and kneaded in and then the sausages were put down in big crocks in the plentiful supply of lard rendered from the fat.  We ate “high on the hog” for a time after hog killin’ on fresh hog liver, brains, ribs, and tenderloins.

Sausage stuffer

Storing up Wood and Lessons

Chapter 7

Possums, Ghosts, and UFOs

Blackjack oak

My favorite time of year in the Ozarks hills was always the spring (“green-up time” we called it) and we could look forward to squirrel hunting, fishing, swimming in the creek, and the myriad things we had to do besides chores when school was out for the summer.  The fall had its own attractions, however, when the leaves had turned to a riot of golden yellow and blazing red, the weather was cooler but with plenty of Indian summer sun, harvest was finished, and we could look forward to possum hunting when the first frosts came and the persimmons were ripe.

Persimmon tree

Even after the oats and wheat had been harvested and threshed, the field corn gathered and the stalks cut and made into tall conical shocks, there were fall chores to be done on the farm.  Some were fun—such as hog killing time—but the one that we really detested (that is an understatement—we hated it) was cutting a winter supply of firewood for the cast iron kitchen range and wood stove in the living room of our little house.

Ozark woodlot

Every Ozark farm had a “woodlot”—an acre or two of trees left when the farm was originally cleared—to furnish a supply of firewood.  Unfortunately, most of the trees in the Ozarks are hardwood; white oak, blackjack, burr oak, and the like, which is hard to saw and even harder to split.  Those hardwood trees made good, long-burning firewood, but getting them cut down, sawed up, and split was a real muscle builder.

We had never heard of chain saws in those days.  Our tools were a two-man crosscut saw that we called a “misery whip,” a good sharp double-bitted axe, a post maul, and a couple of steel wedges.  Dad would notch the base of the selected trees to control its direction of fall then, once we were into our early teens and had put on some muscle, Richard and I would go to work with that danged cross-cut to fall the tree.  When it was down, Dad would trim the limbs off with the axe and pile the brush for later burning while Richard and I sawed the tree into stove lengths.

We would cut wood in the fall after it had gotten cold because it was much too hot for that kind of work in the summer.  On frosty mornings we would go to the woods in our sheepskin coats but after a few minutes on that saw we would have to peel them off and, if the sun was shining, after a while our shirts, too.  It was onerous, sweaty work and it took a lot of passes of the crosscut to get through a log that was a foot and a half in diameter.

We bickered constantly, of course.  I would accuse Richard of not pulling his share and he would accuse me of “riding” the saw (putting on extra pressure when he was pulling it back his way).  We grew up fighting constantly but never came to blows in the woods because Dad was there and getting into a fistfight instead of working could result in a licking for each of us.

The worst licking Dad gave was out in the woods.  At home, when it was in order, he would use either his leather belt (if he wasn’t wearing overalls and had one on) or his razor strop which was also flat and really did not sting very bad (the real punishment was simply the ignominy of getting a licking) but out in the woods it was something else.

Buckberry

The Ozark underbrush includes a plant we called the buckberry bush.  It grows rather like spires with long and very limber limbs about as thick as a lead pencil.  There would be leaves and red berries all along the shoots.  I do not recall that the berries were good for anything unless the birds ate them as they were bitter as gall.

When a licking was in order (I am happy to say that was not very often for Richard and me), Dad would simply and without a word cut a buckberry shoot for or five feet long, run it through his closed fist to remove the leaves and berries, and wield it like a buggy whip.  When he was really mad that little limber buckberry limb would really whistle through the air and would wrap itself clear around your legs, leaving neat red welts that stung for quite a while.  It was better if Dad was only aggravated—the buckberry did not sing much and only stung for a little while.  If we happened to be wearing long underwear, it did not hurt much at all but we would let out a yelp anyway.

Bona School the conclusion: Poetry, Shinny, and Spelling

Bona School 1937 Conrad is in the very back on the left, leaning on door jam.  A somewhat sullen look I recognize from his grandsons.

