Remembering the Fifth Grade

For years after Miss Greengoss disappeared, parents speculated on whether she drew the fifth grade classes of 1938, ‘39 and ‘40 by the old black bean curse. Folks thought that after drawing those brutes three times in a row, she bolted for an assignment overseas or maybe joined a mystic religious order to seek peace in a cell.
On the flight to writers’ workshops at the University of Iowa in Iowa City last month, the thought hit that my final chance to learn to write links to Miss Greengoss. Above the roar of the plane, her words drilled through: “Do your best, be the task be bringing in the coal or dumping the ashes. Stand tall for the only time you head the class to dust the erasers, clean the blackboards and line the chalk trays, as if the Board of Trustees watches and waits for the chance to reward your work.”
Traveling by jet in a leather seat with a dark plaid lap blanket to go to school was mighty different than walking across the courthouse hill from a highway drop-off after sharing a shared ride from the ranch with a neighbor. The snowflakes pelting my skimpy jacket in winter; the rains drenching my faded denim shirt in the spring.
We flew from San Angelo and changed planes in Dallas/Fort Worth to be on the ground in Cedar Rapids in six hours and ride the bus over to Iowa City. On the bus, a case of classroom fright struck so severe that the force of racking body spasms and deep chest hiccups twisted the seat belt over my chest. The driver watched through a big mirror with the same suspicion bus drivers once wore in the World War II days when college students brought a pint on board hidden in a raincoat, except the mean age of these college students exceeded the driver’s age by at least 20 years.
Right then I began to dread hobbling to class with bright youngsters flipping off brilliant copy on laptops, promising lads waiting for a Fullbright to come, or Oxford to start a new term. Gifted, vigorous, alert, talented — all combined to craft deft essays, musical poems, winning short stories and masterful plays.
Unloaded and up to our room, I left my bag packed. Shocked by my reflection in the bathroom mirror, the image read: “Nothing but a blackboard-washing, coal-shoveling, ash-dumping, eraser-dusting cowboy from Mertzon. Three years in the fifth grade, walking to and from the coal bin to be back in the room in time to sit on the last row, in the last seat, by the far window, hidden by a standing map rack and a long stovepipe going through the ceiling.”
Turning from the mirror, I told my pal I was catching the night bus back to Texas.
First time she heard this kind of talk happened at Natalie Goldberg’s workshops in Taos, New Mexico. Instead of planning to ride the bus home, I threatened to move to a smoke-blackened adobe mud hogan by a creek lined with fallow willow trees, the dry leaves and rotten limbs floating into dead water. To never talk or write again, except in sign and pidgin. To sit by the hogan door, draped in a frazzled buffalo robe winter and summer, morning and evening, to pay silent homage to the Great Spirit at sunrise and at sundown, midnight and midday.
She responded in New Mexico to my returning to the wild by making reservations for dinner for three nights for the two of us.
Two summers ago in Iowa, she worked a crossword puzzle to kill time as I vowed to enroll in embalming and undertaking school. All caused from staring at a class assignment marked, underlined, circled, and punctuated, in red and black marks to a colored series of insults and intimidation glaring enough to break the spirit of the biggest egotist to ever march the halls of the Congress of this United States of America.
Maybe she knows, but I can’t remember, the reaction to going back to the ranch for good, the night before leaving for the University of the South. Oh yes! She made me a lunch to carry on the plane. The reason I remember was that she made egg salad sandwiches.
Making the registration time for classes interrupted the speech. Once at the gathering at the student center, the average age passed a tad over 50, perhaps a bit higher, as a grayhair dominated the tables, restoring my confidence.
All the registering was completed previously by e-mail and charged on credit cards. The lady checking in the “N’s” looked familiar. She asked each student whether they wanted a free book satchel or free tee shirt. Before I uttered a word, she said, “Better give him a tee shirt.” Thus reopened my career as a student at the exact mark where I left off in the final semester of the fifth grade.