Morning Thanks--Reunion

I'd put my life on hold for a time. I was graduating from college with a degree in English, I'd had a successful student teaching run, and had always assumed I'd be a teacher someday, a teacher and a coach. 

But the draft board had lined me up for a physical in Sioux Falls, SD, close to the college I was leaving. That was May, 1970.

Several years earlier, our family doctor told me my heart wasn't exactly on point. Years later, subsequent specialists called it "chaotic," or "irregularly irregular," bizarre beating that had occasionally kept me from doing things--I'd pulled myself out of basketball games if it would go on a tear. But I'd learned how to control it, mostly. Dr. Jensen told me I'd never have to go to Vietnam, not with my weird ticker. 

Still, I had been the catcher on the college baseball team. I was active, healthy. When I see pictures of me from that time, it hard to remember being that thin. But I'd put my life on hold because of the notice to report. I hadn't applied for jobs, hadn't determined what I was going to do. . .couldn't figure out what I was going to do, I would have said, until that draft thing was decided.

In Sioux Falls, I pulled out a letter from the doctor and just like that, the guy in the uniform told me to put my pants back on and go home. There'd be no draft, no armed service, no Vietnam. A weird ticker was a ticket home.

By then it was June. I laid sod for an outfit putting in 1-43 along the Lake Michigan shoreline, Milwaukee to Green Bay. Hardest work I'd ever done in my life--twelve hours, six to six. I'd come home and just lie in the grass and remind myself I had options, a college degree. Besides, the idea of teaching Thoreau and Emerson and Poe was thrilling--scary, but thrilling. I didn't want to lay sod. 

The ad appeared in a Sunday Milwaukee Journal--some rural high school in southwest Wisconsin needed an English teacher. That was July, 1970. I applied. Went for an interview all the way down to the state line, where the boss said he needed someone to do theater, coach basketball, and teach English. I fit. 

He told me my teaching recommendations weren't all syrupy. He said some mentioned I was a bit of a rebel. "You want to explain that?" he said. When I told him I opposed the war and I was known to drink beer. "Seriously?" he said. We were less than an hour from Madison, and he was a lifelong resident of a state famous for Pabst, Schlitz, and Blatz. I got the job.

I found a place to live, but it was still occupied, so the night before my first day of teaching I was a resident of an ancient downtown hotel in Monroe, WI. Before my eyes were the names of half a high school on the roll, those registered in junior and senior English, and a journalism class. The student newspaper was my ballywick too. That picture up top--that's journalism class. Color it slack. (That's me, sitting, far left, great tie.)

For the next two years, the students at Black Hawk High School, South Wayne, WI, were just about my reason for living. It didn't take long, and one morning when the room emptied for lunch, I told myself I could do this thing. I'd seen it in their eyes, heard it in the tone of their voices. They may not have liked Ralph Waldo Emerson, but they liked the guy who tried to make him live.

I remember thinking that I was just five years older than they were. Those five years made a ton of difference, but I also remember thinking that when I'd be 65, they'd be 60, and who the heck would know? 

Wednesday night, I got a blessing. One of those kids got herself on a library board in the Black Hawk district and talked the powers that be into asking me to come to talk about my books, about writing. 

Date was set. I came back again, rode around the towns and beautiful river hills of southwest Wisconsin, remembering. That night, maybe 25 of my ex-students showed up, most of them, like me, retired, some, like me, a little more paunchy and wrinkled, but just as spirited as ever. 

It's difficult to overstate how sweet that night was, and I don't even think I know how to describe it. It was as if nothing had changed, and everything had. I don't know that I talked much about writing, and Emerson never came up, although Jonathan Edwards did, bless his soul. And then there was the time I chased a kid out of class, and a shelf full of anecdotes I'd completely forgotten. And, of course, the story I've been telling all week--they all remembered that one too. Very well.

Thousands of these posts are banked in Blogspot's memory, many with the original intent of thankfulness. The old disgraced storyteller Garrison Keillor gave me a quote that I've never replaced--the world would be a better place if everybody took the time each day to be thankful for just one thing. He said it better. Its still up on the top of the page. Read it for yourself.

At the end of this recital of what I did with my time and my old students on Wednesday night, I'm going to say it again: this morning I'm thankful for those ex-students at the top of the page and the others too, for what I remember of them almost fifty years ago, and what they gave me, simply by their presence, their smiles, and their joy, on Wednesday night. 

Once upon a time they were my whole life. It was a honor and blessing and a thrill too to be in their presence one more time.