The American Island

If you’re a fan of the Electoral President of the United States, don’t bother to read this. Just click the pretend Thumbs Down button on FB and move on to the next post on your newsfeed.

One of the New York Times op-ed columnists, Gail Collin, had a catchy title to her opinion today: Trapped on an Island with Trump.  I thought she was claiming that all Americans were trapped

 from The Saturday Evening Post

on the island, but Collins was actually referring only to Republicans. That disappointed me a bit, but after reading the article I was actually feeling sorry for all the Republican Congresspersons. I feel their frustration.

But let’s face the unpleasant reality. It is all Americans who are trapped on the island with Trump. The USA once was a powerful country that stretched from sea to shining sea, but we’ve eroded to a tiny leper colony island that the rest of the world is trying desperately to avoid. Mexico and Canada are close enough to our island to have developed anxiety problems. No more friends in Europe, other than Russia. A few friends in Asia, but only because of North Korea.

In my lifetime, half the people in the country didn’t like whoever was president, but they understood him. He was predictable. The president didn’t cause us to lose sleep or develop nervous ticks because we can’t go for an hour without checking our cell phone to see what the President was up to now. With whom was he trading insults? What were his latest thoughts on tax reform? Who would REALLY pay for the wall? Who would be allowed into the country without having to pass through a dark rendition site? Was he really going to nuke North Korea?

I’m thinking some of you don’t buy into my tiny island metaphor. Okay, I’ll go along with you. It’s a big island, stretching from West Virginia to Florida to Arizona. The northeast coast is actually a barrier island. The West Coast is its own island. Trump is not their problem. They’ve got marijuana and everything is cool, man. And it might be significant, and understandable, that the majority of Republican voters now favor legalizing marijuana. Which may be the only hope for resolving the discord between the small towns and big cities on our little island.

The Atomic Family and the North Forty

Guns were drawn, the players determined to settle the game. It’s a historic picture, one of my favorites. Uncle Don sneering and Uncle Bill yelling, fooling around at the North Forty, circa 1965, “Pollyanna to the Death". It captures some of the essence of my version of modern family history.

My Grampaw and Mamaw Hemphill dwelled in that white house with the long front porch at that rural corner fifteen miles from Marion. It was the gathering place of the seven children of Hicks and Nell and a large collection of grandchildren. In the context of my atomic family, that particle existed only from the earliest to last memory of the place, roughly 16 years, 1956 to 1972. The small piece of earth on which that house sat is still there, but the house is long gone. I recently tramped around the weedy ground looking for an artifact and found only the concrete cover of the well. It was an amazingly small piece of space – far too small to contain my memories. The house is gone, along with my Grampaw, Mamaw, Dad, Mom, Uncle Walt and Uncle Carroll. The other key people of that place are in or approaching the twilight.

In this morning’s waking contemplation, I wondered about how the North Forty got its name, what it even means. I know the phrase ‘north forty” is not unique, so I googled it. How’s that for juxtaposition – googling north forty? Apparently, the phrase dates back to at least the mid-nineteenth century when a homesteader’s 160 acres of land was divided into four equal quadrants of 40 acres, thus generating named places like North Forty, South Forty and Back Forty. The urban dictionary says north forty means “way the hell out there”. Side note: My mamaw would not approve of “hell” appearing in this essay. She told me so when I was thirteen.

I don’t know the longer history of our North Forty, just that Uncle Don acquired it from the Nanny family before my memory came into play; so, before that place was our North Forty, it was the Nanny Place. At some point in my early childhood, Uncle Don moved from the Nanny Place to another family home on Cove Road and, I suppose, because the Nanny Place remained a part of his holdings and it was somewhat northward of the house on Cove Road, he began referring to it as the North Forty.

In the orbit of my atomic family, the North Forty has a much longer physical presence than Grampaw’s house at the corner of Cove Road and Greasy Creek – 50 plus years as opposed to 16 years. Since I was a teenager, Uncle Don has maintained the North Forty as a kind of family retreat. In the decade of the Sixties we gathered there for Thanksgiving meals, board games and rabbit hunting. It became a nucleus for it’s own atomic family encompassing multiple lines and generations. Since the Sixties it has hosted gatherings small and large for birthdays, anniversaries, smoking barbecue and molasses making. There is still a functioning farmhouse with kitchen, bathroom, furniture and the famous “Pollyanna to the Death” photograph. If there is such a thing as the nucleus of a nucleus, it might be my Great Uncle Don, still a sharp wit at the age of 92.

Warning: here comes one of the benefits of writing. This morning I was amazed at how fleeting life seemed. In my mind, that porch (with all the jokes, gossip, teasing and tales swapped by those who propped themselves on chairs and leaned back with their feet on the bannister) has lasted forever. But the place only existed for 16 years – maybe an eternity when I was 14, but just a blip in time to a much older man. But now, as I write this, I feel it profoundly and see it clearly. Who knows how long an atomic family lasts? It is not a physical thing, like a real atom. At some point the atomic family as metaphor falters. But the atomic family as reality lives as long a memory can hold it.

