Going to school from first grade to high school was pretty much the same. I’d get up between 6:00 and 6:30, reminded by Mother to brush my hair and brush my teeth. Lacking a family car some of the time and too close to ride a school bus, I made the daily trek to school and back by foot or later by bicycle. In my early grades, Mom or Dad or Maggie would walk me the seven or eight blocks to school, and on rainy days a neighbor would carry me by car. But beginning in the third grade, I was on my own. Most days I would strap my wooden violin case to the handlebars and pedal to school. Occasionally, I wondered what people might be saying about that spectacle.
Milton “Weed” Jeter and me beginning our formal education at Alabama College’s nursery school.
On my way to school, I would exchange greetings with people like Mrs. Latham, Mr. Rogan at the corner of Main, Smiley Frost when you reached Valley Street, Bloomer Wilson at Middle and Main, Mr. Eddie Mahaffey, Mr. Taft Hill, and others. In the big oak trees that lined Main Street, birds would sing happily and the squirrels would chase each other, and this was all a part of my morning’s entertainment. I have always been acutely aware of nature’s sounds, I think because the elementary school principal, Mrs. Charlotte Peterson, the music teacher, Mrs. Farrah, and the math and history teacher, Mrs. Minnie Dunn, taught me how to be a good listener.
My dad sitting proudly in the fire truck he almost destroyed forty-five years earlier.
I started my school days in the nursery school run by Alabama College. It was housed in a two-story Victorian white framed building, and I would spend my mornings and early afternoons under the supervision of Miss Ethel Bickham. This place was wonderful for a three-year-old. I thought the playground, with its swings, sandboxes, and sliding boards, could not be more perfect. There was a special swing, which we called Miss Bickham’s swing, that was designed like a saddle. You put your feet on a bar in front of you and your hands on a bar above your feet and you could achieve mobility back and forth without any adult help. The swing was held by four ropes instead of two, and that made it easier to achieve greater heights than you could on a regular swing. The girls, like Sarah Pat Baker, Joy Holcombe, and Laura Ann Hicks, could not make Miss Bickham’s special swing go as high as we boys could, so they preferred to play in the sandbox doing girl stuff with little china plates and cups. We boys had no interest in the sandbox, but invariably at the end of play period we would go over and destroy the little sand cakes and pies the girls had created. And invariably Miss Bickham or one of the student teachers would take our hands by the fingers and turn our palms up, striking them with a twelve-inch ruler. Usually it did not hurt too bad, but occasionally a tear would slip from my eye. Yet I never did stop messing up the little girls’ creations.
Miss Ethel Bickham with Joy Holcombe standing in the background. I learned a lot at Miss Bickham’s, including what Joy wore underneath her dress.
Miss Bickham’s school day was extremely structured and ran on a schedule about as predictable as the trains that ran through Montevallo. You ate at a certain time. You pulled out your sleeping mat once in the morning and once after lunch and took a nap whether you wanted it or not. You sang when instructed to do so. You colored and fingerpainted on Miss Bickham’s orders. She did not brook any protest from us.
My next school was the kindergarten the college ran. Housed in the Alice Boyd building on campus, the kindergarten was even more structured than the nursery school. We had to be there exactly on time and were given assignments by only one teacher. We sat in one room with little desks and round tables with little chairs. We did have playground once in the morning, and here we learned games like kickball. I quickly discovered on the playground—even at that tender age—that I was not a jock. There were no sandboxes or Miss Bickham’s special swing. The swings, with just two chains, were much harder to swing in, requiring some help from the teacher to really get going. We didn’t have any rest time or sleeping mats to lie on, but following lunch we were sent home, and I spent the afternoons at the shop with my parents.