Bona School gave us a solid foundation in all the basics—English, mathematics, science, history, geography, etc.  The big advantage was that, since each class was so small (there were seventeen of us in my class and it was one of the larger ones), we got lots of individual attention from the teachers.  We also got a lot of lessons that were not in the curriculum, especially after Mr. Mitchell came there in 1934.  He always took advantage of our individual characteristics and got his points across.

Sometimes, to our dismay, Mitchell’s lessons were severe and could be embarrassing.  We were usually assigned homework for over the weekend.  On one occasion for English, Mitchell told us to write an original poem.  I thought that would be a snap and, as often happened, blithely put it off until Sunday evening.  When I finally got down to it words seemed to just pop into my mind as I put them on paper.  I had absolutely no recollection of having read or heard them anywhere.  As far as I was concerned they simply came to me.

Monday for our English recitation each of us had to stand up and read the poem we had written.  When my turn came I walked to the front and proudly read what I thought was a dandy poem.  It was about Heaven and Hell.  I do not now recall the first stanza but the ending was:

“The road to that bright happy region, is a dim narrow path so they say.

But the broad one that leads to perdition, is posted and blazed all the way.”

They seemed to like my poem and Mr. Mitchell reached to take the paper and I figured I would get an A; however, the Simmons sisters, Lois and Martha, were whispering to each other and then Lois’ hand shot into the air.

“Mr. Mitchell,” Louis said, “that is not Conrad’s original poem.  We got a new book of cowboy songs from the Grand Ol’ Opry the other day and that is in one of the songs in it!”  [indeed, Google lists it in a collection of Cowboy Songs and Ballads]

I froze in dismay and I could feel my ears getting warm as my face turned beet red in embarrassment.  I could not recall ever having heard the song, but I did listen to the Grand Ol’ Opry from Nashville one in a while on Grandpa’s radio and supposed that I could very well have then forgot until the words came back to me.  The whole room was looking at me and most of them were smirking perhaps because I was usually one of the ones who got the best grades, seemingly without effort.  There was some snickering.

“Well, now, Conrad,” Mr. Mitchell said in his mild way, “is that right?”

I tucked my head and stammered, “Well—I—uh—I dunno.  I suppose I might have heard it sometime on the radio, but I sure don’t remember and I know I never saw it anywhere.  I did not copy it from anything.”

“All right,” he said, “I am sure you are telling the truth, but there is a word that I think that everyone should remember.  I want you to write ‘plagiarism’ on the blackboard then get the dictionary and read the definition of plagiarize to the class.”

I did as he said, mis-spelling it when I left out “I”, then got the dictionary and read in a weak voice, “plagiarize—to appropriate and pass off as one’s own the writings, ideas, etc., of another.”

It was a mortifying and humbling experience.  That lesson stuck with me so well that thereafter I was so careful to write down only my own words that sometimes, as in a science report, I would not even quote a book when I could have, but would put the idea into my own words.  That resulted in the ideas and concepts being firmly implanted in my mind and sometime I could clarify what the author meant or improve on it.  I believe that Mr. Mitchell was fully aware of that.

The Bona School grounds were a full acre so there was plenty of room for our recess and lunchtime sports so we got plenty of exercise even though there were no organized sports activities.  Originally there had been backstops in front of the school and the school had a basketball team.  About the time we started there, however, the basketball backstops had rotted off and they were taken out and not replaced.  The men of the community built teeter-totters and swings on the south side of the building for the smaller children.  We who were older contented ourselves with games of longbase baseball and, in the large open area south of the school, shinny and football.

All of us boys played shinny, which is a version of field hockey.  We made our own shinny sticks by selecting a hickory sapling the right size and having a big root at the base that could be carved into a rough approximation of a wood golf club.  We always used an empty Pet Milk can for a puck.  That meant that eventually the game could get a mite dangerous the metal can would soon get beat into a compact, jagged ball of metal.  If you got a fair poke at it with that hickory shinny stick, it would fly through the air like a bullet and raise bruises and cuts.  It was necessary to duck in a split second sometimes. 

Shinny was also very good for footwork.  If a player did not have the knack of dancing out of the way, his bare ankles could get to be a mass of bruises and small cuts from either that beat up Pet Milk can or the opponents shinny sticks.  We certainly did not need Nintendo games for hand/eye coordination!

