Becoming a Teacher IX

Teachers usually don’t think much about leaving the profession until about February each year. That is when the school year seems like it will never end and they are stressed and tired. After about eight years at teaching I began to think about my options.

I was really comfortable with what I was doing although never quite satisfied with my lessons and student performance. I felt I understood the curriculum and could modify instruction to meet the needs of my students. I had grown tired of trying to buck a system that seemed to stifle innovation and stopped change dead in its tracks.

I thought about graduate school but doubted I could get in. I looked at my friends and saw that they were making a lot more money than I was and their families were a lot better off. I didn’t feel like their jobs were all that appealing and could see that most worked solely for the money. That is something educators obviously don’t do. I wasn’t sure what else I could do and make a living.

In late winter of 1979 I read in the Area Education Agency newsletter about an interesting opportunity. It changed my life! The article encouraged teachers to apply for admittance to something called the Southeast Iowa Writing Project (SWIP). Enrollment was limited and interested teachers needed to fill out an application and write an essay to get in. There were great incentives! Those accepted would get four hours of University of Iowa graduate credit free and a stipend of $500. I didn’t think I would get in but thought it was too good to pass up trying.

I filled out the form and wrote the essay. It was about how I used writing in science to help my students learn. I sent it all off to the AEA and waited. I still have the letter I got back saying I had been accepted! I was giddy with excitement! I didn’t know where it would lead me but I was ready for the adventure.

In March I was invited to an orientation meeting at the Ft. Madison office of the AEA. There I met Chris Rauscher and Jim Davis. They were the two people who would be teaching the class. The other participants intimidated me. Most were high school English teachers. I pinched myself and wondered how I got accepted with this group.

Chris and Jim gave an overview of what to expect and gave us some articles to read before the class that was scheduled for three weeks that summer. I was pleased to learn that it would be offered in the library at Iowa Wesleyan College. They told us we would be reading and journaling a lot. They said we would all need a journal and showed us a couple examples.

At one point during the orientation Chris and Jim came around and talked to us individually. I was surprised at how much they knew about me! Jim talked about the piece I had written and my background as a science teacher. I was impressed!

And, so, began the adventure that would change my life in ways I could never have imagined.

Becoming a Teacher VIII

70s39 Becoming a Teacher

In the seventies and eighties teacher’s were required to write lesson plans and turn a copy in each week. The idea was that if something happened to you, whoever took your place would be able to start where you left off. It was useful for substitutes if you didn’t get a chance to write up specific plans. Many teachers resented having to turn a copy in because they felt the administration didn’t trust them.

I really didn’t have a problem with making a copy and turning it in. In those days we used a piece of carbon paper so it was just remembering to use it and put it in the right way when you did it. A few times I put the carbon in backwards and the copy ended up on the back of the page. I found my own lesson plans very useful and didn’t feel I could teach well without them.

I still have every one I wrote, even the ones I did when I was a student teacher. They are full of all kinds of interesting things. I wrote detailed plans about what I would do each day of the week in each subject. There are also notes and comments about specific students or events. I usually crossed out things when I completed them and drew arrows to the next day if I didn’t get to it.

I also had a full school year plan for each subject I taught. It laid out what I would do each month for the year. I never got everything I thought I would do done because I tended to over plan. I didn’t want to not have enough to do when I wrote the daily and yearly plans so I always put in more than I knew I could get done.

Writing the lesson plan required me to look very carefully at the material I was using to determine how best to present it to the students. Most of the reader and math series were scripted and told you exactly what to do and say. You really only needed to know how to read to teach that way. Many times the scripts were way off and written by someone who didn’t know kids, learning, or hadn’t been in a classroom for a long time.

I have heard of principals that expected teachers to follow those scripts and to be exactly where they said they would be each day in their lesson plans. I never had an administrator like that and I don’t think too many of that type exist anymore, at least in Iowa. That practice is still prevalent, unfortunately, in some states. Generally, they are places where teachers typically are not highly trained.

Most training now focuses on teaching teachers to be instructional decision makers and how to tailor instruction to meet the needs of all of their students. Sometimes teachers can do that as they plan the lesson and sometimes they do it on the fly if they feel the need to make adjustments to help the students learn.

Becoming a Teacher VII

I had some great success with difficult students early on in my career and as I have said, that meant that I got almost every difficult one that came along. Most of those kids would be in a behavior disorder classroom now but there wasn’t such a place back then. Several times the district transferred a difficult kid in town to be in my room. On one occasion a student from the Salem Elementary school was bused to my building to be in my room. Twice students from the Trenton area who would have gone to Pleasant Lawn were bused to my classroom.

These were kids who generally brought terror to the eyes of teachers in the building and students on the playground. Somehow, with patience, I was able to calm everyone including the kid. Sometimes the kid would come and there wouldn’t be any problems at all. The change and having a male teacher had been enough to influence the behavior. Other times it wasn’t so easy! Then it was a journey.

Negative behavior usually just doesn’t go away overnight. It takes time and persistence. Even the smallest gain must be celebrated and rewarded. The goal is to constantly reframe every situation so the student is ready to learn. Some of my colleagues wanted the kid to be contrite while I wanted the kid to be back in the room with a positive attitude. That meant that he/she didn’t carry the punishment, whatever it was, on his shoulders for long. There is a strong psychological foundation for that approach but some of my colleagues were more into punishment until it hurts.

Many parents believed in the latter philosophy. If their child was involved in some kind of a problem they always wanted to make sure everyone got the same punishment. If it was clearly the other kids fault they wanted to make sure his punishment was severe. They always pressed me for details but the consequences for someone else’s child is really done of their business. I usually assured them the child was punished and left it at that.

I had a particularly challenging kid who was very violent during my time at Harlan. His family background was horrible. He had witnessed a great deal of violence and inappropriate behavior in his ten years of life. Some of the stories related to him made me physically ill.

I tried every trick in the book to manage him with little success. His father told me to “just whup his butt!” and the principal actually did that once. I was a witness to it and found it very sobering. It worked for a while.

What really finally worked was developing a relationship with the kid…eventually playing with him and others on the playground. The better I knew him and he knew me the more I could reason with him. That was an important point in my emerging belief that relationships are everything. I have held fast to that since.

Once, I had to ask this student to leave the room. In the hall I chastised him severely and shaking my finger backed him into the wall. Suddenly, I saw a tear run down his cheek. I couldn’t believe my words had that kind of effect and, bewildered, I said, “Why are you crying?” He meekly responded, “I backed in to the wall heater!”

Becoming a Teacher VI

Teaching is a sacred trust! Families place their most prized things in your trust…their children. They trust that you will nurture them and keep them safe. It is something not to be taken lightly by educators. Because they do that, they are sometimes cautious. Probably more so today than in the 1970s when I first started teaching.

When I started some parents were a little leery of me. One, because I was a male in a field dominated by females and two, because I was a local boy with a not so great academic reputation. I got lots of questions and I am sure the school administration did to.

I was asked similar questions so many times that they began to annoy me! “Why would a male want to go into elementary education?” Do you plan to continue your education so you can be a high school teacher? And “Are you going to become an administrator?” There was/is the perception by some of the clueless that “People who can, do. People who can’t, teach”

Nothing has been heavier on my mind than safety in my entire career as an educator. I have had this terrible fear that someone would be seriously hurt or die on my watch. I took what some thought were extreme measures to see that didn’t happen.

In the first few years of my career and occasionally after that I had parents volunteer in my classroom. Actually, that first year a couple insisted on it. One wanted to organize the books in the classroom library. Given the small size of the library that took about 15 minutes. They were all obviously concerned about what I might do to their children. By Thanksgiving I had won them over and they disappeared. I guess they decided I could be trusted after all.

Because I was the first male the kids had encountered as a teacher there were other problems, too. My voice was too loud for some and others thought I was mean. I worked hard to win the kids over by over compensating. I learned to speak softly and to joke around with the kids. When we all began to have fun it made it easier for us all.

Overtime it became clear to me that being positive created an environment where kids were ready to learn. That stayed with me during my entire career whether I was teaching kindergarteners or senior citizens. A positive supportive environment is ten times more effective that a stern critical one… something some of my colleagues never learned. I have seen many coaches fall into the negative pattern of only criticizing and belittling their players and then wondering why they have such a poor record. They usually end up blaming the players. I have seen others that build on the strengths of their players and have great success. It seems so simple yet so hard for some.

Becoming a Teacher V

During my childhood and the early years of my teacher career I think education was a more powerful source and influence in the lives of kids than it is now. I have seen a dramatic change that seemed to begin in the 1970s. It could have been earlier and I just wasn’t aware of it. I don’t mean to say that education isn’t a powerful influence now but that there are other equally, or more powerful, forces now.

In my early years parents rarely questioned educators. They almost always supported the teacher in issues of discipline and curriculum. Teachers were highly revered people, although underpaid. Teachers begged for more parent and state involvement in education issues and funding. They raised concerns about the inadequate curriculum and support.

At Saunders we struggled to keep a viable district parent teacher organization. I served as vice president for a time. Only teachers showed up at the meetings. Parents didn’t see the urgency we felt and they were content to let things go along as they always had.

In the mid seventies Iowa passed collective bargaining for public school teachers. That meant we could negotiate with the school board about salaries. I got involved in that for a while as chair of the teacher negotiation team and then chief negotiator. It is a thankless job with lots of hours outside the school day. At least we were able to negotiate a good contract that served as a model for many other districts.

