Kvelve’s Comments: Those good ole’ school days

School days, school days, good old golden rules days. Reading and Riting and Rithmatic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick!

I may be dating myself there, but that goofy song has stuck in my head all these years.

With schools now open or opening across the state and nation, it brought back some memories of my early days in academia.

Every year in mid-August or so, my mom would take me and my two brothers shopping for back to school clothes and supplies.

It was fun and painful at the same time.

For one thing, my two brothers and I were typical boys growing at atypical rates. Every year, my dad would offer sage words of advice on picking out school clothes.

With our feet growing by leaps and bounds and the summer boots or black Converse high tops worn to a frazzle, he would complain that our feet were growing too fast.

You boys, said he, should just go down to the livestock yard, kick a couple of bulls in the rear and walk home. Then he would laugh his laugh.

The laughter would continue when he told us instead of going to the department store for shirts and pants we should just go visit Omar the Tent Maker.

Now I don’t think there was an Omar the Tent Maker in Billings but my dad was my dad and he was paying the bills.

Most years we were also allowed to pick out a pair of “dress” shoes. For me that meant either penny loafers or black and white saddle shoes. If you were a rascal, like I was told I was, you would put a dime in the slot on the penny loafers.

To me, that was the first quiver of rebellion and statement of my uniqueness.

These shopping trips, while entertaining in their own way, were often a sad reminder that those glorious, baseball playing, swimming and fishing days of summer were about to come to a screeching halt.

Soon we would be sitting at a desk that for me was almost always too small, even in those younger days. With a dab or two of Brylcreem in the shortly cut hair, or maybe a little Butch Wax to keep the front of the crew cut standing on end, it was the beginning of nine long months of confinement.

Recess offered some freedom, albeit limited. A game of tag, shoot some marbles or maybe play some kickball, then back inside.

While there was no hickory stick per say, each classroom was equipped with a sadistic wooden paddle, many with holes drilled in the thick end to reduce wind resistance so the teacher, if need be, could put some oomph behind the swing.

If you didn’t fight the paddling, you were allowed the “honor” of signing the paddle. Things were different in those days.

Sassing a teacher or disrupting a class got you a quick visit from the dean of boys. After being drug out of the classroom, the other students would listen in stunned horror to the sound of the perpetrator being slammed against lockers on his way down the hall where the serious discipline would take place.

Part of being a teacher back then, I reasoned, was having to possess a certain degree of sadism. But with a few rare exceptions, said perpetrator rarely caused a ruckus after a trip to the office.

Most were too busy struggling to sit still and ignore the feeling of bees stinging your behind.

If you had the time to get home and back, you could run to your house for lunch. Otherwise you had to bring you own. I’ll bet I ate thousands of peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches.

In my neighborhood, after school also meant fights across the street. I remember being in a tussle with my friend Neil. Not sure why but he asked me if I wanted to fight after school and I said yes.

I won that fight and dodged a bullet at the same time. The bullet was in the form of the principal running across the street with a paddle ready to add insult to injury. For some reason, he just told me to go home.

The next day, however, he arranged for me to put on boxing gloves and fight the toughest kid in school behind the multipurpose room.

The fight was a draw.

But despite the thrills and chills, something amazing happened along the way. For one, after a few backside stinging swings from the paddle, I actually became a reasonably good student.

As a result, I actually learned lots of stuff that I still remember. The only puzzling thing to this day is at what time did the Golden Rule (do unto others before they do unto you, or something like that) come into play?

Chuck Kvelve Bandel is a reporter for the Mineral Independent and Clark Fork Valley Press. Look for his “Kvelve’s Comments” column weekly.