I Loved To Teach

I received a notice of the death of a friend who is four years my junior, and suddenly I see my brain overwhelmed by thoughts of death and how much, as we age, we face the death of friends.  I had recently reconnected with a college friend who found me through Facebook and was shocked to learn that he had passed away.  Sherry Ballinger, who performed for me in many musicals in the Greenfield, Indiana, community theater, has passed away.  I Could always depend on Sherry to try out, and if I cast her, as I nearly always did, I could count on her to sell at least one hundred tickets, which would pay the royalty for the next show.  Details are hard to come by, but I feel the need to do something with the days that are left to me and am a bit confounded about choosing an avenue of service.  Theater has been my life’s love, and I have tried to open some areas in this field, but ran into discouraging problems, such as the health of actors and dependability.  Of course, my age, 76, makes it hard for me to find a venue for directing, and as an actor, I know that if a group is selecting a play with an older character, you may be sure they have an age-appropriate actor on board who has been waiting in the wings and helping out in many ways to make himself obvious in the wings as he waits.  As a director, I found myself in this position when I had a hard-worker that I really needed to use, so I selected the play with this in mind.  Of course, I could not have foreseen that someone would show up at auditions who had more experience, more talent—a superb talent.  I explained the situation to her and proceeded with the original actress.  Fortunately, the newcomer pitched in on every front, excelled in a small role and earned the lead in the next show later that summer.  So, of course, I find it hard to get interested in auditioning.

In Lexington, Kentucky, we had a store called Dance Essentials, Inc.  After an audition for a strange show at which I was asked to read the part of an angel described as a black female angel, someone came into the store and recognized me.  He said, “Your audition was the best I heard.”  But, of course, I was not cast in that show but they told me they hoped I would not be discouraged and would continue to come to auditions.  I never went back, not did I go to see that show.  I thought I was too old, although at that time I was only fifty-nine or sixty.  I was fortunate to find a venue for directing—not a probability now at seventy-six. At the Leeds Theater in Winchester, I directed four musicals and one drama/comedy—“On Golden Pond.”

In recent years, I have tried three avenues of service.  First, I convinced the Senior Citizens’ Center to allow me to start a theater group to do short plays on special days.  We did three plays with some success, but with many, many obstacles, and I gave up, feeling very discouraged.  They now put their energies into readers’ theater, which requires a different degree of talent and energy.  Second, I wrote, costumed and presented free abbreviated skits based on familiar shows for an audience of parents and relatives at a potluck dinner at a “Virtues” Camp.  I suffered burnout after four summers.  One week of camp was not adequate time for more than a rough draft, and that was not very rewarding or fulfilling.  Maybe someone will read this and come up with an idea that will rescue me.  Thanks in advance.  The third effort was “Willy Wonka Jr. with the Mooresville Children’s Theater.  What I soon realized was that I had a different vision, and there was no respect for my experience, effort or special talents.  I rewrote two scenes to give the grandparents lines that would feel rewarding to the college kids who played those parts.  I added music to give the Oompa-Loompas time to get on- and off- stage.  I wrote professional lighting cues three weeks in advance of the show, but it was obvious when the lighting person returned from a cruise the day before the show (we did earlier dress rehearsals in work light and because he had not turned in a list of a lighting crew, no one was allowed to go up to the lighting booth, although we had two qualified persons.

The theater manager called the fire department because a board member had rigged the stage for flying Charlie and Grandpa Joe.  They threatened to shut down the show.  They also assumed the paint was flammable, and although I had been allowed only ten days in the work areas, I was allowed only one color of paint at a time.  Margaret played the piano so that the changes in the score would be possible.  The Wonka character never developed into a believable character because he thought he was playing himself, attempted to direct the children onstage, and treated me with utmost disrespect.  I also designed and supervised building and construction of the scenery.  But I was never considered for another show with that venue.  I guess I made enemies along the way, although the next show the following summer was “Once Upon a Mattress”, which I consider inappropriate for children and would not have directed, but which was directed by the daughter of the lighting man (president of the board) who had paid her dues over the iyears in Children’s Theater and had just graduated from college (which told me that my 187 shows experience meant nothing to the group.

I do not profess to be a sage—not even very wise, but I have a propensity for discerning the presence of evil, and it arouses within me a kind of panic that causes sleeplessness and what I think of as ‘midnight pondering’.  It makes me wish to escape from it, and of late my escape tactics have not been very successful.  They have been merely tools that contract the powers of thinking into shallow channels of thought—email, Facebook, TV and crossword puzzles.  One thought that predominates is that divorce is the product of evil.  Baha’u’llah, prophet founder of the Baha’i Faith, explained that when He refers to Satan (as in ‘Satanic fancies’), He is addressing the Insistent Self.  This must explain why I become wary and fearful whenever I get close to divorce procedures.  I am also, when thinking of divorce, reminded of the Christian vow which, as a minister performing a wedding, I proclaimed—“That which God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”  Thus the Insistent Self needs to reassure itself that its intentions are honorable, and the more the actions reek of dishonor, the louder the Insistent Self must call out, “Honorable, HONORABLE,” and I suspect there is a reason to avoid contact with the institution that Baha’u’llah gave power of action in cases of divorce.  Is there also a weakening of prayer life?  Is there little reliance upon the Sacred Word?  Is this the proper preparation for a life of dedicated service which promises eternal rewards?  I wonder.

