Bowel Movements and other fairy tales...

Several years ago, my friends Mike and Linda were expecting their second child.  If it was a boy, they wanted to name him Brandon Michael.  However, they had concerns about such a name.  Mike feared children would make fun of his initials:  BM

Now I thought that not to be a problem.  I knew school kids could be cruel but BM was just too easy.  Most children had to be more imaginative than that.  Names like butt mustard came to mind but you get the idea.

Then I related to them how in the seventh grade, hating my name, I decided to go by my initials:  RP  By the end of the first day of signing my assignments RP Jensen, I was known throughout school as "rat piss" Jensen.  Of course the next day I was back to "Randy."

That brings me to Verby.  Verby was one of my second grade classmates.  Now I know you're asking yourself, who the hell names their kid "VERBY?"  What is it short for, "Verbiage?" or "Verboten?"  We never knew.

1960's Urinal

Now Verby had a peculiar habit.  Hell, he was a peculiar kid.  At least once a day he asked permission to go to the little boy's room.  After he had been gone for sometime, Mrs. Elliott, our second grade teacher, would sent ME to go get him.  

    

The first time I carried out this task, I was shocked.  Too shocked to tell anyone.  There was Verby buck naked in the boy's room dancing a jig, his little anteater wiener flopping up and down to some strange rhythm only Verby could hear.  He had shucked his overalls and I guess his underwear, though I never noticed any and I damn sure didn't hang around to look for any.

    

We all knew something was wrong with Verby, someone named him "VERBY" after all.  And you don't do that to a normal kid!  Verby was, as we said in those days, "Husky."  He wore thick glasses which failed to mask the rather dull expression that seemed to always be on his face.  Verby rarely bathed, and he washed his overalls but once a week.  Verby rarely talked.  He was one of those kids who sat in the back of the class and was mostly ignored by the other kids.  No one picked on him, it was no challenge, besides they had me, the preacher's kid for that.  All I knew was it was my daily task to go get the little perverted bastard.

    

Now being raised a good Baptist preacher's kid, we were taught to have compassion on the less fortunate.  So I guess those thoughts are un-Christian, but Verby was a sick little fart.  What was to become of him?  He was one of those kids John Prine described as "living in life's in-betweens."

    

Then one day Verby decided to elevate his nude dancing experience by preparing a burnt offering to the god's of disturbed naked second grade jig dancers.  Mrs. Elliot had sent me to the boy's room to retrieve Verby as was her daily practice.  I opened the door and low and behold, there was Verby, naked as usual, dancing around the trash can to which he had set fire to the paper towels contained there in.  As smoke and flames rose, Verby seemed more excited.  Not wishing to find out how excited, I ran back down the hall to tell Mrs. Elliot.

    

I could no longer keep Verby's daily little private perverted ritual a secret as he was about to burn the school down.  Imagine the headlines the next day.  "Nude second grader found dead in boy's room."  "Tens (it was a small school) die at hand's of naked seven year old."

   

From that day on, Mrs. Elliot was very tight with the bathroom passes having been sorely reprimanded for allowing Verby's nude pagan worshiping ritual to be carried out in the bathrooms of the elementary school in a good Baptist God fearing community such as Martha, Oklahoma.

    

One day I raised my hand to go and I was denied.

Martha School

Now my dad was the principal of the small school I attended and in essence Mrs. Elliot's boss, and one of those to reprimand her for allowing Verby to stray from the straight and clothed.  That very day I was denied access to porcelain, I got into dad's 1953 Chevy truck.  The truck I first heard Hank Williams in but that is another story.

   

Dad sort of sniffed.

What is that?

Earlier in the day, when I had asked Mrs. Elliot for permission to go to the boy's room, I was serious.  But due to Verby's over use of  bathroom dance privileges,  I had to shit my pants.  It was one of those shits that was loose but not so loose it ran dawn your pants, but loose enough you just couldn't get a grip on it to hold it in.  But there is that moment of inevitability, the point of no return when you know you're screwed.

    

1953 Chevy Truck

So there I sat in my dad's pride and joy 1953 Chevy pickup with a now cold damp turd gluing my Montgomery Ward white cotton briefs to my seven year old ass.  Dad could not ignore the stench, asking,  

    

Son, did you have an accident?

My dad, bless his heart, a part-time Baptist preacher, could not bring himself to say,

   

Son, did you shit your pants?

