room to move

It was September, 1972, the first day of school, my junior year at Livingston High. U. S. History was a required subject. Our instructor Mr. C. introduced himself and gave us a little of his own personal history. This was to be his first year of teaching. Previously he had been a major league ball player with the Cleveland Indians. He made no attempt to deny that he had been hired as an instructor because he could also coach baseball. Or maybe it was the other way around, he had been given the coaching position because he could also teach. Anyway some of the other boys in class were awe struck and after school they would bring in various bits of sporting equipment to be autographed or blessed.

I had never been into sports and had a different opinion about the merits being a professional athlete. I immediately began to form preconceived notions about this young mans ability to teach. Back then preconceived ideas were quite popular, unlike the enlightened times we live in today. I knew I was being prejudicial and made up my mind to give him a fair chance. I listened to his lectures, read the assigned chapters and took the test each week. But there was a problem. About six weeks into the semester he comes up to my desk one day.

"We need to talk. You haven't been turning in your homework."

I think I'd turned in one to two papers at the beginning of the year. The homework consisted writing out the answers to the questions at the end of each chapter. He went on.

"But every week you get an A on the test. I think you may be finding the assignments a bit boring."

I concurred. I also hated homework and had trouble with authority, but I didn't see the need to elaborate. United States History happened to be an easy subject for me. I had an unfair advantage because I had been born and raised in that country. Mr. C went on to explain that it was okay with him if I didn't turn in the papers, he could understand my not wanting to do it. I realized for the first time that I had something in common with "jocks". He told me that he needed to get some work out of me in order to justifying giving me a passing grade. He proposed that I did some outside reading and turn in book reports on what I'd read. He wanted to know if that proposal was acceptable.

"OK by me." I would do just about anything to get out of homework and I did have some small concern about keeping up the appearance that I was trying to get good grades.

The deal was that I could read anything I wanted as long as it had to do with U.S. history. He suggested I start with The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's scathing expose of the abuses in the meat packing industry in Chicago in the early twentieth century. It's a very good read and a real eye opener. It shows very clearly why we have the FDA and labor unions. When I turned in my report on it Mr. C. had some questions, he wanted to be sure I was aware of the very strong socialist message in the later part of the book. It would of been hard to miss.

But it was from the other books I read that year that I really learned. They were not recitations of names and dates. Nothing about who was president when or what country was our enemy in 1832. They were about the day to day lives of pioneers and Indians in the eastern half of the U.S. What life was like for people before history was made. History books will tell you when the cotton gin was invented and who patented the first sewing machine. They don't go into detail about the endless struggle to survive that prompted their development. Or the conditions and wild life that early settlers found. Everyone knows about the plains buffalo, once living in large herds numbering in the millions on the great plains. Almost no one knows about the forest buffalo, a solitary creature living in the woods of Kentucky among blue gum trees eight feet in diameter, now extinct.

And the only thing anyone knew about the Indians was what we saw in the movies. They were a problem for the cavalry, uncivilized heathens that needed to be removed to make way for progress. But at this time, right after the "hip" movement, the rejection of modern commercialism and a growing desire to return to the land and a simpler time, the Indians were getting a new reputation. One of a peaceful people living in harmony with their environment. Both conceptions were equally naive.

My junior year in high school I saw history from a different angle, I earned straight A's in Mr. C.'s class and learned a valuable lesson about prejudging people. This former ball player saw an opportunity to let me learn and he went out of his way to make it happen.

Thank you, Mr. C.

OWL

Sept. 22, 2007