FIRST PRINCIPLE OF TEACHING LEARNED HERE

Texas, 1898. Weldon, Texas, to be exact, on a tenant farm in September. According to the historical weather records the entire nation was experiencing the hottest temperatures in history. Since Texas is not listed, one can only imagine the heat in this tiny hamlet of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and Bible believing people. Among those who eked out a living with a couple of mules, a few plows, a pig, chickens, and hopefully a water source lived the Harrington family. Albert and Mahalia Harrington had come to Texas from Tennessee not too many years after the Civil War ended. They were extremely religious people calling themselves “Campbelites” after the Campbell brothers. This back to the Bible theology was reborn in the Restoration Movement that happened 20 years before the Civil War. Today we know their branches as the Church of Christ. They believed that the Bible was to be taken literally with no room for interpretation. They would sire generations in the Church of Christ. But, that is another story.

Like many of the poor farmers everywhere, the Harrington’s had a horde of children. According to my grandmother there were 19 births and 15 live children. It was on that hottest of days, on a dirt scrub of a farm that my grandmother was born September 19, 1898. She was in the bottom third of the children. The story goes that my great-grandmother had run out of names for girls. My great grandfather wanted to call her Theodora Octavia…. whew! Glad that did not work out. Her much older sisters just called her “Doll” because she looked like a baby doll. After six months, her name officially became Dolly Harrington.

The Harrington farm raised cotton to make the money to pay the rent on the land. If you know anything about farming, this is a horrible crop to grow and pick. They had to make the rent first and if any cotton was left over, then a bit of money was left over for the family. The boys worked the land with their father. They were up with the dawn and came home at dark. My great grandmother and older girls would start cooking breakfast with the men getting first and most of whatever they had. The older girls would eat next and then the little kids…Miss Dolly, Uncle Leslie, Uncle Archie, and Uncle Newman. Often their breakfast was left over biscuits with, wait for it…. pork grease poured on top (not gravy). Then there was lunch and dinner to make. When I would listen to the brothers and sisters talk about this time, it was amazing they survived. When Miss Dolly was the youngest, the part of the chicken she would get is called the “pope’s nose.” It’s the fatty piece that hangs off the butt of a chicken. Some kids got to chew on the neck bone. 

None of the little kids had shoes. They would get the older kids one pair of shoes when they grew out of their current pair. The old shoes were passed down to the next girl or boy. It did not matter if the shoe fit…they wore it. I think that is why when I was a little girl my shoes were Stride Rites, Poll Parrot, and Buster Browns. My grandmother’s feet were ugly and the toes were twisted…she disliked them tremendously, but she never complained about how they got that way…it was what is was, now move on even if your feet hurt!

Two stories stand out from the stories my grandmother told. She really never talked about those times and when she did it was to impart a lesson to me. The first story happened when she was about six. Her job, as the youngest girl, was to churn the milk into butter. I’m not sure how many people reading this even have a concept of what this is. Basically one stood for several hours with a tall wooden container filled with raw milk, put the top on the container, and the top had a large flat paddle on the end. The person working the churn would move paddle up and down vigorously for one to two hours until something separates from something, magic happens, and voila! One had fresh butter. A six-year-old was expected to do this without complaint until the chore was done. Miss Dolly was, according to her siblings, a bit of a mischievous little girl. One day, in boredom, she started jumping up and down to the rhythm of the churn. Great Gran told her to stop and she just ignored it. Catastrophe ensued. She turned over the large milk vat and it spilled on to the dirt that was the yard. The paddle flew off and soaked her in her little flour sack shift dress. Yes…flour sacks turned into dresses for daily wear. Miss Dolly said that the look on my granny’s face said it all. First, there would be no butter for the next week. This affected the whole clan. Secondly, Miss Dolly only had two shifts: one for school and one for home. Now she would have to wear her “good” shift to school and work in it as well. I’m certain we cannot fathom the production of doing the wash entailed in those days. Water had to be brought from a creek, fill a large iron round caldron, heat it over an open fire, soak, scrub on a washboard, and then go through the same thing to rinse…. Geez! I think this is where she developed the habit of taking care of her clothes almost to an obsession. My clothes were always immaculate and pressed. At that young age, she learned that disobedience had consequences. Deeds both good and bad brought either joy or sorrow.

The second story, to this day, makes me want to cry for my grandmother. It demonstrates the power of the spoken word to hurt for generations. Miss Dolly went to a one room school house in Weldon three days a week. The Harrington kids went there through third grade. At the age of seven, she was in the third grade lesson books. Like her brother, Leslie, she loved school. He was the artist in the family. In World War One, he was a cartographer drawing maps from memory. She was a whiz at ‘rithmatic and figures. She loved school until her new teacher arrived. During this time many of these one room teachers were men. My grandfather had, for her seventh birthday, taken her to Lovelady in the wagon to buy a new coat. Each child received a new coat on their seventh birthday. He saved all year for each coat. This coat according to Miss Dolly was the most beautiful red velvet coat ever made. It had a black velveteen collar, buttons, and cuffs. She later explained that it was the stiffest coat in the world, but her poppa had bought it just for her. The first day she wore it to school, the teacher said to her, “Where did you get that ugly coat?” She remembered every nuance, his vocal and facial expressions. She never wore the coat again; she never forgot those words. She told me this story when she was 70 years old for the first time. When I got my first teaching job, before I drove off in my Volkswagen Beetle, she told me “Karen, never make fun of a child’s appearance, their clothes, or anything they cannot help for themselves. You hear me now; they will never forget it.”

That was my first pedagogical lesson that has never gone out of practice or changed in student-teacher interaction. Basically you don’t have to be whiz teacher of the year; you don’t have to be the hardest or smartest teacher in the building. You don’t have to know the answers to all the questions. You take those students you are given (whether they fit or not into a mold) and you take care of their learning. In everything you do HAVE COURAGE TO SUCCEED, BE KIND AND TENDER HEARTED!