The baby boomers were being educated now, having been born at some point during the past fifteen years or so. Traditional values were the rage, with parents having survived a horrible economic depression and a worldwide war that demanded complete support but had the advantage of not touching much of their homeland: We had it both ways.
We won the war because we were better people, we were told, or at least that thinking was never discouraged (and kept us from delving into the imperial motivations of our own). Exceptionalism was on the march. God had blessed us, which is thinking that dated back at least a hundred years before that (in the form called Manifest Destiny), so victory in humankind's worst war just built on that pedestal.
But in 1957 there came Sputnik, which scared the bejabbers out of everyone and created a new commitment to national education. It wasn't as if the Russians were smarter than we were; they simply decided to devote themselves to more concentrated research. As a totalitarian society, that's a little easier to do.
Americans bring a load to a task but get there when they get there, when they think it's a big deal. It was Albert Einstein's warning, after all, that alerted FDR to the possibility of a German atomic bomb and sparked the Manhattan Project. Without it, the Germans might have been first to that horrible goal and the history of Western civilization might have taken an even worse turn.
But it looked like the Russians were smarter, so schooling became a priority. That was no different in Grafton, Wisconsin, in which a brand-spanking new Catholic grade school had opened (in 1957, wouldn't you know it) and the eight classrooms which would ostensibly hold eight different grades weren't adequate for the surging clientele, what with very un-Catholic contraception still a few years away, papal encyclical or not. Big families were the rage, and quite encouraged.
So some of us, in grades 4 and 5, were shoved back into the old school, rather dilapidated but useable, for at least a few years while St. Joseph's Parish absorbed this enormous influx of kids. Compared to the nice, neat, modern school next door, it was a hand-me-down. The steps leading up to the classrooms groaned and sagged even when grade schoolers used them. The heating registers worked but sometimes dinged loudly and didn't mind interrupting religion class when they did so. The bells still worked, though.
Even back then, there weren't enough nuns to go around, so some lay teachers were hired. Every teacher had at least forty souls to instruct and save from the vestiges of sin and Lutherans. Obviously, unionization of teachers never reached them (and in the private sector, never would) so class sizes were non-negotiable. But they hardly needed it, since a little hardship in devotion to a cause greater than oneself was a very recent memory and scarcely worth a reminder since it had been so successful.
One of these lay teachers taught fifth grade for a while at St. Joseph's in Grafton. He had served in the Navy (or Marines), and had enough ego that he demanded that the students address him as "sir," instead of merely his name, and stand whenever he entered the room, as if a commanding officer had suddenly appeared. Looking back, it was only in the kind of atmosphere in which a wartime mentality could be considered at all reachable that he was allowed to get away with that. Instead it was considered quirky. At least I don't remember anyone making a big deal about it. It was a staple of Catholic guilt that he could make you feel bad for not doing it.
The discipline served as a cover, for he almost never came to school on time. His attendance record would have made me, as a future teacher, lock the door behind me and make him wait outside until attendance was taken (which I did to chronic offenders, who oddly seemed to respond well because someone was paying some attention to them). I honestly don't remember him ever being there on time, though I'm sure there was a day or two. It was surprising when he did.
At St. Joe's, we were to begin at 8. My fifth grade teacher was always at least five or ten minutes late, and sometimes up to half an hour or 40 minutes. His excuse was that his wife worked as a stewardess, they didn't have a second car (interesting with two jobs, but women didn't drive as much), and he had to drop her off at the airport before coming to work in Grafton, quite a drive in those days. This was before the Interstate system decided to build an extension north of Milwaukee, so the main artery to Grafton was U.S. Highway 141 (now known as Port Washington Road), which ran (at most) three lanes north and south and was increasingly treacherous at certain times of the day (which my family knew very well because we'd make a comparable drive on weekends to my Polish grandparents, who also lived on Milwaukee's South Side. In the winter especially, it could be an adventure).
So it was understandable, to a point, for him to say that he was caught up in traffic. But it was also true that the vast majority of the school's business took place next door in the new school, and the principal, a nun otherwise respected to an iconic degree and the 8th grade teacher herself, was too busy to check on him very often; out of sight, out of mind. He came late so often because he knew he could get away with it. As demanding as he was of his students' discipline, he was pretty sneaky himself.
