Luke and the Scratch

Luke was in elementary school, maybe the third or fourth grade, when I noticed at supper one night that he had a slight scratch on his chin. Curious, I asked him how he got it.

“I don’t know,” he said nonchalantly.

“You must remember how you got a scratch on your chin,” I said.

He thought for a while, then offered, “Maybe Billie’s fingernail made it.”

“Really,” I said. “How did that happen?”

“His thumb or something might have scratched me.”

“What was he doing that his thumb would scratch your chin?” I asked.

“He was trying to hit me,” Luke said without emotion. “It probably happened then.”

“He was trying to hit you?” I said, a bit alarmed. “Why would he want to hit you?”

“Well, I hit him, so he was trying to hit me,” Luke said between bites of food.

“You hit him?” My alarm was escalating, held in check only by Luke’s calmness. “Why did you hit him?”

“Well, I was hitting him—“

“You hit him more than once?” I was incredulous.

“Oh yeah. I was hitting him a lot,” he said. “An after a while he tried to hit me back.” Luke’s face broke into a large grin. “But all he was able to do was scratch me a little,” he said proudly.

I looked at Betsy, who was as astonished as I. I looked at Marcus, who didn’t look surprised at all. “Why were you hitting him at all,” I asked, trying to control my tone.

“He was calling Tommy names, so I hit him,” Luke said, as if the logic was foolproof.

“Wait! You hit him first? For calling someone else a name?”

“Oh yeah,” Luke said. “I definitely hit him first. Then I pushed him down and jumped on him and kept on hitting him.” He reached for the mashed potatoes and gave himself another  helping.

“Wait! Where did this all happen?”

“On the playground at recess,” he offered placidly.

“Weren’t there people around? Did anyone see you doing this?” I was getting a bad feeling.

“Oh yeah. There were lots of kids there. They were all around us.”

“Did the teachers see all of this?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Oh yeah, there were a lot of teachers there.” Again, calmly.

“So, you started a fight on the playground, and lots of kids saw it, and the teachers came over and broke it up? Is that what happened.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. Then with a bit of pride, he said, “But Billy was crying!”

“Luke, this is horrible. You were a bully! You attacked a kid and made him cry!”

“No, I’m not, Dad. I was sticking up for a friend.” He looked at me earnestly, and it was apparent that his eyes and his conscience were both clear.

“What happened after the teachers broke up the fight?” Betsy asked. “Did you get in any trouble?”

‘Oh yeah,” he said with what sounded like enthusiasm. “I had to go see the principal.”

“You had to see Mrs. Copley?” Betsy asked, aghast.

I was a bit aghast as well. “What happened when you saw her?” I asked.

“Nothing. I like her,” he said, smiling.

“You like her? Have you seen her before?” I really didn’t want to hear his answer.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen her lots of times.”

I looked at Betsy and she stared back at me, wide-eyed as I probably was.

Later, when I ran into Sue Copley, I asked her about the fight. She told me that Luke explained in detail the whole incident. When she asked him why he was sent to see her so often, he said he didn’t mind, he liked seeing her. Then she said he sighed and said, “I just don’t know why I do these things.”

She said it was all she could do not to laugh out loud. 

Millie and the Teachers’ Association

Most people who knew that my mother Millie also knew she was a strong supporter of professional unions. But few know that the reason for her loyalty was engendered by her experiences as a teacher before they were allowed to bargain collectively with the school board.

She told me her experiences before collective bargaining were uniformly negative with respect to equality in the workplace. In fact, those experiences seem almost unbelieveable in light of today’s labor market. But, in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, they were deadly serious to Millie and stood to transform her thinking about the value of labor unions.

She told me that she was first hired to teach in a four room, four-class high school in Reeds Ferry, NH called McGaw Normal Institute. It was a public high school serving the town of Merrimack and the hamlet of Reeds Ferry, one of four which comprised the town of Merrimack. She had seven classes with seven preps. She taught all four math courses, plus biology, physics, and French. A part of her duties was to arrive early at the school to stoke the large coal furnace in the building’s basement. She also had recess and study hall responsibilities.

Apparently these were standard duties for teachers in small schools at the time, however it was the non-classroom expectations that fueled her support of unions. She told me that when she was hired, she was told that if she were to become engaged, she would be expected to resign her position. Later, that rule was loosened to being married. By the time she was married, the rule had morphed to being pregnant. That was the line over which she could not cross. She resigned when she got pregnant and was told that her career as a teacher was over. Later, after her second child, she inquired whether she could teach again and was told that she could, but that she would have to go on a religious retreat to be “freshened.”  She refused, and two children and 17 years later she was indeed hired to teach math at Merrimack High School, where she taught until the age of 66.  

Apparently the prohibition on pregnant teachers was still in effect many years later. My sister Dianne told me that in 1968 she was sent a letter from the Fall Mountain Regional school board demanding her resignation after she told them she was pregnant. She said the letter referred to her condition as a “sickness.” She told them that she had no intention of resigning her position. She said they never got back to her and never followed through on their resignation demand.

Millie sounded a bit bitter about those early experiences, but one other seemed to solidify her support of unions. In her third year of teaching, the school board hired a man to be the teaching principal at McGraw.  She said he had a college degree, but not in education, no experience, and no certification to teach, and that in fact he was only going to be there until he found a suitable job in his field. She said he was given twice her pay, mainly because he was married and needed the money. She told me he was a complete failure at the school and mercifully found a job late in the school year. The four female teachers were not sad to see him go.

