"The Crack At The End Of The Wall"

I grew up reading "Hardy Boys" books. The adventures of  brothers Frank and Joe, and their sidekick, Chet, filled many hours of my growing up years. After my brother, Ralph, introduced me to the books at the old public library on East Main Street, I never looked back. Who can forget "The Secret Of The Old Mill"? or "The Wailing Siren Mystery"? and "The Disappearing Floor"? Good, clean, wholesome reading!

I know my little story will not come up to the standard of *Franklin W. Dixon but let me tell you the true story of: "The Crack At The End Of The Wall"...

I began my school days at the Junction Hill C-12 Elementary School. I did not attend Kindergarten, but in 1970, when I started first grade, it looked exactly as it appears above. My first grade class, with Mrs. Beulah Story as teacher, was the one right behind the basketball goal in the picture.

When the school was built, there was not a separate classroom for each grade. There were six classrooms, so some of the grades had to share a room. I confirmed with one former teacher, Mrs. Nondes Good, that she taught 3rd and 4th grade in one room in 1963. She also said that the 7th grade was divided between the 6th grade room and the 8th grade room. I also visited with former teacher, Mr. Bobby Vonallmen, who started teaching at Junction Hill in 1961. He said that the 1st and 8th grade had their own classrooms with the other classes being divided between the remaining rooms and he taught 4th and 5th grade together. (And as a side note: He was also the boys PE teacher for all the upper grades!)

Taking all this into consideration, it seems that some of the rooms were larger than others. And then sometime, in the years before I started school, they divided the larger rooms with a wall...

And a few years down the road, I made a discovery...

When they built the wall dividing the room which would house the 6th and 7th grade classes, they did almost a perfect job. "Almost" being the key word. The end of the wall, opposite the windows fit perfectly against the inside block wall. The end that was against the outside wall where the windows were... not so good. At the end of the wall, about three or four feet up from the floor at the bottom of the window, there was a crack...

This crack was between the end of the wall and the window, and it reached all the way to the ceiling.

I discovered this crack at the end of the wall by mere accident. Our teacher, Mr. Herndon, had moved me to the very back corner of the classroom so I was not directly under his gaze every moment of the day. I was forever more looking for ways to occupy my time in class. Besides studying.

I kept hearing the teacher lecturing in the 7th grade class, very clearly. So I knew there was some kind of opening into the class next door. Upon further investigation (at intervals when Mr. Herndon wasn't watching) I discovered the small open space between the window and the end of the wall. "The Crack"!

Well... I had a good friend, Eric, who was in 7th grade, so we conspired to fix a method of communicating using this secret passage. After all, adolescent boys have so many important messages that they need to send back and forth to each other...

I brought a long, thin piece of copper wire to school, and while the teacher wasn't looking, threaded it through the crack, into the 7th grade classroom.

In the 7th grade room, where the wire came through the crack, was right on top of a row of book shelves. So... Eric found some excuse to go back to the bookshelf and attached a note to the end of the wire. I pulled it through to my side, read it, attached an answer back and sent it back through the crack.

This worked famously for a couple of days. Then, things got even better. Eric somehow persuaded the teacher to move him to the back corner, right across the wall from where I sat!

This made it so much easier and faster to send our important missives.

So we sent our messages back and forth, back and forth and enjoyed the fact and we were getting away with secret, high level communication, right under the teacher's nose.

We might have gotten away with this clandestine communication until the end of the school year....If I hadn't been so slow. Alas! It was impatience that brought the whole surreptitious operation down in flames!

Eric had passed a note through to me and I was attempting to answer it. Before I could get a reply written and passed back, Mr. Herndon stood up and started lecturing on some important (I'm sure) 6th grade subject.

I figured, "No Problem". Surely Eric can wait until Mr. Herndon finishes.

How wrong I was...

A few minutes into his lecture, I began to hear a rustling behind my head. Now, I didn't dare turn around, because the teacher's eyes were roaming back and forth across the class as he talked. And all of a sudden... He stopped talking, his eyes bugged out and he was looking RIGHT AT ME!!

Actually, he wasn't looking Right at me. He was staring at something right above my head and right behind me!

It seems that, in his extreme impatience, Eric had decided to get my attention. He had found a HUGE sheet of paper. Rolled it up into a long tube. Flattened it out until it would fit through the crack in the wall. Stuck it through the crack until there was about two foot sticking out on MY side... And was WAVING IT UP AND DOWN!!! LIKE A HUGE, NARROW WHITE FLAG!!!

Uh Oh!!!

Mr. Herndon had this quirky habit. He was left handed, so he would snap the left thumb and forefinger then make a fist and smack the heel of his left hand into his right palm. Over and over, while he was lecturing.

Here he came, slowly down the aisle between the desks, snapping his fingers and smacking his palm.... He walked right back to the corner where I sat, reached above my head, grabbed the still waving paper banner, and jerked it all the way through the crack and right out of Eric's hand!!