The bad part is that it set up an adversarial relationship between the teachers and the board and administration. The board and administration then slowly begin to convince the community that the teachers were bad because they were taking their tax dollars. Public sentiment began to shift.

Another problem was on the horizon. Fundamentalism was on the rise across the world. Americans were held hostage in Iran. Locally, religious fundamentals jumped on the bandwagon and condemned public education for the evils of the world. They were against values education, evolution, and generally anything else that might teach their children to think. It was scary! These critics really had no idea what went on in a typical classroom.

A small group from a local church refused to send their kids to public school. The kids were truant, parents were charged, and eventually the group opened their own school. A public forum was held in the community room of a local bank and leaders of the group chastised us for being evil. Our own pastor, Ron McMenimen, rose and spoke passionately in rebuttal and our defense. He made me proud to be a Presbyterian that day! The critics were speechless when he was he finished. He knew their brand of Christianity better than they did, but the damage was done.

The irony is that most of the Sunday school teachers in all of the churches in town were “evil” public school teachers during the week.
I read this week of the teacher in the Middle East that was to be flogged for letting students name a teddy bear Mohammad and I was immediately reminded of the intolerance of our own far right. Scary!

Becoming a Teacher IV

In my 50s and 60s pieces I wrote about my struggles as a student and so I won’t repeat it all again. Let it suffice to say I struggled as an elementary student and certainly wasn’t a stellar high school student either. It wasn’t until my junior year in college that things began to fit together.

Many experts believe that the biggest influence on the way teachers teach is how they were taught as students. I would tend to agree with that. If they felt they were really successful in school, teachers tend to teach like their teachers did. On the other hand, if they struggled they might choose methods they think might be more effective. I would be in the latter group.

I was fortunate to student teach with a teacher who was open minded and encouraged innovation. She modeled effective instruction for me everyday and was a big influence on me. I adapted many of her ideas and techniques for my own classroom.

Marsha Cammack also heavily influenced me. Marsha taught special education in the room right next to mine. She was an incredibly positive person and had a big impact on me as well as her students. Marsha and I were doing mainstreaming (now called inclusion) of her students in my regular education classroom in 1971. We were pioneers for what is now commonplace. One unintended side effect of the success we were having with special needs kids was that for the rest of my teaching career I was the person that got the special needs kids and the discipline problems when they got to my grade level.

John Becker, the person who hired me and was the principal of the building, also influenced me. John was a progressive educator who was open to new ideas. He had a reputation as an outstanding teacher, himself, and that added credibility. He encouraged me and had confidence in my skills as a teacher.

I would have to say that my own daughters had a big impression on me, too, as I formulated my ideas about learning. They had some of the same struggles I had at their age and I could see what worked for them and what didn’t. I even experimented on them sometimes, probably more with Heather because my thoughts were not as formulated when Angie was younger. I tried different things to immerse them in language as they grew up. I watched as they had different kinds of teachers and could easily see where they prospered.

In the spring of 1972 I took Supervision of Primary Grade Reading at the urging of some colleagues in the building. I really had no business doing it in my first year but I did. It was a University of Iowa extension course offered in Mt. Pleasant. Although I only got a “C” in the course I did get a lot out of it and it bolstered my emerging beliefs about learning. The teacher wrote me a note at the end of the course saying she couldn’t recommend me for graduate school. I hadn’t asked her to? Her comment haunted me for years.

Becoming a Teacher III

Not having a viable alternative I followed along with other teachers and used the basal reading program and the language arts book. I hated it but I did it for a while at least. Then things begin to happen. Things I loved and the kids loved began to creep in to the day. I started reading aloud to the kids more, using poetry more, and letting the kids do their self-selection of literature from the library. We started writing a lot more, too. Still commercially produced materials dominated my classroom.

But the tide began to shift. I saw the rumbling of discontent in the professional journals. I knew I had to be a better teacher. I knew I couldn’t continue to do something I didn’t believe in…something I was convinced was actually doing harm to the kids.

Other teachers wanted to do more but were afraid. Teachers generally are a very cautious group. Contrary to popular belief they don’t take on every new thing that comes down the pike. Generally teachers teach they way they were taught and only do things differently if there is powerful research and support for it.

Parents demand their children be taught just the same way they were taught. Parents have stopped more than one significant educational innovation simply because it was new and different. When I hear politicians tell us education has got to change I always think they are talking to the wrong people. They need to talk to the parents.

Publishers and parents got the pieces but not the picture and, unfortunately many others were in the same boat. The goal of reading and writing instruction should be to produce readers and writers.

The model of public education we use today came from another time and was tailored to produce good citizens and level the playing field by offering the education to everyone. In Europe only the very wealthy could afford to be educated and the thinking in the new world was that it should be for everyone. It was only later that things like producing good workers for the business world became important. The one size fits all model we were using in Mt. Pleasant and most other schools wasn’t working because large numbers of kids were failing to become readers and writers.

So I was faced with the dilemma. Follow the rules and just go along with the others, or ask a lot of questions and try to find a better way. There had to be a better way! But, would the school district let me find it and use it if I did? What about my colleagues? What would they say? What about parents? I was sure they expected a traditional education much the same as they one they had. And last, but most important, would the kids prosper and grow up to be readers and writers?

Up to that time I had been influenced by a lot of different people and things. Out of my experience I began to form my beliefs about education and learning. (Continued)

Becoming a Teacher II

Rudolf Flesch was strongly opposed to a technique that was in use in some places in the early 1950s called the “look and say” method in which students learned to recognize whole words. He felt that students were not being taught to link letters with sounds and turn the sounds into words. He felt that looking at the context in which the word was used in was counter productive.

What was called phonics became the method of preference in most schools for the next 30 years or so even though research and professional opinion didn’t support it as the only method to use it became just that! I was beaten by the phonics stick myself and now facing the prospect of doing what I hated so much to my own students.

The trouble was that learners associated reading with boring and pointless drill and practice and writing with grammar drills and red marks on their papers. There was no reading and writing but rather the so-called preparation to be readers and writers. Contrary to Flesch’s contention, Johnny could read but he chose not to. Much the same problem that we have with most adults today and the same is true for writing.

Are the generations of kids hammered with Flesch’s phonics better readers today? Nope! Publishers loved the programmed instruction and made a fortune peddling their reading series. Textbook authors and quasi researchers published volumes to support what they were doing…lining the pockets of the publisher. The popular press was full of stories espousing their beliefs. True researchers who had no vested interest in selling books continue to advocate for an alternative but their voices we drowned out by the deep pockets of the book selling industry.

Those who advocated for more novels and books (literature based) in the hands of children didn’t have a chance either. The publishers wanted to sell their volumes of scripted lessons that only included brief reading passages that the kids seldom got to even read.

A movement called whole language was quietly gaining strength in the background. It advocated for much more reading and writing and the teaching of skills in the context of the student learning and not in isolation as advocated by the phonics approach. I was drawn to it because it made sense to me. Who could learn to golf or play tennis or ride a bike if they never got to actually do it because they were always practicing the sub skills? Thus, came the name, whole language, and teaching from the whole to the part. That is pretty much how we learn everything else. Oh, there is some instruction that usually goes on before hand but the real learning doesn’t really happen until the learner tries the activity.

Teachers didn’t have to think. They dutifully read the script in the teachers’ manual to their three reading groups and didn’t question the fact that it didn’t take any training to do that. When it is tightly controlled like that there is no decision making on the part of the teacher. Today we know that good teachers make instruction decisions that impact student learning all the time. We now train teachers to do just that. (To be continued)

Becoming a Teacher

Some say that good teachers are born while others say they have to be trained. I think it is both. Some people are more natural at it than others but they can benefit from some training, too. At least, I did!

I felt pretty confident, coming out of college, that I could do the job. I knew quite a bit about science and had the equivalent of a minor in that area. I was comfortable with math at the elementary school level and didn’t see social studies as a challenge. I wasn’t so sure about how to teach skill-oriented reading or even where to start for that matter. I hadn’t been a good reading student myself so that didn’t help. I loved language but didn’t do well with the traditional language arts classes that were heavy on drill and practice.

Educators tend to break things that need to be taught into parts, teach the part, and then have the student put it all together. The problem was that we got so busy teaching the part that the student never got around to putting it together. The putting together is where the fun and reward of learning is. Needless to say many didn’t find reading and language arts fun and rewarding. Kids rarely read anything more than a very short passage. Research in those days said elementary students spent less than two minutes a day reading. They almost never got to write a story and when they did it was taken apart piece by piece with a red pen.

I sought advice from my colleagues in the building about how best to go about teaching reading and language arts (English). Most just said they went by the teacher’s manual. It was scripted instruction and had exactly what the teacher should say and what the student response would probably be. No creativity there! It seemed sterile and boring. I honestly believe the other teachers were terribly bored with it and, as a result, the students were, too. Oh, a small percentage of kids “got it” and made sense of the drudgery but the majority just dutifully plugged along.

It just seemed to me that it didn’t have to be that way. School didn’t have to be boring and tedious. Kids needed to know that somehow it would all fit together for them. From that came a career long battle of swimming upstream against prevailing practice in the classroom. The surprising thing was that even then, and long before then, research and professional opinion was on my side. As far back as the late 1890s professionals had warned of the pitfalls of the drill and grill instruction that became common practice after Rudolf Flesch’s book Why Johnny Can’t Read became so popular in the 1950s. As I recall he had little background in education but had tutored his child or grandchild using the skill and drill technique and the child could now read. It wasn’t research and it might just have been the extra attention the child got that turned him around. Flesch swore it was the method and if it worked for this kid it would work for all kids.