I also wonder about the acquisition of wealth which becomes so overpowering that it denies the one-time partner access to the necessities that make day-to-day easiness accessible while it allows Self to bestow upon the children of this partnership a one-sided trip into the pleasures of life while it ‘shuts out’ the ex from these same propensities.  The purpose of marriage is not to receive the right of punishments!  What happens to the purpose of each to enable the personal growth and development of the other?  Does that stop with the civil divorce?

Perhaps this is not the appropriate forum to discuss these issues, but they are matters which the general public needs to consider, and where and when will I be allowed to address them on a personal level with anyone?  (So that I may be allowed to drop off into a peaceful sleep.)  I am going to pause at this juncture to allow my subconscious mind to deal with these issues before continuing this discussion.  I’m back, feeling that a dependence upon lawyers and the courts to dispense a just solution to equanimity is not adequate in a legal system that demonstrates corruption in so many inadequate decisions almost daily.  One must rather rely upon the trustworthiness of both parties.  In The Revelation of Baha’u’llah, Bk 4, p. 26 I found this explanation:

If a man were to perform every good work, yet fail in the least scruple to be entirely trustworthy and honest, his good works would become as dry tinder and his failure as a soul-consuming fire.  If, on the other hand, he should fall short in all his affairs, yet act with trustworthiness and honesty, all his defects would ultimately be righted, all injuries remedied, and all infirmities healed.  Our meaning is that, in the sight of God, trustworthiness is the bedrock of His faith and the foundation of all virtues and perfections.  A man deprived of this quality is destitute of everything.  What shall faith and piety avail if trustworthiness be lacking?  Of what consequence can they be?  …’Abdu’l-Baha counselleth the friends—nay rather, fervently imploreth them—so vigilantly to guard the sanctity of the Cause of God and preserve their own dignity as individuals that all nations shall come to know and honour them for their trustworthiness and integrity.  They can render no greater service than this today.  To act otherwise would be to take an axe to the roots of the Cause of God—we take refuge with God from this heinous transgression and pray that He will protect His loved ones from committing so flagrant a wrong.

If one desires more argumentation and has access to this volume, the importance of trustworthiness continues.

Do you ever wonder what to do when things fall apart?  I learned a valuable lesson back in 1963 when I was teaching on the second floor of the old Charlottesville High School building on Highway 40 in the small, small town of Charlottesville, Indiana—that building has not been used for many years, although it is still standing.  The floor of my classroom was a tile that was hard, but easily broken once an edge was open, and we had such an edge by the inlet pipe to the old radiator by the windows.  I remember that on a cold day, the steam rising from the radiators gave an eerie unstable look to all the objects outside, as if they were dancing on the wind.  When one tile was dislodged into small fragments, it didn’t take students long to discover that adjacent tiles could be reduced to fragments with a sharp blow from the heel of a shoe.  I reported the need for repair (as if the janitor who swept the room each night couldn’t see it for himself) but in the week or so it took them to take action, the repair required more and more replacement tiles—8, 10, 12, 14.  If I had had access to tiles and adhesive, I would have put a stop to the damage myself, as I did when the sketch of the principal’s head (they had called him “the nose”) became extended until the nose had spread across two walls.  Without waiting for exact matching colors, I went to the stage and mixed colors myself until I could, in a sense, erase the graffiti completely.  Anyway, from that experience I learned to make repairs in the classroom as soon as they were discovered, sometimes as the class watched, and I kept tools handy.

What brings this to mind today is that Margaret, my wife, claims that when she lifted the lid to a sugar bowl that has matching teapot and cups that are distinctive (why is it always the lid that breaks?) simply fell into pieces, and I was called to the rescue (of course).  When I picked up the largest piece and started to apply glue, another piece fell off. (I think of this as my punishment for doubting the “just fell apart” tale of woe.  Now I have affixed the first piece back into place and have some time on my hands until it is dry enough to safely affix another piece.

I am a man with a great deal of patience, but I do not always work in a pleasant, patient manner.  For example, I am painting the eighteen-foot high entry and hall in my home, and I am doing it in sections so as to make the task less dangerous and not so taxing.  I had thought a month before my granddaughter’s four-day visit would give me plenty of time, but when the day of arrival came and clean-up had to be done, I removed the ladders, drop clothes, brushes, tape, paint pans, etc., and looked with chagrin at what was going to take at least another day to finish.  Luckily, the color change was kind of subtle and the unfinished section was up high and would require moving the ladder only twice.  Unfortunately, the tension that accompanies the high climb with a loaded roller, the difficulty of affixing tape at the ceiling line, and the handicap of an uneven base (the stairway) will slow down the process. So how daunting can the lid of a sugar bowl be to a man like me?  (Mainly I was thinking, “Why me?  Why today? and “Why not put it off?”) Then I look up at the fireplace mantel at what used to be a perfect matched set of antique Haviland China and “It’s too bad that the lid from the broken sugar bowl won’t fit, but it’s white with lots of gold and the sugar bowl is Asian, green with black and gold veining and gold edging—nowhere near a match.

This sugar bowl is one we use every day, but why not put it back with the set and get the sugar bowl from another set of dishes in the cupboard where there are many sets?  Okay!  I’m glad I decided to write about this.  I think now I’ll go and do just that—but I’ll still repair the broken lid and put it in the cupboard, probably never to be used again.

