When school started in September, girls discovered that boys, awful in the sixth grade, had become terrible in the seventh grade. They said bad words, some of which we did not understand. They tucked small mirrors under the laces of their Keds and stuck their feet under girls’ skirts.
Our class was supposed to be studying grammar, which included diagraming sentences from a tan book, Grammar and Composition, by Effie B. McFadden, with selections for seventh-grade study and memorizing. Many of us referred to this unpopular book simply as “Effie.”
“After all, this is a grammar school,” Miss Stone, our serious teacher, reminded us when we groaned at Effie and her grammar.
Instead of concentrating on Effie, my attention turned to a curly-haired boy named Allen who sat across the aisle from me and was more interesting than making skeletons out of sentences and labeling the bones with proper subjects, verbs, objects, and modifiers.
Allen was also more interesting than our arithmetic book, obviously the work of an educator who enjoyed torturing seventh-graders with “An ice cream can was 2/3 full. After 18 dishes had been taken out, it was still 1/16 full. How many dishes had been taken out?” Concealing Allen’s notes from Miss Stone, who threatened to read aloud any note she intercepted, was my exercise in problem solving.
Because boys usually went in pairs for protection when one of them was interested in a girl, Allen and his friend George sometimes walked home from school with me while I wheeled my bicycle. Except for chinning themselves on any handy branch, they were almost civilized. It was George who gave me his first manual training project, a breadboard nicely rounded at one end, with a neatly bored hole for hanging it on a nail. Mother put it away for me to use “someday,” and whenever she ran across it, she referred to it as “Beverly’s hope chest.”
In the seventh grade, changes took place, not only in boys but in the school curriculum. The platoon system was introduced. This meant we were taught some subjects—“Effie,” reading, arithmetic, and United States history—in our homeroom but marched off in platoons to other rooms for music, art, nature study, library, an oddly named class called “auditorium,” and double periods for domestic science or manual training. And, of course, gymnasium, where seventh-graders exercised with wands or marched while Claudine played “Napoleon’s Last Charge” on the piano.
Girls sewed in 7A and cooked in 7B while boys hammered, sawed, and sanded in another basement classroom. Many parents objected to the platoon system; schools should stick to basics. Mother felt the new system too strenuous. “It’s just rush, rush, rush all day long,” she said. At PTA she complained to Miss Stone that my handwriting had deteriorated and was difficult to read. Miss Stone replied that before long most people would use typewriters.
We now had a school library with a librarian, Miss Smith, a young, brisk, well-tailored teacher who also taught reading. She taught us how to use the library and once made us line up alphabetically by our last names, as if we were books on shelves. After that, I found a place on the shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.
Miss Smith introduced an innovation to Fernwood. Until Miss Smith entered our lives, our teachers forbade reading in the classroom, except for old copies of the National Geographic. No one enjoyed this except the terrible boys who knew, by ragged covers, which issues contained pictures of naked women in African tribes.
Not being able to read in school had frustrated me. During the first week, I held my reader under my desk and read it all the way through, even though teachers said repeatedly, “Do not read ahead.” After that I hid books I wanted to read inside my geography, an ideal book, because of its size, for hiding other books. I was deeply grateful to Miss Smith, not only for letting us read but for letting me into the library first on the days when St. Nicholas magazine arrived.
Miss Smith had standards. We could read, but we must read good books. Cheap series books, traded around the neighborhood, were not permitted in her classroom. Miss Smith was also strict. She once made me stay after school until I could write on the blackboard, from memory and in order, all the presidents of the United States. I do not recall what I did to deserve this judgment, but I do recall thinking it more sensible than writing “I will not talk in gymnasium” one hundred times—a penalty once meted out by Miss Helliwell, our gym teacher.
Miss Smith also gave unusual assignments. Once, without warning, she said, “I want you to pretend you live in George Washington’s time and write a letter to someone describing an experience.”
Write something we had not learned in a book? This was unheard of. “But that’s not fair,” some protested.
Miss Smith assured us that such an assignment was perfectly fair. We knew she was right. Miss Smith was always fair. Strict, but fair.
“You mean now?” someone asked.
“Now.” Miss Smith was always firm.
“But how?” someone else asked.
“Use your imaginations,” said Miss Smith, unconcerned by the consternation she had created.
I was excited. All my life, Mother had told me to use my imagination, but I had never expected to be asked, or even allowed, to use it in school. After a moment of pencil chewing, I wrote to an imaginary cousin, telling how I had sacrificed my pet chicken to help feed Washington’s starving, freezing troops at Valley Forge.
The next day, Miss Smith read my letter to the class, praised me for using my imagination, and said everyone else in the class had to try again. At Fernwood any written work, even practice sentences, that did not measure up to teachers’ standards was rewritten—sometimes more than once. Smugly I read a library book while my classmates struggled with letters about their sacrifices of pet lambs and calves for Washington’s troops. Copycats, I thought with contempt. Mother had told me authors found their ideas in their own minds, not in the words of others. Besides, who ever heard of lambs and calves in the middle of winter? In Yamhill, they were born in springtime.
