Cotton-Patch Schoolhouse is a memoir of the author’s year as a young and inexperienced teacher in rural Marengo County, several miles from Linden, Alabama, in 1926. Seeking to earn money to continue college after her freshman year at AlabamaCollege in Montevallo, the author welcomed the opportunity to teach eight children at five different grade levels in a one-room schoolhouse in the middle of a cotton field. Youthful enthusiasm, native wit, and a sense of adventure helped her transform the simple schoolhouse into a place of learning and excitement.
Cotton-Patch Schoolhouse is a memoir of the author’s year as a young and inexperienced teacher in rural Marengo County, several miles from Linden, Alabama, in 1926. Seeking to earn money to continue college after her freshman year at AlabamaCollege in Montevallo, the author welcomed the opportunity to teach eight children at five different grade levels in a one-room schoolhouse in the middle of a cotton field. Youthful enthusiasm, native wit, and a sense of adventure helped her transform the simple schoolhouse into a place of learning and excitement.
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Overview
Cotton-Patch Schoolhouse is a memoir of the author’s year as a young and inexperienced teacher in rural Marengo County, several miles from Linden, Alabama, in 1926. Seeking to earn money to continue college after her freshman year at AlabamaCollege in Montevallo, the author welcomed the opportunity to teach eight children at five different grade levels in a one-room schoolhouse in the middle of a cotton field. Youthful enthusiasm, native wit, and a sense of adventure helped her transform the simple schoolhouse into a place of learning and excitement.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817391331 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 08/30/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Cotton-Patch Schoolhouse
By Susie Powers Tompkins
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1992 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-9133-1
CHAPTER 1
A Familiar Road Brings Back Memories
On that warm September morning in 1926 I drove our Model T Ford up and down the hills of a little country road in Marengo County, Alabama, and was completely happy. At the top of each hill, I would cut off the engine and coast to save gasoline.
I should have been scared to death — not of coasting (the little car was going only fifteen miles an hour and there was no traffic) — but because at age eighteen, I was going forth, with no experience, to teach in a small, one-teacher school consisting of five grades and eight children.
I did not think this lack of experience imposed any problem because Miss Bunker, the county supervisor, whom I had met the week before at the teachers' institute, had promised to help me. She was jolly and friendly, and I had liked her immediately. I think the feeling was mutual, but I got the distinct impression that she was a little surprised at my youthful appearance. She had eyed me up and down, then asked,
"Susie, dear, how old are you?"
"Eighteen, ma'am."
"Any courses in education?"
"Well, I don't think — that is — no ma'am, not if they have to do with teaching."
She sighed. "Well, don't worry, dear, we'll work it out." As she confessed to me later, she had immediately decided to spend much more than her allotted time in that little one-teacher school. But Miss Bunker was new in the community, and no one had informed her that in winter there would be times when she could not get her car within several miles of our school. She could have gotten there by horseback, of course, but she tipped the scales at nearly two hundred pounds and riding a horse was about the last thing she ever intended to do. If we could have foreseen the year ahead, we would have known that there would be long periods when the children and I would be completely isolated to learn what we might and get by as best we could.
At that moment, however, there was no room in my curly head for problems. It was too full of happy thoughts about making some money, which would enable me to return to college for my sophomore year. Anyway, what was there to worry about? I had started my education in a one-teacher school, and my teacher, Mrs. Minnie O'Neal had not five but eight grades. Though youthful for a widow, she was mature, experienced, resolute, and intimidating. I well remembered the baseball bat she kept back of her desk, and I hoped I would have no need for such a weapon.
As I thought back over those years, I decided that one way Mrs. O'Neal got through the day with so many grades was that she saw to it no time was wasted. When a class was called up to the recitation bench, the pupils knew that if they didn't know their lessons, severe punishment would be an absolute certainty. While one class recited, the others were busy in preparation.
