When I was growing up, the kids in town pedaled their bicycles or walked to school, which they still do. The kids in the country ride one of the fourteen school buses, all of which are driven by members of the Lefter family, who cornered the Harmony bus-driving market before I was born and have been at it ever since.
Morey Lefter, who was the kingpin of the Lefter bus cartel, began driving in 1949 and drove for forty-six years. In 1989, Bob Miles Jr. took Morey’s picture for the Herald to commemorate his driving one million nearly accident-free miles. The only blemish on his record happened in 1974 when Morey backed into Fern Hampton’s brand-new Lincoln Town Car, which was parked in the teachers’ parking lot.
We did not hold that against Morey. It was the consensus of the town that Morey was simply the vehicle for God’s judgment. It bothered us to see a civil servant driving a luxury car, and we thought Morey was simply being prophetic. Shortly afterward, Fern traded in the Lincoln Town Car for a Chevrolet Impala, and after a few years the Lincoln was forgotten by most of us, though some still hold it against her. Every now and then someone at Harmony Friends Meeting stands in the silence and talks about the beauty of simplicity and laments how simplicity is a dying tradition. Then they turn and frown at Fern, even though the Lincoln was twenty-five years ago and she’s driven Chevys ever since.
Fern Hampton was my first-grade teacher. It is the Quaker custom to avoid the use of titles such as Mr. or Mrs. or Doctor or Reverend among our membership. We believe that all are equal at the foot of the cross. Titles confer an honor that belongs solely to the Lord. That is what my mother taught me. So when I was a small child, Fern Hampton was introduced to me as Fern Hampton and that is what I called her.
I would sit in the fifth pew and turn around during the greeting time and say, “Hello, Fern Hampton,” and offer my hand. She would reply, “Good morning, Sam Gardner,” and shake my hand.
Then I went to first grade and she was my teacher. I walked into her classroom the first day of school and said, “Hello, Fern Hampton,” just like I did at meeting.
She looked up from her desk and said, “While we are at school, you are to address me as Mrs. Hampton.”
That’s when I knew she wasn’t a true Quaker, that she left her Quaker principles at the door of the meetinghouse. The Lincoln Town Car only confirmed my suspicions. So when Morey Lefter backed into her Town Car and broke off the hood ornament, I reasoned that it was not unlike the Old Testament prophets tearing down false idols and I quietly rejoiced.
I remember what my mother had taught me, that the Lord lifts up the lowly and casts down the haughty. I was only in the first grade and had already witnessed the sure justice of the Almighty.
I believed that calling Fern Hampton “Mrs. Hampton” was a test from the Lord, and that holy obedience required me to call her “Fern Hampton” no matter what she said. So I called her “Fern Hampton,” only to find myself face to face with the principal, who rewarded my faith with a paddling. I bent over and grabbed my ankles and thought of Jesus on the cross, suffering for Truth, and I felt a proud thrill. One, two, three whacks, all of them hard, and I didn’t even cry. Instead, I felt honored to suffer for the One True Faith.
Not only had Fern Hampton violated the Quaker standards of equality and simplicity, she had subjected me, a fellow member of the One True Faith, to persecution. My father was an elder in the meeting. I went home and reported Fern Hampton to him, and he violated the Quaker stand on nonviolence by giving me a paddling too.
I was surrounded by backsliders.
Now I am Fern Hampton’s pastor and have forgiven her, though I’m still suspicious of her. Underneath her plain, gray dress lurks a woman longing to wear red and drive a Town Car. I take what she says with a grain of salt, knowing the compromises she’s made. It’s like Dale Hinshaw said back in 1974: “We’ll have to keep an eye on that one. She could be trouble.”
Now Fern Hampton is retired and devotes her considerable energies to the Friendly Women’s Circle quilt project and Brother Norman’s shoe ministry to the Choctaw Indians. But it might be a trick to lull us into complacency. Once you’ve dined at sin’s table, it is a strong temptation to go back for seconds. So we’re watching her closely.
School in our town begins the first Tuesday after Labor Day, which is the way it has always been and always will be, change being something we don’t take to here. Which is why most of the kids who grow up in our town can’t move away fast enough. Then they turn forty and are tired of progress and want to come back. They wake up one day and it occurs to them that the television remote control is smarter than they are, and they find themselves pulled toward home, toward their own kind, where brilliance and progress are suspect.
I was walking my son Levi to school the day after Labor Day. It was his first day of first grade. He was carrying a cigar box with his school supplies: three pink erasers, six Laddie pencils—sharpened—eight crayons, one pair of safety scissors, two bottles of glue, and a ruler. He had his lunch money in his right pocket and his computer fee money in his left pocket.