Poverty and Families

Image from www.aam.govst.edu

I visited Charlie’s home on a cold, gray November afternoon. He lived in a shack at the end of a tractor path crossing a field of corn stubble. The unpainted shack sagged in the middle so severely the front door would not close. In the crowded front room with a wood-burning fireplace were Charlie, his mother, grandmother, an aunt and several other children. The conversation did not last long since I was the only one with much to say. I told them I was a reading teacher and that I thought Charlie was a

sweet boy who was never a problem and that I wanted to do all I could to help him learn to read. There were some questions I wanted to ask, some things I wanted to talk about, but as I absorbed the barrenness of the room – the absence of paper, book or any sign of written word – literacy seemed like a one-sided topic. I told his mom I would send home a couple of books each week for Charlie to read or maybe for her read to him. She nodded and smiled but did not make eye contact. I told her I was concerned about Charlie missing so much school. It was a long walk to the bus stop, she said. And the bus came early.

I left Charlie’s home with conclusions about his life, perhaps some of them wrong; but, I felt confident that Charlie was responsible for whether or not he attended school - a responsibility that came with all the limitations of being seven years old.

As a reading teacher in South Carolina, I thought often about the effect of poverty on the children I taught. Each year I worked with about 40 of the poorest readers in grades 2 though 6. All but a handful of them lived in poverty.  The link between poverty and literacy seems clear, but why?  Why is poverty not an incentive for learning? Words are freely available. Cheap print surrounds us. Every child spends five days a week in a building that includes a library. Why do the majority of struggling readers come from poor families? Access to printed words is essentially free.

Today, 40 years after my visit to Charlie’s home, we know more about the answer to this question about poverty and literacy. As it turns out, there appears to be a price – a cost, if you will - for words both written and spoken. And for young children living in poverty, it is the low volume of spoken words that creates a literacy problem. Studies consistently find that children living in poverty come to school knowing about half as many words as children raised in better economic conditions. Studies of homes of three year-old children living in poverty show they are only exposed to half as many words as children in better circumstances.

Purely from a learning standpoint, it is poverty of words we must worry about more than financial poverty. A child beginning school owning only 50% of the words of her peers is in a deep learning hole. The consequences of a small vocabulary are dire. We have not found a way to speed up the rate of gain. We only partially understand the nature of the problem. Vocabulary knowledge is one of the traditional indicators of intelligence. But a small vocabulary is also a result of a lack of exposure to a variety of words. So, in many cases, low intelligence is not the culprit.

Here is where an absence of word variety in the early years leads: A few years ago I was helping my college students tutor seventh graders who were 2 or more years behind their peers in reading skill.  For a tutoring text, we were using the 7^th grade social studies book, a chapter on Ancient Egypt. I was sitting with a tutor working with Lakeshia. As I listened to Lakeshia read the text she pronounced words correctly but read sentences as if they were a list of random words – expression absent in her voice.  I had told the tutor to stop her after each paragraph, ask questions and help her with words that might be unfamiliar. As it turns out, there were many words for which she had no meaning, words like - noble, artisan, scribe, fermented, pestle, imitate, glaze, etc. On any given page, there could be 5 to 10 unknown words. Try reading a text in which 5 to 10 words on each page are unknown. Frustration will quickly drive you to discard it. But that is not an option for Lakeshia and other 7^th graders who often adapt to the circumstances with either a vacant or belligerent demeanor.

A proper solution for educating children in poverty evades us.  We fail to understand both the problem and the solution. It is very difficult for educators and politicians to grasp the nature of the problem because we are not poor, or at least have never lived within a family that has been impoverished over multiple generations. Many have known financial poverty. From my parents and grandparents I glimpsed the Great Depression – grandparents living in homes without running water, heated only by wood or coal. They were poor by an economic definition. But they were far from poor in words. Their capacity with words built a circle of hope, creativity, problem-solving and, ultimately, a path out of temporary poverty.

Image from www.asergeev.com

The world as I have known it, is not the world that Charlie and Lakeshia live in. Their impoverishment has a much longer history than ours and encompasses both money and words. We can invite them into our worlds via magnet schools, charter schools and vouchers to private schools, but why would we

think any significant numbers of those children are going to cross that gulf between their world and ours. Their fear and skepticism is almost as great as ours. Why don’t they deserve a well functioning school in their neighborhood with a faculty and administration committed to the long haul?

Seventh Grade Humor: Bold and Outrageous

Some people think 7^th grade comedians are silly or stupid. I think they are bold and outrageous.

“Splat! Teeth, hair and eyeballs, all over the concrete!” The junior high students in the audience laughed. Some teachers frowned. Others giggled.