Publishers grabbed on to the “one size fits all” mentality and produced manuals and workbooks and worksheets by the truck load! Use their materials as they prescribe and your students will prosper. Never mind that they had never met even one of my students.
(Part 1 of many!)

The West Clay House

The West Clay house was in a nice neighborhood. It was within walking distance, about three blocks, of downtown Mt. Pleasant. The hospital was even closer and just on the other side of part of Saunders Park. The city swimming pool was just down the hill about a block from our house. Later, in the 80s I taught school for several years at Manning school that was just on the other side of the park, past the hospital, and about four blocks from the house. It made walking to and from work a pleasure!

The Shappell’s lived in the house just west of our house. The two lots were once one and the Shappell house was part of a much bigger house that was on the lot years before. When they tore part of the larger house down they used a lot of the material to build our house. Through the years we were in that house we found old cisterns and foundation materials from the older building. I think that our basement was the original and you could see where stones had been used to fill in where it formerly joined the other.

Behind our house was a large lot that covered at least a quarter of the block. The Van Allen family owned it. Actually, the Van Allen’s owned everything on the block except our lot and the Shappell’s. My Dad said traveling circuses and other performance groups used that lot when they came through town. My plat said that there had once been a schoolhouse in the northwest corner of the lot and there were some foundation type stones in that area. We liked having the lot as a buffer between us and Washington Street, which was also Highway 34.

The east half of the block had two houses on it. Facing Washington Street was the old Van Allen house. It is now a museum. Directly across the alley from us was the new Van Allen house. My cousin, Bob Mendenhall and his wife live in that house now. While we were there, Winfred Van Allen lived there. She was the wife of Judge George Van Allen who was a brother to James. She sometimes had me come over and change light bulbs in her house because she couldn’t reach then.

Directly across the street south of our house lived the Deckers. Charlie was a retired salesman and always volunteered as a conductor for the railroad at Old Threshers. His wife, Joanne, was best known for her Miss Kitty (from the Gunsmoke TV show) costume that she loved to wear at Old Threshers and other community events.

Dr. Poulter and his wife lived east of the Deckers. We didn’t see them often because their house faced away from us. The Wings lived in the next house south of them. On the west side of the Deckers was a house that was owned by Glen Hoffman and his wife. They built and lived in a newer house behind and down near the swimming pool. The Grandson Bob Jennings and his wife Bonnie lived in the older house.

Deer Hunting

Growing up I did a lot of hunting and fishing. I hunted rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, and quail, but never deer. My mother, of course, thought deer were beautiful animals and didn’t think they should be hunted. I, too, thought they were pretty amazing animals. I still do.

Deer were almost totally hunted out of Iowa by the turn of the century. That would be 1900 for you readers. It was only through conservation efforts that they were re-introduced in Iowa. I have seen early Iowa newspaper articles from the 1920s about the excitement of spotting a deer. Over the years the population grew unchecked. By the 1970s deer hunting was a popular outdoor activity.

My neighbor, Charlie Shappell, invited me to hunt with his group soon after we moved into our house on West Clay. I passed that year but took him up on the offer the next year. I hunted with them for several years.

I learned that storytelling is a huge part of hunting deer. The hunters easily spend as much time talking about the hunt as they do hunting. Stories from previous years have to be told. It is truly a social event for the participants. At its heart, deer hunting is more about being out in the woods than killing anything. The hunt is just as satisfying even if you don’t shoot a deer.

The first year I hunted I didn’t see a live deer. I saw a couple dead ones that other members of the group shot but that was it. The second year I saw a couple from a great distance but nothing anywhere close enough to shoot at. The third year the group placed me on a hill that looked out over a big valley.

From that vantage point I watched in amazement as deer ran from one side of the valley to the other. When they reached one side there would be a volley of 10 or 20 shots and the deer would run to the other side where they would encounter more hunters. They would fire away and the deer would run back the other way. This went on for some time as the hunters on each side moved down the valley. It was amazing! It was even more amazing considering that hundreds of shots must have been fired and not one single deer was hit. The two-dozen or so deer escaped unscathed. They must have gone off somewhere and laughed about the cross-eyed hunters who shot at them.

Often we finished the season with only one or two deer to show for all of our time and energy. We usually split up the meat between all of the hunters and so sometimes I only got a package or two. Other times we did better but always missed more deer than we hit.

It was four years before I even fired a shot and seven years before I got my first deer. He as a huge buck that probably would have ran over me if I hadn’t shot him. His rack is still on the shelf in the garage. When I finally broke the ice that year I seemed to get one every year for several years in a row.

Smoking

I am embarrassed to admit that I was a smoker. While I was never a heavy smoker, I was a smoker non-the less. It is hard for me to believe now, that I did it for so long. Now, I don’t even like to be in smoky places.

My smoking started out innocent enough. I think I first tried it under a bridge on West Madison Street. Then I think maybe a couple times with the boys in the neighborhood. David or Billy, who both had parents who smoked, would steal a few from them and we would get together someplace secretly and smoke them. I was probably 10 to 12 years old.

Later, we would send Billy to the gas station to buy a pack. We would all smoke one or two and then hid them someplace. Many times we would lose interest and never go back to find the hidden pack. I suppose some of them could still be out there somewhere? A few times Billy bought cigarettes for us to sell at Boy Scout camp. In the black market our camp cigarettes would sell for as much as one dollar a piece. As I have written before, I often came home from camp with more money than I took.

By the time I was a freshman in high school I was having a cigarette or two almost every weekend when I was out with the guys or on a date. By then I could buy my own at a vending machine somewhere. They were about 35 cents a pack, I think. Athletes had to be careful they didn’t get caught smoking because they would be punished. I recall only a few who didn’t smoke at one time or another.

With each year I seemed to smoke a little more. In its peak in my high school years I probably smoked as many as five cigarettes a day. That’s not many but it was still becoming a habit. In continued into college even when I was on the swimming team where oxygen is a premium. I guess it didn’t help that the coach smoked, too.

When I became a teacher I could only smoke at certain times. I had to go to the boiler room of the building to do it. I began to plan my whole day around when I could smoke and my consumption increased to about 10 cigarettes a day. It never got much higher than that. Along the way I smoked a pipe for a while and often would have a cigar or two if I was out fishing or hunting.

I quit smoking cold turkey on April 29, 1978. I would have to say it has been the most difficult thing I have done in my life. I smoked my last cigarette that Friday night. I have not had another smoke of any kind since that day. Sometimes, now, almost thirty years later the urge is still there but I haven’t given in.

The power of the addiction is huge and I am afraid if I would have just one it would lead to another. You should never yield to anything that powerful except God! You have to take charge of your body.

The Trabert Place

I wrote about this place in my “Secret Places” piece last year but it is worthy of a little more. The Trabert Place is located in Jefferson County and at one time or another visited by every member of my family except my granddaughters. My mother and father were there many times. My sisters, Nancy and Loretta hunted arrowheads there with my father. Angie and Heather were there with us hunting more than once, too.

It was one of my father’s favorite spots for several reasons. He took a group from the State Archeologists office there and a lot of others. A dirt road cuts across the ridge above the spot. If the road wasn’t muddy the site was accessible. If it was muddy we sometimes walked in. That wasn’t easy but sometimes very worth it.

The site has much to offer. Standing on the dirt road and looking east you can see across the Skunk River valley into Henry County. It is a magnificent view! From there you can see the farm where Dad grew up. About a mile the other way, west, is where Dad was born in Christian Egli’s house, his grandfather.

Facing east again and following the ridge we are on to the right we come to a spot were several Native American babies were buried. They were buried in shallow rock lined graves with large flat stones on top. Dad was very sad and reverent when we came across them. He reported the site to the State Archeologist Office and they came and excavated them and took the bones and reburied them somewhere else where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

Still on that road, the field directly in front of us was full of artifacts. It was an ancient site and yielded several axes, spear points and other material. After the deep mole board plowing, ancient fire pits were evident. That deep plowing isn’t done anymore because it led to so much erosion.

The more recent sites were much farther down close to where Walnut Creek goes into the river. Dad assisted in identifying one of the spots as Hopewell because of the type of artifacts we found there. We found points and large amounts of pottery there.

It was easy for us to spend an entire day there walking the rows of corn or beans and still not cover everything. We did that many times. Often Dad would bring along delicious sandwiches that Mom made and we would have them for lunch along with some sorghum cookies.

One summer day we had an unusual experience while sitting along the dirt road eating our sandwiches. While we were eating and talking we suddenly heard a huge roar to the West and looking up saw three huge airplanes approaching us at what seemed like treetop level. They passed right over us and were gone in seconds. We were speechless for a moment. Later we read that Air Force bombers for Offutt Air Force base near Omaha were practicing strafing runs in the less populated areas of Jefferson and other counties.

Kayaks

My Dad and I went canoeing many times. I think the first time I took him on Big Creek in the Explorer canoe hooked him. We got in just north of town and got out near old highway 34. It was after a rain so what was normally a rocky stream was a raging boat ride. Actually the creek was only a few feet deep in most places but it was still a fun trip. He loved it.

We floated down Big Creek, Big Cedar, and the Skunk River from Merrimac to Oakland Mills. I still have a piece of ancient pottery I found on a sandbar in the middle of the river. Floating down Big Creek or any float trip was like a trip to another place. The rocky bluffs on both sides of the creek made us feel like we were in the wilderness. The abundant wild life was a constant source of beauty. The whole thing was like a vacation to Colorado.