Our Bona School brand of football was we were playing it when Mr. Mitchell first came onto the scene could be a dangerous game as well.  It was an un-coached, rough and tumble, full tackle game without benefit of yard markers or referee.  We had not pads other than our overalls and shirt and a jacket and clodhopper shoes late in the fall when the weather got cold.  Our specialty was the flying tackle.  I only weighed a bit over a hundred pounds but when I took off full tilt and made a leaping dive at a larger ball carrier, he was almost guaranteed to get knocked off his feet and probably lose the ball.  You had to knock the ball away because we did not know about ten yards in four downs.

The first fall he was there, Mr. Mitchell came out to watch one of our lunch hour football games and was soon shaking his head in dismay.  He thought someone was going to get badly hurt although I do not remember any injuries beyond good bruises and fairly frequent bloody noses.  Of course you often got the wind knocked out of you but we took that as a matter of course and part of the game. 

Mitchell soon banned the flying tackles, insisting that we keep our feet on the ground at all times.  He taught us about touch football, yard markers, tec. But somehow the game just was not the same after that.  We privately agreed that he was making us play sissy football and began to lose interest.  One result was an increase in the number of good fist fights because we needed some way to work off our aggressions, I guess.

I look back fondly at my years at Bona School for many reasons—not the least of them being that I found it easy to be at the top of the class scholastically.  The reason was that I was very curious about everything and I wanted to learn everything I could.  I did not like to be wrong and I did not like not to know something.

None of the boys could match my grades (most of them just did not care) and almost none of the girls with the exception of Martha Simmons (who would go on to a career as a teacher) and Cook Neil’s daughter Mary.  For instance, almost invariably when were was a spell-down, it would be Mary Neil and me who would be the finalists and it was a toss-up as to who would trip up first—and sometimes it was me who went down first.  In retrospect, I am grateful that I had Mary Neil’s competition to spur me on—but I did not much like her at the time.

Bona School part 5: Lesson of a School Play

An outfit similar to what might have been worn by the author for his school play

I never forgot one lesson that I learned at Bona School that stood me in good stead in later years when my career at Boeing got me involved in public speaking.  One of the school plays that we put on around 1933 or 1934 involved some skits that depicted going to school in an 1880s’ schoolroom.  I was to be dressed in a homespun shirt and old time short pants.

My mother found some authentic clothes for me to wear.  Pour neighbor Bertha Beck had a truck full of old clothes from the time when her father was a boy.  She loaned me a pair of short homespun pants, a pair of galluses, and an old-fashioned white shirt.  The skit called for my pants to have a big ragged hole in the seat.  Of course Bertha did not want her father’s pants ruined so my mother loosely pasted on a piece of white cloth.  In the light of those few gasoline lanterns she figured that the audience would not know the difference and it turned out that it worked great.

I do not recall the point of the whole skit but there were several of us in it.  When my turn came I stood up in my clodhopper shoes (I was wearing a pair of my father’s work shoes so they really looked clumsy) and faced the audience to recite a ditty.  As my grandmother once said, I could not carry a tune in a milk bucket so I sort of chanted:

“Nine o’clock spelling lesson just begun,

Johnnie throws a spitball—just fer fun,

Hits the teacher’s ear with an aw-ful splat—

She turns around and says, ‘Now who did that!’

“Jonnie’s told to stand up with his face to the wall,

He says ‘I dowanna’ and he tries to stall.

If’n I stood up there I’d take an aw-ful chance—

Cause I gotta big hole in the seat of my paints!”

During the punch line I turned my back to the audience, bent over so they could see the fake hole, and peered at them through my spread-apart legs.  I had sweaty palms the whole time but it turned into a very gratifying moment.  Everyone laughed, applauded, and there was even a whistle or two.  I could feel my somewhat oversize ears getting red from embarrassment as I stood and bowed stiffly as I had been instructed to do.  I left the stage with a very good feeling about getting up in front of people.  It gave me confidence that would stand me in good stead later on as a commencement speaker, lead in my high school paly in 1939, and—much later on—in public speaking literally all over the world.

