Civic lessons and two pair of pants. In the seventh grade I had a class in civics. One of the assignments was to memorize the pre-emblem to the constitution. That was not a monumental task for someone who could memorize a three act play. However, being seventh graders and thinking that the assignment was over the top the class got together and decided that we would not do the assignment; there were fourteen of us in the class. When the day of the assignment came due no one in the class had memorized the pre-emblem. I think the teacher knew that there was a conspiracy going on so he went ballistic. He said we would have to write the pre-emblem five hundred times. One of us asks and if we don’t write it then what? He said he would give each one of us 20 licks with a paddle on the behind. We got together during recess and all but one girl and two boys decided to take the licks. In fairness to the two boys who did not take the licks of the paddle it was their father’s wrath they feared not the teachers.

            When we made know our decision to the teacher he said he would not spank us all on the same day so his arm would not give out. I was one of the lucky one who got to wait for the second day punishment. I wore two pair of jeans to help cushion the sting of the paddle. It may have helped some but a paddle wielded by a full grown man hitting you behind while you were bent over holding on to your ankles can be felt well enough. I still cannot quote from memory the pre-emblem to the constitution. We the people of the United States in order to perform -------.

The trauma of overalls and modern washing machines. When I first started to school we did not have electricity so my clothes were washed using a number two galvanized wash tub and a rub board. But alas there came the day that the local Tennessee Valley Rural Electrical Association found Witts Springs on their map a came out our way putting in electrical poles and they put one right close to our house. We were on our way to modernity. We had electricity. The first thing we bought was a refrigerator and we now could have ice cream without waiting for a snowy day. Next came an electric washing machine with an electric wringer. It was easier to wring water out of overalls using the wringer than by hand but the rollers that the wringers had could wreck havoc on the metal fastener on the galluses. Herein lay the problem, after several times being washed and ran through the wringer the metal parts became bent and hard to fasten, that is to latch and unlatch. I was in school and needed to go to the bathroom. I ask and received permission to go. By the time I arrived to the outhouse the urge was upon me and I was unable to undo the fastener on the end of the galluses. The end result was that I did my business in my overalls. I could not go back to class after messing in my cloths so I went over the school fence behind the outhouse and went through the woods to our house where I could get help. I do not remember the teacher ever asking what had happened that I did not return to class. It may be that she got busy and did not miss me.

Locking up two classes with one board. Faye Drewry was several years ahead of me in school and gave me grief from time to time. I did not like him because of his pestering and teasing me. He did turn out to be a great adult when he grew up but this event her related was during his school years at Witts Springs High School. Some background information is necessary to understand how the story unfolded. The school did not have indoor plumbing but had two outhouses. One outhouse was for the girls and one for the boys. The girl’s outhouse was located on the north side of the school propriety and the boy’s on the south side. During the time that classes were in secession those needing to go to use the outhouse would raise their hand and when the teacher would recognize them they would ask to be excused. Thus the teacher gave his or her permission for you to leave the room. For some reason which I do not know the teacher would write your name down and the time you left and returned. It may be that they were just trying to keep up with each student since they were in charge of each student. At any rate I ask to be excused and the permission was granted. I went to the outhouse and on returning into the school building; just inside the south entrance of the building I encountered Faye Drewry. There were wood and some lumber lying on the side just inside the door. The wood was for the wood stoves that heated the class rooms. I do not know what the long boards were doing there. Faye looked at me and said, “Kenneth you are a chicken if you do not pick up that long board and place between the two doors.” The two doors opposed each other across the school hall way. I avowed to him that I was not a chicken. We went back and forth for a while, then I picked up the board and jammed it against the two doors which opened in the direction of the hall. The room on the East side housed the 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grades along with the principal of the school. The room on the West housed the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd grades.

            I went to my room and promptly forgot what I had done and did to think of the consequence at any time. I had in effect locked six classes into their rooms. I learned latter that in the room where the principle and the upper grades were located one of the students ask for permission to leave and informed the principle that the door would not open. The principal thought him in jest until he tried to open the door and could not get out. He was an elderly man and became quite concerned that the door would not open. The school building itself is or rock construction. This is not fake rock but real rocks only the partitions between the rooms are made of wood. This leaves a small crack between the rock wall and the wood wall. The old gentleman put his head in the corner and began to try to get the attention of the teacher in the adjoining room. His plea was, “Miss Turney, Miss Turney please let us out.” This cry went on and on to no avail, because Miss Turney could not hear him. The high school students were getting a kick out of the whole show. This begging went on until it was time for school to be over then one of the high school boys simply raised a window and jumped down, a distance of about six feet to the ground, and went around to the door and removed the obstruction. Why the principal did not think of this is beyond me. The next day the old gentleman who also was the principal of the school went to each room and got the names of students who had been dismissed from their room at the time he deemed that the board had been placed between the two doors. From my home room there were three of us, J. D. Watts, Sonny Heit and myself. He asked which one of us had placed the board there and Sonny was our advocate. Sonny pleaded our case with a passion avowing that none of us would do such a thing. I simply remained silent and said nothing as Sonny pleaded with success and thus did not receive the thrashing the old gentleman would have administered to me had I owned up to my crime. It was a case of lying by saying nothing.