I could well identify with this article, although I was graduated with a BS Degree in 1958, attended seminary in 1962-3, and completed work on my MA Degree in 1968.  I wrote all my own papers, including doing all the research and all the typing, including footnotes.  I won several awards and was told by one seminary professor that my paper was the finest he had received in eighteen years of teaching; I was told by the graduate office (after having been warned by several professors that the chairman I had selected did not give ‘A’s) that my ’A’ was the only one he had ever given—he had invited me to lecture one of his classes using the three models I had chosen to build before drawing floor plans and front elevations of the stage scenery they represented—no one could possibly have faked my daily appointments in his office or the labor those visits represented.

I had three small children at home and had to drive to school an hour’s distance away every week day.  I worked in a study carrel in the library eight hours every day, which would have been easy to check out.  I showed him a card pack of cross-referenced notes I had taken, much of which I did not use.  I did not work on anyone else’s paper during this period.  But I was aware that my high school principal at the time, who became my school superintendent, was turning in graduate papers that were being written by his English-teacher spouse.

As an undergraduate student, I had written many papers for my roommate.  I insisted that he compose them and sit by me to explain the hieroglyphics as I typed and created footnotes wherever I thought appropriate.  I thought this made it ethical.  His first job upon graduating was as a fifth-grade teacher.  He told me that he learned enough grammar in this job to be able to write his own graduate papers. He had failed the mandatory English proficiency test, and after I had tutored him in preparation for his second failed attempt, I made the following suggestion:  “These questions are tricky, right answers sound wrong because no one says things that way.  Unless you are absolutely positive of an answer, decide which answer sounds right and choose the other one.”  That time, he passed.  It was the strategy I had used to pass Dr. Morgan’s T/F test in Biology I, which nearly everyone else had failed.

In a world literature class, I read every assignment twice.  My roommate read only the Table of Contents, which he studied.  I refused to dwell on that.  He got an ‘A’ on that test; I got a ‘B+’,  My diligence went unrewarded and was by grading standards a waste of time.’

But the issue I had intended to address, which was not mentioned in this article, was this:  I often got ‘A’s on papers that went unread by any professor, and the grade was simply because they were beautifully typed and footnoted before the availability of computers—a time when that meant retyping many pages just to avoid erasure smudges.

In one folklore graduate course, I interviewed many elderly local sources in addition to using about 35 library sources.  Two people, one man and one woman, had practiced folk healing for years but had never passed their secrets on.  They had decided to reveal those secret remedies to me, and I had included them in that paper.  For weeks I waited to see his excitement upon reading it.  But I waited in vain.  On the last day of class, he entered and handed out four graded papers to be read aloud to the class while he went to his office to grade the other twenty-one papers.  Mine was not one he had chosen, and the four we heard were mindlessly boring.  Twenty minutes later, he returned with the rest of the papers, graded but unread.  Why was I not delighted with his ‘A’ which carried not one comment?

I was reminded of the sociology paper I had used for weeks in high school as an excuse to get out of an out-of-control study hall.  That teacher quickly leafed through the paper which I had handed in early and asked, “Wherever did you find so much material?” And he placed an A+ on the first page, not having read a word.

Let me say that as a teacher, I read my papers carefully and wrote comments.  One senior boy whom I got to know later in life had received an ‘F’ for not writing the required paper.  He told me that he had, in fact, written four term papers for classmates who had then passed because I had failed to discern that they had money which he needed badly.  I had monitored the students’ card packs and rough drafts, and I had caught one cheater whose paper was in his girlfriend’s handwriting. (I did not accept typewritten papers, although they would have been much easier to read.

In seminary I worked especially hard on a paper for a New Testament class because the Bible school graduates had surpassed me on tests, and I absolutely refused to cheat on tests.  One student who got an ‘A’ on his paper had place a staple deep into the pages around a four-page center segment, and when he got the paper back, held it up for others to see that the staple had not been removed—the paper had not been read.  I got a ‘C’ on my paper, an absolute first for me, and I resolved to take it to the Dean of Students.  But when I reported for this professor’s exam soon after, I was shocked upon entering to realize that I had studied all night for the wrong class.  My exam paper was pure jibberish to fill space and deserved an ‘F’.  So when I got it back with another ‘C’ because he had not read a word of that piece of work either, I let the matter drop and accepted the resulting course grade as the grade I deserved.

The point I am trying to make is that the cheating is going on on both sides of the desk.

A second point I make is about class assignment of teachers.  During my work on my Master’s Degree, I was teaching at a small school where, because I was masterful at creating beautiful Senior Prom decorations, I had been assigned as permanent junior class sponsor and taught American literature to members of the junior class.  For this reason, my primary focus at grad school was in American lit.  But after I arrived at Greenfield-Central High School, where a department chairperson assigned the classes, I was never in sixteen years to have another junior English class.  Most of my graduate work became of no avail simply because I wasn’t needed to assist with proms at that school.

After listening to two teachers bad-mouthing remedial English students in the teacher lunchroom all year, I went to the principal and asked to be assigned to those classes.  He couldn’t imagine why I wanted that group.  I explained that the class size was limited to fifteen, whereas other classes were over-crowded.  I always thought it was bizarre that students needing individual attention, who had no self-motivation, were placed in very large classes that were full of discipline problems, while gifted classes were small and project-oriented—projects often done by one student in a group or by a few parents and then displayed with great pride as teacher accomplishments.

