A Pilgrim’s Digression

Recently I have been thinking about the past almost obsessively. Every once in awhile I become moody and preoccupied with things that happened a long time ago. From about 1978 to about 1984, I attended a small elementary school in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, called Ordnance Elementary. For many years, I have always wondered about the name of that school. Ordnance is defined as the materiel of war, such as weapons, ammunition, and so on. Perhaps the school was founded during wartime, and the founders had a sick sense of humor. At this point, who knows.

I moved away from Point Pleasant long ago, around 1984 when I was in the sixth grade, but over the years naturally I often remembered my experiences there and thought about my early years in Point Pleasant. When one has moved away from a town that is so prominent in the growth and development of one’s psyche and persona, one always remembers it as it was and supposes it must remain unchanged until the end of time. I went back once soon after we moved away, but since then, I have never returned. As it turns out, through some simple research I did on-line, my old elementary school, Ordnance Elementary, is now defunct. The county built two schools to replace it, a primary school for grades k-3, and an intermediate school for grades 4-6. I recognized some teachers’ names on the faculty list. The websites are pretty threadbare, though, as Ordnance itself was once, and as its replacements probably are now as well.

I never realized back then the impoversihment of the Mason County school system. Ordnance was a small, red brick schoolhouse, with about three classrooms per grade, and a student/teacher ratio of about 1:15. We had the same teacher all year in the same classroom. At the end of a schoool year, it was always a thrill to receive our final report card, on which would be the name of the teacher we would have the next year. Then we would go around asking, “Who’d you get” of everyone, and trying to form an idea of what our class would be like next year. I was always disappointed by the fact that I was never placed in the same class as my best friend, Mac Stricklen. He always got the best teachers, I thought at the time. I was only moderately lucky, in that I never got any of the “mean” teachers, but I also rarely got one of the “nice” teachers either. My teachers were neither especially nice nor especially mean, by pre-adolescent standards, though each classroom had a paddle that hung over the chalkboard. However, I think by then corporal punishment was outlawed. Even so, if corporal punishment was still practiced, I can well imagine our principal using one of those paddles. Mr. Barnett was a big man with a flattop haircut from which one could have launched F-16 aircraft.

My mother swears that Mr. Barnett paddled me once, but I don’t believe her. My memory is not the greatest, but I think I would remember something like that, or at least I would have written about it somewhere. I do know that I found myself in the principal’s office on a few occasions. Most significantly, one day I punched a bully in the nose. He had shaken me down several days in a row, and finally I figured I’d given him enough comic book money, so I slugged him. His name was Eddie Rice, a lanky redneck probably a foot taller than me … or maybe my memory exaggerates his height to make the story better. He always wore flannel shirts–in my memory I see blue flannel–and the generic Rustler jeans that poorer kids like he and I wore instead of Levis. Eddie also had a flattop haircut. I remember that because it was unusual for boys in the early eighties to have short haircuts. Even though Eddie was a tough, boys older than him still teased him about that haircut.

Eddie immediately started crying, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, “He hit me! He hit me!” We were on the playground, and the two women teachers on playground duty started looking our way. “Here!” I said, trying to force the change in my pocket on him. “Just take it! Stop crying!”

His hands over his nose, he said, “But I’m bleeting!” and screamed all the louder. I felt ashamed of myself for hitting him, as well as afraid because of the attention Eddie was attracting. The teachers came over and broke us up, sent Eddie to the nurse and me to Mr. Barnett. I forget my punishment for that “fight.” Mr. Barnett, for all his stern appearance, was a good man, and I don’t remember being punished excessively. Maybe that was the occasion of the paddling my mother swears to, and I’ve just repressed it.

At Ordnance, our library was literally a janitor’s closet converted into a library. Bookshelves lined the small room, and the books were stacked on every available surface, including on the top shelves way above our heads and on the floor. They were ordered not according to Dewey or LC standards, but according to appropriatenes to grade level. One had to get special permission from the teacher to read above one’s grade level. There were no tables or chairs, so one spent only enough time in the library to choose a book or two, and then we went back to our classroom to read our choices.

Our classroom teacher would take us to the library once every week or two to check out a book, and somehow we would all crowd into that small space. I recall library time as a favorite with everyone, equivalent to recess. I don’t think children learn to hate books until they reach at least sixth grade. To me, even though our library was a closet, the close-packed, high-stacked books always made it seem much bigger. I think my love of libraries and books stems from those early visits to that library. There was something comforting and cozy about being cramped in such a small place with so many books.

Not having a librarian on staff, the library was kept locked between class visits, so that made it even more special. I still remember many of the books I discovered there. I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which I felt I had to surreptitiously check out because they were “girl’s” books. I read about King Arthur. I even remember reading a book about Martin Luther. Not the civil rights leader, the boring, long-dead Lutheran guy. I read James and the Giant Peach. I read “junior” editions of classics, such as Treasure Island and The Count of Monte Cristo, which was one of my favorites, though I liked to call it “The Count Of Mommy’s Crisco,” as a sort of inside joke. Crisco was a kind of lard my mom used to cook with; I don’t know if it is even still available. I read a book called City Under the Sea about humans living under the ocean. It never occurred to me to think that our library, let alone our school, might be underfunded, or somehow inferior to other schools. Never did the thought even cross my mind.

On the playground, probably every piece of equipment would be considered a lawsuit waiting to happen these days. I recall one day, a boy named J.R. Eads and myself were playing chase. On the playground, there was a series of metal poles sticking up out of the ground, their purpose long since forgotten. Maybe they were part of some kind of obstacle course. One of them had been dug out of the ground, and it sat in a hole, it’s concrete base a kind of ovular pivot on which kids could stand and twirl around and send each other sprawling. As J.R. and I chased each other, he grabbed the pole and swung around it in a kind of Keanu Reeves Matrix-style move, with me right behind him, and when he let go of the pole it flew up straight into my forehead knocking me cold for a few seconds. I think it scared him to death. When I came to, it was like one of those movie moments where the hero awakens to a circle of faces looking down at him.

The teacher on playground duty took me to my classroom, and I lay on a table for awhile, a small bag of ice on my head. Finally someone called my mother, and she came and took me to the hospital. Nothing was broken, and as far as I know there was no brain damage. I had a huge knot on my forehead just above my eye, and to this day when I touch the spot I can feel a small lump just under the skin.

One other incident of note occurred in second grade. We were making a Christmas ornament with small beads. Another boy, Michael Taylor, dared me to stick a bead up my nose. What kind of dare is that, I thought? So I stuck a bead up my nose, and it stuck. “It’s going to go into your brain, and you’re going to die!” Michael said ominously. I started to get scared, and I picked furiously, trying to get the thing out. What a sight that must have been. Finally, my teacher, Mrs. Spurlock, noticed and said, “Matt, stop picking your nose.”

I said, “I can’t. I’ve got a bead stuck up my nose!” “What!?” She said. “How in the world …?” “I dunno,” I said, perfectly innocent. She sent me to the principal, and he and the school nurse worked over me for quite awhile. Their method was to have me blow it out, but it did not seem like it was going to work. Finally, they resigned themselves to the fact that I would have to go to the hospital. “We’re going to have to call your father at work, Young Man. What do you suppose he is going to say about this?” Mr. Barnett said. At this point, I started to cry, and the lubrication apparently helped the bead come out in the next blow.

All so long ago now. I can now literally say it all happened in another century.