The computer fee was a new development and not without controversy. The school board had deliberated for five years about whether to train kids to use the computer. The leading opponent of computers was Dale Hinshaw, who is the leading opponent of ’most everything new in Harmony. He’d read tabloid stories of kids hacking into the Pentagon computers and starting wars. He knew this for a fact because he’d read it.
He stood up at a school board meeting and said, “It happened with the Gulf War in 1990. That wasn’t Saddam Hussein who started that war. That’s just the government version. The real truth is that a kid in New Jersey triggered the whole thing on his computer. How you can even think of bringing computers in the schools is beyond me.”
But it wasn’t beyond the school board, who bought the computers anyway. Now Dale is thinking of running for the school board on a no-computer, no-progress platform. He believes the current school board is riddled with government informants whose plan is to create a One World Order starting with the Harmony schools.
I walked my son to the front door and into the school. Down the hall, past the principal’s office to his classroom, which was right across from the gymnasium. I remembered playing dodgeball in the same gymnasium in the sixth grade on days it rained. I remember the football players throwing the ball so hard it imprinted my body on the wall. I remember them laughing. I was turning my son loose into this hard world.
I introduced Levi to his teacher, Mrs. Hester, who is Baptist and uses titles. Her name was written on the chalkboard: Mrs. Hester.
I shook her hand and said, “Hello, Mrs. Hester. This is my son Levi. He’s in your class this year.”
Mrs. Hester took him by the hand and showed him his desk. Second row on the left, third seat from the front.
This, then, was the moment of his growing up. I wanted to kiss him and rub his burry head. Wanted him to be two days old again and coming home from the hospital. He was scared. All the kids were. Sitting in their chairs, verging on tears.
I walked toward the door, then turned and looked back. He was watching me. His baby teeth were gone. My toothless son. He looked like Gabby Hayes sitting there. Like a little old man on his first day at the nursing home. Brave on the outside, wobbling on the inside.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. You go on home. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
We learn that in first grade.
I stepped into the hallway and watched him, unobserved, through the window on the door. Watched him open his cigar box and line up his Laddie pencils in the pencil tray. Watched him fold his hands and place them on the desk. Instinct. We smell chalk dust and something inside us says, “Fold your hands and look forward.” We just know to do it.
My wife could scarcely bear the first tearing of this mother-child strand. She stayed home and cried. I did my grieving alone, in the fifth pew. I was thinking how this was it, this was the Going Away. Twelve years from now he’ll leave for college. Then he’ll sit across the kitchen table and talk about a job six states away. We’ll move his things in a U-Haul. We’ll talk on the phone every Sunday night. Begging him to come for a visit, without making it sound like begging. Giving him room. Trying not to let the hurt show when his plans don’t include coming home.
“No, son, don’t you worry about Christmas. Don’t give it a thought. Your mother and I understand. We know you’re busy. You know we’ll be thinking of you. Let’s shoot for next summer. Don’t forget we love you.”
Putting a brave face on things. We learn that in first grade.
I went to fetch him at two-thirty. Waited outside the school, on the sidewalk, in front of the buses. Saw him skipping out the building toward me. I rubbed his burry head, laid my hand on his shoulder, and felt his skinny bones.
“Hey, little man, how was your first day of school?”
“Neat. But if you’re bad, you get your name written on the chalkboard,” he told me.
“Back when I was little, they used to give paddlings,” I told him.
“Did you ever get paddled?” he asked.
“One time,” I told him. “It was for my religion. Faith is not always an easy thing. Try to remember that.”
My hand dangled at my side. He reached up to hold it. Automatic, without thinking. Hold Daddy’s hand. I wondered when that would end, when the day would come that my hand would hang empty.
We were walking past the Coffee Cup. I asked him if he was thirsty. Of course. Always thirsty.
We sat in a booth and shared a Coke. A rare treat.
“Let’s not tell your mother about the Coke,” I suggested. “It can be our secret.”
One day I’ll grow old and need a nursing home. My son will take me. He’ll wheel me through the doors to my room. He’ll take me by the hand and bend over my form and speak into my wizened ear, “Hey, Dad, remember when I was little and you’d walk me home from school and we’d stop at the Coffee Cup for a Coke?”
I’ll squeeze his hand.
Oh, yes, I remember. I’ll never forget. Never forget the day you were born. Never forget your burry head. Never forget you lining up your pencils and being brave. Never forget you folding your hands and looking forward. Never forget you taking my hand. Never forget hauling your things six states away.
He’ll rise to leave. “I’ll be back soon, Dad. I promise. Will you be all right?”
“I’m fine,” I’ll tell him. “I’ll be fine. You go on home. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Putting on a brave face.
We learn that in first grade.