My remedial students were not graded by testing because they cheated at everything.  I watched and assigned grades daily.  To pass, they had to participate.  They had to write, albeit badly.  They worked on self-control, self-improvement, self-motivation, consideration of others and being respectful of the classroom setting.  I started the semester with a class discussion in the meeting room, accompanied with sodas and chips, and we talked about attitudes.  I asked why they felt they should be constantly testing the teacher.  I asked at what age they had begun to cheat and why.  They asked me, “Why are you doing this?  Don’t you know that teachers hate us?”

Because the classes were small, I could change the structure and add a modicum of trust to the mix.  I saw improvement begin to take place, but because I often ignored curriculum guidelines, the department chair took those classes herself to see that they became ‘remedial’.  That lasted one year, and because she realized that those special education kids were not improving, were not retaining spelling, comma rules, nouns, verbs, etc., the classes were done away with.  When I had asked for permission of the guidance counselors to restructure that classroom, I was told this, after she looked over my class list “Jack, you may do whatever you want.  If you are getting anything out of these kids, you are the only teacher in the school who is.”

Lastly, I discovered that there was a way to involve the parents in their children’s education on the high school level without encouraging cheating.  I assigned parents assisting jobs, usually not too demanding and short term, and they were wonderful and talented.  They assisted in my drama classes, allowing me to do many short productions.  They taught accents that amazed our audiences; they drilled line memorization, contacted outside sources, aided in publicity, supervised programs, lifted weight off my shoulders and created ways to involve still others.  They began to come at night and build scenery and do costuming chores.  And I got to know many parents and they got to know many of my students, their children’s peers.  Discipline problems vanished and warm affection prevailed.  Administrators tried to explain to me that other teachers and staff never welcomed parents as I did.  Why did I encourage this?

There were two necessary ingredients.  I had to be open to their suggestions.  I had to praise their efforts and give them the credit for the success that inevitably followed—more-nearly professional results.  I had to welcome their friendship and be sure that no one took advantage of their kids.

(I apologize for having sent this to publish yesterday without proof-reading, but I’d had to retype it because only my laptop has Windows Live Writer, and the original on my desktop refused to cut and paste to my swivel.)

This picture brought a couple of memories.  The first was in 1964 when I was a minister.  It was the occurrence that made me decide trying to teach school and pastor a small church was too much stress.  My barber, Roy Trowbridge had his shop about two blocks down Main Street from this clock, on the other (south) side of the street.  When I walked into the shop, I was told by the owner that I had arrived too late.  I blamed Margaret for making me late, and walked back to the car where Margaret was waiting.  When I said I had blamed her for making me late, she expressed disappointment in my judgment,  We were sitting at the stoplight just beyond the old theater, and I just got out of the car and walked away.  I wandered around downtown Greenfield until it dawned on me that I was about ten miles from Charlottesville and had no way to get there unless I walked.

I walked back to the corner where Margaret had driven across Main Street and parked to wait for me to return in a calmer state of mind—what a patient woman I had married.  I drove back to the parsonage and wrote my final sermon in which I did not mention this incident.

The second incident was a number of years later when we were living in this downtown area within easy walking distance of the Methodist Church on the corner there.  Tammy was taking ballet classes at Debbie Wilkerson’s Dance Studio, which was upstairs in the old Odd Fellows Building, now long gone, and I had gone there to walk her the two blocks to our house.  When the light turned green, I dashed across Main Street and pretended to hide unseen behind the church’s large sign; then when Tammy crossed the street, I jumped out, pretending to frighten her.  In her journal the next week, one of my Freshman students wrote that she and her mother had sat at that stoplight that night and observed my antics.  When her mother had said, “There goes a happy man,” the girl reported, “Mother, that man is my English teacher.  And here is Tammy’s daughter, Debby, posing many years later at that downtown landmark.

In 1961 in Carthage, Indiana, I taught a senior English literature class, and one of the early assignments was Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  I was fascinated by the rhythms of the Old English that was included in the text, so I studied the pronunciation guide with those few senior students and did a literal translation, requiring them to memorize the 22 opening lines.  One of those students, Jim Ellis, went on to Butler  University in Indianapolis.  (I’ll bet he has been wildly excited during the NCAA basketball tournament the last two years when that small college has made it all the way to the final game!)  He couldn’t wait to get back with me to relate this story–just what are the chances!  In his freshman world lit survey course, his professor just started that quotation aloud in class–I don’t have the text before me, so this is roughly a phonetic exercise for me–"Whan that Aprilla with its shourrra’s sota, the dracht of Marrrch hath pair-sed to the rrrota…"  I’ll be willing to bet that there is not one person in this room who has any idea what that is!"
Jimmy Ellis, from a little Indiana town, shot his hand up, and when called upon, simply gave the next two lines in Old English–"…and bahthed ev’ry vein in swich liquerrr, Of which vairtoo engendred is the fleur.  Zaphirus, with his swaeta brrretha…"
The professor, simply astounded, interrupted him at about this point, eyes large and with appropriate expression, "I don’t believe it!  I simply can’t believe it!  Someone somewhere in the state of Indiana still teaches students the sounds of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as they sounded so many years ago."  It had been an improbable moment, and I wonder if Jim Ellis still retains that memory.  I know it made a big impression on his high school English teacher–a lovely, unimagined connection across the lines of time and space that gave one of my early students–I had been a third-year teacher–a chance to shine on the college scene.