Two years before I started first grade, the old elementary school, which sat at the corner of Valley and Boundary streets, burned to the ground. Although I was only five at the time, I remember the excitement it caused because Dad drove to the fire in the brand-new Peter Pirsch fire truck the City had just bought. In the excitement of dealing with the smoke and flames billowing out of the heart-pine structure, he forgot to turn on the cooling system that pumped fresh water into the block and radiator of the six-cylinder Chevrolet engine. Before long the engine burned up. So the new fire truck met its Waterloo on its first trip out. This was a minor scandal, and Dad was, of course, mortified, but luckily the City had insurance and could replace the motor.
When I began regular school, my first teacher was Mrs. Alice Rice. She intended to get us off to a good start, stressing order, discipline, routine, and punishment as the four elements of a sound education. We were all somewhat terrified of her, as she walked between our desks incessantly, dressed in all black with flat lace-up shoes. But worse than her austere appearance, she was constantly armed with a wooden twelve-inch ruler, which she was ready to put into use at any infraction. My failures were mainly not paying attention, talking, and, as she put it, not cooperating, and on a number of occasions my little white palm was made red by Mrs. Rice’s whacks. You knew right away how bad your failure was by the number of whacks she gave you. After that you got a tongue-lashing, explaining why she had had to inflict the punishment.
Very different from Mrs. Rice was my third-grade teacher, a shapely young beauty named Mrs. West, who had been a Wave in the U.S. Navy. While Mrs. Rice seemed old enough to have taught Abraham Lincoln, Mrs. West was new and fresh, full of laughter, walking up and down between the rows of students not to keep order but to converse with us in a pleasant way. If you couldn’t answer a question, she didn’t make you feel bad, the way Mrs. Rice had. She asked us to report on our interests and hobbies, and she encouraged us to make colorful bulletin board displays. She was a disciple of progressive education that Dr. M. L. Orr, head of the education department, was responsible for bringing to Alabama College.
Progressive education, a liberal philosophy of educating the whole child, was just taking off across the nation, and we were made to feel privileged to attend such a school. I think the whole system went against the traditional Three R’s—reading, writing, and arithmetic. We were to progress at our own speed, and we received only pass or fail grades, no A, B, C, or D. Report cards would say something like “Mike has passed his math, history, music, but he could do better if he really applied himself.” But progressive education did not really make me want to work at my maximum level, so I just piddled around a lot of the time. In dental school years later, I encountered a philosophy that took me back to my progressive education days. We said that anything above seventy was passing, and any effort beyond that was wasted, as our diplomas would all say the same thing. Except for the few students who graduated at the very top of the class, we had all pretty much adopted that philosophy.
Although I was never a top student, I had a lively curiosity and learned a lot from my teachers, but I never applied myself sufficiently to be distinguished as a scholar. I was never elected president of anything. I ran for vice-president of the student council and lost by seven votes. I never made first chair in the band, and neither was I an athlete. But what I did have was enthusiasm, and my teachers liked that about me. I could energize a group and make them excited about a project. Teachers liked to give me jobs to do, and I was proud to be singled out. I actually liked to erase and clean the chalk boards and to run errands down to the principal’s office. If a teacher needed something found for a class project, I would quickly volunteer.
One of my favorite teachers was Miss Susie DeMent, who taught commercial subjects. By the time we were in the ninth grade, we all thought we needed typing. For many of my classmates, especially the girls, it would provide them an avenue for employment, and those of us who planned to go to college were told that typing would be invaluable to us as well. So in the tenth grade I signed up to take a typing class from Miss Susie, whom we called the Mother Superior of Typing.
Mother said I was likely to be very good at typing. After all I had taken piano lessons for nine years, and I also was able to play stringed instruments. Certainly, she said, the dexterity required for those activities would transfer to typing. Alas, my mother was wrong. I sat down dutifully before the manual Royal typewriter assigned to me and began to bang out a, s, d, f, j, k, l, ;. Over and over I typed this sequence. It seemed like running scales on the piano, and I felt pretty confident. Then we proceeded to “Let us now praise famous men,” which was not quite so easy. Then it was time to be speed-tested. I scored a miserable twenty words the first day. Ed, Joe, and Harry all scored higher, as did every girl in the class. I never was able to reach forty the entire semester, and I had to admit that my musical skills were not transferable.