One of Dad’s neighbors, Clarence Rouse, introduced Dad to kayaking. Clarence had two kayaks that he built from kits. They had a wooden frame and were covered with a vinyl like material. They were very sturdy and could withstand major whitewater conditions. Dad went with him several times including a trip down the Buffalo River in Missouri.

That convinced Dad he should build one of his own. He ordered the kit from Folbot. It was very similar to a kit they still sell called the Greenland II. He had all the equipment he would need and was an experienced woodworker. The question, then, was where do you build a boat that size in the wintertime. Building it outside in an Iowa winter was not an option.

The basement at our house was suggested as a possible location. To make sure they could get it out of there once it was built they first brought over a 17 foot board. It would easily go down the steps and into the basement. Ever cautious, they brought Clarence’s boat over and put it in the basement. It had room to spare! So, our basement on Clay Street became the building site for the boat.

Clarence and Dad worked on it diligently for about a month. I helped when I could and when spring came we had a kayak. It returned to the basement only for winter storage and was just turned over outside in the summer. Although Dad used it a lot it was usually stored at our house and he encouraged us to use it.

That boat took the place of the Explorer canoe for us and we used it a lot. I still have two of the paddles but the boat itself is long gone. I miss it but it was heavy and vulnerable to puncture in rocky waters. It repaired easily but it was always a concern.

The last trip we took in it Dad and I got caught in a rainstorm between Rome and Oakland Mills. We waited it out standing under an overhang at Neil Panther’s cabin west of town.

Canoes

When the Explorer Scout Troup disbanded in Mt. Pleasant much of their gear went to whoever wanted it. Clint Rila kept the seventeen-foot canoe and would loan it out to any Scout or former Scout who wanted to use it. He would even let you keep it for extended periods because there just wasn’t much demand for it.

We borrowed that canoe a lot! It was easy to lift up on top of a car, strap it on and carry it off to a river or stream somewhere. We usually used it on the Skunk River, Big Cedar Creek or Big Creek. It was fun to get some other couples and more canoes and go on a float trip. Most of the time the weather was good and we had few problems. At least once the weather was bad.

One time we planned a trip with two other couples. Each couple had their own canoe. We thought we would float down Big Cedar and have a picnic on the way. When the day came it was cool and rainy but we were determined to go anyway. We loaded up our gear and headed for the starting point. By that time it was evident that one of the females was less than excited about going even if the weather got better.

As luck would have it she got wet just getting into the canoe. It went down hill from then on. Becky and I were experienced and dressed for the occasion. I can’t say the doomed couple was. The third couple were prepared and not getting bothered by the circumstances. The male taunted the now discouraged couple and after awhile pulled up next to them and rocked their canoe. The victims over compensated and were in the water in an instant! The female let out a stream of expletives that only fueled the bully.

When they were back in the boat and headed downstream he started in again. Seeing that this could only get a lot worse I encouraged him to leave them alone and he did for a while. By that time the poor couple wanted nothing than to just get out of there, dry out, and get some warm clothes on. We were in the middle of a stretch of the creek between the only exit points, which were simply bridges. There was really no choice but to ride it out. We had planned to go a lot further but the couple and the other two females in the group had enough.

When we did get near the exit point the bully started again with the taunts and then moved in for the boat rocking. Trying to get away the couple tipped again. By then the female was so mad she was spitting bullets. We got out at the bridge, trudged through ankle deep mud and flagged a ride to one of our cars. Eventually we all go home safely. We thought maybe we all just go someone’s house and eat but that was quickly nixed.

The very sad part of this whole story is that the couple that had so much trouble soon divorced. I doubt if it really had anything to do with the canoe trip but I am sure it didn’t help.

My Dad and I canoed a lot together and he even, with the help of a friend, built a kayak. More on that in the next piece.

Rabbits

When Angie aand Heather were young we raised rabbits. They, of course, multiply so quicky you have more than you bargained for. That happened to us. I thought maybe we could sell them to people for food. I probably should have known better since I raised rabbits as a kid.

The trick is to have a litter and raise them to four or five pounds and then sell them as pets or for food. A female rabbit can produce 1000% of her body weight in food in a year. You wean rabbits after about 8 weeks and the female can then be bred for another litter. They usually have seven to ten babies per litter.

Dad helped me build a terrific two-section cage for the rabbits. The buck lived on one side and the mother and babies on the other. They were only allowed together when it was time to make babies. There was a door between the two cages that could be opened at the right times. The cages had narrow mesh wire floor and wider chicken wire on the sides and top. The floor mesh was wide enough to let the manure fall through but support the rabbits’ feet. I was pretty proud of the design and construction.

The cage was located just off our patio and under a small redbud tree. Feeding and watering were easy and rabbit food was cheap in those days. They also loved leftover lettuce and carrot and potato peelings.

Early one morning I heard a rabbit scream! It’s a horrible sound! We had a litter that was about six weeks old at the time. I went out to the cage and found that one of the rabbit’s had got a paw somehow twisted in the wider chicken wire on the side. The rabbits twisting and squirming had only made the situation worse. Its leg was broken and pulled out of joint. I had to cut the wire to get it out. The whole thing saddened me! I gave the rabbit to my neighbor who I am sure had it for dinner.

Shortly after that incident I decided to sell or give away the whole bunch. An old friend, Billy Jackson took the rabbits and cage and I thought I was done with it. That wasn’t the case because he returned it all the next day saying his landlord wouldn’t let him keep them. A few days later another guy took the whole thing off my hands and gave me ten bucks, too. The cage was probably worth twice that.

That was the end of my experience with rabbits. I often think I would like to have a rabbit. They produce the most incredible fertilizer that would be great for my garden. For a while I had a friend whose kids were in 4H and supplied me with a feedbag full of manure two or three times a year. I need to find someone like that again or start rasing rabbits to produce my own.

Bank Poles

I wouldn’t call bank pole fishing a sport. It is more of a harvest of available food. It involves baiting up to five poles and sticking them in the muddy bank along the river. Thus, the name bank poles. All of the poles must be tagged with your name and address and be checked regularly. If you don’t follow the regulations you are very likely to get a ticket. Typically, the poles were just five to six feet long branches cut from trees. On the big end it was chopped to a point so it would stick easily in the bank. On the other a length of line is tied.

I usually used some strong line or string not much longer than the length of the pole. My bait of choice was always a three or four inch sunfish that I had caught in a pond somewhere. I would stick the pole in the bank and let the hooked sunfish swim around near the surface. It was best to fish with a bank pole when the river is rising as the fish feed on what is a new area for them so the lines are often only a few inches from shore.

Most often I did this kind of fishing with a group of two or three friends. We would each put out our lines early in the evening and then go and run them every four hours or so for the next 24 hours. Five lines usually yielded two or three catfish each time and sometimes more.

One guy in our group was particularly annoying. If he knew where your lines were he would run them before you got there and then show the fish off as ones he caught. He was soon out of the group. Another guy liked to do the fishing but didn’t like to do any of the work involved. He always had something he had to do right now when it came time to clean the fish or anything else that required much effort.

I remember once when I put out poles down river about a mile from Oakland Mills. A run of the lines about eight o’clock that evening had produced good results including a three pound cat. Nobody was willing, that night to run them again around midnight so I ended up going out to run mine by myself.

It was pretty dark but I thought I could see well enough with the light of the moon and stars so I left the flashlight in the car. I am actually kind of fond of a dark night in the woods. If you couldn’t see the fish you could certainly feel it when you grabbed the pole.

Anyway, this first pole had a pan size catfish. I rebaited it and moved on. The second was empty. As I approached the third I could tell it must have a fish on cause the line was moving around wildly. I grabbed the pole and I could feel the fish or, at least, what I thought was a fish.

I lifted the pole and reached for about where I thought the fish would be. Just a split second before I grabbed the line I saw in the moon light something that was four or five feet long and not much bigger around than the pole. It was a snake! I dropped the whole thing on the ground and took about 10 steps backward falling in the brush.

I got to my feet as quickly as possible and went to the car to get my flashlight. Back at the pole I found the huge black snake angrily trying to get off the hook. How do you get a snake off the hook in the middle of the night? I didn’t know either. I ended up cutting the line as close to the snake as possible and then I got out of there as quickly as possible.

When I returned in the daylight the snake was nowhere to be found. I pulled all of my poles out and went home. I fished with bank poles after that but was a lot more careful when I ran the lines.

Changing Schools

After two years at Saunders, a K-6 grade building, the district decided to move to grade level buildings. For some reason they decided Saunders would be a K-2 building and Harlan would be a third and fourth grade building.

To this day I am somewhat mystified as to why they did it. I have never read in research or professional opinion that one is significantly more effective than the other. I was also surprised that if they were going to do it they would put the smaller kids in a building on multi-levels with lots of steps.

Anyway the district moved me and the third grade teacher, Nadine McCoy, to Harlan over the summer. Becky was set to be the building secretary at Harlan, too, but took a job at the Coop over the summer to be Lawrence McCoy’s (Nadine’s husband) confidential secretary. That was probably good because she probably would have killed me if she had to live with me and work with me everyday.

I loved my top floor room at Saunders. The big window on the north looked out over the playground and the south facing windows in the hall outside my room were perfect for starting tomatoes. Every spring the windows were lined with the little milk cartons with plants sprouting out the top.

Harlan was a much newer building on the north side of town. It was over a mile from our house on West Clay. Not a really long walk from home but a lot farther than the three and a half blocks Saunders was.

