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by James
C. Johnston Jr.
From
1950 to 1958, I attended school in the Town of Franklin, Mass. In the
abstract, I should be grateful for that opportunity afforded me in a
free society that actually cared enough to invest tax dollars in my
education, but I wasn’t. I dreaded the coming of the end of my
summers of sublime freedom when I could do pretty much whatever I
could get away with doing.
Basically,
I hated all restrictions. I was also very rigid about what I
believed to be true. For example, I was brought up in a religious
belief where I was told to blindly accept all I was taught as
absolute truth, and that everybody who disagreed with the teachings
of this particular belief system were wrong. By the time I was ten, I
wished that I had been born into other faith systems that were a bit
more flexible, and I envied my contemporaries for whom this
inflexibility was not a reality. In the summer it seems that I could
escape all that.
My
first grade teacher was a Mrs. Mac Ivor who taught at the Ray
School. She was a very nice lady with about forty first grade
students, of various abilities, to teach the fundamentals of
everything. Inadvertently, I drove her crazy, and I loved her. She
was a very tolerant woman who had her breaking points all of which I
seemed to ferret-out.
For
example, for an art lesson, she passed out a line-drawing of an
apple. Under the apple was the word “Red”. This I understood to
be a suggestion to color the apple red. Actually, it was not a
suggestion. It was a command, but it made no sense to me what so
ever. After all, apples are not all really red were they.
All
I had to do was look at Mrs. Mac Ivor’s desk. There were always
apples on her desk, because back in those days, it was a friendly
gesture to bring a teacher you liked, or wanted to bribe for your own
questionable reasons, a fruity bribe. I wonder sometimes what a whole
bushel basket of Macintosh apple could have done for me in this area
of lower academic life. I never had access to the resources to find
out what a hundred or so apples at one time could have resulted in.
Getting
back to that art lesson and the “Red” apple I was “suggested”
to color red, I decided that realism was a for better route. My
mother was an artist, and I was very eager to learn from her. From my
observation of the aples on Mrs. Mac Ivor’s desk, I could plainly
see that apples could be red, orange, green, and russet all at the
same time. Some were green. Some were yellow. Some were something
else. I was never a blind follower. Even as a small child, I followed
my own path, because I always knew that my judgement was for superior
to all others. Such radicalism failed to make me popular with my
fellow students who didn’t like other kids who were different.
These dissenters disturbed the peace and reality of their fragile
world. How scary is that?
I
colored away in all the frenzy of my artistic creativity totally that
I was challenging the very foundation of mass-education by my
artistic rebellion. “Red” was not a suggestion. It was an
absolute command, and I was acting in contravention of all good and
duly constituted order. And worst of all, I was actually thinking for
myself and acting on my rebellious instincts! The foundation of the
educational system of all of Greater Franklin in the year 1950 was
being both assaulted and challenged by the open rebellion of a
six-year-old-rebel with an orange crayon! Good Lord! What could be
next? A brown and obviously rotten apple! Was there no end to my
artistic depravity?
A
shocked Mrs. Mac Ivor looked over my shoulder as she wandered up and
down the neat ailse of her classroom watching all of her little
charges obediently coloring their apples a uniform red color. Their
challenge was staying in the lines. I was fighting the rebellious
urge to turn the paper which had the mimeographed round apple, which
to me looked very cartoonish, and to draw an apple in a more natural
ovalish shape. That of course was the sort of artistic heresy that
might have brought down consequences at least as serious as those
visited on the head of Galileo by the Inquisition!
“What
are you doing!’ cried Mrs. Mac Ivor as she looked at my act of
utter revolution.
“I
am coloring my apple the way its supposed to look. You know-like the
ones on your desk,” I replied smiling, because I could see how
impressed she was with my artistic daring. Let’ just say that I
grossly mis-read the situation.
“But
Jimmy, the apple is supposed to be red! It’s not supposed to be all
of those other colors!” she cried.
“Really?
What about my shading. That’s the way my mother taught me. When
coloring, what is closer to you is lighter and as you move back,
things shade darker. That makes them look like they are really
round,” I said with some enthusiasm. Again, I mis-read the
situation. I was being “Difficult”.
Mrs.
Mac Ivor in total exasperation marched over to “The Door” that
separated our classroom from that of the school’s ultimate
disciplinary authority, The Principal”-Miss. Dougherty herself!
“Now
I wonder what that is all about?” I thought.
Then
it came to me. Mre. Mac Ivor must have been very impressed with the
artistic realism of my apple. At last! Recognition! I just thought
about how Michelangelo and Leonardo must have felt when their mastery
was discovered. Yes, in my house these two artists were actually
discussed along with many others when my mother shared her artistic
interests with us which was a daily event.
Getting
back to the events now about to transpire at Miss Doherty’s door,
Mrs. Mac Ivor knocked and a few seconds later a smiling Miss Doherty
oped the magic portal and asked what she could do for her caller.
“Mrs. Mac Ivor replied, “It’s Jimmy Johnston’s apple! It’s
not ‘Red’ “
“I
can see that. Jimmy that nis very nice. It almost looks real. Very
good.” Miss Doherty almost cooed.
Mrs.
Mac Ivor was almost incandescent with apoplexy, “You don’t
understand Miss Doherty. It’s supposed to be red! You can see the
word ‘’Red” right under the apple! Jimmy can’t seem to
conform to my directions. He always challenges me. It’s very
frustrating!” the poor woman was making me mfeel sorry for her, but
what could I do?
“Wait
a minute dear,” the principal said softly as she came over to my
desk.
The
principal leaned over me so that I only could hear what she had to
say.” It’s been a long day Jimmy. Do you think that you could
make Mrs. Mac Ivor happy by coloring another picture of the apple
red? I liked your apple very much. May I keep it? I would like to
take it home and show my sister what you’ve done. It’s so nice.
So can you make a nice red one for Mrs. Mac Ivor and be a good boy
and do what she tells you to do from now on?”
I
was awash in her praise and kindness, “I think so,” I whispered
back confidentially. That was a very nice spot in my school day which
I can remember 76 years later. Both of these women were bright spots
in my earliest academic life. I look forward to sharing more with you
later as we move on to the opening of school which still fills me
with a sort of latent unnamed dread! Labor Day always greeted me with
very mixed feelings.
James C. Johnston, Jr. is a retired Franklin educator.