In Mrs. O'Neal's class, we worked just as hard at our desks and wasted no time with words. We had signals. Holding up one finger meant that the pupil needed help (and it had better be for a good reason), two fingers meant a trip to the outhouse, and three was for a drink of water. (We all drank from the same bucket and used the same dipper.)
Mrs. O'Neal certainly had the parents on her side. They said to one another proudly, "We have a fine teacher. Strict, too. We like that."
What they did not know was that Mrs. O'Neal was sweeter than usual her first year there and was making every effort to control her temper. The reason was that she had set her cap for our community's most eligible bachelor, Mr. Marvin Peacock, and she did not want any gossip to reach him that would be detrimental to her character. She did get him, and there was a summer wedding.
When Mrs. O'Neal (Peacock) returned for her second year of teaching at Old Spring Hill, her disposition had undergone a complete change. One would think marital bliss would affect her manners. They were affected all right, but for the worse. She had a twelve-year-old daughter, Elmer, who was always into mischief. At the least provocation, Mrs. O'Neal, as we continued to call her, would slap Elmer so hard that her handprint showed for hours.
The old homemade desks that we used seated two, and Elmer shared one with Pete Allen. One day they lifted the lid and put their heads under it. Although I don't know what went on, we could hear giggles. Mrs. O'Neal stopped her lesson, tiptoed back to that desk, and mashed the lid down on their heads with all her strength. She finally let up when they screamed with pain. She dusted her hands and marched back to her lesson without ever looking to see what damage she had done. Needless to say, there was a divorce the following summer, and Mr. Marvin Peacock and his relatives moved to another state. The next year, much to our relief, we had a new teacher.
I still remember that as a small child I had been eager to enter first grade; consequently, I was terribly disappointed when I reached the right age and an illness prevented my doing so. I suddenly came down with a high fever, and our family doctor was baffled. What he had diagnosed as a simple case of biliousness proved to be much more serious. My fever went very high and did not respond to the usual treatments of the time, which were quinine and calomel. Other doctors were called in and were equally baffled; I still recall how hot I was. My grandfather continually brought in buckets of cool water from the well, and my grandmother sat by the bed and sponged by body. My father sent to Demopolis, the largest town in Marengo County, for ice. An ice cap was kept on my forehead around the clock. After about ten days, the fever went away as suddenly as it had come and left me lying pale and weak. Now my family began to tempt me with nourishing food to build up my strength.
One day my mother said, "Maybe you'd enjoy coming to the table to eat." I held on to the bedpost and slid to the floor.
"I can't walk," I said.
"You're just weak," they said. "We'll help you."
But I was right. I couldn't walk.
Next day, with my father carrying me, we boarded the train for Selma, the nearest medical center. After much consultation, the doctors said to my parents, "There have been some outbreaks around the country of a new childhood disease called infantile paralysis. We think your little girl may have had it." They prescribed bed rest and nourishing food.
"In time, we think she may walk. Give her a chance, and if she does, bring her back to us as she no doubt will need a brace."
After several months, and much effort, I finally managed to limp a few yards without help. Then followed a series of trips to Selma for brace fitting to keep my ankle straight because paralysis of one of the leaders had made it begin to turn. Now I began to think of school.
"If I don't go to school, I'll never learn to read," I wailed. I was almost seven.
My mother quoted the doctors: "They say you may not go now, but next fall you'll be ready."
My grandmother told my parents not to worry because she would teach me.
"Ma," said my father, partly in jest, "when did you learn how to teach?"
"I'll have you to know, Davy," as she called my father, "that when your Pa went off to the Civil War, if I had not taught your older brothers, they would not have even learned to read. There were no schools and no teachers."
"Can we begin right now, Grandma?" I begged.
"It won't be long — I promise. You know how busy we are now putting up food for winter."
"How about at night, Grandma?"
"Yes, that's when we'll have our lessons. But we'll have to wait for the weather to cool. It is terribly hot at night now, and you know how we must sit on the front gallery [as we called the porch] until the house cools off."