Next Miss Smith gave us homework: writing an essay about our favorite book character. This brought forth groans and sighs of resignation from most of the class. Nobody wanted to do homework, especially original homework.
That weekend, Mother happened to be visiting her parents in Banks, where Grandpa Atlee had bought back his store. (When he was seventy, after two years of retirement, he decided he was too young to be idle.) After I put together a Sunday dinner for my father, who gamely ate it and was enjoying his pipe and the Sunday paper, I sat down to write the essay. Which favorite character when I had so many? Peter Pan? Judy from Daddy-Long-Legs? Tom Sawyer? I finally solved this problem by writing about a girl who went to Bookland and talked to several of my favorite characters. I wrote on and on, inventing conversations that the characters might have had with a strange girl. As rain beat against the windows, a feeling of peace came over me as I wrote far beyond the required length of the essay. I had discovered the pleasure of writing, and to this day, whenever it rains, I feel the urge to write. Most of my books are written in winter.
As much as I enjoyed writing it, I thought “Journey Through Bookland” was a poor story because the girl’s journey turned out to be a dream; and if there was anything I disliked, it was a good story that ended up as a dream. Authors of such stories, including Lewis Carroll, were cheating, I felt, because they could not think of any other conclusion.
I was also worried because I had used characters from published books. Miss Smith had lectured us on plagiarism and said that stealing from books was every bit as wrong as stealing from a store. But how could I write about a favorite character without having him speak?
When we turned our essays in during library, I watched anxiously as Miss Smith riffled through the papers. Was I going to catch it? Miss Smith pulled out a paper that I recognized as mine and began to read aloud. My mouth was dry and my stomach felt twisted. When she finished, she paused. My heart pounded. Then Miss Smith said, “When Beverly grows up, she should write children’s books.”
I was dumbfounded. Miss Smith was praising my story-essay with words that pointed to my future, a misty time I rarely even thought about. I was not used to praise. Mother did not compliment me. Now I was not only being praised in front of the whole class but was receiving approval that was to give direction to my life. The class seemed impressed.
When I reported all this to Mother, she said, “If you are going to become a writer, you must have a steady way of earning your living.” This sound advice was followed by a thoughtful pause before she continued, “I have always wanted to write myself.”
My career decision was lightly made. The Rose City Branch Library—quiet, tastefully furnished, filled with books and flowers—immediately came to mind. I wanted to work in such a place, so I would become a librarian.
Miss Smith, dear brisk lady who gave unusual assignments, astonished us again by announcing one day that we were no longer to call her Miss Smith. She was now Mrs. Weaver.
“You mean you got married?” we asked after this news had sunk in.
With a smile, she admitted she had. A teacher getting married was unheard of to us. Some were called “Mrs.,” but we thought they were widows. Our teachers never discussed their personal lives with their classes, but here was a teacher who had presumably fallen in love while she was a teacher. Astounding! Such a thing had never happened before and, in the course of my education, never happened again.
In addition to Mrs. Weaver and her surprising assignments, home economics and manual training were new to us. In sewing class, while boys were sawing away at their breadboards, girls in 7A were laboring over samplers of stitches and seams and putting them to use making cooking aprons that slipped over our heads and had bias binding properly applied to the neck and armholes, and bloomers that taught us to measure elastic without stretching it. In 7B, cooking class began by making white sauce without lumps.
Mother, who often told me how she sacrificed to give me piano lessons, gave up when we moved from Hancock Street; so once again I had school music to dread. That had not changed. We were still expected to sing alone.
The goals of our new art class were conformity and following directions, not creativity. The teacher passed out squared paper. She instructed us to set our pencil points on an intersection ten squares down and four squares from the left-hand edge. Her directions droned on. “Draw a line two squares over, one square down, two squares over…” on and on. Grimly we labored to keep up with the instructions, to pay her the attention she demanded. When she finished, those of us who had kept up had identical outlines of a rooster. We were then told which crayons to use “without scrubbing” on which squares; others, those who did not pay attention or, in the case of the terrible boys, did not want to, had something surreal. Perhaps, without knowing it, they had captured the spirit of a rooster, if not the approval of the art teacher.
Auditorium was taught by Miss Viola Harrington, who stood at the rear of the auditorium while we took turns standing up straight, walking up the steps to the center of the stage, facing her, and whispering, “Can you hear me whisper?”
“Louder,” said Miss Harrington. “I can’t hear you.”
We took deep breaths and even deeper breaths until we thought our lungs would burst, until Miss Harrington could hear us at the back of the auditorium.