I have been lying awake, thinking, wondering just what it is that is so necessary about lying awake, thinking. Perhaps it is that there are so few distractions. Our lives are so full of distractions—what needs to be done for our own sanity and for our physical health, what others demand of us, ways that we annoy someone in the room with us and how we can avoid becoming that annoyance. There are three generations living in this house, each person with unique physical needs and demands and varying degrees of happiness. For a short time, with all of us here, the third generational member introduced her charges—she’s a nanny—which made us, briefly, four generational. This addition, if one was observing closely, added a new dimension to the mix. JOY. However did a little bright-eyed girl in a tutu, aged about four, and a little toe-headed boy, around two, manage to do that? Partly by giving the members of the group focus outside themselves.

The children had a bowl of Fruit Loops—oh, that reminds me of a story from my schoolteacher past. Please allow me to insert that here. It was in the sixties when men’s shirts began to have a little loop on the back near the neck. Somehow they became known as fruit loops, and students had begun collecting them by walking up behind the wearer and yanking them off neatly. This teacher was not aware of any of this, so when, as I stood at the chalkboard writing and someone declared, “Look! Mr. Rhoades has a fruit loop,” I thought they meant Fruit Loop, having small children at home who had had them for breakfast; so I did the logical thing—I casually brushed the seat of my pants, inspiring a sudden roar of gay laughter at my expense, and someone had to explain to me why anything was that funny. Certainly it had nothing to do with gerunds.

Back to the present! Winnie and Miles were sharing a bowl of Fruit Loops, and Sean (second generation) was nursing his pain by lying, pillowed, on the couch. When Miles offered him a single Fruit Loop, he opened his mouth into a humorous ‘gawp’ to receive the generous donation and snapped it shut almost immediately, causing surprise and a delighted guffaw from the littlest one. Winnie was intrigued and was not to be outdone. Soon they were rushing to Sean for a repeat performance, and the shrieks of gaiety got increasingly loud.

And, wonder of wonders, (“… and what to my wondering eyes did appear..”) I discovered that everyone in the room was joyful and having a wonderful time, so much so that when the little ones were leaving, they had to kiss every one of us—such is the result of sharing just a little bit of joy.

But, lying in bed just a short bit ago, I was wondering what happens to those little ones when life becomes mundane, parents are separated, school—another new one—has become intolerable, and reactions become blown out of context and seem bizarre so that freakish behavior results and psychiatrists and therapists are needed to sort things our if they really can.

How does one child get to be self-motivated, a teacher’s delight, while another very similar child begins to self-destruct, developing self-confidence in the one case and self-loathing in the other? Another granddaughter, also visiting yesterday, shared something very personal in a rather joyful way, and I wondered if she hadn’t discovered her ability to produce a loud ‘squawk’ sound, both very annoying and quite humorous, as a serious cry for help that no one understood. “When do you do this?” I asked.

“All the time,” was her reply with very bright eyes and a coy grin. She was sharing a secret with Grandpa, who would surely understand because he was a master of strange noises. When my children were little, I developed a ‘hoot’ that would echo down the long street to wherever John had strayed to, and he would quickly appear on the run. It was during a visit to Margaret’s parents’ home in Montana that I discovered why it was so effective. As he was going out to play, he said, “Don’t hoot, Daddy. Just call first, and if I don’t come, then you can hoot.” But he always came running after the first call because there was something about the hoot that he found embarrassing. High school students, hearing somehow about this noise I could make, would ask me to give a hoot for them, and if I obliged, it brought a bit of joy to the classroom.

In Carthage, Indiana, fifty-one years ago, I had a girl whose unusual talent was telling jokes. She kept a notebook of them, and on the senior trip to Washington and New York, she never repeated a joke as she poured them forth on the bus. In senior English class, her hand would go up during serious class work, and she would say, “That reminds me of a joke, Mr. Rhoades. May I tell it?” We were always poised for these daily interruptions, and I always allowed them because it gave my classroom a bit of joy, and the class always allowed me to go right back to the matter at hand.

And I have to wonder, where are the people who always brought joy to my daily life? At 11:15 the other night when I had gone to sleep pondering serious problems, the phone woke me up and a friend who just happened to be doing a service project with his college students at Wounded Knee where it was 9:15, said with a voice that always gives me joy, “Jack, what the heck is going on there?” And he gave me some more joy with his very sound advice. What I wouldn’t give to be the voice of reason for someone out there needing advice.

All this makes me come to this conclusion: we must not become so intent on the perplexities of life that we forget to give heed to the strange voice that sang so lustily, “Make someone happy! Make just one person happy…”

Maybe you could stop listening to that voice in your head that is the “insistent self” which Baha’u’llah said was the reality of Satan in our lives and step outside your skin to offer up a fruit loop or give a hoot to make just one person (or maybe a roomful of people of many generations) happy.

Yesterday, on Monday, I watched a most intriguing movie.  I had started watching it on Sunday when, as sometimes happens when I’m watching sports, I found I had to stop watching because, for some strange reason, I begin to care too much who wins, and I detect a haunting taste (but it’s not exactly a taste either) that is a warning I discovered when I was in my forties and my body would suddenly “give out.”  My heartbeat would become irregular and then there would be no heartbeat while that mysterious organ would get its rhythm back.  There was no pain involved—only fear.  Several times I went to the hospital—once in an ambulance.  The fireman/boy who pushed me out on a gurney was a former student, a mild, quiet lad whom I knew had once gone on an ambulance call and found that the dead child he had gone to assist was his own daughter.  And when I looked up into his face, I was surprised to see tears in his eyes, and I knew that once again he had found himself intent on assisting someone he loved.

