Special to The Windham Eagle
During Easter vacation of 1963, as winter gave way to spring, the snow shrank to patches and became a rapidly flowing icy creek alongside Windham Center Road. It was a perfect scenario for the “dare” game we called “saved your life.”
 |
| Mr. Sweatland gathers with eighth-grade students at Field Allen School in Windham in the spring of 1963. SUBMITTED PHOTO |
He responded by doing the same to me. But I somehow slipped his grasp and plunged into the ice-cold water. I ran screaming back home, chilled to the marrow.
That spring, Field-Allen Junior High held a competition to see who could sell the most magazine subscriptions. I was eager to win, so I asked Lloyd if he and I could sell together and list everything under my name. He agreed, and we set off on our bikes, covering every part of town that we could reach.
My friend Bob Clark, who lived on top of Windham Hill, saw us riding by and guessed our scheme. By the time we reached the bottom of the hill and rang the next doorbell, Bob had already called ahead and secured his neighbor's promise to buy from him instead. He emerged as the top salesman in the class, and earned three large prizes, while Lloyd and I settled for a cheap alarm clock.
But I admired Bob's pluck, and we remained friends, as we still are today. We sometimes pulled a caper in study hall when Mrs. Johnson was on duty. She was hard of hearing and couldn't tell where voices were coming from. When she wasn't looking, Bob and I would take turns yelling “hey!” from different parts of the room. She would look up with annoyance unable to identify the culprits.
All the girls at Field-Allen took home economics, while the boys took shop taught by Keith Richardson. We spent the class time working on our separate projects, such as a wrought iron plant potholder, an electric magnet fashioned from wire, and a pump lamp – a wooden lamp designed like a mechanical water pump, with a handle for the light switch. Some of the boys spent the whole year making that lamp and sanding it with the finest sandpaper until it was as smooth as a baby's cheek.
Only the older boys were allowed to use the electric saw and electric drill. To change the drill bit, one had to insert a “key,” a piece of geared metal attached to a metal chain.
One afternoon when Mr. Richardson stepped out, a boy inserted the key and left it in, then turned the drill on. The key and chain spun around violently, then flew off, just missing a student's face. Other times we used the electric saw to make wooden slingshots, cutting slots to insert the thick rubber bands that we bought at the Surplus Store in Portland.
The school lunch cost 25 cents. Every Monday my dad would put $1.25 on the table for each of his school-age children, but sometimes we would bring extra food.
Mr. Gardner once caught me eating an orange in class. To set an example, he called me up to the front of the class and stuffed the whole orange into my mouth, one section at a time.
In a room packed with 35 adolescents, it was a challenge for the teachers to maintain control, but they had a potent weapon: the detention. When a child – always a boy – did something to interrupt the flow of instruction, the teacher would announce, “That will cost you two hours and 10 minutes,” which was how long the student had to sit in study hall after school. We didn't consider that it mainly punished the teacher, who was eager to get home but had to stay and monitor the miscreants.
I never got a detention, but I had occasional run-ins with Mr. Crowley, an English teacher with a confrontational style. I once corrected him in front of the class for using the word “heighth” instead of “height.” He told me to shut up. I said OK. He shouted back, “When I tell you to shut up, don't say another word. Do you understand?” I said, “Yes sir, I'll be quiet now.” His face reddened and he fumed, “Don't try to get the last word in!”
Earl Sweatland, who joined the school during my eighth-grade year, was one of the most popular teachers, a jolly and rotund minister who brought a Christian humor to the classroom. If something went badly, he'd describe it as “a mell of a hess.” He kept track of student behavior by writing their names on the blackboard under the headings “saints and sinners.”
About 15 years later, I heard he was in the last stages of cancer. I tried to see him, but he was receiving no visitors. He died in 1978 at age 61, a much beloved son of Windham. I remember him, along with William B. Herrman, Reginald Fickett, and Blair Higgins as outstanding male teachers from the Windham schools.
They have all passed from the scene now, but I look back on them gratefully as role models who later inspired me to become a schoolteacher for my second career. <
But I admired Bob's pluck, and we remained friends, as we still are today. We sometimes pulled a caper in study hall when Mrs. Johnson was on duty. She was hard of hearing and couldn't tell where voices were coming from. When she wasn't looking, Bob and I would take turns yelling “hey!” from different parts of the room. She would look up with annoyance unable to identify the culprits.
All the girls at Field-Allen took home economics, while the boys took shop taught by Keith Richardson. We spent the class time working on our separate projects, such as a wrought iron plant potholder, an electric magnet fashioned from wire, and a pump lamp – a wooden lamp designed like a mechanical water pump, with a handle for the light switch. Some of the boys spent the whole year making that lamp and sanding it with the finest sandpaper until it was as smooth as a baby's cheek.
Only the older boys were allowed to use the electric saw and electric drill. To change the drill bit, one had to insert a “key,” a piece of geared metal attached to a metal chain.
One afternoon when Mr. Richardson stepped out, a boy inserted the key and left it in, then turned the drill on. The key and chain spun around violently, then flew off, just missing a student's face. Other times we used the electric saw to make wooden slingshots, cutting slots to insert the thick rubber bands that we bought at the Surplus Store in Portland.
The school lunch cost 25 cents. Every Monday my dad would put $1.25 on the table for each of his school-age children, but sometimes we would bring extra food.
Mr. Gardner once caught me eating an orange in class. To set an example, he called me up to the front of the class and stuffed the whole orange into my mouth, one section at a time.
In a room packed with 35 adolescents, it was a challenge for the teachers to maintain control, but they had a potent weapon: the detention. When a child – always a boy – did something to interrupt the flow of instruction, the teacher would announce, “That will cost you two hours and 10 minutes,” which was how long the student had to sit in study hall after school. We didn't consider that it mainly punished the teacher, who was eager to get home but had to stay and monitor the miscreants.
I never got a detention, but I had occasional run-ins with Mr. Crowley, an English teacher with a confrontational style. I once corrected him in front of the class for using the word “heighth” instead of “height.” He told me to shut up. I said OK. He shouted back, “When I tell you to shut up, don't say another word. Do you understand?” I said, “Yes sir, I'll be quiet now.” His face reddened and he fumed, “Don't try to get the last word in!”
Earl Sweatland, who joined the school during my eighth-grade year, was one of the most popular teachers, a jolly and rotund minister who brought a Christian humor to the classroom. If something went badly, he'd describe it as “a mell of a hess.” He kept track of student behavior by writing their names on the blackboard under the headings “saints and sinners.”
About 15 years later, I heard he was in the last stages of cancer. I tried to see him, but he was receiving no visitors. He died in 1978 at age 61, a much beloved son of Windham. I remember him, along with William B. Herrman, Reginald Fickett, and Blair Higgins as outstanding male teachers from the Windham schools.
They have all passed from the scene now, but I look back on them gratefully as role models who later inspired me to become a schoolteacher for my second career. <
No comments:
Post a Comment