Welcome to the second Podcast of my “Back Window” Series. In 1959, my father bought a baby blue Plymouth station wagon. I was twelve and anytime we traveled, my sister and I sat in the rear facing back seat. Everything we saw was past tense. We couldn’t say “Let’s stop at that Stuckey’s” because it was already disappearing behind us. These stories, like the view through the back window, are observations through my personal window into the past.
I call this episode “Baseball, Pete’s Paddle, and Life Lessons.”
As we entered the 5th grade, my class moved from Fort Mill Elementary (Later Carothers School) up the hill to Fort Mill Central School (Later named A. O. Jones) At Central School recess, sports were encouraged as a great way for boys to work off energy with good, healthy competition. Our Principal, a former football coach, walked the playground during recess encouraging every form of competition. He would hand out nickels to anyone who could make five free throws in a row or kick five field goals. I remember one repeat eighth grader who was a whiz at field goals. I said something within range of Mr. Reynolds one day and he said, “Yeah, I just wish he could pass.” I was naïve enough at the time to think he was still talking about football.
Times were different in the mid-fifties. While outside play was boisterous, we all despised rainy days. Everyone in the school was lined up in the halls in single file and we would walk around the entire building, upstairs and down for the entire fifteen minute recess. Mr. Reynolds, in his twenty-year-old brown suit with huge shoulder pads, would stroll like General Patton ensuring that no one talked or misbehaved.
In seventh grade, the great paradigm shift was upon us. The girls began to stand around to watch us play baseball. Suddenly, every play mattered more and the game tempo increased in direct relation to how many girls were watching. I was usually a pretty reliable hitter but in one pride-infused game, I hit a little boinker to the infield. Unwilling to look bad in front of the girls, I attempted to run out a single. The ball and I arrived at first base at the same time and I ran over my good friend Tommy Patterson in an attempt to make him drop the ball. The nefarious ploy worked. He hit the ground and dropped the ball.
Donnie Shaw, the best athlete in our class, was the pitcher and roared over to me with blood in his eye. I am convinced that without the presence of the girls, the incident would have been short-lived. Instead, we went from shoving to throwing punches. I have no love for fighting but the moment overwhelmed both of us. Donnie was smaller and tough. I was big but barely able to hold my own.
By the time our principal arrived, at least one of us was secretly glad to see him. Mr. Reynolds, (“Pete” to his friends and in whispers on the playground) collared us both and offered us his standard option for fighters. We could choose to put on boxing gloves and fight it out in front of the whole school or we could take two “licks” from his paddle.
As fearsome as Pete’s paddle was, we had both had enough fighting. He led us into the building and sat us outside his office while he let the tension grow. Donnie went in first. He took the two licks without uttering a sound but the smack of the paddle let me know that Pete was not holding back. He came out of the office with a grimace on his face that told me that the paddle hurt. (In the presence of Pete’s paddle, we were all allies) When my turn came, after one swing of the paddle, boxing gloves began to look like the better option. I clenched my teeth and kept equally quiet but was completely convinced that fighting and trips to the office were not for me.
I learned later in life that when Mr. Reynolds called my father to report the incident, he told Dad not to punish me again. “They weren’t just playing,” he told Dad. “They were fighting like men”
I only faced the paddle once more. We were in my uncle’s 7th grade math class, and my uncle “Bubber” (Robert Case) went out of the way to show no favoritism.
Bubber was one of Mother’s older brothers and always took very good care of her. When Mom was growing up and needed clothes that her mother would not buy, Bubber was always there to help. Bubber was a good athlete and played golf and tennis as well as being a good diver. He was always fastidious in his clothing and only married for a brief time late in life. During WWII, he served as a line company clerk in the African Campaign and on into the Italian Campaign. He was at the battle for Monte Casino and received his combat Infantryman’s badge, a Bronze Star and had two Battle Stars on his campaign ribbon.
Bubber (my mother’s mispronunciation of brother) was never shortened to the more common “Bubba.” He and I had a complicated relationship. I was the oldest grandchild and so Uncle Bubber at first doted on me. He would bring me a toy whenever he took any kind of trip. Once he brought a plastic Mr. Peanut character about a foot tall. I was playing in the back yard on Gregg Street and accidently broke the toy within minutes. Bubber swore at that time he would never bring me another toy and, true to his word, he never did.
Later in the year of the fight, Donnie Shaw was misbehaving in “Mr. Case’s” seventh grade math class and was sent to the office. When I thought it was funny and laughed, Mr. Case sent me out too. Both of us felt one more strike of Pete’s paddle and we came back to class red-faced and I am sure red elsewhere. I will always believe that Bubber pulled the trigger too quickly on me in a strange form of anti-favoritism.
I have always hated injustice, especially when it applied to me. When I told Dad my side of the story, he summed the situation up pretty well. “Think of all the times you deserved to get punished and didn’t,” he told me.
(To be honest, I was a complete disappointment to Mr. Case and every other math teacher who ever tried to teach me. Something in me rebels against formulas and always has.)
Middle school is the time of bullying and although, or perhaps because, I was tall, I became the focus of bullying by another repeating eighth grader who for a year, pushed or shoved or punched or threatened me. On Halloween night, in my eighth grade year, my friends and I ran into Gene in front of the police station at the bottom of Main Street. As stupid as it sounds, it was the old “Your candy or your life” routine. I had had enough and refused to give up my hard begged candy. Gene punched me in the chest and we wrestled and punched until I landed the gold standard of punches…a left to the groin.
Gene doubled over, all the while threatening me with every kind of retribution and his cronies joined in. My friends and I retreated in a disorderly fashion that looked much like we were fleeing for our lives. The retribution never came. From that day on Gene only glared at me to save face. Facing up to a bully may change the bully’s attitude but unlike the popular stories, it did not relieve my anxiety. I still dreaded every day of the rest of the eighth grade.
Evidently he dropped out after the eighth grade. I was a senior in high school before I ran into him again. I was working at the Men’s Shop on Main Street and he came in to buy some shoes. I stopped growing after the eighth grade and so I was still the same 6’1” beanpole I had been before but he seemed much smaller. He was a little sheepish and I did not find him at all intimidating. He bought a pair of work boots and paid without anyone mentioning the past.
I was miserable with his bullying and would never condone it in any way but as I look back, in his second year of eighth grade, I believe Gene already saw himself as a failure. I took that revelation into my teaching career.
My insight did not always produce success in my students. During one of my first years at Fort Mill High School, I was teaching a class full of “difficult” students. Lee sat at the back of the class and had little interest in anything I had to say. When I assigned book reports, I tried to help students select books that might interest them. For Lee, who was not an interested reader, I suggested Old Yellar, a relatively easy book about a boy and a dog. I had the book in my class collection and let him borrow it.
A week later, before the book report was due, I was teaching from the front of the class when I saw a reflected glint at the back.. Lee was showing another student a hawk-billed knife, a common item in a mill town. He was not threatening anyone but I saw the knife and everyone in the class knew I saw it. I had no choice but to act. I walked back to Lee’s desk and held out my hand and told him to give me the knife. We looked each other in the eye and he hesitated a moment then held it out, blade first. I reached out and took the knife and told Lee to go to the office. Only half-way back up the aisle did I realize the stupidity of taking a knife blade first from anyone.
This was not Lee’s first offence and he was expelled for the rest of the year. I explained that no one was threatened but to no avail. I felt terrible about his expulsion and a couple of days later I pulled his file from the office. I got as far as the first page where the photograph of a first-grader, dressed up for picture day, full of hope and smiling at the camera made me close the file and take a minute before I handed it back to the secretary.
I felt personally responsible for that first grader who had lost that smiling excitement and grown into a big surly looking sixteen-year-old. About a week later, I was writing on the board facing away from the class when everything got quiet. I turned around and Lee was standing in my doorway. I was speechless and he broke the silence.
“Mr. Hill,” he said, “I brought your book back.”
I didn’t know what to say then or even now.
I thanked him for the book, he turned and was gone.
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