I felt very guilty that, by the time we reached the hospital my heart tested completely normal.  My doctor told me after the third occurrence of this panic attack that what I needed to do the next time was to darken the room, lie down, relax, and wait for it to pass.  I was sure he had no idea what I was going through, but when it occurred next, I did as he had said, and as I lay there, expecting to die and not wanting to die in that beautiful, recently-decorated bedroom in that finally finished brand new home, everything returned to normal, and I knew he had been right and I had been wrong.  “Darn you, Dr. So-and-So,” I thought, “you were right!  I had been in no real danger.”  David’s tears had been in vain, his recalled pain had been unnecessary.  I shall always love him for those tears.

I had asked that doctor if I should give up directing plays, as the stress was always directly related to the pressure of doing a difficult play.  The first attack had come after midnight when the kids should have been at home but the huge bridge for Oliver, which should not have been made of large sheets of masonite, had fallen apart as if made of match sticks, and there was no other time to do the repairs before the performance, so I lay on the gym floor, expecting to breathe my last.  That doctor was a wise man to know he held so much of my future life under his control at that moment.  “Do you enjoy directing plays, Johnny?”

“Absolutely, but we have four children.”

“Then you need to learn to deal with stress.”

And in that moment, lying in the dark, I was able to discern something akin to a taste in my mouth, and when it returned the next time, I was in a classroom at Southwestern High School in Shelby County, Indiana, and I gave the class a task, left the room, went to the nearby teachers’ lounge, switched off the lights and relaxed on the couch until I felt ‘safe.’

I had learned to recognize a chemical reaction to stress that was wrought with fear.  I called off play practice for that evening and went home, I guess to rejoice.  I don’t believe I ever really explained this phenomenon to Margaret, but somehow she understands when I suddenly say, in the throes of a basketball game (Is that a pun?)  I can’t ?watch this.” and divorce myself from the activity that it is still important to me, so she watches and periodically updates me on what is happening.  I think there is hidden in here something magical about the enduring material a good marriage is made of.

I’m sorry—that was quite a digression, wasn’t it?  But that was what happened suddenly as I watched Nicole Kidman and Nicholas Cage in The Interpreter.  Factor in that the producer was Sidney Pollack, a South Bend boy, also trained by James Lewis Cassidy, though ever-so-much more talented and more loved, who has since died and “shuffled off this mortal coil” but appears as a character in this film—something he chose to do that was always a thrill for me, having first watched him, while I was awestruck as an aspiring  high school kid, as he portrayed a psychiatrist in that brilliant musical which was to become my first attempt at directing a high school musical.  (It required eighteen scene changes, and nothing was ever to seem impossible to me after that)—Lady in the Dark.

Our AT&T cable system allows one to just press record and it records the show you are watching from the beginning, even if it is in the last minute, and retains it until the space is needed for more recording.  So, when I realized that I could not deal with the stress the film was creating for me, I pressed record, turned off the TV, and walked away.  So it was that I was watching the rest of that admirable piece of work on Monday afternoon, prepared for stress by putting aesthetic distance in its proper place.

Nicole, as the Interpreter, explains her fascination with words, which she may or may not really have, but I do; and in a notebook, when she comes across a word that fascinates, she adds it to her list.  So I was awakened this morning thinking of fascinating words and trying to remember some/any of hers.  In this process, I came up with a town in northern Indiana that I knew was stored in my brain but was escaping my cognizance—Osceola, an Indian word with more vowels than consonants.  Incidentally, this computer program is driving me nuts by filling the spaces in front of the letters I type with the wrong words—words that I have used somewhere in the past.  (Virginia Woolf might admire my ‘stream of consciousness’ today , if she were alive and were to read this.  Maybe you can to that for her.)  So, in trying to find “Osceola’ in the cloudy mess of my morning mind, I was recalling that my brother Dan’s first college roommate was from this ‘unnamed’ town.  What was his name?  He went to our church in South Bend—Marty Something?”  Martin?  Well, I didn’t come up with that, but I came up with the name of the town where a handsome young man I hardly knew had grown up.  I wonder if Dan has given any thought to Marty in these many years.

In parting, let me explain that I know there are probably few people who experience life in the manner that I do, which is introspective and retrospective at the same time, and, knowing it might bore many to death, wanted to attempt to explain that process.  Thank you ever so much for taking time to read this.

A number of years ago, perhaps about 1970, Margaret and I wanted to see a high school production of Li’l Abner because I was planning to produce that show at Charlottesville High School in the old gym with a small stage at one end. I had taught one year at Lapel (IN) High School in 1968 and had produced Brigadoon with former student (Carthage) Jeannine Terhune and the band director, Mr. McKamey. Jeannine had a college friend in northern Indiana who was directing shows (musicals) in beautiful productions there. We were later to see Hello, Dolly! there a few years later, and I borrowed set ideas from that show that I used and embellished for many years.