Then... He just stood there... Wadding up the paper... Staring at me with his black beady eyes... Not smiling... His mustache twitching... "Mr. Riggs! Get your desk and move it right up in front of my desk. It seems I need to keep an eye on you."

I moved my desk to the "honored" place, right in front of his desk. The front of my desk was actually touching the front of Mr. Herndon's desk!!

Almost immediately, he went next door and informed the 7th grade teacher of our covert activity... And guess what? Eric also had the honor of being moved to the head of the class!!

We didn't receive any other punishment, but the humiliation was enough.

The school year ended. I attended West Plains Junior High my 7th grade year. But I have never forgotten the rush of excitement, the thrill of danger, the humiliation of discovery, in the undercover case of: "The Crack At The End Of The Wall"...

*Franklin W Dixon, "author" of the Hardy Boys Books, was actually a pseudonym for Edward Stratemeyer the original creator of the series.

The Day That Dad Popped A Wheelie

In my "growin' up years", bicycles were the preferred mode of transportation. No Skateboards or Scooters for us! Besides the fact that we lived on a DIRT ROAD, which was not commodious to skateboard or scooter riding; there was a certain manly stigma associated with riding a bike.

I was still in the "slightly less manly" tricycle stage when we lived on the farm at County Line. My older brother Ralph, however, had already graduated from "Tri" to "Bi" so Dad and Mom purchased him a brand spankin' new Bike!

If I remember correctly, it was a hot, muggy summer evening, when Dad decided to "strut his stuff'. Ralph had been riding around the back yard at the farm house for a while, when Dad posed him the question... "Ralph, can you pop a wheelie??"

Now... Knowing my brother like I do, I would say that "wheelie popping" had already been attempted. And I am also sure that he attempted to perform the feat for Dad.

It must have fallen way short of Dad's expectations. Because the next thing out of his mouth was "Here. Let me show you how to do that!"

So... My Dad climbs on the bike.

You know how, when you're young, everybody is old? At this time, in the late 1960's, my Dad was old. At least in his middle thirties. I had never seen my Dad on a bicycle... And I don't believe I ever saw him on one again...

Dad sashayed around the yard while Ralph and I watched with anticipation for the big wheelie. I think Mom was just watching with with a sense of foreboding...

On one of his trips around the yard, Dad must have figured that it was Show Time! He pulled up on the handle bars of the bike, pulled the front wheel off the ground and Popped A Wheelie!

....Only the "Wheelie" kept "Popping"! The front wheel kept coming up, up, up... Until Dad slid off the back of the banana seat and hit the ground, Ker Thud! Right on his Bohunkus!!

Now Ralph and I knew better than to laugh. But Mom had no such inhibitions. While she was running over to see how badly Dad was hurt, she was laughing, snorting, giggling and trying to act concerned, all at the same time! Ever been there?!?

After we found out that the only thing really damaged was Dad's pride, we all had a good laugh!

In the next few days, a patch of dead grass appeared in the yard... In close proximity to where my Dad performed his one and only bicycle exhibition. Now I'm sure it had nothing to with my Dad's derriere hitting the terra firma with the force of bunker buster bomb...

But it was forever a reminder to our family, of "The Day That Dad Popped A Wheelie"!!!

*I'm pretty sure that the bike Ralph is riding in the picture above, is the one that Dad popped his wheelie on. And...this picture is taken at the Conklin House, at Junction Hill, in the summer of 1969.

Ivory Soap Memories

I've been having some sort of irritation in my eyes. I wash them out with my regular soap, Irish Spring, and everything is fine for a little while. Then, it starts to feel like I have something in my eyes. The best I can explain it is this... It feels like morning "eye boogers" but you can't rub them out. Sometimes (Gross Alert!!) I can even wipe white sticky "boogers" from my eyes... The other symptom is that direct sunlight seems to make it worse.

I decided to try a new kind of soap.

So... I went to Wally World and bought a three-pack of Ivory Soap. When I opened the soap up this morning to begin my face wash, Tami happened to be in the room. So I stuck the bar out to her and said "Here. Smell this and tell me what it reminds you of."

She took a whiff of the Ivory Soap bar and then said "At school...."

I interrupted with "EXACTLY!!!  It reminds me of School!" More particularly, it reminds me of art classes when I went to the Junction Hill Elementary School.

It seems like every year, we had an art class that included carving "something" out of a bar of Ivory Soap. The teacher would announce that we needed to bring a bar of Ivory Soap to school for an art project.

Our family used Zest...

Zest would not work Dove wouldn't either. Even "Clean As A Whistle" Irish Spring would not work. It had to be Ivory!

So the bar of Ivory Soap would be procured, taken to school and readied for the future Michelangelo's to sculpt. As I am typing this, I am wondering... Did they let us use knives to carve with?? Third and fourth boys with sharp knives? I'm lucky to still have my fingers! My old school friends are lucky to still have their fingers. And other appendages...