Susie DeMent, aka Miss Susie, aka Miss Montevallo High School. She taught many generations of students the art of typing and shorthand. Her dedication and love for teaching made her a Montevallo legend.
I liked Miss Susie so much that I felt bad that I was not doing better in her class. But Miss Susie was in charge of the school newspaper, the Spotlight, which she reigned over with the care that the editors of the New York Times must have given to their publication. She demanded absolute perfection. Maybe if I did well on the staff of the Spotlight, she would overlook my deficiencies in typing.
I first signed on as a reporter, a job I quickly realized was not for me. I could interview people pretty well, but my writing left something to be desired, and Miss Susie saw that immediately. Little of my work was deemed worthy of the column inches it would require in the newspaper. So it didn’t take long for me to find my niche in the more technical side of the publication. Jobs like cleaning the mimeograph machine or straightening up the printing room I eagerly took on. I also distributed the papers around town and mailed copies to other high school newspapers in Alabama. When the Spotlight won state awards, I was as proud as the writers were.
Miss Susie continued her work with the Spotlight long after I graduated, taking the paper into full color and digital printing. She also remained a fixture at all school events, particularly athletic competitions. She was the official scorekeeper for the three major sports, and she always dressed in the school colors, orange and blue. Students all seemed to love Miss Susie, and she became a mentor to many. In her eighties, she still was an active fan of the Montevallo High School teams, and when alumni returned for home games, she was the first person they wanted to speak to.
Vinnie Lee Walker seated on the rocks at Davis Falls during the class of 1952’s picnic there. Miss Walker was feared, respected, disliked, loved, and dedicated beyond words to the art of teaching English and literature to generations of Montevallo students.
My senior English teacher, Mrs. Vinnie Lee Walker, bore very little resemblance to Miss DeMent. Feared by many and respected by all, this woman was the last great hurdle we students faced on our educational journeys. I knew I was in for it, as progressive education had allowed us slackers to get by with murder, and I had not gained all the basic skills required. This thin, graying woman had high standards, and she was not about to compromise them. We read the best literature, and we wrote about what we had read. I did her assignments quite perfunctorily, as I had done most of my high school career. But here there was one difference. My papers came back with C’s and D’s written in red. Up until then I had embraced the philosophy of “don’t sweat the little things; just get the big picture.” The utter failure of that philosophy became abundantly clear when six-weeks grades came out. I fearfully opened the card to see a D in English. When my parents saw the grade they were none too pleased, either. As for me, I underwent a conversion, accepting Mrs. Walker as Lord and Savior of Senior English, and with the help of my friends Ed, Emily Vest, Jane Triplett, and the student teachers from Alabama College I was able to make A’s and B’s the rest of the year. Vinnie Lee Walker accomplished more with an academically cavalier guy from Shelby Street than any other teacher I encountered.
At our high school, you were pegged as an athlete, a brain, a musician, or a nobody. But that changed for a number of boys when a short stocky man named Moon Thornton came to town to teach vocational agriculture. He started a Future Farmers of America chapter, offering opportunities for the nobodies to build their confidence up. He took them places and formed a barbershop quartet that competed with quartets from other schools. He had them entering speaking contests. They proudly wore their FFA jackets, decorated with patches won in hog-calling contests and other such events. For many kids who were getting no encouragement at home, Mr. Moon was just what they needed. He also had a great effect on people who had never been classified as nobodies.
People like Donald Dennis from Pea Ridge greatly developed their sense of self-worth due to Mr. Moon’s encouragement. One trip to the state fair with Mr. Moon and his fellow future farmers did not end so well for Donald. Things started off okay, as he won a number of dishes by throwing dimes into them. But when Mr. Moon drove up into Donald’s yard when he took him home, Donald dropped and broke every last one of his dishes.