Cat fighting and fund raising. Small schools have little money so they sometimes need to have money raising events. One way they do this is to hold carnival like events with games that offer small prizes that cost very little. They can charge to play the game and make money. Things like throwing baseballs at pins or darts at balloons are good games that are safe and are an easy way to raise cash for school needs. Once when the Witts Springs School was planning such an event they ask the high schools students for input in to the events which could raise money. Some of the boys came up with the idea of having cat fights. With some persuading they were able to talk the teacher sponsors of the event to proceed with the cat fights. This meant that they had to scour the neighborhoods and farm to find cats that could be used. Most farms have more cats than they need so it was not to difficult to come with a stash of cats. These were put in cages and fed and watered until the event of the carnival. Two tame house cats don’t just natural fight if you put them in a cage together. You need to do something to encourage the combatants. The boys found out if you strung a wire line across the room and tied the tails of the cats together and draped them on the wire the cats would fight each other. They used one of the school rooms and cleared the desks out of the way and charged admission for people to come into the room and watch the fight. It was both a success and a failure. It was a success since it did raise money without costing anything but the work of volunteers. The failure was what they did not take into account. When cats are mad, scared and fighting they urinate. They urinated not a little but a lot. The stench in the room was a major problem. The room was washed, disinfected, scrubbed and rescrubbed with little affect on relieving the smell. The room had to be vacated by the teacher and class and had to be aired out for many weeks before the smell abated enough to be used again. So the first and only cat fight event came and went into the annuals of history at Witts Spring School. 

A long switch and cheating at spelling. Our class room had three grades in one room. This resulted in hearing oral teaching three times. You heard it in the fourth grade. You heard it all over again in the fifth grade and again in the sixth. This sets up the thing that happened in a spelling exercise that was going on in front of the class room. One grade was line up in front of the room and the teacher was giving spelling test in turn to each student. The teacher was named Jo Wasson. She was single and pretty and I loved her and had plans to marry her when I grew up. She kept close discipline when she taught. To help her in the task of discipline she had a long switch which was green and pliable. As she was giving out the words for the students to spell my cousin J. D. Watts was setting on the front row. He decided to help the slower students by mouthing the letters for the students. Jo caught him doing this and gave him a warning to stop doing it. He tried to be more subtle and continued. She caught him a second time and gave him a stronger warning. He keep it up and the next time she caught him she said nothing but turn to him with the long switch in her hand and administered a cut across the neck and the top of his shoulder with the full force of her power. He stopped mouthing words after that. But he made another error in judgment.  He went home and told his daddy what the teacher did to him. For this he received a very hard thrashing from his father.  There was a time when parents expected their children to obey their teachers.

Best friend and fighting siblings. Cranfield McGovern was born December 23, 1936. I was born October 26, 1936 so I was just about two months older than he. We were in the same grade and were great friends. We sometimes got into scuffles but quickly made up. We sometimes would walk with our arms around each other’s neck like little girls might do. My brother Leroy and my sister Wanda would fight with his brother Bruce and his sister Debora. They were older than Cranfield and me. This fighting was often after school on the way home. If I missed a fight he would tell me and I would tell him about the fight he missed. The fact that our brothers and sisters fought did not affect our friendship. One Friday, Cranfield woke up in the middle of the night and asked his older brother for a drink of water. His brother went to get the water and the bucket was empty so his brother went to the spring and got a bucket of water to give him a drink. He went back to sleep and woke up in Heaven. That was on February 9, 1946. He had not been sick so it was not known what caused his death. That was the first time that death touched me up close and personally. Sixty-seven years later I can still remember seeing his freckled face lying in his coffin. 

School stories

            Love and passing notes. When I was in my first years in school I fell in love with a most beautiful girl. I really do no remember if this was in the first, second or third grades. I do know it was the real deal. Her name was Jerri Aday. We had a wonderful letter writing romance that lasted until her parents moved away from our community. The sum total of those deep love words consisted of the words, “I love you. Do you love me?” I have no recollection of any other words that were written but we wrote those words over and over.