The competition was one of the ways Mrs. Mac Henry Lane taught us. She was my fifth-grade teacher at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School. Her name was Mrs. Alta Lane, but everyone always called her Mrs. Mac Henry Lane, not Mrs. Lane. I always thought her name was Mrs. Machenrylane! At least that’s what my momma told me to say. She was one of the best teachers in the whole world.
This time it was geography class, and our homework had been to memorize the forty-eight states, their capitals, and how to spell them. As you can see, it was before Alaska and Hawaii became states. Each “team” took turns going up to the blackboard and, with chalk in hand, tried to beat the opposing team member by spelling the state or capital Mrs. Lane called out. The first student to get it correct scored a point for their team. My favorite state to spell was
“MISSISSIPPI”! For forty minutes, we thirty kids went at it. .. what
fun competition.
Next on the agenda was the art class! One day we had art; the next day, we had music. We had been using our crayons to color the birds we had drawn, but today she told us, “Class, I have a special project for you. We’ve got a little surprise.” There were some brown boxes
on her desk, and we anxiously sat there as she opened them up.
Oh ... my ... gosh! It was colored clay! Mrs. Lane told us to keep the clay on a notebook sheet to avoid ruining our desks. The bars, which were 2”x6”x2”, were in all different colors. The next
hour of the Class was spent in pure heaven as we made everything from cars to animals to houses. “Let’s keep a little and have a game of ‘war,’” one of the guys whispered. So, we kept about one-third of our supply for use during afternoon recess. Our group of guys always came up with something creative during the break. Whatever you could think of, you could do as long as it wasn’t dangerous to others or yourself. We made up the rules as we went along ... Like a game of tree tag or who could walk the steel pipe that stood four feet off the ground and was
thirty feet long. We also had our standard activities of races,
wrestling, and softball “work-up.” We would have been shipped off to the Child Protection Agency by today’s standards! But there was never a broken bone, bloody nose, or black eye in the group.
But today ... eight of us played war by throwing clay “bullets” at one another. A guy would pinch off a piece of clay the size of a
marble and roll it into a ball and throw it with such force it would stick to the opponent ... what fun! We ran all over that school ground chasing each other and taking aim at the back, chest, or head of our adversaries. It was time to celebrate and enjoy the triumph if it stuck to them. After everyone had run out of clay, it was time to sit and brag about how many targets you hit, enhancing the story a wee bit. “Oh shoot, there’s the bell,” one guy said. “Yeah, we’d better
get back to our class.” So moaned the next one, all of us getting up and running into the classroom, where we had a session on grammar.
After Class, the majority of us agreed to meet back at the school
playground for some baseball. However, five minutes before the final bell, Mrs. Lane stepped to the blackboard and began writing names ... E. Jay McIlvain, Harold Lewis, Marion Stone, Gary Griffin, Ken Hinkle, Jimmy Ayres, Ben Sturgeon, and Bobby Conway. Uh-oh, eyes opened wide, and we each looked at one another, knowing we were in a heap of trouble.
Then Mrs. Lane turned, facing the Class said, “Will you eight young
men remain after class?” And she wasn’t smiling. Oh boy, we knew that we had been caught.
Sitting there with a frown on my face, I thought, who could the tattletale be? Who squealed on us? It HAD to be a girl. Those girls had it in for us; all we had ever done to them was pull their pigtails or play an innocent prank like putting a tack in their chair. Yep, it had to be one of them ... they saw us sneak the clay out at recess, and they could have ... accidentally ... gotten hit with one of the clay projectiles. I KNEW they would try to get even. It had to be Marcheta Hall, Carol Waggoner, Jane Morrison, Janice Isabell, Jerry Sloan, or Jo Walker. One of ‘em was guilty, and boy, was she gonna get it! Well, everyone except maybe Marcheta. She was two inches taller and could chase me down and put a knuckle to my head!
While in deep thought, the bell rang, bringing me back to reality. Everyone filed out with a few glancing at us eight boys. Glances that spoke volumes, “Te-hee, you’re gonna get a
spanking ... te-hee!” Mrs. Lane closed the door, walked back to her desk, and sat on the edge facing us. The silence was deafening, with each of us trying to look and act really casual.. . like little angels. But our halos were off-center and slanted toward the floor! I was trying to look so innocent, so she would think I was this lovely, sweet boy who never did anything terrible. She finally spoke, “I know you took some of the clay, and I want it back. Now go outside, pick up
every piece of that clay, and bring it to me.” She stood and pointed toward the door. So without saying a word, we slid from our desks and slinked outside.