My mother’s idea about the fake hole in the seat of my pants worked so well that, after the program, Bertha Beck came around a bit upset that we had ruined her daddy’s pants by tearing a hole in them.  She was quite relieved when I showed her that it was just a piece of an old handkerchief basted on.

The deep impression that little performance made on me is probably why, after all these years, I am able to recall every word of my little ditty.

Although short, this episode give me a lot to think about as my father's great-grandchildren have been in several plays.  What influence of that will we see down the road?

Bona School part 4: Intrigue at a Pie Supper

I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that Bona School was sometimes used for social events and sometimes for a fund raising “pie supper.”  I suspect that it has been a good number of years since the last pie supper was held anywhere.

Woman placing her pie (maybe hers) with others for

A pie supper was actually an auction with the proceeds going to the school fund.  When one was scheduled, all the ladies and girls in the community would bake their favorite pie.  They would then put the pie in a box and decorate the box with fancy crepe paper, ribbons, and bows.  The idea was that when the pies were auctioned the bidder would not know whose pie it was or what kind it was.  After the auction was over, the successful bidders would sit down and eat the pie with whoever it turned out had baked it.

This auction winner looks like he wants to take a bite out of her!

Maintaining secrecy resulted in some spirited maneuvering.  The girls would often trade pie boxes before carrying them to the school or else would cover them with a newspaper or a grocery sack.  In turn us boys had a regular spy network to attempt to determine in advance which pie box belonged to whom.

The whole thing would get complicated since boys and young adult males wanted to bid on their girlfriends’ pie since they were going to eat with the baker.  Conversely, they did not want anyone else to know.  (I suspect that, in some cases, the girls simply told in advance but not usually as that would take all the fun out of it.)  A couple of years I had a pretty good crush on Betty King Lindley and wanted her pie.  She was best friends with my cousin Mary Catherine, and I figured they would carry each other’s boxes so I bid on the one Mary Catherine had carried in.  I was right.  I ate pie with Betty King.

Another time I decided that I wanted to buy the pie of cute little Betty Lou Long (she was pretty as a spotted pup) but she was two grades behind me in school and I did not want anyone to know that I was sort of sweet on a girl that young.  I got a peek at the box Betty Lou’s mother carried in and bought it.  Of course I pretended to be very surprised when it turned out to be Betty Lou’s pie.

As you might well imagine from my comment about his nature, Richard one time came up with a scheme to make a little money on the side at a pie supper.  Got him in trouble, too.  He was in cahoots with our first cousin James Lowell Tygart.  The two of them volunteered to direct traffic in the schoolyard where folks would park their Model T’s, wagon, or buggy as the case might be.  The idea was that they would get a peek at the boxes, figure out who was carrying whose pie, then they would sell that information for a dime to the fellow that wanted a particular pie.

It worked out pretty well at first.  By the time the auction had started they had collected maybe a dollar between them.  It was afterward that they got their comeuppance.  Jaycee Lindley, who had already graduated from Dadeville High and was full grown, wanted his sweetheart’s pie but she coyly would not tell him what the box looked like.  Jaycee paid Richard to tell him which box it was and old Dick solemnly assured him what it looked like.  Well, Jaycee bought the wrong box and wound up eating pie with the widow, Bertha Beck, who lived across the road from us south of Bona.

Jaycee was mad, of course, because he had wasted a dime on Richard’s information.  He was a good sport about eating with Bertha (she made great apple pie) but afterwards he cornered Richard out by the coal shed, demanded his dime back, and was going to beat the tar out of Richard.  I did not think that was quite a fair fight so, when I didn’t see James Lowell making any effort to help Richard, I sort of dived at Jaycee from behind and knocked his legs out from under him just as he was reaching for my brother.  Before Jaycee could get to his feet we had disappeared into the darkness.  Jaycee was pretty big and I was glad that he was not one to hold a grudge—he just laughed about it later.

Bona School part three: classroom distractions

Bona School 1928

When I get to thinking about Bona School (the old building has long since gone and present-day Bona kids go to the consolidated school in Dadeville) fifty-year-old memories come flooding back.  I will try not to bore you with miscellaneous details but will endeavor to stick to some interesting things.

