Occasionally, in those minutes before falling asleep, a memory bubbles up from my subconscious and offers a good area to explore in writing. This is a good thing because inspiration does not come every day. If it is an interesting bubble, there will be no sleep for a while. I will poke and prod at every area of my mind digging up fragments of events often long forgotten. My subconscious should have a warning sign that says, “Don’t get me started!”
The result is that often I awaken at five a.m. with a story clawing to get out. On those rarified occasions I start the coffee and open the computer and start typing. This may last thirty minutes or two hours. I am barely aware of events around me. When I emerge from my writer’s reverie, I am sometimes surprised to read what I have on the screen in front of me.
The subconscious is like Van Gogh during his madness. It produces images and forms that whirl and flow. Like Van Gogh, the subconscious would never sell a painting. It is, in the field of writing, a terrible editor. My awakened self must then organize and correct and interpret to make the writing palatable for anyone else.
Last night’s restlessness was about memories of teachers at Fort Mill High School when I was there as a student…make that pupil. I wish I could name studiousness among my short list of virtues. Curiosity did make the list and I was always interested in class but when the three o’clock bell rang, my academic day was over. I didn’t need a bookbag. I’m not sure my parents knew we were issued textbooks in high school. They rarely saw any from me. The paperbacks I was constantly reading fit into my back pocket.
I relied on memory. I took part in class, listened to what was said…except in math, and retained enough to get my usual “C” or “B”. Even an occasional “A” showed up in the English column.
So, before I talk about teachers, let me say that they carry no blame for my wayward study habits or my lackluster performance on tests.
Just as in high school, let’s get math out of the way as quickly as possible. Mrs. Katie Lou Culp was the premier math teacher for years. Student after student praised her for their success in college math courses. She was an unreformed old school, straight-laced teacher who pronounced every syllable of every word and every hard-consonant word ending. I see her standing pine tree straight at the front of class with a wooden pointer in her hand. She never hit anyone with it nor did she ever threaten me but she should have. I am certain I was the son she was glad she never had. Algebra class was as foreign to me as Mandarin Chinese and every test had to be taken home and signed. I finally got my friend, Chuck, to sign my father’s name. Mrs. Culp saw right through that so from then on, Chuck signed my mother’s name. Worked every time.
I only did well in one math class. Mrs. Barbara Rogers taught Geometry and I hung on every word. She was a petite, black haired beauty who wore dresses and high heels every day. Every male in the class was mesmerized by her. To be fair, geometry made more sense to me than the more abstract math courses but it sure helped that my focus was always on the teacher.
While math was the arch-villain of my high school years, English was always my place to shine. I was a reader and could write a decent paper.
Judy Sandifer was a first-year English teacher when we were freshmen. She was a pretty blonde with long hair and bright blue eyes. She was the fun teacher who was a confidant to the girls and a distraction to the boys. She made her classes interesting but as with many beginning teachers, was so close to our age that she felt more like a friend.
The next year, when we were sophomores, our class was responsible for entertainment at the Junior-Senior Prom and Miss Sandifer was our sponsor. We practiced our songs and our entertainment, usually in the afternoon but occasionally at night. One evening, as we neared production, she invited a dozen or so of us to her Rock Hill apartment for drinks (soft) and snacks.
The entertainment that night was all of us sitting around her stereo attempting to figure out the words to “Louie, Louie”. The song was a scandal, at least it was supposed to be, if we could only understand the words. If you remember the song, it begins, “Fine little girl waiting for me,” or maybe it is “My little girl”.
Either way, everything beyond that is impossibly garbled except for “Louie” and “We gotta go now”. It was a heady thing for a sixteen-year-old to be talking about a raunchy song with a pretty teacher in the group.
It was my first attraction to a grown woman and later in the year, when some of the prom entertainers were asked to perform for the Women’s Club at the old Leroy Springs Club House, I got the thrill of my early life when we were all waiting outside to perform. Someone had a transistor radio tuned to Big Ways, the local rock-n-roll station. The DJ played “My Girl” by the Temptations and Miss Sandifer asked if any of us could shag. I was quick to volunteer and suddenly there I was, in a magic twilight on a spring evening outside the clubhouse, dancing with a real woman. The song ended and a slow song followed. We closed in to dance and reality crashed between us. The spell was broken and we were teacher and bewitched student again.
That was it. There was no flirtatious follow up, no secret rendezvous, no knowing looks. It was a moment when a boy steps across the magic line into manhood. Like in the movie Field of Dreams, there is no stepping back. Thank you, Miss Sandifer, for a brief insight into a grown-up life.
That sophomore year was a turning point for me in many ways. Our English teacher was Mike Jewett. Mr. Jewett was our Beatnik. He loved the language and it showed. Every short story, every novel and every poem sparked to life when he taught it. He made the Scarlet Letter interesting to even teenaged boys. He threw philosophy and psychology and history at us and, at least for me, it stuck.
I could not wait for his class to begin and hung around as long as I could after the bell sent us to the next class. He was tormented and funny at the same time and had a devilish knowing grin when a writer slipped in a pun or a wry comment. He taught us Salinger and e. e. cummings and life. He was the can-opener of my mind.
As a result, he had to go. The year was 1963 and the Cold War was heating up. Parents were wary of folk music, Jack Kerouac and rebels with a cause. The Cuban Missile Crisis made them afraid the times were a’changing and they didn’t like it. Teachers who encouraged free thinking were encouraged to move on. Mike Jewett was caught in that sticky web.
At the end of the year, when our yearbooks came, I asked him to sign mine. He didn’t write much, but he wrote everything.
“I hope I haven’t dulled your intellectual curiosity.” That’s all.
He made me feel like an intellectual and I have worked all my life to try and become one.
I was a teacher because of him. I tried to teach like him. I still see him from time to time and always try to tell him what he did. I fall short every time.
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