364 and counting

Happy New Year

With a new year, we need a change, so if you thought you found the wrong blog this morning, you're wrong! I decided to veer off course with a new look, which is exactly what Slight Detour allows me and my brother to do, and we seldom end up in the hospital. Of course, some of the things I write in my postings should put me in the hospital, but so far so good.

I noticed right away that the new format enhances the photos and cartoons nicely. I'll have to be more selective when choosing readable colors for my font. In fact, I'll probably go back and fix all the unreadables now that the dark color almost disguises them. That can be accomplished easily.

So, I welcome you all to a new year of Slight Detour. There's not much exciting here in this wet North Idaho to discuss today. It's warm and sloppy. We were in bed by 11 p.m. last night after celebrating New Year's in New York at my mother's house.

We did add a festive touch to the duel birthday party/New Year's Eve celebration by blowing of shrill noisemakers when the countdown in New York reached zero. I purchased these party implements from Harold's Foods several months ago, so they had special meaning as some of the last merchandise ever sold at the 60-year-old store before it closed in March.

I was happy to see that one of my new friends in 2005, Cis the Retired, toughed it out and sent all her blogging friends and family New Year's Wishes at precisely 11:59 p.m. last night. Thanks, Cis, may we blog away in 2006 and continue documenting life as we see it.

In 2006, I'm hoping that a new book will dominate my thoughts and actions, so since this posting serves as the introduction of a new year of blogging, I thought I'd share with you a few pages from the introduction of my new book, which will be published this year----come Hell or High Water (we've already got the latter).

I don't mind one bit if you tell all your friends and family to tell all their friends and family to be looking and spreading the word about Lessons with Love. From time to time, I'll share a few first pages of unedited chapters, just keep myself excited and hopefully entertain you. Enjoy:

Introduction: Teacher Prep

Almost every morning for nearly two years, I followed my older brothers out of the house, climbed atop a big wooden post at the end of our driveway and sat, watching, wishing and waiting. Each day as they would climb aboard the North Boyer school bus and the driver pulled the door shut, I’d yearn for the day when I’d be old enough to go up those metal steps myself, find my own shiny vinyl seat, and go to school.

Morning after morning, I imagined what it would be like sitting next to other neighborhood kids as we rode down the dirt road from our farm just outside the city limits of Sandpoint, Idaho, to Lincoln Elementary School two miles away. The partially-filled bus would stop several times after our house, to pick up the Bests, the Gunters, the Samuelsons, the Brooks, the Pursleys and the Barnharts before reaching Lincoln where Boyer kids would get off and run toward the two-story red and gray brick school house located across the street from Balch Lumber Company’s sawmill. A few of the remaining students would wait to get off at Farmin Elementary in downtown while the older kids stayed aboard until the bus reached the junior high or the new high school.

My big day finally came. After breakfast, my mother first helped me button my print dress, adorned with frilly white ruffles. Then, one by one, she removed the skinny white rags from my auburn hair, which she had so carefully wrapped around individual clumps the night before to enhance my natural curl. Taking extra time to primp her firstborn daughter and making sure that Mike’s and Kevin’s new collared shirts were properly tucked into their corduroy pants, Mother beamed with pride as she handed us our lunch boxes, with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies wrapped in wax paper. Then, she stood on the porch and watched us walk out the door.

On that September day in 1953, I began the first leg of my 49-year educational journey with Mrs. Mabel Kinney and her red fingernails. Those carefully-polished, pointy nails not only impressed me on that first day of school, but they kept my classmates and me in line from that day forth. Apparently, from past experience, Mrs. Kinney knew the most effective pressure points on little kids’ frames where her well-groomed, razor-sharp nails could inspire immediate respect. We learned quickly not to invite a visit to our desk from Mrs. Kinney and her nails. Some of my classmates also learned not to wet their pants. They would stand in the hallway with their coats wrapped around their lower extremities while their pants dried, or, in one case that I’ll never forget, they could have a bucket placed next to their desk, reminding them and everyone else of their embarrassing accident.