Mr. Moon was always pressing us young men into service for the school. Late one afternoon he had a number of us trying to improve the football field, which was more hard-packed clay than sod. He had re-seeded the field, but nothing was growing much as it was so in need of water. The hose we had would not reach far enough, and he asked if anyone from town had a hose at home he could go get. Ed said yes, and Mr. Moon said, “Can you drive, Ed?”
Mr. “Moon” Thornton, the legendary teacher of agriculture, loved and respected by generations of Montevallo students, seen here in his beloved shop instructing two aspiring mechanics.
Ed quickly answered yes, but he failed to tell Mr. Moon that he had only driven his father’s Chrysler a few times or that the car had an automatic transmission. “Go on and take my car,” Mr. Moon said. I volunteered to go with Ed, and Mr. Moon said okay.
Mr. Moon’s car was a four-door 1940 Chevrolet with the gearshift on the floor. But Ed and I were undaunted by the challenge. After all, Mr. Moon had always drilled in to us, “Don’t say you can’t do something. Before you say that, go and try it.” So we went. Ed took his place in the driver’s seat. I knew the gear patterns, and I knew when to press the clutch. Ed engaged the clutch, and pushed the starter button. We were in business. I put the car into low, and told him to let off on the clutch and give it some gas. We jerked forward, but the car didn’t stall, which pleased us, as we imagined that Mr. Moon was monitoring our takeoff. “Clutch,” I said to Ed, shifting up into second as smooth as you please, and by the time I gave the command for third gear we were moving along quite smoothly. We drove up to Ed’s house, got the hose, and returned to school without a hitch. “We are one hell of a team,” Ed said as we got out of the car, and I couldn’t help smiling in agreement. Ed got the Givhan water hose from the trunk and proudly handed it over to Mr. Moon. He and I felt like something that day, having driven the car of our teacher. We didn’t even care it had taken two of us to do it. As my dad would say, “There ain’t no hill too high for a stepper,” and Ed and I were true steppers that day.
We liked Mr. Moon so much that Joe McGaughy, Weed, Ed, our new friend Bill Kirby, and I all signed up for Agriculture the following fall. We were Future Farmers of America, but none of us had any idea of having a career in agriculture. Mr. Moon told us that didn’t matter, that what FFA could teach us would be valuable the rest of our lives no matter what path we took. But we did have to have some sort of farm project. Joe and Dudley Pendleton chose to raise a steer, Ed did a work project with his Dad, and I chose to go into the worm farming business. My partner in that enterprise was Bill Kirby, who appeared in Montevallo the same year Mr. Moon did.
After his father died, Bill moved here from Selma with his mother and his younger brother John. Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Kirby, now having to support the family on her own, enrolled in Alabama College to earn teacher certification. The Kirbys lived in a house on Valley Street between Shelby and Middle Streets across from Frost Lumber Company. The two-story house was unpainted with a long concrete walk to the front steps. Neither the house nor the grounds had been taken care of very well, but Bill’s mother made it into a comfortable place to live. There were beautiful large oak trees in the front yard, and there was a fine porch from which Bill and John could keep up with all the goings-on on Valley Street.
Bill was my age and in my grade. We quickly became the best of friends, although our life styles greatly differed. I was a musician and a poor athlete. Having been governed pretty much by the female dynasty on Shelby Street, I was non-aggressive and pretty much afraid of physical contact. Bill was completely opposite. In fact, he loved combat. He was not much for academics, keeping his performance just above the failure line.
My close friend Bill Kirby, known far and wide for his prowess socially, romantically and athletically. In 1964, he was a bartender and bouncer in a Key West, Florida restaurant.
Bill pushed his behavior to the precipice, barely avoiding the unethical, the dishonest, or—occasionally—the illegal, but the coaches, Mr. Moon, and all the teachers saw in Bill all the qualities needed to do anything or be anyone he wanted to be. He was as dear, true, and honest a friend as anyone ever had. I always knew that if I had ever needed physical protection or security Bill would be there. Through our FFA activities and our membership at the Methodist church, we became lifelong friends, and when Mr. Moon said that we had to have a project in our Ag class, we naturally decided to work together.