I did know that, and I looked forward to those nightly gatherings when we children lay on pallets and listened to the adults talk over the events of the day and tell stories as they rocked back and forth in their rocking chairs. They had become so adept at telling family stories that ancestors seemed to come to life again and long-gone days were relived. The stories were as good as if not better than those in my storybooks.
We did have our lessons when the weather cooled, and we did them by the light of a fire and kerosene lamp. We had a little black girl, Rosa, given to us by a family that was overburdened with children. My parents felt responsible for Rosa's education, and my grandmother, as long as she was able, taught Rosa until the child had a very good elementary education. Rosa was my first classmate.
As soon as supper was over and the dishes washed, Rosa and I would take our slates and pencils and, with Rosa pulling me in my little wagon which I preferred to the big wheelchair, hurried to my grandparents' room. Grandma first taught us our ABC's and then how to spell the easy, rhyming words. By learning to spell, we learned to read. It was an antiquated method, but it worked, and by Christmas Rosa and I were reading every easy book in the house. No accomplishment in my life had ever delighted me so much. In the fall, I was able to enter school in Old Spring Hill and because of my grandmother's help, I went through two grades during my first year with Mrs. O'Neal.
Just when my family was feeling relieved and happy about me, another disaster struck. It was in the form of a tiny insect called the boll weevil, which bored into cotton bolls so that the cotton never opened. A little before the turn of the century, this weevil crossed the Mexican border and attacked the vast cotton fields of Texas. In time, it moved on to Louisiana, Mississippi, and then Alabama. The whole economy of the South was threatened. When my father had his first cotton crop failure, his father said to him, "Now Dave, plant other crops — no more cotton. Else you might lose all of your savings."
My grandfather was right, of course, but it was not easy for my father to change. He had invested in all the equipment for growing cotton. Also, living on our farm were some of the best cotton pickers in the county, including one very old black man who broke records by picking four hundred pounds a day. Other pickers would say to him, "No wonder you beats us. You so stooped you already down close to de cotton stalks." Other inducements to my father to "plant one more time" were the circulars that came almost daily in the mail from insecticide companies saying they had come up with a formula to control the boll weevil. In the end, my father went broke and the weevil continued to thrive.
My parents felt they were still young enough to make a second start and earn enough money to achieve their two lifelong goals: to own a home and educate their children. They decided to make a change from independent farmer to employee.
A Mr. Shedd from Chicago had purchased a large tract of land called Egypt, the last large plantation in the area. We knew the place well because the Eppes estate, where we then lived, joined it, and some of the former owners of Egypt were friends of my parents. Even when I was a baby, my father would put me on a pillow in front of his saddle, and with these friends we would ride over the plantation. It then was sixteen hundred acres, but my father had known it when it was even larger. When Mr. Shedd purchased this vast acreage, he told his new business acquaintances that he knew nothing about farming in the South and even less about the black people who were so necessary to the operation of such a plantation. He then asked whether they knew of anyone who was experienced along these lines and might be interested in the job of helping him.
"Mr. Dave Powers would be an excellent choice, if you could get him," they told him. "He has been a successful farmer in this area all of his adult life, and so was his father before him. He has just had a loss from the boll weevil and for that reason might be interested."
Mr. Shedd then made frequent visits to our home during which he and my father sat on the front gallery discussing all aspects of the job. Finally, my parents agreed that the benefits offered were too good to be turned down and the decision was made. We moved to Egypt, and to this day I feel that growing up there afforded me some of the richest and most wonderful experiences of my life.
CHAPTER 2My First Horse
For the first time I had a horse of my own. Doctors who had cared for me during my polio advised my parents to see that I spent much time in the open air and sun. Knowing how I loved horses, my father would allow me to ride behind him while he made his daily trips around the plantation. As a result, I became brown and strong. One day we watched the wild horses that roamed the big pasture. They had never been touched by a human hand, and when they saw us, they would take off following their leader, an iron-gray stallion.
