cousins, these two men had known each other a lifetime. Their existences centered on the comings and goings of the community; events like a water pump breaking or a hard rain that dropped three inches or Sadie being sick marked significant moments in their lives.
Intrigued, I observed their friendship as closely as I could. I could see how utterly they respected and loved each other, although they would have never used those words. The words they used were “toadstrangler,” “hay baler,” “stud,” “pigweed,” but they meant so much more. With each other, Uncle Percy and Uncle Bill were unerringly polite and flexible, so that a casual observer would not understand how very much they meant to each other, and each to the entire community.
I realized then that the two men, like our other quiet and unassuming neighbors, possessed a great dignity. Since birth they had been vital and esteemed members of this small society. Here, they had never been anonymous and never would be; they were not only accepted but were highly regarded. They had gained the authority that comes with a lifetime in a place.
I know, too, the danger of silence, as well as of leaving things unnamed and unrecognized. By understanding what you feel as love, by naming love, you claim it. By claiming a thing, you give it life. Then when something happens to yank it away from you, you are prepared for the sorrow that befalls. You are prepared to create anew that which is beloved. Then you will do whatever you can to keep it alive.
Keeping the Old School Open
On a Sunday afternoon, my son, Silas, and I were putting up our last sign eight miles north of town, on the edge of U.S. Highway 1 where the road to the school crosses. Across the road lay cotton field.
“Where would the most people see the sign? There at the corner or along the highway?”
“I think here,” Silas said. “It stands out better.”
Silas, nine, struggled with his end of a four-by-eight sheet of plywood. We dropped the wood and Silas took up the posthole diggers, which were a good foot longer than he, and started grubbing a hole beyond the right-of-way in Dave Sellers’s clearcut.
I looked out at what was left of a forest. A year ago, this had been fifty acres of mature longleaf pine, with evidence even of red-cockaded woodpeckers, the endangered bird that nests in old-growth pines, especially longleaf. Now another precious piece of that diminished ecosystem was gone. Four or five of the trees with woodpecker nest cavities were saved. They were ugly and gnarled, stark against the sky. Around them the land was freshly disked, plowed into wide beds and replanted in rows of slash, a quick-growing “improved” pine.
Across the clearcut, a third of a mile away, I could see our rural, red-brick school that would soon no longer be a school if our county school board had its way. This time it was not forest we were trying to save.
“Don’t Waste Taxpayer Money,” our sign, the one my son was helping erect, said. “Vote No to School Closings.” It was two weeks before the county referendum.
What we learned soon after arriving home was that in order to fund a brand-new elementary school in the county seat, a school board almost a decade before had agreed to close two rural schools, one, Altamaha Elementary, eight miles north, the other, Fourth District Elementary, fifteen miles south. Those facilities were obsolete and hadn’t been maintained. Altamaha’s roof leaked and the windows needed replacing. Entrance ramps had deteriorated and classroom walls were faded and smudged. For years the threat of the closure loomed. Now the time had come to let go of them.
Altamaha is a rural school of about 250 children, named after the wide, chocolate-milk river a few miles away. We have enough students for about two classrooms per grade, up to fifth; Silas is in third.
Altamaha has special meaning to my family. My mother went to school there, as did most of our neighbors in Spring Branch Community. Uncle Percy was a fourth grader the year the school was built, 1936.
It’s a pretty little school. The main buildings are deep-red brick, flanked by white-painted additions: a cafeteria, an art room, a gymnasium, kindergarten mobile units, two playgrounds. The older children’s playground has a track and a baseball diamond, a set of swings and a long slide. The little ones have a playhouse and a merry-go-round.
The school has a particular deep-pine smell, the smell of local history, that overwhelms me every time I enter its wide dim hall. This is the same smell my mother studied in, a fragrance that transported her back to a wide-eyed, drag-footed little girl when she came to eat with Silas on Grandparents Day.
“It hasn’t changed a bit,” she said.
Of course it has, but what hasn’t altered is that the school defines the community. The teachers know students by name; they know their parents and grandparents. After school the front lot is Grand Central Station—clay instead of asphalt—with farmers in pickup trucks fetching grandchildren and mamas milling around their vans, talking, and the uncle who’s out of work retrieving his nephew and the nephew proud to be seen in his uncle’s lipstick-red Camaro. Not to mention children yelling out the windows of the three yellow buses that are loading.
Down the road at the corner, there’s a gas station and convenience store. The storekeeper, Terry, used to own a mastiff named Rocky, who loved to visit the school. When the dog showed up, the principal, Ms. Smith, would put him out and close the front door, then call Terry.
“He wants an education,” Terry would say.
The principal ousted Rocky again one day, but the pre-kindergarten class was on the playground, so the dog lingered with them, craving their delight. He discovered, by following some tickled third-graders to class, that even if the front doors were closed, the back ones might not be. The principal heard the ruckus, hauled Rocky out again, and called Terry. Before the owner arrived, Ms. Smith lettered a certificate of graduation for the dog, which she presented to Terry, who laughed until he cried.
On certain days, Johnny Jordan would come by the school peddling cabbages, cucumbers, onions, collards. Off-duty teachers would slip out to buy vegetables from the back of his truck, because Johnny piled them high, a heavy sack of carrots for a dollar. Johnny battled cancer a few years ago. He had no insurance, but teachers took up collections for him. Once he was well, he wrote each person who contributed a thank-you.
The school is not all good. Our state is one of the last bastions of corporal punishment, and early on I had to visit the principal over the matter. “I haven’t raised my son using physical punishment,” I told Ms. Smith. “Likely he will never be sent to your office. Should he be, however, he may not be hit.”
She nodded. She and I had a lot in common; she gardened and liked the outdoors. “We would never spank a child against a parent’s wishes. But most parents want their children spanked if they get in trouble. Sometimes the child gets another spanking at home.”
“They don’t understand there are better ways to parent,” I said tersely.
There are other matters of educational philosophy and practice that I disagree with. Field trips aren’t allowed, for reasons of safety. Class treats are mostly full of sugar and artificial colors. Sometimes bullying goes unnoticed or unchecked by adults; disputes are not so much resolved as the probable offenders punished. The curriculum lacks art and music. But the school is serious about education, and it is small, close-knit, and nearby. I don’t have to worry about my child there.
One day I read aloud to my nephew Carlin’s pre-kindergarten class a story about a king. I paused to explain that in our country we have a president instead of a king. “Does anybody know who the president is?” I asked.
An elfin boy raised his hand. “Ms. Smith?” he asked.
Then Carlin spoke up. “I know who the president is,” he said. “God.”
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