Besides getting acquainted with school behavior boundaries, I learned my ABC’s. I also learned to read from Dick and Jane books. I practiced penmanship with my clumsy left hand on wide pieces of paper with blue solid lines and blue hyphenated lines running through the middle as guides for the size of our letters. We wrote with yellow No. 2 pencils. We did math drills as Mrs. Kinney sat in the front of the room with flash cards. I’m sure we did our share of finger painting too.

I got in trouble one day from Mrs. Kinney. It was after school. While waiting for our school bus, David Harney and I were playing at the blackboard with chalk and erasers. David took an eraser and put chalk dust on his nose. I laughed and laughed loudly because he looked so funny with that pale yellow nose. David also laughed. Mrs. Kinney heard my giggling. She came into the room and spanked me.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” she warned. The humiliation of what I deemed unfair punishment followed me through the rest of my education and into my own teaching career. In fact, that distant scene of after-school injustice still remains vivid in my mind. At the time, Mrs. Kinney’s harsh discipline style was no different from most other teachers except for those intimidating fingernails. Corporal punishment was expected. In spite of that painful experience, even at that early time in my life, I entertained thoughts of some day becoming a teacher, but my chewed-off, often soiled fingernails still had a long way to go.

My grade school years with Mrs. Kinney and other elderly women teachers who kept their authoritarian thumbs on us while filling our minds with knowledge occurred at a time when our sleepy little town, tucked within the Idaho Panhandle on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille between Washington and Montana, was virtually unknown to the outside world, except maybe for relatives of the farmers and loggers who had settled in Sandpoint and the surrounding area during the first half of the Twentieth Century.

Lumber and cedar pole businesses reigned supreme at the time. Not far behind was a healthy agricultural industry supported by the hundreds of small dairies and beef farms throughout the county. We had the Farm-to-Market Road east of town. A livestock auction yard sat in the middle of a residential zone on the west side of town. A few blocks north, next to the pole yard, stood a thriving meat-packing plant. My mother and I often rode our horses from our farm to Jack’s Lockers in North Sandpoint to collect a few packages of frozen meat. We took cream from our milk cow to the local creamery. Several bulk gas plants served the farmers and loggers’ needs.

On First Avenue, stores such as Merwin’s Hardware, Del’s Family Shoe Store, Ben Franklin, Chapman’s Food Market, the Sandpoint and Bi Rite Drug stores, Jennestad’s or Larson’s Clothing stores and the J.C. Penney department store brought locals to town for regular weekend shopping. During these visits, folks might grab a hamburger or hotdog at the Sandpoint Cafe or Pastime where everybody knew everybody else. We did have a motel or two to house the occasional tourists who passed through town during the three months from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Many visitors crossed the yellow “Long Wagon” Bridge across Lake Pend Oreille enroute to Canada or Montana. The tourist numbers quickly dwindled as soon as Sandpoint went into its winter hibernation.

Another newer bridge, with a cement base rather than those boards that went “kerplunk, kerplunk, kerplunk” as cars passed over, replaced this structure in the mid-‘50s. The new span brought Gov. Robert Smylie to town for its dedication. Still, Sandpoint remained fairly quiet and isolated. I eventually moved on from grade school to Sandpoint Junior High as a seventh grader. The firm grasp those Lincoln School marms (except for our token male, Mr. Scheibe) had over us loosened a bit during our next level of education. We met six teachers a day---in my case, half men, half women.

Junior high also meant a step forward in independence for us 12-year-olds. We no longer had to loop our y’s and g’s as the Palmer method and our teachers had dictated, and if we wanted to write our cursive “backhand,” we could. We could also leave campus and cross Pine Street to purchase nickel and dime candies, pop, or ice cream bars at the Whatnot Shop.

In spite of these liberties, the adults in our school still maintained control and unquestioned guidance over our lives. All students, teachers and parents knew that Charlie Stidwell, our no-nonsense but much-loved principal, kept a paddle in his office and used it. He also closely inspected skirt length for girls and watched closely for low-hanging beltless slacks on the boys. Every morning, we listened to Mrs. Keiski, the office secretary, read a Bible verse over the intercom. One day, in seventh grade English, we all cringed when Mrs. Weaver broke a plastic ruler on Billy Freudenthal’s head for some infraction of her classroom rules. . . .

More to come in Lessons with Love, available sometime in 2006. Check this blog or my website at www.mariannelove.com for details.