    

Embarrassed as never before, and not having shit my pants since giving up diapers, I reluctantly nodded yes.

    

How did it happen?

    

Well, I asked Mrs. Elliott if I could go to the bathroom and she said no.

I see.

    

Unbeknown to me, I had just gained great power over my second grade teacher, for from that day on, all I had to do was look uncomfortable or merely begin to raise my hand, and I was given unconditional permission to go to the bathroom.  An advantage I made much use of as the second grade progressed.

    

Matisse Dancers

After the fire, we never saw Verby again.  No one ever told us what happened to him.  We thought they sent him to the reform school for naked seven year olds, envisioning rooms filled with naked Verbys dancing about burning trash barrels.

    

And as for naming your kids, don't worry about his or her initials.  Kids are cruel and will make fun of it no matter what you name him or  her.  I would avoid Fred Uker, or Sam Oscar Baugh though...   And for God's sake don't name him Verby!

Spare the rod and....

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. -- Deuteronomy 21:18-21


By now you heard of or seen the video of the Texas Judge whipping his daughter with his belt.  I find it curious that she waited seven years to post this on YouTube.

Leather Razor Strap

For those of my generation, we wonder what is the big deal?  When I was little my mom told stories of her father and the razor strap.  For the young among us, it was a heavy strip of leather used to sharpen a straight edge razor.


When I misbehaved with my grandmother, she added insult to injury by making me go cut the switch with which to switch me with.  (say that real fast 5 times)


Woodworking became by dad's hobby as a result of his quest for the perfect paddle.  With his first jig saw, he sculpted a board with which to discipline his son.  When he discovered 9 ply void free Baltic Birch plywood with which to make a virtually break proof paddle, well it was damn near Nirvana.  Dad sanded and varnished his creations as if they were fine pieces of furniture.  Of course, we all have heard the, "This hurts me more than it hurts you."  I never really bought that.


In the first grade, I refused Ms. Bond's command to write my name on my paper.  She promptly sent me to the Principal's office, where upon my dad, the Principal gave me 3 licks with a paddle.  When we arrived home that evening, my dad, the DAD, gave me 3 more licks.   The lesson was that if I got spanked at school, regardless the administer'er of that spanking, I would receive the same when I got home.  Dad taught school for over 35 years.  For all but the last five or so, he paddled his male students when he deemed it necessary.  But dad's finely crafted wooden paddles were tame compared to some of the instructional devices other teachers used.

Fungo Bat

My ninth grade football coach, Ed Skelton, a 300 pound former pro baseball player and a coach I had the utmost respect for, used a fungo bat sawn in half.  A fungo bat was a long narrow bat used for infield practice. It was sort of the nuclear option.  This hung on the wall behind his desk.  You heard reports of him using it.  But no one really wanted to challenge him, for something told you he'd use it.  Sometimes the mere threat of such a device was enough.  Another coach, MastroGiovanni had a more hideous approach.  You had to bend over in the center circle of the basketball court, grasp you ankles and he'd paddle you until you were out of the center circle.


We learned very early that when dad said bend over, he meant it.  Unlike the above mentioned judge's daughter, you only refused once.  You learned very quickly that dad's licks on the butt hurt much less that on the legs.  Now mom was less patient.  She preferred a belt still.  Once I lost a game of Monopoly to David Franklin and tossed the game board up in the air in anger.  Something about that set my mom off, where upon she chased me to my bedroom wielding dad's belt and swinging wildly.

Paddle Ball Paddle

You almost never hear of children being spanked anymore.  Some states and municipalities have made it illegal.  The hair brush, coat hanger, the paddle ball paddle (a favorite of my grandma, once in town and no more mesquite switches, and Ms. Bond, my first grade teacher), the belt, the switch, a spatula, a cane, wooden spoon, the paint stir stick, even the hand, all relics in the child rearing arsenal destined for the museum?


I am not saying that all these forms of discipline work.  And some were harsh.  But I fear that having none has brought us more problems.  Regrettably though, for the worst among us, we end up following Deuteronomy, and the "Elders" strap someone to a table and administer a lethal "stoning."


I have had employees I thought could benefit from corporal punishment.  I have even thought of doing a management thesis on bring corporal punishment to the work place.  How do you think that would work?  Don't tell me you never had an employee you wanted to spank!


