Red Haired Teacher Chapter 1 Ernest Tigner

That spring marked my first term in school. We had a school teacher that was something else. She was a nervous wreck. She had very red hair and a temper like no woman or man I have ever seen or heard tell of since. The poor thing was sick. She had to be.

Her favorite way of keeping everybody in line was to take a ruler and slap you on the back of the hand across the knuckles That never happened to me because she had the fear ingrained in me, and so I was a real nice. boy.

But I will never forget one day. There was a young fellow ahead of me, a new boy who had moved in and started attending school. As the teacher came down the aisle, she asked the boy to hand her a pencil. She had a paper or something in her hand and needed a pencil. So the boy handed her a pencil, point first.

She grabbed the pencil, threw it on the floor, grabbed that poor litlle fellow's hand, and started slapping him on the back of his hand with her ruler. Of course the little fellow started crying, and she informed him that she would teach him never to hand a pencil to anyone point first.

That ruler had cut into this boy's hand and the blood started flying. The older children, like my brother and the other boys older than him, saw all this commotion and everybody in shcool was pretty much fed up with what she had been doing.

It happened to be real chilly, windy day in the spring of the year. We all had to go outside in the hallway when it was stormy to eat our lunch. The teacher would shut the door and lock it, so no one would interrupt her rest and lunch hours.

In the corner of the schoolyard was a large pile of rocks that had come to the surface of the ground. A farmer had cleared it and piled it up at one end of the shcoolyard. These boys got together and recruited all of us to pack the rocks over, most of which was about the size of a grapefruit.

We packed a large pile of it and put it on the floor in front of the door. When the boys figured we had enough, they took those rocks and started in on the door...and they pulverized it with those rocks!

The red-haired school teacher was inside screaming. The more she screamed, the more the rocks flew. This may sound kind of cruel, but ... (to be continued)