Millie loved teaching and wanted to be a teacher from an early age, putting her at odds with her mother Effie Sleeper. Effie was a teacher herself until she married, and resented the life it afforded in the early 20^th century. As part of her pay, she was force to board with her students’ families, moving every few weeks during the school year. In the summer she was on her own. She was underpaid, overworked and, in her view, humiliated. When Millie told her she was going to become a teacher, Effie all but disowned her, and never gave her money for college. But Millie soldiered on. She graduated from UNH while receiving a variety of scholarships and working for the math department, who took special interest in her. She also worked at a soda fountain as a waitress during her years there.

My family was then and is now very conservative politically, starting with my father Chappie and reinforced by his sons Edmund and Kevin. I was very liberal from an early age and felt my differences with my father and brothers, but not so much with my mother. In my view, Millie was a closet liberal, always supporting my father’s views in public, but perhaps quietly pressing her own views privately.  Certainly her strong support for the teachers’ association was evident and perhaps informed her thinking on other political issues as well.

Chappie, Me and the Revolving Door

I don’t know how old I was, but I think at least 12. I remember the incident clearly and with too much detail for me to be much younger. I also remember being somewhat tall and wanting to look older.

For some reason, my dad, Chappie, was in charge of me. We were alone, in itself an oddity, and, as usual, we were not together. He was doing something, and I was doing something else, probably reading, when he called me downstairs. He hardly ever sought me out, not that we were at odds, but more that we just didn’t have much in common. When I got to him in the kitchen, he was standing by the table and seemed insecure or confused about something. He started to explain something to me, but it was lost on me what the hell it was. Finally, it dawned on me that he was telling me he was going to leave me alone and go to Manchester, which was about 30 minutes away.

Normally that would not have bothered me, being as I was a bit introverted and liked to spend long periods of my time reading in my room, but for some reason it seemed to be bothering him. On hindsight, I now think that he was “babysitting” me and didn’t want to upset my mother by leaving me alone. I think I was old enough to be alone, especially by the standards back then, but he seemed torn. I don’t know if I picked up on that or what, but I began to argue for him to take me with him. I could see he didn’t want to, but I could also see that he could be talked into it.  From the discussion I realized he was going to a bank to do some business, so maybe he didn’t want the distraction. But he was weakening, so I pressed on, not sure why. Any other time I would be fine alone at home, but for some reason I really wanted to go.

On the way to Manchester, he began to talk to me about what I should and shouldn’t do. Basically it came down to I shouldn’t do anything, say anything, touch anything, or look at anything. I had heard those rules before. Chappie was a great dad in many ways, but I tested his patience greatly and often, or at least I felt like I did. Older brother Ed was nearly perfect—intelligent, quiet, respectful and devout. Sister Dianne was kind of high maintenance, but she was his only daughter, and he loved her to distraction. Kevin was the baby—little and cute and quiet. 

I was the family screw-up. I admit it. And Dad was forever frustrated with me. I was mouthy, awkward and active, consistently getting myself into embarrassing situations. He routinely called me Jughead when I said or did something he considered stupid and I said and did those things a lot apparently. 

Anyway, on that day, his last and most memorable rule was, “Don’t do anything to embarrass me.”  I knew that provided the motivation for all of the other rules, and I remember being challenged a bit by it. It seemed to me I embarrassed him a lot. But I resolved to show him that I was capable of not embarrassing him at least this once.

So, we got to the bank, parked in the parking lot, and walked to the front entrance. It was a new bank, and I remember being impressed and a bit intimidated by its size and newness. As we approached the front revolving door, Dad turned to me and said, “Remember, don’t touch or say anything. Don’t do anything to embarrass me.” I nodded, determined to avoid doing anything, saying anything or embarrassing him in any way.

I now think that he might have been applying for a loan. I’m not sure about it, but this was more than a visit to put money into or take money out of an account. At any rate, he looked at me with a stern and worried look on his face, then quickly turned and walked into the open space created as the door revolved. 

Now, before then I had no experience with revolving doors, and to tell the truth, I had been looking it over as Dad was giving his last minute instructions. It seemed huge and heavy and a bit mysterious to me. But as Dad finished his instructions and strode forcefully toward the revolving door, I didn’t really have a plan on how to negotiate it. 

I had a split second to make a decision: do I follow him into the space or do I wait for the next space? The space seemed huge as it was open to the sidewalk. Perhaps fearful of embarrassing him by separating myself from him and maybe losing him somehow and becoming a total embarrassment to him, I leaped after him, just quickly enough to avoid being hit by one of the door’s now revolving partitions. 

Unfortunately, that left me with precious little room to maneuver so I had to all but climb onto my father’s back.  I put my arms on his shoulders and kind of hugged him to my body. I remember in slow motion how his head began to turn back to see what the hell I was doing just as the partition hit the back of my foot, all but stopping its revolution. 

Immediately, because Dad was now walking forward while trying to look back at me, the side of his head hit the now motionless partition in front of him and I crashed into his back, forcing him forward even more. The door’s partitions shook, and groaned, as dad push forward on them, causing them in turn to push forward on me, causing me to push forward onto him. Another person, one who was leaving the building, was caught on the other side and I heard some grunting and crashing going on over there as well.

Rather than stop, survey the situation and come to some logical solution, my Dad pushed harder and harder on the partition, and by inches we staggered forward, kind of bunny hopping into the building, ending with me being propelled forward against his back for a final time and falling to the floor. I looked up to see the most mortified expression on my Dad’s face, one of embarrassment, shame and confusion. I looked around the lobby and saw about 20 people frozen, looking at us.

I have absolutely zero recollections of anything that happened after that. Safe to say that it took me quite a while before I impressed my father enough for him to take me alone anywhere again, if he ever actually did.