Bona School had no big school bell on it.  The only bell was a small, hand-held brass bell.  One of the teachers would step out onto the front stoop and ring it five minutes before class time and you had better be in your seat right quick or you would have to stay an extra half hour after school—which meant having to think up an excuse for being late getting home for the evening chores without telling your parents that you had been kept after school.  When that happened to Richard, he would blandly announce at home that he had stayed after school to wash blackboards and dust chalk erasers—which could well be true because something like that was usually what the teachers would make the miscreant do.  (No, we never tattled on each other—that would not have been fair.)

Each room at the school had its own “library” which consisted simply of a bank of shelves along one wall.  There was an American flag in the corner and each morning we would stand and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.  I recall that in the Big Room at the front over Mr. Mitchell’s desk there was a large picture of Sir Launcelot and his horse.  The only other decoration was a portrait of George Washington.

The older boys had a nasty trick they would occasionally play in the wintertime when those old coal stoves were going.  Some of the boys carried their rifles while walking to school in case they saw a rabbit or a squirrel on the way home.  They usually had a few twenty-two shells in a pocket.  Every once in a while when one of them was sent out to fill the coal scuttle, a twenty-two shell would find its way into the coal.  It would sound like a firecracker going off when it got hot in the stove which, of course, was a bit of a distraction from lessons.

The twenty-two shells were not very dangerous because, when they went off, the lead bullet did not go anywhere and the little brass casings would simply ricochet around inside the cast iron stove.  The principal had to try to figure out who was responsible because it was not necessarily the one who went to get the coal—someone could have put them into the coal bin in advance.  Mr. Mitchell was pretty good at spotting the sly look that could give the perpetrator away.

The worst episode of that nature was one time when someone sneaked a four-ten gauge shotgun shell into the coal.  Boy, when that thing went off it was more like a hand grenade than a firecracker!  It did not break the stove itself but it blew the door open and the stove pipe came crashing down.  Of course it scattered black coal soot all over the room and everyone.  School had to be called off for the whole day while the mess was cleaned up.

I did not get very dirty in that one because my desk was right by one of the north windows.  When the stove blew I simply flipped up the window and bailed out closely followed by Rountree Lindley who was my seatmate.  Of course we were closely questioned by Mr. Mitchell because it made it appear that we were ready for it.  I convinced him, however, that the window was the way I always went out when we had a fire drill.  The culprit was not found because no one had carried a four-ten shotgun to school that day so Mitchell sent the girls home and made all the boys stay and help with the cleanup.  That ended the episodes of ammunition in the stove as, from then on, Mr. Mitchell would check all the pockets of all the boys who left guns in the cloakroom an confiscate all the ammunition until school let out in the afternoon. 

Another check the teachers had to make every morning in the wintertime was for skunk odor.  Several of the older boys had steel trap lines and might have skinned a skunk then not cleaned up too well.  Even when it was hard to smell when he came in from the cold, a boy smelling of skunk would really stink in there by that hot coal stove.  The result would be that he got sent home to have a bath and get clean clothes.

I recall one time that Mr. Mitchell tagged a distant cousin, Gene Asbell, for having skunk on him and sent him home.  Henry and Maude Asbell (they were the Asbells involved in the feud with the Tygarts) lived about three-quarters of a mile east of the school.  A few minutes after Gene was sent home, Maude came stalking up the road madder than an old wet hen.  She called Mr. Mitchell out into the cloak room in the hall and really laid into him, insisting that her boy did not smell like skunk.  (We all smelled it and he really did stink.)

Well, Mr. Mitchell patiently heard her out but finally had enough of her tirade.  He calmly said, “Missus Asbell, maybe you don’t smell the skunk on him because I do believe that you smell like skunk yourself!"

Of course that made Maude madder than ever.  She got so mad that she was red in the face and could not even speak.  She finally went off toward home sputtering and fuming to herself.  I do not recall how long it was before she was on speaking terms with Mitchell, but was quite a while.

I met Maud Asbell in 1970.  I do not disbelieve my father.