My dad had for years wanted to have a basement under our house, so he made a business deal with Bill and me to dig a basement, and in return we could use it for our worm business. For our labor he would also pay us ten cents per wheelbarrow of dirt we dug, hauled from under the house, and dumped down a bank in the backyard. Bill and I agreed to his terms, and we formed our partnership for this FFA project. Dad bought a new wheelbarrow, two round-pointed shovels, a pick, and a mattock. K & M Worm Business was launched. We would split the income 50/50 from the dirt removal and eventually from the sale of the worms.
In late spring, we began digging each day after band and football practice. We also dug on Saturdays and whenever there was spare time. It was hard work bending over under the floor using the pick without hitting the floor joists, then shoveling the dirt into the wheelbarrow and pushing it up a 2x12 walkboard through a large hole dad had knocked in the brick foundation walls. We soon worked out a system, one of us digging with the pick and mattock and the other filling the wheelbarrow with the dirt. This allowed the picker to rest before the loaded wheelbarrow was pushed from under the house. As you went up the ramp, you had to duck your head to clear the foundation, then roll the wheelbarrow over to the bank and dump the dirt, then back to the basement. We would do this over and over again. Each time the cash register would ring up $.10.
Studying redworm farming in a book from the college library, we found out that we needed to get some old bathtubs and fill them with a mixture of rotten sawdust and dirt, placing a breeding stock of worms in the mixture. Of course, worms had to be fed, and we used uneaten table scraps, some corn meal, and old milk, which we read was good for worm breeding. We hoped to have our worm business started in early fall and begin selling worms after Christmas. Once we had demonstrated that we could complete the project, we would become full-fledged members of the FFA.
By Christmas we had worms and began to sell some out of the first bathtub. We put 50 or 100 worms in a round ice-cream paper carton we got from Wilson Drug Store. I think the price was $1 per 100-worm carton, but the wholesale price was $.25 a box. Our wholesale customers were Western Auto, the Shell service station, and the grocery store across the street next to the colored funeral home. We also made direct sales from my house and some we even sold in Dad’s barbershop. K & M was a successful business, and our friendship became more entrenched and mature. The K & M worm business only lasted part of the ninth, all of the tenth, and a little of the eleventh grades. Both Bill and I grew a bit weary of the project, and our interests began to diverge, making our friendship less intense.
While Bill and I raised our worms, Joe McGaughy and Dudley Pendleton raised their steers. Mr. Moon had told them that they would be expected to show and sell at the State Fair in Birmingham late in the fall. Joe and Dudley had no idea how to get the cows to Birmingham, but, in his usual way, Mr. Moon said, “No problem.” He soon found a trailer that would hold two cows, but it was in terrible condition. It had maypop tires, and the tailgate had to be wired shut with haywire. Mr. Moon had a trailer hitch on the rear bumper of his 1940 Chevrolet, and he offered to drive us to Birmingham.
Once the steers were loaded, Mr. Moon—along with Dudley, Joe, Ed, Harry, and me—headed up the dirt road to Alabaster and Siluria, where we got on Highway 31, at that time the busiest highway in Alabama. We crossed Shades Mountain in Birmingham and drove past the famous statue of Vulcan atop Red Mountain, then began driving down to Five Points South. It was on that stretch that one of the maypop tires blew out. The two heavy show steers began to move right and left as the trailer zigged and zagged down Highway 31. Mr. Moon’s Chevrolet was not made to pull such heavy loads with good tires, and with this flat tire the load began to shift, threatening to tip over. Mr. Moon looked rather grim as he tried to steer the car down the road, and we guys looked just as grim. We could hear the steers bellowing loudly.
Finally, Mr. Moon brought the Chevrolet to a stop. We all piled out of the car to size up the situation. We discovered that we were not out of the traffic, and we motioned the traffic around us as Mr. Moon maneuvered the trailer off the highway. He got out and told Dudley to get his jack out of the trunk. Then he looked a little pale. It was at that point he remembered that he did not have a spare.