Jeannine made arrangements for us to stay overnight in someone’s home in that town, and they had a few recent tornado stories to tell us. This one made a big impression on us. This couple lived in a split-level home with their three small children—the youngest a toddler who slept in his own upstairs bedroom in a crib. When they heard the noise of the tornado subside as they had dived into a downstairs bathroom, they rushed to find the children, noticing as they stumbled up the damaged stairway that the roof of the upper level was gone. They first ran into the baby’s room and saw that the crib was empty. Desperate and weeping, they ran for the other bedroom, where they found the three boys sound asleep in one bed where the baby was wedged in the middle of the older boys. The baby had gotten out of his crib only once before, and they had punished him to emphasize that he must not do that. I also believe that they said they had found their refrigerator in a nearby golf course.

At Eastern Hancock, we had several close calls in “tornado alley”. The worst close call hit several homes along highway 40 very near the old school. In a sixth-grade classroom, where the window were behind the teacher’s desk with students facing those windows and seeing the tornado clearly. One boy calmly asked, “Uh, Mrs. Kroencke, look at that funnel cloud out there,” and thus began the tornado drill they had rehearsed. One of the homes visible through those windows belonged to Margaret’s teacher’s aide, whose son was in her second-grade class. Two smaller children, one not yet walking, were at home with an uncle, who, when he couldn’t locate the baby, grabbed the older child and pulled her into a closet as the tornado whipped away the eastern kitchen wall, dumping bricks onto the oak pedestal table in the center of the room. When the sitter lifter the bricks away, the baby sat safely under that table, not too concerned. As there was no school the next day, a Friday on which the planned speech-class play did not take place, I went to that home to help with clean-up.

At the new high school just up a country road during that tornado, students were caught unprepared and unimpressed. In my classroom, a student dashed in from the hall after returning a welder he had used for a speech in my class. “Hey, man, it’s really neat.” And with a sweep of his arms, “Come on!” And although I had the class seated on the floor with books protecting their heads as we had been taught (other classes had gone to restroom areas), a few ran out into the hall as the tornado lifted off the ground just outside, lifted across the nearby Interstate 70 to touch down at a grade school where children had been called back from their buses and taken to the basement as they had done in a drill just the day before. We had flunked the tornado test, and they had passed. No one was injured.

In an early speech assignment, we would place the student desks in a circle for story sharing. Each student was to have thought of something to share that would last three minutes. Some would be short, and whenever someone’s sharing made them think of more, they could add time. In this effort, there were several favorite topics that sometimes emerged—snakes, mice, accidents, and yes, tornadoes.

One girl told of being with her family in a car that was lifted by the tornado and dropped at a filling station where it rested against the gas pumps but was still driveable. The cautiously pulled back and set off down the road toward home, but had been rerouted several times because there were power lines across the road and various officials had been posted to make sure no one was electrocuted. She said the children had been told to lie on the floor in the back seat and their parents had lain on top of them to protect them.

These stories pale in contrast with events across the United States this past week.

Perhaps it is unfortunate for most of us that we do not remember our parents as ever being young.  Often novelists tell of haunting memories a character has of a parent who left him/her when that character was a child—hence, he only remembers that parent as a young person.  I was the last of seven children, so my parents were older when I came along.  Old photos remind me that they were young, but I do not actually remember those times.  When my father passed away at the age of 86, I recalled the first time I actually realized that he was old.  Earl and Goldie were visiting us in about 1975 when I was directing Brigadoon at Southwestern High School just south of Shelbyville, Indiana.  We were conducting a scenery-building night, and Dad had decided to accompany me.

The students were divided according to projects, and each project had a student supervisor.  Dad was fascinated with the bridge that was taking shape on the gym floor in front of the stage.  It was a bridge I took with me to Greenfield-Central and used many times, but the design was faulty.  When I had directed Brigadoon at Lapel High School in 1967, we had borrowed a bridge from a store on Hwy 40 west of Greenfield that made gazebos and such and had displayed this weathered bridge in its yard.  The store and bridge were long gone in ‘75, and I was attempting to recreate that design, which had arched over a supposed stream, and I thought the walkway had been an arch.  This bridge was difficult to act upon because the actor had to think about his balance since there was no flat surface to stand on.  To store the bridge for later use, it was necessary to remove the flooring that held the two side apart.  When I used it next, I simply used two steps up and two steps down, achieved by attaching two sets of two-steps back-to-back, then attaching the decorative side rails, which could be altered in many ways for other shows, such as the covered bridge I created for Music Man years later.

But on this work-night, there was no flat surface, and at the age of eighty, Dad took a spill off the very low bridge onto the gym floor.  He was not hurt, but he was embarrassed to fall in front of so many strangers.  I was on the stage, watching him fall when I realized for the first time that he was indeed ‘old.’  His posture was always quite erect and he walked with a bit of ‘bounce’ in his stride that made him seem more youthful.  I try, at seventy-five, to emulate that walk, and I hate it whenever a slight injury causes me to limp, feeling that it makes others think ‘old man’ as they take in my gait.

The fall had bruised his ego, so that when we were in the car on the 45-minute ride home, he said, “Well, I didn’t see YOU do much work tonight.”  So I had to explain that a few students and I worked on scenery after school almost every night, and I did the work that required my close attention at that time, but when I was supervising 40 to 50 teenagers in an evening session, if I worked on a project, nothing else got done.  There would be horse-play and someone might get hurt, so I assigned students to do the work.