We walk a fine line between disciplining our children and abusing them.  Other times, our responses are not creditable.  Once when I was 5 or 6, after church, I went over by the parsonage and took a leak. When all the after church hand shaking and greeting was over, dad asked me if I peed over there.  Now I faced a dilemma, which was worse?  Maybe he didn't really see me pee?  I said, "No."  I got one hell of a spanking.  When it was over, dad said it wasn't for peeing out in the open but for lying to him about it. I never really bought that either.


Even with all the spankings I received, most of which I deserved, I would never have exposed my dad the way the judge's daughter did.  I will be curious to hear her motives after all these years.

When them cotton ball get rotten, you can't pick very much cotton...

My cousin-in-law posted on Facebook about living in modern day cotton country.  It brought back a flood of memories I thought I'd share.  First, the view from our front step was not much different than the current photo at the top of my blog.

It was 1959-1960.  I rode to school with my dad in his 1953 Chevy pick-up.  Hank Williams was still getting radio air play.  "I'm so lonesome I could cry..." struck a nerve in that flat lonely isolated landscape.  I played my dad's Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams and Johnny Horton LP's.  There was a Nixon-Kennedy billboard on the road into town.  Our party line ring was two shorts and a long.  Drinking water came from a cistern.  Canned goods were stored in a dug out cellar, with its musty smell and refuge from tornadoes.  There was one tv channel when the weather was right.  It was there on that black little box I fell in love with Annie Oakley.  Played by Gail Davis.  My first unrequited love.

We lived in a rural community of Hester.  It was on an old KATY spur and down the road was an abandoned cotton gin.  Dad was pastor of Hester Baptist Church.  The building was a converted WPA school house.  There was no running water in the church.  A his and her's 4 seat outhouse sat next to the fence.  The farmer behind us ran some cattle there and he used an electric fence.  On a dare, I once peed on that fence.  You will only do that once.  We lived in the parsonage next door.  Surrounded by cotton fields,  my anal retentive compulsive cleaning mom fought the dust there for 5 years.

This was still the day of migrant farm workers.  Families from Mexico would travel north following the various harvests.  Cotton was still picked by hand in those days.  It was back breaking work.  Stooped over, you'd drag this long duct cotton sack picking the cotton balls from the spiky, thorny hull.  When your sack was full, you'd take it to the truck, it would be weighed.  You were paid by how much cotton you picked.  Many of the farmers still had migrant camps.  They were old ramshackled huts that provided shelter for the couple of weeks it took to pick cotton.

Dad taught Spanish at Martha High School.  This meant when ever there was problem, usually a birth, the migrants were sent to our house at all hours of the night so my dad could translate.

On a clear sunny day, I'd watch the crop duster daredevils spray the cotton fields.  They would come in low, under the power lines sometimes.  I would imagine them as P38 fighters coming in for a strafe on my bunker in the bar ditch.

We were poor in those days so steak was a real treat.  Dad had a little tripod charcoal grill on the back porch and was grilling us some steaks.  I imagine one of the church members butchered a calf and gave us the steaks.  I look up and I see dad running down the cotton row, spatula in hand chasing the Ferrel cat that just snatched the steak off the grill.  I once was playing in the irrigation ditch and caught a mess of small fish in the drain.  I gathered them up in a box and took them home.  I filled a wash tub with water and ran in to get mom to show her.  When we emerged from the house, the tub was empty.  Damn Ferrel cats again.

Thanks to Senator Robert S Kerr and the irrigation projects of the 50's, cotton farming in western Oklahoma was tolerable.  Boll weevils were dealt with by harsh chemicals.  The mechanized cotton harvester made migrant workers obsolete.  Western Oklahoma and Texas are littered with small abandoned cotton gins.  A cotton farmer can now farm thousands of acres instead of a few hundred.

I'd still like to once more travel those old country roads in an old 50's Chevy pickup with Hank on the radio.


COTTON FIELDS
by Huddie Ledbetter aka Leadbelly

When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in my cradle
In those old cotton fields back home
When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in my cradle
In those old cotton fields back home

Oh, when those cotton ball get rotten
You can't pick very much cotton
In them old cotton fields back home
It was back in Louisiana
Just about a mile from Texarkana
In them old cotton fields back home

When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in my cradle
In them old cotton fields back home
When I was a little bitty baby
My mama would rock me in my cradle
In those old cotton fields back home

Oh, when those cotton ball get rotten
You can't pick very much cotton
In them old cotton fields back home
It was back in Louisiana
Just about a mile from Texarkana
In those old cotton fields back home
In those old cotton fields back home...