"Daddy," I said wistfully, "do you think I can ever ride one of those?" He looked at me in shocked surprise.
"Have you lost your mind? Even the man we hired to try to break some of them can hardly stay on!" Then, seeing my face, he added more kindly, "Don't worry. We'll find you something to ride."
The next day a small horse, purchased in Clarke County, was tethered to our front gate. Rosa saw him first and told me. I was in such a hurry to see the horse that Rosa had to hold my skirt to keep me from falling. A note was pinned to the bridle. We read: "This is Clark. He is to Susie from the 'Plantation.'" That last word stumped us. Then we took it by syllables as Grandma had taught us.
"Plan-ta-tion." "Plantation!" I exclaimed. "Rosa, the plantation has given me a horse! Isn't that wonderful!"
Rosa stepped back so she could get a good look at the poor animal. His head was down and his eyes were closed; his mane and tail were a mass of cockleburs; his ribs showed and his hip bones stuck out and he had a set-fast in his back. Rosa shook her head.
In the meantime, I had pulled the horse's head up and kissed him on the nose. "Lawd, Miss Susie, don' kiss a hoss!" But I did not hear Rosa. The horse had opened his eyes, and we were looking at each other. Right then a relationship between us was born that was rare for horse and rider.
Clark was very gentle, and for the first time my parents allowed me to ride around the quarter pasture alone. But my father knew horses. "Clark may not be so gentle when he gets his health back so we must watch him," he cautioned. Maybe Clark was an exception to the rule because of all the attention we gave him. He got as round and as beautiful as a circus pony, yet he remained gentle, at least with children. He hated men, and whenever one got on him, he would buck. My father thought it was because someone had mistreated him. As many as four children could climb on his back at once. We could slide off his tail and climb under him. Still, he was gentle and remained that way with my friends and me as long as he lived. Yes, Clark was a very unusual horse and I loved him with all my heart.
Roads were bad in that area in winter, and transportation was a problem for us. My parents solved this by having one of the old black men, whom they fully trusted, usually either Uncle Reuben or Uncle Cajer, take me to school in the buggy as long as that was possible. When the mud became too deep for the buggy, one of them would accompany me on horseback, and I would ride Clark. When winter weather prevented that, I would board in the village with Mrs. Eppes, a leader in the community and an accomplished artist. She gave me my first lessons in painting, which many years later provided me with both pleasure and income.
As a whole, I remember those as very happy years, and one summer when I was about ten years old an event occurred that was to change my life. Young Dr. Abernathy, the village physician, came to our house with an exciting piece of news. A Dr. Marcus Skinner, who had won much recognition for his surgery on victims of polio, was moving his practice to Selma. Dr. Abernathy wanted my parents' permission to take me to see this doctor. Of course, they were grateful. An appointment was made, and we went by train to Selma. After an examination, Dr. Skinner said he could help me, and an operation was arranged. It was so successful that even though I would always have a limp, I never had to wear a brace again. I especially remember the first pair of black patent leather slippers I could wear instead of the heavy, high-top shoes. All my life I was to remember those slippers as the most precious wearing apparel I ever owned.
I was able to complete five grades in four years at the one-teacher school in Old Spring Hill, but then we were faced with another dilemma. Because of lack of money and pupils, there would be no sixth grade so it was arranged that I would go by train to Laurel, Mississippi, to live with my maternal grandmother during school months. The year was 1918, and soldiers coming home from World War I brought into the country a deadly virus known as Spanish influenza. Doctors had no knowledge then of ways to control it, and there was a great epidemic. Sometimes whole families would succumb to the disease. No sooner had I gotten settled in school than it had to close. People shivered behind shut doors, and I was not allowed to play with neighborhood children. I think if I were ever to be homesick it should have been during those lonely days when I sat in my grandmother's upstairs dormer window and watched the continuous funeral processions pass by on the way to the nearby cemetery.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cotton-Patch Schoolhouse by Susie Powers Tompkins. Copyright © 1992 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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