Every one of us started out with confidence and a determination to carve the best "whatever" that anyone had ever seen. A Turtle? A Dog? A Fish? The best I can recollect, the teacher had only a few patterns and we had to choose one of them. Otherwise, some smart alack like me would have tried to carve the Statue of Liberty or The Eiffel Tower.

As it turned out, I would start carving... Let's just say a turtle. After working on it for a few class periods, I would despair of caving anything remotely resembling a turtle and try to convert it into a fish... or a snail... or an egg... My high hopes would descend into low expectations.

What I usually ended up with was something that faintly resembled Quasimodo... with no teeth, missing an arm, both legs and an ear, complete with the wart over his left eye...

How did the teacher keep a straight face when she complimented us on our masterpieces? And not break out in hysterical laughter??

I do know this; when I stuck that bar of Ivory Soap up to my nose, and breathed in... I was transported back to a simpler, uncluttered little world of good memories....

You can read more about Ivory Soap Here

"I Have A Dream"

Our beautiful "Heart of the Ozarks" was not always the laid back, friendly, peaceful place that it is today. During the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression... depending on what side of the Mason-Dixon you were on) our area of the Ozarks was basically deserted. It became a violent battleground of Union and Southern sympathizers, with brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor and family against family. This resulted in guerrilla bands burning the courthouse and most of the buildings in West Plains and causing the residents to pack and flee north or south, depending on their ideological leanings. I have heard the arguments that this war "was not about freeing the slaves!" And I would agree, that it was not fought totally over that issue. But the Emancipation Proclamation and the slaves being freed at the end of the conflict tell me, that it was not an insignificant, little happenstance at the end of a bloody five-year war.

I was born four months after Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the "March on Washington" on August 23rd, 1963. I was a child during the civil rights upheaval of the sixties and early seventies and it seemed far away and unimportant in my "world." Most of the black people in our town were well respected, hard working people like the white folks... with a few bad apples... just like the white folks. However, the people of color all lived on the "Hill", had their own church and their own cemetery.

I do remember the "N" word being used in jokes in my elementary and high school - although there were no black children in my elementary school and only two in my high school. I am deeply ashamed to admit that I also joined in on some of this talk but I couldn't have told you the names of more than than three or four black people.

When I consider the presence of racial prejudice in the West Plains of today, I am really clueless. I still do not have a lot of contact with the people of color in our town. I have a couple of friends I swap howdys with when I meet them but no close relationship with them. Our West Plains college campus has increased the number of African Americans and other people of color in our city, but again, I have no real contact with them. Maybe I should work on that?!?

This brings me to the real purpose of my post. When Dr. King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech; I'm sure, in a small way, he had this in mind... An annual tradition of my great niece, Claire Riggs.

Every Memorial Day for years, even decades, our family has went to the family cemetery plots and decorated the graves of our ancestors. For many years, (at least the years she has been aware of the significance of it), Claire has decorated the grave of Aunt Mime, in Ledbetter Cemetery near Crider, Missouri.

Aunt Mime's Gravestone

Why is this so significant?

Aunt Mime was a former colored slave.

Sometime around the 1850's, Turpin Goode Scoggin* moved from North Carolina, into the Ozarks near the settlement of South Fork. In addition to his family, he brought with him, two female slaves. In the years that followed, according to certain accounts, one of the slaves "became unruly" so he set her free. This left her homeless so she had to find someone that would take her in. Scoggin had family near Crider, Missouri, so one of these kind-hearted souls took her in. She established her place in the household and became "Aunt Mime". From my recollection of comments of people that knew her, (such as my Grandma Fox) she was a kind, sweet lady and not "unruly" at all. 

Considering that Aunt Mime passed away in 1921 and was set free in the late 1850's, she lived quite a long life! Even in death though, she never gained the status of "all men are created equal". They buried Aunt Mime in the southwest corner of Ledbetter Cemetery, away from all the "white folks", and marked her grave with a large rock. An unceremonious end for a life of labor, heartache and trouble. In later years, a small granite stone replaced the rock with the words, "Aunt Mime - Died August 1921

This story of "Aunt Mime", I have heard since my childhood. This was the story, in the fine oral tradition, that was repeated to Claire. It touched her heart and made her want to "do something" for Aunt Mime. So every year, at Memorial Day, Aunt Mime gets flowers on her grave. Some ninety-odd years after her death, she is remembered and mourned by a "white" young lady.

It just may be that Dr. King's "Dream" is coming to pass. Not with marches, protests and riots. But with the telling of a story that touches the tender heart of the younger generation...

Claire Riggs at Aunt Mime's grave

Claire Riggs and "Pawpaw" Ralph Riggs decorating Aunt Mime's grave. You can see how isolated it is, in the far corner of the cemetery (although there is a new grave nearby)

*As an aside - Turpin Goode Scoggin was appointed the first County Surveyor of Howell County in 1859.