At Harlan they put me in the classroom at the end of the north Hall and on the left. The new principal was Philip Speidel. The windows along the north side of my room looked out on the street. It certainly wasn’t the pleasing view that I had at Saunders and I lost the advantage of being able to watch my kids on the playground during recess.

Gertrude Miller taught 4th grade across the hall from me and the other 4th grade in the room just south of mine was Mrs. Morrison. She passed away that year. It was a very sad and sobering thing for the whole building.

Nadine was teaching 3rd grade along with a new teacher to our district, Marilyn Strohman. I can’t now recall who the other third grade teacher was. There was also a kindergarten in the building.

You couldn’t see the playground from the windows of my room but could from the teacher’s lounge down the hall. Teachers would gather there during their breaks and watch their kids outside the window even though there was plenty of supervision out there. You could learn a lot by watching your kids in that environment.

One warm spring day I saw a group of fourth grade boys in a tight circle near the far edge of the playground. I could tell they were looking at something but couldn’t tell what. I walked out of the building and in their direction but tried to avoid having them realizing I was headed toward them. I got within twenty yards before they spotted me and panicked. I zero in on the kids who had the goods and soon had them all. One boy had quite a collection of material.

It included two adult magazines, a package of condoms, and three Polaroid photographs of a naked woman in a lawn chair. I took the bundle into the teachers lounge and told the other teachers what it included. They were on me in seconds and took it all away from me as if I was one of the students. Eventually, it all got handed over to the principal who, in turn, met with the boy’s mother and handed it all over to her.

The stories of Harlan are many and I will tell some more another time.

Cats

I don’t like cats. I have never liked cats. They make me sneeze and I don’t find them appealing in any way. The trouble is they like me. I don’t know what it is but cats seem to be attracted to me? It seems like every time I go someplace where there is a cat around it ends up coming over and rubbing against me or wanting to sit on my lap. It’s very annoying!

We had a cat when we lived on West Clay Street. Angie had returned from a weeklong retreat with it I think? I wasn’t very happy about it but what could I do? The girls loved the kitten and named it Hilda. I thought that was a suitable name for a feline.

This cat lived in our basement and was only upstairs to pass through the kitchen, back porch and out the backdoor. She did, on occasion, love to show her independence by taking a path through the whole house. That was something that annoyed Becky and, of course, me too!

Although the girls professed to love the kitten they fed it on an irregular basis. Sometimes she had food provided and at other times she had to forage for whatever she got to eat. She had a regular route through the neighborhood and I always hoped she would catch and eat the mice in the basement. She wasn’t too good at that. Too much work I think?

One winter I trapped so many mice in the basement that I skinned them and had the hides made into gloves. I couldn’t wear them though because the all of the cats in town followed me around when I did.

Early one summer morning when Hilda was still a kitten I was awakened by a terrible racket in the basement. I went down there only to discover that the kitten had gotten into some fuel oil that I was siphoning out of a large tank. The little kitten was covered with the stuff! Each time she took a step she let out a horrible howl and would extend a leg out in front of her and shake it like crazy. When I saw the cat howl, step, extend, shake and then do it all over again with the other foot I couldn’t contain myself. I burst out laughing and it continued for some time.

Finally, I realized the cat wasn’t laughing so I needed a plan. I got a bowl of water some dish soap, and I, still in my underwear, carried the kitten out to the patio. Then I shampooed her six times. Somewhere in the middle of it all my neighbors, Charlie and Eunice Shappell, on their way to work came out their back door and caught me in all my glory. They stopped, looked at me, shook their heads, and headed off to work. They never did ask I me to explain what I was doing early that morning on the patio with that cat.

If that kitten liked me before he loved me now because, I think, he attributed me with saving his life.

Curses

I really don’t believe in curses but there are some times when you just wonder? Particularly when certain kinds of problems just don’t seem to go away.

When we looked at the house on West Clay we noticed that in the basement one of the covers on the large sewer pipe was missing. It was just an open hole and the realtor said that it was no problem and could be fixed easily. I should have known better.

Plumbers just looked at it and shrugged. They said the spot where the cover screwed in was broken and the only thing to do was replace the whole thing. That was something they didn’t seem to want to do and I certainly couldn’t afford. Now, you can’t have an open sewer pipe in your basement because not only does it make the whole house smell bad but also it poses an explosion risk because methane is highly flammable.

The hole was about eight inches in diameter. I tried covering it with plastic bags and duck tape. That sort of worked but my Dad didn’t like it. He carefully measured the hole and then, in true Mennonite tradition, fashioned a wooden plug for the hole. It was perfect and even plumbers marveled at how well it worked!

Sewer problems solved. Not so fast! They were only just beginning!

Our sewer started backing up. A neighbor said, “That house had always had sewer problems!”

We tried everything! I dumped more chemicals down the drain than Dupont produces in a year. I am probably, single handily, responsible for the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Oh, some things worked for a while but the problem always came back.

The old fellows I talked to said it was the Moleburg tile. I am not sure that was the name but whatever it was tended to crack and let roots in and that is what clogged up the sewer.
It was roots all right! My neighbor, Charlie Shappell, did something, which turned out to be a routine. About every three months we would have to send a twisting sewer taped through the line. It always came back with a great big ball of roots. Sometimes we had trouble pulling it out because the roots were packed so tight around the tip.

I have to tell you that rooting out a sewer is not a pleasant task for what should be obvious reasons. In our time in that house I bet I did it at least 20 times. I paid to have others do it, too.

Noting seemed to solve the problem. Finally, I dug up the sewer by hand for the first of three times because I couldn’t afford to have it done. I cleaned it as best I could but the roots would always eventually come back.

At last, I thought, I paid the plumbers to come and replace that old pipe with new plastic that was root proof and would solve my problem. It didn’t!
For some strange reason they replaced the entire line to the street except the last three feet before it came into the basement.

The last thing we did as owners of that house was pay to have that last three feet of pipe replaced because, of course, the sewer was plugged and the new owner wanted it fixed.

Shhhhh!!!! We have escaped the sewer curse for now but I am still looking over my shoulder now and then.

First Aid Classes

I became a first aid trainer in the early seventies. It was probably a mistake but was a natural off shoot of all of my water safety training. First aid was a big part of that training, too.

John Becker and I went to Burlington two nights a week for three weeks to take part in what was called Multi-Media First Aid. It got its name from the sound practice of having the participants view a video, read about the each technique, and then practice the technique. It was a very effective way to learn. We completed the course and were certified to train others.

The Henry County Red Cross bought all of the books and materials to teach the class. It was an Occupational Heath and Safety (OSHA) approved course and was required of all construction businesses that employed more than fours workers and all firemen and police officers. We were in great demand to teach the course!

The draw back to the whole thing was that we were volunteers and could not, because of Red Cross rules, take any payment for teaching the classes. John quit doing it after the first year, but I continued for some reason.

I taught two large groups from the local concrete company. The owner was very appreciative and kept wanting to give me something for doing it. I wanted a patio behind our house. I knew how to do the concrete and had friends who would help. The company provided the cement free of charge and we ended up with a nice large patio. Angie and Heather left their handprints in it near the southeast corner. I am sure they are still there.

I trained the Mt. Pleasant Police Department. That was a nice thing because it is always a good thing to be on good terms with the police. They handled the whole thing very seriously mostly, I think, because they had all been in many situations where they could put the training to good use. They always had valuable tips to share.

I trained some difficult groups of construction workers. They usually didn’t want to be there and didn’t even try to learn the material. There was an exam at the end and it wasn’t unusual to have a few of them fail. Then they were mad because they had to pass it. A couple of times I let them retake the test.

Once one of the course participants was drunk and very disruptive. His foreman was in the class and he made the guy leave during the break and he never came back. I suppose he lost his job but I really don’t know.

I taught a large group of the employees at the Rural Electric Association (REA), the Mental Health Institute (MHI), Metromail, and several other places. It was always interesting and enjoyable. I think I learned a lot during that time.

The most unusual group I taught was the nursing department at Iowa Wesleyan. College. I was really apprehensive about it because I didn’t feel qualified to teach nurses. They were very kind to me and said they really hadn’t had any real training in first aid. I don’t know if that was true or not but they were very nice about it. I learned a great deal from them in the process.

Nightcrawlers for Sale II

As time went by we moved the large cooler to the patio and gradually customers got used to the self-service nightcrawler business. That’s when the trouble started! But first let me tell you about the set up.

The cooler sat on the patio just outside thejkl;o back door that led first to an enclosed porch and then into the kitchen. The cooler usually contained several dozen worms in Styrofoam cups, a frozen bottle of water and a cup with some change in it. Buyers would come and take as many dozen as they wanted and leave their payment in the cup. It worked remarkably well for some time.

Once in awhile we might be short a little money but other times there seemed to be extra in the cup. Then we started missing cups of worms. We were amazed that people would steal fishing worms but it was happening. It got worse! Someone started taking all of the worms and money.

I was infuriated! We stopped putting so many worms out in the cooler and were careful to not leave much money there. Still it was continuing. There was another worm seller across the highway and I began to suspect him. He was an ex con who rode around town on a bicycle.

I set up all kinds of elaborate schemes to catch the culprit whoever it was. One involved running a fine thread around the yard and attaching it to a bell in our bedroom window. That would have worked but every dog or cat that went through the back yard set it off. Early one morning I heard the bell jangle and then heard a bicycle in the alley. It didn’t register with me for a minute or two and then it was too late.