As we walked around searching for the colorful clay balls, we were asking each other who could have “blabbed” on us or had anyone hit a girl with a clay ball ... as we gradually covered the grounds picking up the clay, someone would add another girl’s name
to the list. . .like Charlotte, Jeri, Barbara, and Janice.
I didn’t much think it was Carol or Jerry because they were on my paper route, and I considered them as close friends, and besides, they fed me cookies and cake all the time when I went around collecting the twenty-five cents per week for the Pampa Daily News. Hey, they could tell me who the snitch was! Since I still had my newspapers to deliver that afternoon, I made a mental note ... “stop and talk to them about who did it.” And besides, I was getting hungry from all this mental anguish!
Anyway, we finally headed back to our doom of facing Mrs. Lane and handing her the red, brown, blue, green, and yellow ... dirty clay balls ... I was so embarrassed. I had been trying to pick dead grass and tiny rocks out of the clay before giving them back to her. Our wonderful teacher made us sit at the desks at the front next to hers, and she lectured us on the sin of stealing. I never thought about it that way and felt like some criminal.
After the lecture, it came time for punishment, “You have a choice. You can go to Mr. Yoder’s office (our principal) or use my paddle and spank each other. What’s it going to be?” Well, it didn’t take half a second to answer that ... in one accord, we all said, “We’ll spank each
other!” As Mrs. Lane pulled the 30” solid oak paddle from her desk, she said she would pair us up, and we would each receive three swats. Now, it just so happened that we all had been members of the softball team, so we knew how to swing a “chunk of wood”! Mrs. Lane warned us, “If I think you’re not swatting hard enough, I’ll make you do it again.”
Putting us in pairs, the spankings began. We had to bend over and grab the edge of Mrs. Lane’s desk. You had never heard such grunting and groaning going on. I mean to tell you, we were ‘laying on the wood’ to each other’s “bottoms”. The noises we uttered got us snickering, and by the time Ben was spanking Harold, the utterances were totally embarrassing!
Harold was part Indian, was bigger in stature, and more developed than the rest of us kids, yet we had never heard him make such sounds! We had considered him “invincible.” An Indian was not supposed to flinch or show emotion. Well, let me tell you, that myth was squelched right there on the spot! Ben was in total shock and couldn’t keep a straight face ... he couldn’t lift the paddle for the third swat. The rest of us were all in stitches, laughing our
heads off, and so was Mrs. Lane!
Afterward, she had us take a seat and told us that she had seen us throwing the clay through our classroom window. Well, shoot, I didn’t get to blame it on a girl... I had been thinking about all the “fun things” I was going to do to the guilty one! My thoughts were interrupted by Mrs. Lane saying, “Now do you have anything you wish to say to me?”
We each said we were sorry for what we had done and promised never to do it again, and then she dismissed us.
This experience was such an embarrassing situation that we each went our separate ways in silence, and it was years later before the spankings were ever mentioned again. The confession took place at the “Sturgeon’s Stag Party!” Ben, Marion, and I had the group bent over double laughing when we demonstrated the groans and hollers from that spanking episode!
I must say, I learned some great lessons from that fifth-grade incident .. .like, don’t ever steal, and you won’t go through the embarrassment and humiliation when caught; and stuff like this can cause a great deal of pain; oh, and don’t place the blame on someone until you know all the facts.
In thinking about this, I called some of the guys to refresh my memory and for the story’s accuracy. When I called Marion, he began laughing and said, “You bet I remember that day. I got the whipping of my life when I got home and told my parents what we
had done!”
These many years later, I located Mrs. Alta Lane in a nursing home in Canyon, Texas. She was just as sharp as ever. We had a pleasant visit, and she even remembered “the art class” incident! Mrs. Lane was 102 years old on March 16, 2008. I congratulated her and then
sent her a big bouquet of flowers from eight 5th graders, and I listed all of the names and lifetime occupations!