“We got to get that tire off and take it to that filling station back up the hill,” he said.
We placed the jack under the trailer, but it was incapable of lifting the trailer and its heavy load. There was nothing to do but undo the baling wire and unload the steers. We tied one to the trailer and the other to a utility pole. Traffic was creeping by us. A few cars tooted their horns at us, and one man rolled down his window and howled in laughter. Joe shot him a bird, but Mr. Moon said not to let on no matter what they did. Luckily, with the steers on the ground, the jack was up to the task and we got the maypop off, rolling it up the road past Vulcan to the Pure Oil filling station.
Once the tire was repaired and back on the trailer, we were ready to reload the steers and head for the fairgrounds. But the steers had another idea. They elected to pull their ropes loose from the trailer and the light pole. Off down the hill they tore, with all of us in hot pursuit. They ended up next to Brother Bryan’s statue right in the middle of the roundabout at Five Points South. Brother Bryan was kneeling in prayer, and perhaps it was his intercession that stopped the steers, who stood quite still next to his statue. We were able to take control again.
Mr. Moon slowly drove the trailer into Five Points South. All he could do was shake his head as we reloaded the steers. Everything was pretty quiet as we made our way to the fairgrounds. We were happy to get the two beasts out of that trailer and lock them into the wooden stalls, where they would remain until they were shown and ultimately sold. The sooner those steers became hamburgers, the happier we would be. I couldn’t help but feel lucky that I had chosen worms for my own FFA project.
Joe McGaughy and Dudley Pendleton with the famous escapee steers posing at the Birmingham Fairgrounds ready for the next day’s scales and sales. Mr. Moon Thornton and his young son Danny are on the far right. Jack McGaughy, Harry Klotzman, and I are bringing up the rear.
In addition to our regular teachers, we had a steady stream of practice teachers from Alabama College beginning in elementary school and extending through high school. We guys loved having these beauties from the Angel Farm in our classrooms, and when we were old enough to cruise the campus we used to see them regularly and engage them in conversation, flirting shamelessly. In our classrooms they were primly dressed, but on campus they seemed much more sexy, with their shorts or slacks. We even went to the campus Tea House, where we would dance with them to music from a big jukebox in the corner. Everything was fine until Mr. Adams, the campus security officer, would come by. He was under orders to expel non-college students from the Tea House, and, although he personally did not mind us being there, he was committed to fulfilling his responsibilities. He would escort us out the front door, and we would go sit in our car until we could see him returning to his office under West Main Dormitory, a place we called the cave. Then we would reenter the Tea House through the back door and resume our socializing with the college girls.
Joyce Moncrief, the practice teacher who captured my affection, posing here at Big Springs. I thought she was the epitome of grace, beauty, and intellect.
Only by the grace of God, the successful culmination of my high school career. Back row, left to right, Harry Klotzman, Joe McGaughy, and Kenneth “Hanky-Pooh” Rochester. Front row, me and Ed Givhan.
It was not unheard of for a college girl to go out with a high school boy. In my junior year, I became infatuated with my student teacher, Miss Joyce Moncrief. When prom time came, I asked her to be my date. She said she would have to think about it, and I felt encouraged by that, expecting that she would have turned me down flat. I went off and bragged to my friends, and the story was soon all over the school. The principal, Mr. Hurt, called me in and told me that under no circumstances could I take a practice teacher to the prom. Plus, Joyce herself, who was nearing graduation from college, had second thoughts. She did continue to take walks with me by the creek, to pose for pictures, to dance with me on occasion at the Tea House, and to go over to Calera to Pearl’s for a burger and a shake. Several times on our way back to campus we would turn off Highway 25, proceed up the dirt road to the monument located in what was said to be the center of Alabama. There, in the moonlight, pulse racing, I would imagine smooching with her. That would have to be enough.