Becky and I took turns sitting on the back porch with the lights off and waiting for the thief. Late one night when Becky was sitting there, a thief came across the neighbor’s patio and crept by the back door to the cooler. At that moment Becky turned a flashlight on and shined it in his face. I am not sure who was scared more, Becky or the crook. He turned and ran and Becky came and got me but by the time I got out there he was nowhere to be found.

Another time I was sitting in the dark on the porch and I heard a terrible racket on the neighbor’s patio. Then a stark naked guy came gingerly stepping through our yard. He stopped near our clothesline and turned back towards the neighbors and said, “Larry! Come on!” A second naked guy came through the yard and they both headed off towards the alley. I heard them swearing all the way. I heard them him hit Van Allen’s fence, too.

Then a policeman appeared in our backyard. I went out and told him which way they had went. The boys had been skinny dipping in the pool, which was about a half block away, and had ran when the police came leaving their clothes behind.

One evening, after dark, Becky and I were sitting on the front porch when we saw a figure walking up the street and then cut between our house and the neighbors. Becky went back through the house and I followed the guy to the back of the house. We had him dead to rights! I recognized him right away and he was very surprised. I turned him into the police but I don’t think much ever happened to him for that charge but soon after he was implicated in some other thefts and got in serious trouble.

We got out of the worm business but for a long time after that people would stop at our house and ask if we were still selling worms.

Nightcrawlers for Sale

We sold nightcrawlers from our house for several years. Becky really got it all started when she saw how much others were charging for a dozen worms and remembered how easy they were to collect when she was younger. She made a big sign for our front yard, we collected several dozen one evening and we were in business. Well, maybe it’s not all that easy.

Going out once in awhile and hunting nightcrawlers can be fun but when you are doing it almost every night it gets a little tiresome. Fingers actually get soar from grabbing the things. Generally, you drive your thumb and index finger into the ground trying to catch the worm and then hold on until it tires and then slowly pull it out of the ground trying not to break it.

It was a competitive market! We started out selling them for 75 cents a dozen. That forced other sellers to lower their price. As the summer progressed the price went up, as worms were harder to find in the hot weather. Because I had a sales tax permit I could buy worms in bulk form Rose’s Bait Shop in West Burlington. I had to have the permit for my house painting business.

Rose’s actually imported their worms from Canada. They came in Styrofoam cooler like boxes they called lugs. A lug of worms was determined by weight but usually was about 400 worms. Smaller worms meant more worms. We liked that because it meant more profit and a small Canadian worm was still plenty large for a fisherman. Their large worms were huge!

The profit, of course was much better when we were finding our own worms so we tried to do that as often as possible. During the years we sold worms we averaged over $1000 per summer. Not bad for a part time job and nice summer income. We reported the income for sales tax and paid the 3 cents on a dollar to the state. Yes, we also reported it all on our income taxes.

We initially kept the worms in the refrigerator and sold them right out of our front door. Becky quickly grew tired of worms in the refrigerator and we moved them to a large cooler on the back porch. We started directing people to the back door to pick them up.

That worked well! Many fishermen just came down the alley and came to the back door. Sometimes they woke us up early looking for worms. Other times we were gone and lost customers, which we didn’t like. We had some regular customers who asked if we could leave worms out on our patio for them. We put them in a smaller cooler and left a cup in it for payment. That worked well and they always left the money.

As time went by we moved the large cooler to the patio and gradually customers got used to the self-service nightcrawler business. That’s when the trouble started! You can read about that in the next installment.

Church Youth Trips

Becky and I went on lots of church youth trips during the seventies. We were a young couple involved in the church and so we got asked often to be part of youth activities. We were even the youth group’s leaders for a few years. We also did youth Sunday school several times. But, the big thing was the trips.

One of the first trips we went on was the youth ski trip to Mt. LaCrosse near La Crosse, Wisconsin. We did know much about leading a group of kids and we knew nothing about skiing but we went anyway. It’s not really a mountain but a big hill.

We started out on the bunny hill and did Ok. They had a rope tow to the top of the big hill so that was the next challenge. It was a long not so steep hill. We went up and came straight down and then up and down again. We could go straight but didn’t know how to turn. After awhile it wasn’t too exciting.

Becky crashed on the hill behind me and was twisted in a painful position. She was unable to move and screamed for my help. Now, the only way I knew to go up hill when skiing was the rope tow but that wasn’t an option. I ended up crawling about 20 yards up the hill to get to her. She had twisted a knee so her skiing was over for the day. Her swollen knee made the long trip home a painful trip.

We took a weeklong trip with the youth group one summer. We took the girls with us on this one. We went to a Presbyterian Camp for a week’s work cleaning and repairing the camp for the camping season. From there we went to Minneapolis we stayed in a church basement. While there we toured an inner city refuge and the group went to a play at the Guthrie Theater. I didn’t get to go because someone needed to stay back at the church and watch Heather.

We made about six trips to Dubuque with church kids. We went there with the confirmation group and visited New Mallory Abby and a Greek Orthodox Church. We stayed all night in the Catholic Seminary and enjoyed having breakfast with the cloistered monks.

Several times while in Dubuque we went skiing at Sundown. It was a better slope than Mt. LaCrosse and offered several routes and challenges. It also had lift chairs that we liked much better than the towropes. We got better and better at it as we continued to go.

Becky perfected several acrobatic moves. More than once after one of the spectacular tumbles I thought surely she was seriously hurt, or worse only to find her giddy with joy. Fortunately, neither us were ever hurt seriously and none of the kids were a problem. We did get a little tired of sleeping on the hard floor of a church.

The Legend of the Camelback Lure

The Legend of the Camelback Lure

My Grandpa Perry was a great fisherman and he often fished with his brother-in-law, Louis Van Doren. I remember Grandpa being a big fellow who had a full head of hair, seldom wore a hat, and always had a smile on his face. Uncle Lew was a small thin man who often wore a straw fedora and always had a toothpick in his mouth. They fished for catfish, carp, bass, bluegill, and about anything else that swam in the rivers and streams around the family farm in Henry County.

Uncle Lew was always interested in the best fishing techniques and read magazines and many books about it. He experimented with baits like Grandpa’s Gooey Catfish Bait and the anise dough ball for carp. He was always looking for the perfect bait.

I am not sure if he ever found it but he did find the perfect lure, or rather, he made it. There wasn’t much he couldn’t make out of wood. Lew had seen lures advertised in magazines but in the 1930s had no money to spend on them so he started fabricating his own out of wood and other available components. He once told me the first few looked good but didn’t perform right in the water. After much experimentation he came across the perfect design.

The lure, made of wood and leather, behaved just like a fish when you drug it through the water. That behavior is what many commercial lure makers struggle to create. It is not as easy to achieve as you might imagine.

The lure was in two segments, the body and the tail, attached together with a thin strip of cowhide. It was about five inches long, had two treble hooks and was in its day, a real beauty. He called it the Camelback lure cause it sort resembled the back of a camel. I only saw it once. When I was about eight years old Lew got it out to show me.

He kept it in a small cigar box with some of his other homemade lures. I remember holding it in my hand and then he put it back in the box. He even had an old newspaper article about it folded up in that box. He said it was a big mistake to do the interview for the article because it just drew more attention to it. I never saw the article or the lure again but he often told stories about all the fish he caught.

Lew said he ended up making about 5 more just like it for friends and Grandpa. He said they were all amazing but none worked quite as well as the original. He attributed that to one slight difference that he would not divulge.

The unbelievable thing is that the lure never failed to catch a fish. That’s right! With every cast or troll it caught a fish. Unbelievable? Yes, but it is the truth or that is at least what my Grandpa and Uncle Lew said. Being Quakers I don’t think either one would ever tell a lie.

That lure seemed to work on almost any kind of fish. It was irresistible. Bass, carp, bluegill, catfish and even walleyes and northerns went for it. Word spread pretty fast about that lure and when folks saw Lew fishing somewhere they would gather around and watch in amazement! Grandpa Perry talked up the lure every time he got a chance. It got to be so bad that Lew would wear a disguise when he fished but people soon figured that out and flocked around.

That and the fact that fishing trips got much shorter because it only took a few casts to catch his limit caused Uncle Lew to put that lure in semi retirement. Besides that he said it took the fun and challenge out of fishing. He only used it when he had a big fish fry coming up.

I have always wondered what happened to those lures? Uncle Lew died in the sixties and Grandpa in 1972. I don’t remember seeing them in the things they left behind. Years later, I met an old fisherman fishing at Oakland Mills. When I told him my name he said, “You Perry Mendenhall’s grandson?” Of course I said “yes” and he started talking about that lure. He had seen Lew use it many times and Grandpa use his, too.

The old fella swore it was all true and claimed he had one of the replicas for a time, too, but lost it years ago catching a huge catfish in the very spot he was sitting at that moment. Believing catfish can live to be 50-60 years old he was hoping to catch that fish again and get his lure back. I don’t know if he ever did?

I have asked members of my family about the Camelback lure but no one seems to know what became of it. Oh, they all remember it, but each one describes it slightly differently. I do remember what it looked like because I saw it. I sure wish I had it now!


All fishing stories are true and some of them really happened.

Colorblind House Painter

There are jokes about colorblind house painters. That made it tough for me! I usually tried not to slip and tell a customer I was colorblind. I painted houses for several summers in the 1970s. I liked it because I was outside and could work when I wanted to.