From that stage, speaking distinctly, we recited memorized poetry, reported on current events, and gave talks on assigned subjects. When Miss Harrington assigned me a report on “Guano,” Mother said, “The idea! What a thing to talk about in public.” The terrible boys whispered a different word for fertilizer supplied by birds on islands off the coast of South America. I was embarrassed to stand on the stage talking about bird droppings, no matter how rich in nitrate and phosphate. Such stuff, to me, was not valuable but something to avoid stepping in. Miss Harrington obviously had never walked across a barnyard full of chickens.
The most unusual change in curriculum was nature study, taught by Miss Lydia Crawford, an aloof eccentric with long, glossy brown hair wound around her head and with the high color and glowing complexion of an outdoor woman. She always wore plain dark dresses that stopped just below her knees; she wore high brown shoes, much higher than those I had finally been allowed to abandon, which laced all the way to her knees. We were all intimidated by Miss Crawford.
Miss Crawford believed that if we were to study nature, we should have nature around us. She brought, and encouraged us to bring, exhibits to be placed on a ledge beneath the window. Plants bloomed; lichen, mosses, and minerals were displayed; chipmunks raced on wheels; and a two-headed garter snake and I stared at each other through the glass walls of its prison.
Miss Crawford told us that when she was a little girl, she was taught to recite “From the stable to the table, dirty flies!” She said women ruined their skins with face powder, which was made from talc. “See, children, this is what foolish women rub on their faces,” she said, holding up a piece of the greenish mineral while her own face shone from soap and water. She told us we must always rotate our crops and never, never perjure ourselves.
The curriculum required Miss Crawford to lead us through a book with a dark blue cover entitled Healthy Living. We stared listlessly at drawings of correct and incorrect posture and of properly balanced meals before we began a relentless journey of a meal through the alimentary canal, beginning with food thoroughly chewed. I endured what went on in our mouths and esophagi, but I began to have doubts about the whole thing down around our stomachs, and when we reached the liver and gallbladder, the whole messy business became disgusting and, beyond those organs, too embarrassing to mention. I did not want to think of all that going on inside of me. Ugh.
Miss Crawford, radiating health, was apparently as bored with Healthy Living as her class. One day she suddenly closed the sensible text, laid it aside, and with her fingertips resting on the front desk in the center row, began to tell us a story about a man named Jean Valjean, who lived in France a long time ago and who had spent nineteen years as a galley slave for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry nieces and nephews. We all perked up. We knew about galley slaves from pirate movies.
Miss Crawford’s cheeks grew redder, and her face became incandescent with excitement, as she went on and on, telling us the story in great detail. Nothing this moving had ever happened in school before. We groaned when the bell rang.
“Children,” said Miss Crawford, “I shall continue the story in our next class.”
Nature study became the best part of school. Chipmunks still raced, a home of a trapdoor spider was added to the nature display; but all that mattered to us was Les Misérables. On and on we traveled with Jean Valjean, hounded by Inspector Javert all the way. Fantine, her little daughter, Cosette, and the wicked Thénardiers all became as real as, perhaps more real than, our neighbors. We gasped when Fantine sold her beautiful hair to pay the Thénardiers for the care of Cosette. Even the most terrible boys sat still, fascinated. Unaware of social injustice in our own country, we were gripped by Victor Hugo’s story of social injustice in nineteenth-century France.
Some parents—but not mine—listening to us retell at the supper table the marvelous story Miss Crawford was bringing to our imaginations, began to object. Storytelling in school was improper. We were there to learn, not to be entertained. Telephone calls and visits were made to Mr. Dorman, who was a very wise man. Of course we should be studying Healthy Living, and so we did. However, at least once a week Miss Crawford came to our auditorium class to continue the story.
June came, summer vacation was about to begin, and she had not finished Les Misérables.
“Don’t worry, children,” she said. “I’ll be here when you return in September.”
True to her word, Miss Crawford was waiting when school started, and took up where she had left off. Well into the eighth grade, the story of Jean Valjean came to an end. Miss Crawford began another novel by Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea.
By coincidence, the next year one of Mother’s cousins, Verna, who had become a librarian, sent me a copy of Les Misérables, which she inscribed in her beautiful vertical handwriting: “A book that you may enjoy someday, if not now, Beverly.” I had already lived the book and did not read it for many years. Then, as I read, Miss Crawford was before me on every page. She seemed not to have missed a single word.
I often wonder why this particular book meant so much to an eccentric Oregon teacher. Had someone in her family suffered a terrible injustice? Had her repeated warning about perjury come from some experience in her own life? Or had she perhaps spent her childhood in isolation on a farm where the works of Victor Hugo were the only books available? And why did she suddenly feel compelled to share this novel with a class of seventh-graders? Whatever her reasons, I am profoundly grateful to her—and to the wisdom of Mr. Dorman for circumventing unimaginative parents and allowing her to tell the entire book in such detail. My copy has 1,222 pages.