It was the 1962 Marion Junior High School Talent Show. I, then known as Johnny, told Brother Dave Gardner's  “The Motorcycle Story” while my two buddies, Stanley Hall and Monkey Brown mimed it.

Some background: About two years earlier my neighbor bought Gardner’s vinyl recording, Rejoice Dear Hearts. Brother Dave, a Southern musician/comedian, was at the peak of his rather short career that included a couple of gigs on the Tonight Show. Kids in the neighborhood gathered in the neighbor’s living room and listened to the album over and again. It was not an album for children, but even at the age of 10, I delighted in the hilarity of Gardner’s satire of the Southern red-neck/beatnik.  Until Rejoice Dear Hearts, Brother Dave made his living performing his routines in honky-tonks and small town venues across the South. In the summer of 1960, I listened to “The Motorcycle Story” a gazillion times and practiced the variations in pitch and dialect that Gardner used to give voice to his characters.

It was a story about Chuck, an ol’ south Alabama boy who loved to ride motorsickles, who always had a cigarette in one side of his mouth and a toothpick in the other side and who wore an aviator’s cap with zippers on the flaps so his side burns could hang-out. His motorsickle had a Stratofreeze air conditioner, a stereo so he could listen to Elvis and a side-car for his girl friend, Miss Baby.

By now, if you’re over sixty and lived in the South, you’ve remembered this story.

There are lines my 10 year-old self didn’t get: Chuck wants to leave a bar: “Baby, let’s blow this joint.” “No, Chuck,” Miss Baby says, “Pass it on to the waitress.”

Chuck is cool.  Miss Baby thinks he is wise. Chuck says, “I know what’s in every book in every library in the world.” “What’s that, Chuck?” “Words.”

Chuck and Miss Baby are cruising down the road at 115 mph and they come to this mounteen where they encounter a transfer truck with a sign on the back that says, “I may be slow, but I’m ahead of you.” Then comes the demise of Chuck and Miss Baby.

You can hear Brother Dave Gardner’s rendering of the full story at the link at the top of this column. If you listen to it, you’ll probably be amazed that three, 12 year-old, boys were allowed to get on stage and act out the story.  But it was 1962, before political correctness changed things, including Dave Gardner’s career as comedian. Perhaps I shouldn’t defend him. He really was racist and so were the mass of southern white people, including me. I can only plead not knowing better.

You will also probably be amazed that we won the talent contest!  Susan Bradburn, then also in the 7^th grade at Marion Junior High School, was amazed and disgusted. For years she had taken piano lessons from Captain Olstrom, had faithfully practiced many hours every week and had played a beautiful piano solo in the talent contest. But she did not win because three “stupid” boys got up there and acted out this red-neck joke!  Susan just could not see the comic genius on display. Here I was, a little white boy, all of 90 pounds in the 7^th grade and talking like a comedian in a honky-tonk; and my friend Stanley, one of the biggest kids in the school, in an aviator cap and leather jacket, with a cigarette hanging out one side of his mouth and a toothpick in the other side, sitting on a bicycle that was supposed to be Chuck’s motorsickle; and Monkey (Keith) Brown, the smallest boy in the whole school, dressed up like a girl with his mother’s wig, lipstick and eye liner, sitting in a Radio-Flyer wagon that was supposed to be the side-car.

I did not know Susan back then and do not remember her playing the piano in the contest.  But she remembers me. If someone had told her then that she would grow up and marry that Johnny Hemphill she “would’ve have gone to the bathroom and thrown up.”

Seventh grade was the year of my greatest fame and celebrity. In hindsight, I attribute it to Mrs. Hartley, my teacher. She overlooked all my flaws and vices. I was learning to cuss and practiced it regularly. I was learning dirty jokes and exchanged them often with the girl who sat behind me. When it came to girls, Stanley and Monkey were my mentors. They had parties and invited girls.  We danced, consumed lots of Coke, chips and popcorn. We played spin the bottle. Stanley, Monkey and I created a secret code so we could pass profane messages in classroom. One day Mrs. Hartley intercepted one of my coded messages. For a week I worried she would decipher it. If she did, she didn’t mention it. Every month we had to submit a written book report. One month I had not read a book so I reported on a book that never existed, written by an author who never lived. I made an A on the report.  In fact, I made A’s on everything.  I could name the states and all the capitals, knew all the countries and capitals in South America. We played games to learn the trivia of the seventh grade curriculum.  We painted murals and did science projects. We had debates and did storytelling. Our class was not made up of all the smart kids.  There were a couple of boys who could barely read. There was a girl who always smelled bad.  There was girl who looked to be sixteen, but had braces on her legs and walked with crutches. But we were mostly friends and Mrs. Hartley was our best friend and advocate. I don’t know why she never mentioned my flaws and misdeeds. I know that she knew.  I was obviously a cad. But seventh grade was a very good year. I think I’ll change my name back to Johnny.