The first summer I painted a house on White Street up near the railroad tracks. A friend wanted to work with me so I let him join in. He had a truck and a ladder so that worked well. We did a couple houses and split the money.

The next year he wanted to go on his own. He thought he could make more money on his own. I was a little disappointed but decided to go ahead on my own. I used car top racks and borrowed my Dad’s ladder.

I learned a lot about house painting. I learned how to calculate how much paint would be needed for a job. It is all based on the number of square feet that need to be covered. Other things like the absorbency of the surface or the number of coats that are being applied have to be considered.

I always let the customer choose the color and kind of paint they wanted and I even preferred that they purchase it directly from the store if possible. I just told them how much to get and I was usually pretty accurate. I preferred the more expensive paints because they seemed to spread easier.

Houses first had to be prepared for the paint. Sometimes that meant hours of scraping. I discovered that on many houses you could scrape for days and not seem to make any progress. The process of scraping took of the loose paint but also loosened up other spots. The more you scraped the more was loosened up and soon you realize you have to stop doing that or you will be scraping until all of the paint is off the house.

It was sometimes hard to find a safe place to put the ladder on a house. Siding was sometimes soft or rotten. I did break one pane of a second story window when I got the ladder too close. I was able to repair it quickly.

I painted some pretty high places including the bell tower on the First Presbyterian Church. That was kind of scary! A crane was used to lift a painting platform up next to the tower and we painted from there.

I painted high places on many houses, too. Sometimes I had to stretch as far as I could to cover all of the spots. It was very scary at times. I fell only once and it was down the ladder and I caught myself before I got to the ground. I was very sore for a while but not seriously injured.

I think I was a good painter and had several satisfied customers even though I am colorblind. I just tried to make sure I covered every spot with the paint. Usually, it was white on white so it wasn’t much of a problem.

Construction Worker

I worked one summer as a construction worker. My cousin, Melvin Smith, owned a construction business and offered me a job. I found out later that he didn’t think I would last more than one day at it and most of the crew felt the same way. In fact, they took bets on whether I would show up the second day.

That first day was a tough one but I honestly never even considered quitting. We were working on digging a basement under an existing house in Trenton. All the work that could be done with heavy equipment had been done and we were now doing the last of it by hand with shovels and wheelbarrows. We filled the wheelbarrows with dirt and then pushed them up a ramp and out of the hole. It was heavy, hard, dirty work.

There were sarcastic comments about schoolteachers that I didn’t pay much attention to. Thinking back on it I think they were going to show this soft kid a lesson or two about hard work. They did but I showed them a thing or two, too.

By the time we broke for lunch I was worn out. They hadn’t told me that I was supposed to bring my own lunch. One of the kinder older guys gave me part of his sandwich but I mostly just rested. We only got a half an hour and then we were back at it. The same badgering went on all afternoon. I was really happy when four o’clock came!

The next morning I showed up at the lumberyard early and ready to go to work. Someone said, “The schoolteacher came back!” The second day wasn’t much easier but the badgering tapered off as they got to know me. I worked side by side with them the rest of the week and was finally one of them. Aside from the occasional sarcastic remark about what an easy job teachers have there wasn’t much that made me feel like I was picked on. Soon they were making similar comments about each other.

One guy did tell me that if it weren’t for construction workers I wouldn’t have a job because there would be no schools. I didn’t comment much and let the conversation move forward.

They did try to trip me up with the old construction worker gags like telling me to go get the henweigh out of the truck, hoping I’d ask, ”What’s a henweigh? Of course, the answer is about 5 pounds. They also tried to send me back into the lumberyard to pick up a piecost. I didn’t fall for that one either.

I actually grew to love the work! We were outside all day and I liked that. Also, there was absolutely no stress. I didn’t have to make any decisions. I just did what I was told and went home at the end of the day and didn’t think about it again until the next morning. It was also gratifying to see visible results of the day’s work.

Tower School

I worked as an educational consultant for two years at Tower School. It was on the top floor or the Mental Health Institute and thus the name. I liked being able to say I was an educational consultant. I worked two nights a week for about two hours each.

The truth is I was a tutor along with several others and worked with kids from the children’s unit at the hospital. We worked mostly on reading and had one or two kids for each of the two hours. Many were very needy and all had serious mental health issues. While I was fascinated with many of their stories I was also saddened by their misfortune.

All of them attended a day school at the institute and this program was designed to supplement it. The day program had a principal and this tutor program was lead by a professor from Iowa Wesleyan College. The two guys didn’t see eye to eye and their dislike for each other spilled into the evening program. The guy in charge of the evening program had a Ph. D. and insisted on being called doctor. I didn’t mind doing that but thought he was rather arrogant in insisting on it.

The night principal had a routine he expected everyone to follow. At the end of your session with a child he wanted you to parade the child before him. Then he proceeded to interrogate the kid about what they knew. Most were quite intimidated by the ritual and would beg to avoid it if they could. I sympathized with them and never quite got the point of the activity. I think it was more about authority and control than anything else.

Overtime we did build relationships with the kids we worked with. I remember one boy being so excited that he was getting a home visit over the weekend and would get to see his father. That weekend he went to the basement and got a rifle and went upstairs and killed his father and then went back to the basement and shot himself. We were, of course, shocked!

Another time when I was tutoring a student he was sitting in an old fashioned chair with the writing surface that was part of the arm of the chair. As we were talking he slowly slid out of chair and on to the floor. He started chewing on the arm of the chair and too my amazement was taking large chunks of wood off with each bite.

One of the boys, a teenager, was brilliant! He had an incredible memory and could tell you who won the World Series for whatever year you choose and all the details of each game. He was incredibly bright and from a wealthy family on the west coast. How he ended up in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa I don’t know. He left before the year was over and went back to be with his family. I don’t know why he was there in the first place?

Other than the above and a few other isolated incidents the kids were a lot like any other kids you might encounter.

Angie's Fish

I have always loved fishing and many times Becky went along with me. When the girls we young they went along, too. Sometimes when Heather was really small we even packed up her playpen and took it along with us.

One of my favorite pond fishing spots was on Marcia and Dale Commack’s farm. I got to know Marcia because she taught special education in the classroom next to mine at Saunders. Marcia and I were pioneers in a sense because we started mainstreaming special education to my regular education classroom in 1971. It is now quite common and is called inclusion.

Dale and Marcia lived on a farm east of Salem. I had an open invitation from them to fish there anytime I wanted. I took my Dad out there several times and also a few friends. The Cammacks actually had two ponds. One was nearer the house and the other, a catfish pond, was out a ways across a field and a small rise.

One day we took Angie and Heather and went fishing there. Ron and Marcia Marshall went along with us. Angie was about 5 years old and Heather was just an infant. We put Heather in the playpen and Becky, Angie, and I along with the Marshalls, started fishing. The front pond was a great bluegill pond and we caught several very nice ones.

Angie was set up with a pole and bobber and caught several bluegills. All of a sudden she had another fish and started yelling at me to come and help her. I told her to just reel it in like she had done with the others but she said it was pulling too hard. I encouraged her to pull harder and she said she couldn’t do it. At last I realized she did have a big fish and went to help her. I held on to the pole with one hand while she reeled in a huge bass. We were all thrilled!

I fished at that pond many times. I made the mistake of taking a few friends out there. The pattern was to always stop at the house on the way in and on the way out to show the Cammacks what we had caught. I always introduced the friends to the Cammacks.

After taking two guys out there one evening they went back three evenings in a row without telling me and their boldness irritated the Cammacks and me. They said I could continue to fish but didn’t want anyone going out there if they weren’t with me. My unscrupulous friends almost ruined the whole thing for me.

I continued to fish at that pond for several years but never took anyone else but my father or my immediate family along with me.

Coon huntin'

“You never been coon huntin’? Anybody born in Iowa aught to go coon huntin’ at least once!” Those were old Jim’s comments one afternoon when we were butchering deer in a shed. Jim was a hunter and fisherman. He ran two or three trap lines every winter and spent countless hours out in the woods. He was a big strong guy who was well known for his fondness for the bottle.

I had never been coon hunting, but had heard a lot about it. I mostly stuck to rabbits, pheasant, and deer once a year. I have always loved to be out of doors and it doesn’t take much of an excuse to get me there. In the summer, my spare time was spent fishing. It still is. More recently I have lost the desire to kill something but still long to be outside.

Jim was adamant that he was going to take me coon hunting! He started pressing me for a time that I could go. Now you have to understand that coon hunting is done at night with dogs with names like Ole’ Blue, Boomer, Red, and Marley.

Generally, you take the dogs to some location in the woods and turn them loose and sit down and wait. Eventually, you’ll hear them bark. Well, it’s not a bark but a combination of a howl, a bark and a scream. That means one of the dogs is on the trail of a coon. The others rush to that dog and join in the racket. The hunters get up and wander off into the woods following the sounds of the dogs.

As you can imagine this is fraught with dangers. Who knows what hole you are going to step in or stream you are going to have to wade to find the dogs. When the dogs actually tree the coon, the sounds change pitch and an experienced hunter knows they have cornered the animal.

So, I made a date with Jim. It was a Friday night in October. He picked me up about 10:00 and we headed out into the country. Now, I am a person who likes to know where I am and I was hoping we would be hunting in some spot I was familiar with. That didn’t turn out to be the case.

We went north of town to some of Jim’s old stomping grounds. We parked along a gravel road and that is when I asked Jim if we had permission to hunt here. He said, “Nope.” But not to worry. If we were stopped by anyone I should let him do the talking.

