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A true
story by Julia Allen McCullers
In the late 1940s or early 1950s, when Eastern North Carolina was still an agricultural area unaffected by television or broad Interstate highways, my mother taught first grade in Johnston County. Keep in mind that in those days first-graders were a relatively unsophisticated lot. Public-school kindergartens, Operation Head Start, and Sesame Street were still in the future. Those children did not sit up to watch The Simpsons or A Current Affair; they did not shop at malls or eat pizza. By and large they lived quiet lives on small farms, and the day the school bus stopped to carry them to first grade was often their first day away from home. During that era, primary teachers in this county were urged to visit in the home of each child in their class. What a wise requirement! Much valuable insight was gained through those in-home visits. Sometimes I would go with my mother as she drove a '47 Ford along rutted rural roads looking for the houses where her first-graders lived. In my memory, the fields were fallow and smooth, and smoke curled from the chimneys of all of the farmhouses along the way. Sometimes we had to stop and ask directions several times; sometimes we got hopelessly lost. When we at last reached the right house, often the first-grader whose home we planned to visit would burst out of the front door in an ecstasy of recognition and pride, shouting "Missallen! Missallen! I told Mama you were comin'!" My mother had long ago given up on coaching her children to call her "Mrs. Allen"; "Missallen" was ever so much easier for them to say. One of the falls during that era, Mother mentioned that there was a certain little girl in her class who did not have a coat to wear on cold, windy November days. The child (I'll call her Lois) wore a brown sweater over a cotton dress, whether the weather was cold or mild. The child wore socks that had problems that most modern children know little about, thanks to the development of synthetic fibers and improved knitting techniques. Lois's socks, Mother observed, had holes the size of silver dollars in the heels, and the cuffs had absolutely no stretch left in them and flapped around her ankles. Lois was a bright child, Mother reported to our family gathered at the dinner table, and probably would be reading pretty well by early spring. Mother knew that Lois lived in a remote two-room tenant house with her parents and three brothers and sisters. There was no electricity, no running water or indoor plumbing, and precious little privacy. The house, she had noted on her visit, did not contain a single scrap of printed matter: not a book, not a magazine, not a newspaper. Still, Lois's mother tried hard, and Lois was a fine example of what the American Dream of Public Education was all about. My mother, herself the oldest of children in a farm family that had known hard times, felt drawn to the child. One day shortly before Christmas that year, Mother asked for permission to bring Lois home from school with her. "I'll have her back home before dark," she promised the child's mother. At our house, Lois, round-eyed but fully cooperative, was soon splashing in a tub filled with hot water and lots of bubbles. Mother gently washed Lois's hair with fragrant shampoo and dressed her in clean underwear, whole socks, and sturdy hand-me-down clothes. When Lois got back into the white Ford for the trip home, she was wearing a not-new-but-serviceable winter coat and proudly carrying some oranges and hard candy for her brothers and sisters. She was also carrying several easy-to-read books with her name printed on the flyleaf. Lois was going to have her own small library, even if she had little else. Lois's mother offered a bucket of pecans as a Christmas gift to my mother, who had the wisdom to accept the younger woman's gesture. That way, everybody's pride stayed intact. In the years that have passed since that December, I have often thought of Lois --- Lois who learned to read quite well and who had whole socks and a coat to wear while she was in the first grade. I have often wondered if my mother's simple act of compassion might today be condemned as an unwise, imprudent move for a teacher. In this litigious age of political correctness and frequent lawsuits, would the hot bath be condemned as degrading or humiliating to the child? Would the hand-me-downs be regarded as put-downs? What if the child had been injured in an accident while being transported in the Ford? I'm glad that Mother totally disregarded the legal aspects of the incident. She and many other teachers and compassionate people have changed children's lives through similar acts of kindness, most of which no one ever knows about. Merry Christmas, Lois, wherever you are. Have you read any good books lately? |
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