When my father passed away, I was directing Life with Father.  I had no thought when I chose that show that my own father, so very like ‘Clare’ (for Clarence) would not live to see the final product or that it would be the first event my mother would attend as a widow and the only show my Brother Dan, home from Claremont, CA, for the funeral would ever see.  Brother Chuck had made it a point to see my shows whenever he could and had insisted that Mom and Dan come to see that play.  Mom, of course, didn’t see the parallels to our lives, and she didn’t like what she saw.  She didn’t like that the father used the words “damn” and “damnation” and she could just tell that the young man playing the role liked saying those words (although I had changed many to “tarnation”, etc.)  I believe it gave her the abstraction to create the distance she needed at that time.  She never mentioned that show again, nor for that matter, did she ever mention any of the shows she had seen over the years

Anyway, I did not write about my father’s death at that time, but at a later date, when a boy whose parents had once lived next door to us had become a policeman and was killed in the line of duty pushed me to think about it.  I hadn’t had an occasion to know him, although I had directed and been directed by his younger brother, Barry Morris.  I wrote the following poem, a line from which brought my thinking to the place that was the genesis of this writing.  Here is that poem in its entirety:

         BED CHECK

The day is done
Each task is set in its place–
           Completed
                      To be done tomorrow
                                   Put off–
And I can take my rest.

I climb the stairs and know that all is well
But, just the same, out of habit,
I check each bed to see that my little world is quite secure:
Tammy looks serene but takes her mask of seriousness
To her land of dreams.
Lori leaves it all behind and seems to sing.
John looks pale–he wasn’t well today.
(He’s hardly ever ill, but this new influenza is relentless.}
Danny sleeps untroubled
As if remembering that tomorrow he’ll be master of a new cat–
His only birthday wish since Shakesbeard went to sleep a week ago.

Margaret waits up for me, and she shuts out the light.
As she drifts off to sleep, I sift through troubled thoughts.
I tiptoe into the baby’s room
To look at tiny Lori, first and only then–
My first "bed check" upon awakening in the night
And wanting reassurance.
She seemed a miracle, breathing all alone,
Her faultless motor never missed a beat.
Knowing all was well and full of pride and joy,
I went to bed again. Soon I slept.

But tonight, though everything is right here,
I can’t escape my thoughts.
I see Jerry and Barry’s father but a few years past
Checking the beds in the house next door,
And I snap to wakefulness!
His children are grown and have lives of their own;
Yet one bed must be forever empty, a hero’s bed.
How dare anyone murder the boy next door!
(Though we have moved, he will forever be the boy next door.)
This villainy haunts my bed-check hour!

I scarcely know I’ve slept, but somehow in the magic of slumber,
I am a boy again, in a house long since torn down,
And I awake and am afraid at night.
I slip to the floor to run to the safety of another bed nearby
And stop and see I am a man, at home now, standing,
All the glory of my day set aside,

Grieving….
For I cannot, even in my dream
Run off to my daddy’s bed. He’s gone!
His bed forbids me come to it.

What was it about my father?
He was there! That’s what it was!
He was always there: like Tammy, too serious; like Lori, serene;
         Like John, rarely sick; and like Danny, the master of his world.

O grieving Earth,
What loneliness wells up in you at bedtime!
O divine kingdom,
What treasures we give up to you!
O Thou merciful God,
Refresh me now and let me sleep,
        And Mama too, and Barry, and all those
        Who, in the freshness of parting,
        Cannot sleep at bedtime.

Now let me point out the line that bothers me, the lie that lies inherent in the line, “I cannot, even in my dream, run off to my daddy’s bed.”  You see, I never felt I had dared to run to that bed for any sort of ‘rescue’.  We didn’t bother my dad if it could be avoided—ever, and we never asked him for money.  We all understood that, in those post-depression days, there simply wasn’t any.  However, he ran a filling station, provided me with wheels, and allowed me to get gas at any time without asking.  Isn’t that interesting to recall?

But there was one night when the brother who shared a bed with me until he left for college at the end of my sophomore year really needed me to run off to my father’s bed—but he wouldn’t let me go.  He was perhaps twelve, so I was about ten, and he was in terrible pain.  I lay there and cried to have to hear his “Ooh, ooh, OOH, oooh, OOH’ing until I just couldn’t stand it any longer and ran to tell my dad that something awful was wrong with that ‘golden boy’.  Danny’s appendix had burst by this time, and the frantic race to get him to the hospital on the other side of the river got him there just barely in time.

So what I meant by that line, I guess, was that there was no running to the anchor man who was “always there.”  I don’t know if I love my father.  I respected his authority, and I knew that if he took off his belt, he wouldn’t put it back on without using it, but if the car I was driving broke down, he would come to it, take me where I needed to go, tow the car home and fix it.  This happened one year on Easter Sunday when I had to page him at church.  He did this  because he was an ace mechanic, and in his words that meant that “He could take anything apart, put it back together, and it would run.”  He also told me once, whenI had disappointed him, that he ‘didn’t raise no bums.’  And that day, with the fear of letting him down, I went out and landed the best available job in South Bend, Indiana, on that day.  And I saved all the money I earned and went to Indiana University the nest semester to study drama, for which he had told me he had “not one dime!” 

My mother was always a little bitter that he had preceded her in death: “I was supposed to go first.”  And he had surely known that.  She carried a picture of him in his casket in her billfold for several years until she faded into the depths of Alzheimer’s.  Even when we stood around her bedside when she didn’t know who any of us were, she smiled as we all sang “Jesus Loves Me,” and she literally jerked on the bed when one of us said his name “Earl.”