Amazingly, we kids never (at least I don't remember it), ever got rowdy or decided to hang out on the steps or play hooky, taking chances that they could beat him back to the room. Instead, we quietly sat and did some of our homework or read. This was probably because, though he was consistently late, you could never tell how late he would be. But he'd come strolling in and we'd have to "hit the deck," as he called it, coming to our feet when he entered. It was also because somehow, he had us worried that we would be the main culprits if we were caught being tardy or AWOL, which I'm sure is how he would put it, addicted as he had made us to his quasi-military farce.
I wonder if anyone's parents ever complained. I wonder if they ever knew. I'm sure my parents did. The number of instructional minutes wasted through that year must have easily gone into four figures. If we'd have decided, as kids, to test his limits by disappearing (or invoking the now unofficial but widely followed ten-minute limit on sticking around, and then dispersing for the day--what a headache that would have been), I think action would have been swift and guilt-producing, regardless of the actual irresponsibility that had sparked it. I do remember that he was good and knew his stuff, so that must have carried him further than it otherwise might have.
Or not. Suddenly, as we neared Christmas, we were being made to memorize the song Silent Night. No one knew exactly why we were being made to do that. We were to sing it together while waiting in the lunch line one noontime hour near the holiday. Thing is, we were to do it in German.
Nobody told us why we had to do that, either. I'm guessing that, with his job already in jeopardy, the teacher had to convince the principal that we were, or that he was in fact making us, capable of many remarkable things in his purview, and that he was the master at making us do it. With the culture of Grafton thoroughly German--the Bund, a pro-Nazi group, had held a summer camp for youth briefly just twenty years before--it would hit the right notes, literally, with the general population and maybe even be the talk of the town.
So even though we lost minutes of instruction almost every day, we were to pull off to the side and learn one verse of one Christmas carol in German, thus losing even more instruction in arithmetic, religion, and reading. We practiced, of course, for days; he had a German name and perhaps knew the language well.
I have nothing against learning new languages; in fact, we've done not nearly enough of it. Enhancing the curriculum can be a great boost. And what the hell's wrong with a Christmas carol in a Catholic school? But a one-time deal like this is cheesy. It built on nothing and there was no follow-up. When I taught, I engaged students in some activities that were complimentary to the curriculum, but there were follow-ups and various roles involved. This wasn't that.
As I recall, we pulled it off. We had that thing down cold: Stille nacht, hielige nacht. Alles schlaft, einsome vacht. Think that doesn't stick with you? I didn't have to look that up. It probably helped, too, that St. Joe's choir also sang it in German at midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
It must have saved his job, at least for the moment. It made quite the impact, the kind that made you believe he'd be there forever, a reliable cornerstone. But it was a gimmick, a one-time diversion of attention that was never repeated. It had all the appurtenances of cuteness, but in retrospect, it feels like we had been used, maybe in effect if not in intent. He did not stay. By the time we graduated from eighth grade and dispersed to various high schools, he was long gone.
We could have been forgiven: We were fifth graders. Might we have been adults, we might have looked back and asked ourselves: Really? We bought into that? And nobody twitched a muscle?
I wonder whether some of the otherwise faithful to 45 might ask themselves that very thing later on. Or will they blindly continue in indoctrination after he leaves: Make America Great Again. Lock Her (Him, Them) Up. Fake News.
Think that doesn't stick with you? But nobody, so far, has seemed to do anything but buy into that. Nobody's twitching a muscle.
Perhaps time will introduce perspective, as it has mine (though 60 years downwind). Perhaps a considerable number of minions will conclude that they've been hoodwinked and, in point of fact, robbed of some of their money by grifters out for only themselves. Eventually, they might figure out that they were diverted from their attention to the undermining that had really gone on. Perhaps they will double down. More journalism will certainly ensue. More people will talk.
45 can't save his job (maybe it should be called his awarded hobby; he sure never worked at it), though he keeps trying at ridiculous levels. Too many who are interested in the continuation of the republic have interceded, building a firewall for now. But he will be remembered for stretching democracy nearly out of whack. He wants to return. He will work daily in attempts to do just that, and will get stooges to help him. We're not finished with him, arrest and trial for some of his grifting notwithstanding.
Where he takes his nonsense after January 20 will make for temporary interest. Meanwhile, Joe Biden will need our help in building back a governmental infrastructure that 45 has tried (and is still trying) to deconstruct.
Only one thing to do with bad memories: Build new and better ones. Merry Christmas.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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