He hoisted his two dogs over the fence and we climbed over after them. The dogs were long gone by the time my feet touched the ground on the other side. The sky was overcast and dark. I followed Jim into the woods feeling my way with my feet. He had a flashlight but didn’t want to turn it on. After stumbling and falling a few times we finally reached a spot where he said we could sit down and wait. I looked around as best I could in the dim light but saw nothing but weeds and bare ground to sit on. That was it. We sprawled there on the ground to wait for the chorus to start up.

Jim reached into his coat and pulled out a rather large flask of Blackberry Brandy and took a long pull on the bottle, wiped his lips and handed it to me. Not being much of a hard liquor drinker I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was at first sweet and pleasing but then I swallowed. My throat burned and it hit my stomach like water hitting a hot frying pan! I was speechless and my eyes were watering.

Of course, not wanting to look like a novice, I hid my discomfort the best I could. We sat there in the dark on the ground speaking in soft voices and waited for hours. Jim didn’t put his flask away but drank from it and handed it to me many times. Thinking back on it now I don’t know why I just didn’t fake drinking it.

Finally, in the far distance we heard a dog bark, then another. Jim jumped up. I tried to get up but staggered and fell back. I made it on my second try and we headed off through the brush. Now, not only was it dark, unfamiliar terrain, but we were drunk. We staggered through woods arguing about which way the sounds were coming from.

I gave into Jim and he was right. We found the dogs not under a tree but barking at a hole in the ground on a hillside. Jim quickly surmised the coon had been forced by the dogs to take refuge in the hole. He said, “We got to dig ‘em out!” I, dizzy from the alcohol and long walk, thought we should just give up and go home.

Jim had a big old knife and he started chopping at the hole. Suddenly, he stopped and reached up to his shoulder into the hole. Laying flat on the hillside he said the coon was in there sure enough because he could feel him but not get a hold of him. He said, “You try it.” “Not a chance! I said, your arms are longer.”

He dug away at the hole furiously now. Stopping every once in awhile and reaching in to touch the critter. I kept expecting him to bring back a bloody hand from some bite or scratch. He seemed unconcerned. Finally, he said, “We’re going to have to shoot him!” Jim had carried a single shot rifle with him all evening. Let’s see now…a gun, alcohol, dark unfamiliar woods…what’s wrong with this picture?

He loaded the gun, stuck it in the hole and fired. Then he reached and pulled at the critter. After a little bit he said, “I must have missed.” He said here, you hold the gun and pull the trigger when I tell you. He slid his arm and the gun in at the same time. When he was ready he told me to pull the trigger. I did and he said, “Oh shit! You shot me!” He saw the shock on my face and then laughed and said, “Just kidding.” He tugged and pulled on the critter and out came an opossum. More swearing! An opossum hide was worthless but he decided to take the carcass home, cut it up, and put it in the freezer. He would use it for coyote bait in his traps later that winter.

I don’t remember much of going home. Probably because we had a couple more pulls on that bottle before we staggered back to the car. I never went coon hunting or even had the urge to go again.

505 West Clay

After a year and 8 months of living in a rented farmhouse we moved to a house on West Clay in Mt. Pleasant. Although Becky was not thrilled with the house or its size it was ours. Well, not quite ours but we were buying it.

Our house in the country was sold when the Garners moved away, so we had to find a new place. I didn’t think we had much of a chance of buying a house and thought we would have to rent. We were heavily in dept from my college and living experiences during that time. On a teacher’s salary it was going to be hard for us to find something.

My Dad talked with Stan Macbeth and said we should see him about a house. He was a local realtor and the former mayor of Mt. Pleasant. He was a gregarious sort of follow who always acted like he was glad to see you.

Stan took us to a few houses that I don’t really remember much about and then took us to 505 West Clay. It was a small bungalow on a lot with some great shade trees. It was a stones throw from Saunders Park and the swimming pool. I thought it had huge potential. We couldn’t get the money from the bank and our parents didn’t have any money to loan us so Stan suggested we try the Farmers Home Administration (FHA) for a government subsidized loan for low income people in rural areas.

We had resisted food stamps or any government help in our lives as a matter of principle but this time I didn’t think we could afford to pass it up. The house qualified. The next question would be do we? We filled out all of the forms and met with officials. We were on a tight timeline and needed to get out of our other house.

It wasn’t going to be a “slam dunk”! The local board of the FHA didn’t think we were a good risk and the local administrator said our only chance would be to meet with them and convince them we could handle this. We did and they did. It was one of those painful experiences when someone you hardly know goes through your finances and it is plain that you have not done so well. Somehow by the grace of God, we convinced them.

We settled into our home in the fall of 1973. We didn’t have much but it was going to be ours. The house had a kitchen and dinning room attached to a living room and two bedrooms and, of course, the bath. The Bath was not the greatest. It had an old claw foot tub and there were ugly brown arrows painted on the wall. I don’t know what the point of the arrows was.

Our neighbors on the west were Eunice and Charlie Shappell and their children, Susan, Marion and Rick. One the east, across the alley was Winifred Van Allen. Behind our property on the north side was a big empty lot. My Dad said he remember a few times when a circus came to town and set up on that lot. Long before that my plat book showed that there was a school on the northwest corner of that lot. The Van Allen family owned it and the other half of the block.

Originally, our lot and the Shappell lot were one and had a large house on it. About half of the large house was torn down and the bricks and materials were used to build our house. Shappell’s house was part of the original house. Our house was a fortress! The walls were about three feet thick and solid brick. It heated easily in the winter and stayed cool in the summer. I’ll tell more about our time there and the changes we made in the house in future pieces.

Hope Haven

As I have said previously, I worked as an associate in the summer program at Hope Haven. It was a position created for me to give me something to do in-between bus trips. I transported people to the center and arrived there about 8:00 AM daily. I took them home at 3:00 PM. To make the job viable, because I couldn’t earn enough just driving the bus, they gave me this position to fill out the day.

The unfortunate thing was that by doing that I displaced someone who had worked there for several summers. The other summer workers loved the person and that made me the bad guy. They didn’t want to like me and they were determined not to let me win them over.

I got the dirtiest jobs and the duties no one else wanted to do. The two teachers and the other three associates loved to order me around and remind me that I didn’t know anything about special needs people. They were right, of course, but I was eager to learn and wanted to do the right thing. I had experience working with behavior disorder kids and felt confident I could learn the nuances of working with physically and mentally challenged kids.

The kids in this program ranged from severe autistic to wheelchair bound to severe mental disabilities. There was one adult person for every two or three kids. The adults were busy all the time tending to the needs of the kids. There was barely time to go to the restroom. Lunch was out of the question because I had to sit between two kids to help them eat. By the time it was over each day they had food all over themselves and me, too. I wasn’t usually too hungry after all that anyway.

We did take the kids on field trips from time to time and it worked well that I could drive the bus. On some trips the kids would get very excited and we didn’t seem to have enough hands to keep them out of danger. I always had this terrible fear that one of them would get away from us somehow and get lost or worse, get injured in some way. Fortunately, that never happened.

Over time the staff softened and actually begin to like me a little. The whole thing was a lesson for me in how to treat others with dignity and respect. I was able to earn it but it took a few weeks.

I earned respect from the management as well. They were very pleased with my work. A couple years later they asked me to serve on the board of directors. I did serve two terms and during that time was offered the Assistant Director position at Hope Haven. Although it was tempting, it was a direction I really didn’t want to go at that time. I have fond memories of my time at Hope Haven as an employee and then a board member. I think of the kids and the families from time to time and wonder how they are doing.

School Bus Driver's Permit

When I was summer school science director I had to get a bus driver’s permit each year so I could drive the busload of kids to each of the areas where we did the science activities. To get that license I had to take a test and drive a school bus for the officer. I also had to get a physical each year.

Driving the bus was easy and so was the test. The physical was easy, too, except that every time I took it I failed the colorblind test. Dr. Rankin had to write a letter each year saying that the colorblindness didn’t affect my driving. Dr. Rankin was always intrigued by my colorblindness and asked me the same questions about it each year. My guess is he just didn’t remember what I told him the year before. The only other thing would be that he was just interested in it?

The summer science program continued for some time. I passed the job off to someone else eventually so I could do other things. I did keep getting the bus driver’s license for a few years. The only time I drove the bus was with my own students. It made field trips easy and inexpensive for the district because they didn’t have to pay a driver to take us out. Eventually, some of the drivers did complain that because I did that it took away their opportunity to earn some extra money.

I was about to give it up when another opportunity presented itself. Hope Haven, in Burlington needed a summer driver to transport kids from Henry County to the center each day for the summer program. John Becker, who was on the board there, knew that I had a permit and told me about the job. It included not only driving a route and then on to Burlington, but to keep me busy in-between they offered me an associate position in the summer school program there.

At first I was a little insulted and told them I was a teacher. They offered me more money and I took the job.

During the year they always had an associate ride the bus but that wasn’t the case for me. I was on my own. The only training I got was one dry run with the supervisor. Then I was ready to go. I picked up one group at the high school in Mt. Pleasant, made a few other stops and then off to New London. I had one rider just west of town and then one stop in town. Then it was on to the Des County Home and then Hope Haven. I did the route in reverse on the way home. Never once did I ever have a problem!

On weekends I parked the big old bus in front of our house. It seemed to work out OK and I don’t remember any complaints from the neighbors. That was the last of my bus driving. Maneuvering a big old bus around is kind of interesting but not as difficult as you might think. I career as a bus driver ended with a perfect accident free record.