The Economics of Nostalgia

In mid-August of 1974 I walked into Joanna Elementary School and introduced myself as the new reading teacher. The principal, Frazier Sanders, was a short, balding man in a crumpled short-sleeved white shirt and dark, thin tie. “I been expecting you, Mr. Hemphill.” He smiled and extended a friendly hand. “Here, I brought you a little something from my garden.” He handed me a brown paper bag full of green beans and tomatoes.

We toured the brick schoolhouse built in 1927. The wooden floors creaked as our steps echoed down the hallway. My classroom was large and mostly bare except for tall windows and iron radiators along the outside wall. On winter mornings for the next four years, the first thing I did was turn off radiators and open windows to let the heat escape.

Back in the office, Mr. Sanders introduced me to his secretary. “If you need anything, just ask Cheryl. She’s the one who runs this place.” I soon learned that Sanders spoke the truth and was never embarrassed by it.

I spent a good four years teaching in that school in a small South Carolina cotton mill village. Though I was a young man with a beard from the foothills of North Carolina, I was always welcomed. I was naïve, but had learned from two previous years of teaching that respecting the community was necessary to success. Sometime in the first month of the school year a father came into my classroom

Typical cotton mill village street *

after school and handed me a paddle, about a foot and a half long, made of sturdy wood with holes bored in the blade. On one side was printed “The Board of Education”. “I made this for you,” he said. “Don’t call my wife again about Wesley ‘til you’ve used this.” A month later, I reluctantly pulled the paddle out of my desk drawer and used it on Wesley. I never paddled him again and never had to call his parents – a dent in my educational philosophy, but a small battle won.

Joanna Elementary was an old school in an old school place. Modern times had changed the community, but old culture held fast. The school stood among artifacts of the past. Windows in the library revealed the remains of a swimming pool, its cracked and decaying concrete filled with debris. The playground was an old ball field where a semi-pro baseball team once played. Towers of broken lights no longer illuminated the field. Honeysuckle vines obscured the fading advertisements on the outfield fence.

On the backside of a low brick wall separating the teacher’s parking lot from a pine forest, rusted metal vats lay half buried in the sandy ground. I asked Mr. Sanders about those vats. He chuckled. “Oh, you are looking at the hog parlor.”

“The hog parlor?”

“It’s where folks in the mill village brought their hogs for slaughter. Those pipes through the brick wall carried hot water from the school’s boiler to the vats.”

Joanna was planned and built by the cotton mill owner – a rich man from up North. The school stood on the western end of a long quadrangle.  Small, wood framed homes lined streets along two sides of the quad. On the eastern end was the schoolrry – a two-story brick building that once provided apartments for the young female teachers. In addition to the factory, school and homes, the owner also built a small hospital and movie theater.

I was no stranger to cotton mill villages. In the early 1900s, Minnie Justice, my mother’s mother came to the Clinchfield cotton mill from her home across the mountains in Haywood County. She got a room in a boarding house and a job in the mill where she met Taylor Messer who had also come across the mountains looking for work. They got married and eventually bought a small frame house on the end of a dirt road at the top of the mill hill.  I was their first grandson and Grandma Minnie was my first baby sitter.

My grandparents were typical of the people of the mill village.  They had come there from desperately poor circumstances. Their frame house, with no running water and heated by a coal grate in a shallow fireplace, was a major improvement in life’s circumstances. Neither had an education past grade school, though Grandma won the spelling bee when she was in the 4^th grade. They never owned a car. Grandpa Messer died when I was eight years old. On Saturday afternoons, I rode my bike across town, cut the grass around Grandma’s house and watched Gun Smoke with her.  On Sunday mornings, Mom and Dad picked us up and took us to church.

I share this bit of personal history because I believe there is an economic lesson in it. There was a time when corporations lifted masses of people out of poverty. I know that it was not a totally benign and altruistic process. I know the abuses of the company stores. I know the violent resistance to labor unions. I know the first generation of workers was uneducated and marginally literate. But most of the second generation graduated from high school and the third generation, my generation, had access to colleges and trade schools. Those wealthy people who built the cotton mill villages created, at least in part, the circumstances that helped build an educated and versatile middle class.

In the 21^st century, there is little evidence that corporate America is willing to sustain the middle class. Commerce and industry have always existed to generate profits for owners and shareholders. But now, they seem only about profit; the welfare of workers be damned. Good jobs with benefits are hard to find. Wal-Mart is the standard for both shopping and employment. A globalized economy may work for some skilled and mobile people; but for the masses, it is a brutal and inhumane thing. It is hard to imagine how anything other than local industry and business, with a commitment to a good wages and benefits, can restore the middle class.

 * By Bill Fitzpatrick (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons