Kick out the Stob

When Mac McAlister took over as principal of Chester High School, I knew things were changing for the good. At the meet and greet for teachers, he knew most of our names having studied yearbooks. It was a neat trick and I was impressed. One of the first things he told us during that initial meeting was that his door was always open if we needed to talk.

Having my Mother’s propensity to take people at their word, I believed him.

My teaching was sometimes unconventional and, let’s face it, different. McAlister would observe classes by doing a quick walk-through and when he passed through my classroom, would nod his head and do a one finger pistol-like pointing movement which I took to mean “Continue”.

Being the curious person I am, I had to challenge his open door promise and one morning during my planning period, walked into his office.

He was studying some paperwork and after a moment, looked up.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I have a question?”

“Like I said, What is it?”

“Mr. McAlister, When you walk through my classroom you nod and give that finger wave. What does that mean? Are you happy with what I am doing or not. I need some kind of feedback.”

“If I didn’t like what you were doing, believe me, I would tell you.”

I found that to be true. He didn’t mince words.

Over that first year, I learned to like and respect Mac McAlister. I served on several different committees and when I needed to talk to him about a sensitive issue, he would point to his open door and say, “Kick out the stob.”

He was referring to the wooden wedge doorstop and kicking it out meant “Close the door, something important is about to be discussed.”

Now, Let me kick the stob out before I go any further in this narrative.

I have been lying to you for the past three years. Not about the things that happened or the meaning I drew from them. The things that I remember are mostly true with just the least little bit of glitter sprinkled on to give them shine.

I have told you the truth but not the whole truth. I have walked you through the joys and sorrows that we felt when we were kids. I have tried to bring back the way the kitchen smelled and the joy that snow brought us when we were young. My sins have been of omission, of the things I didn’t say.

Why are most of my stories about growing up and not about the way things are today? Because we want to hold on to a time before we knew the real sorrows of the world. It is certainly not the whole story.

We often remember our youth as a time of joyful innocence and here’s why. We were joyful and innocent. We didn’t worry about the things our parents faced. We didn’t even realize they faced them. We were protected from their troubles and didn’t believe them when they told us to enjoy ourselves because these were the “Best days of our lives.”

I grew up mostly in the nineteen-fifties and early sixties. I was three years old in 1950 and and seventeen in 1964. Most, but not all, of my stories have come from that time period. While I was digging caves in red dirt and flying balsa wood gliders, my parents were just recovering from a World War with its constant notices of friends and family members being killed or wounded in far away lands.

Things had been hard here, in America, with rationing of food and clothing and gasoline. We always tell ourselves that they were glad to make the sacrifices they had to make but no one likes to feel fear or grief and no one likes to have to do without everyday things.

In 1950, only four years after Dad returned from the Pacific, thousands more men found themselves on the front line in Korea and, at home, another problem added to their worries. Polio had reached epidemic levels and thousands of children were paralyzed or killed by the disease before a vaccine eliminated it.

The 1950’s were also years when black soldiers who served in World War II and Korea returned to their homes where their children were educated in schools that were separate but far from equal and when a misguided senator pointed an accusatory finger to destroy the lives of anyone who did not fit his kind of patriotism.

I grew up during a time when the “Cold War” kept everyone on edge. America and Russia, the great nuclear powers of the era each had the capacity to destroy the world several times over. News releases even predicted how many people would survive in the event of all-out war. Although every town had designated bomb shelters, many individuals constructed and stocked their own shelters and debated who to let in and who to leave out if the war came.

As school children, we were told that, if an attack came suddenly, to curl up into a little ball underneath our desks. Radiation and fall-out, as we know are no respecters of wooden school desks.

There were worries aplenty and unlike Peter Pan, we would have to grow up and face them. Every generation, every political change, every technological advancement brings its own problems and we, like our parents before us, try to shelter our children and their children from the worries we face daily.

I have seen much ado about school boards taking books out of school libraries because some parents fear they might offend their children or show them that people are different or depict things we don’t like to talk about. There is the fear among many parents that school just might open a child’s eyes to different beliefs or lifestyles.

It is the modern equivalent to hiding our children under desks to keep them safe from nuclear attack. Our children don’t go to libraries to learn about sex or gender differences, they don’t learn forbidden things by reading To Kill a Mockingbird or Lord of the Flies.

All the terrible things we try to shield our children from are as close as their phones and computers. Parents who believe they can keep their children safe from forbidden sites or new ideas are living in a fantasy world. Even if you are standing over your child’s shoulder every moment they are on their phones or on the computer, which you aren’t, you can’t stand over the shoulders of all their friends.

“Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,” as Bob Dylan told our parents and he was right. The sentiment is even more true today. You can’t hide information from your children or tell them to “Just say ‘NO!’” Your only defense against a confusing world is to show your children how to act…to demonstrate good behavior, not legislate it. Children learn from the actions of their parents, not from their words.

I will continue to write about the delightful and meaningful things that happened while we were young. I love to recall those innocent moments but I want you to know that in remembering the good, we need not to forget the bad. In glorifying our moment in the sun, we need to remember that there were always troubles hiding in the shadows.

Before I open the door and put the stob back in its place, let me say that my parents and your parents were wrong. The best days of our lives don’t come all at once. They are scattered through the years of young love and marriage and the birth of children. They happen when we see a dear friend or realize that our life has meant something to someone else. As we grow older, and begin to number our days, we realize that there is beauty in the sunrises of our beginning and all along the journey toward our sunsets.