Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.10: Elementary School Days: Helping Grandpa

In my elementary school age it was always a very special treat to go visit Grandma and Grandpa Kieschnick. They lived in a farm outside Lincoln, Texas, about 60 miles from my home. The trip to and from was itself an adventure. We loaded our 1929 Model A Ford with kids and excitement. The roads, of course, were unpaved and the 60-mile trip took in excess of 2 hours, especially since it was not at all unusual to have to stop and fix a flat.

Once at Grandma’s place we were sent to the garden to hoe weeds, prop up plants and often harvest some vegetables and/or fruit. If I (or my sister Leona and I) stayed over for a week or more our jobs got more interesting. I remember picking beans, then placing them on a tarp to get good and dry. After a few days we beat the beans to separate the kernels from their pods. After another day or so of dry heat we would find a windy spot. Then we threw the beans into the air and let the wind separate the kernels from the chaff. The chaff was fed to the animals; the kernels we consumed.

A special treat while at Grandpa’s was to make hay. The hay was in a field some distance from the farmhouse. That was good because we got there by riding on the back of my Dad’s faithful horse Dan. I remember my job when the dried hay was made into bales. I sat on one side of the baling machine and reinserted baling wire so it could go from one side of the bale to the other.

We had an hour off for lunch to eat and rest. One time I think my sister and I sat on some kind of a tick nest. That evening our bodies were covered with blisters and we both believed that some of those ticks had embedded themselves permanently into our flesh. We struggled to extract them from our own and our sib’s body.

At the end of the day there was a special treat. Grandpa would say in German, “Melvin, go take the horses down to the tank to water them.” This meant unhitching them from their wagons and then leading them to a tank (pond) where they drank the water. I loved being in charge of those horses, then unbridling them, feeding them and getting them into their own stalls for the night.

A job that I did poorly and hated was “cutting maize”. Milo maize grew to be several feet tall and the stalks held heads containing seeds. The job was to use a knife, cut off the head put it into a bag and then load it onto a wagon. That was tough work. Worse yet was that something about that milo maize created a terrible itch over my whole body – and of course the rule was “bathe only once a week, on Saturday.” One of God’s great gifts to kids like me was the invention of the combine, which eliminated the job of “cutting maize”

Many years later when as a school principal I was confronted with an upset parent or an angry teacher I always comforted myself by saying, “This surely beats cutting maize!”

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.9: Primary School Years: Chores and Work

During my primary school years I almost never had to do any school homework. Since I attended a 2-room school there was always time during school hours to complete our assignments. (We did that while the “other grades” were “up front” for their specific subjects.) The only homework I recall was my mother listening to me recite my “Religion Recitation”, memorized Bible verses, Catechism lessons and hymns.

Household chores were shared (after all eventually there were 9 of us kids.) I often helped “do the dishes” and got an earful from one or more of my sisters when I tried to be excused from this as I suggested this was “girls’ work”.

We lived in the church’s teacherage, which was located on several acres of the congregation-owned land. So there was room for our home, barn, stables, hen house, large pasture, small field for crops, a large garden and a big cemetery. Our lawn was immense and the grass was always mowed by me using a hand-driven mower.

The cattle, chickens and pigs needed twice daily feeding. We shucked corn and shelled it for the chickens with the hand-driven corn sheller. We sometimes had fun shucking corn, seeing who could shuck 100 ears the fastest. Or we would get a thrill out of shucking an extra amount of corn and hiding it. Then when we were told to “go shuck corn” we gleefully exposed our already completed work.

From very early on I milked the cows. The cow was let into the stall and her calf was allowed to come suckle. Then we roped off the calf, sat down next to the cow and milked her. The milk was immediately taken to our home and run through our hand-cranked separator that separated the cream, which was then made into butter. I always liked to drink my milk when it was still warm, having just come from the cow’s udder. When the calves reached a weight of a couple hundred pounds or so they were sold to the local butcher.

We slaughtered our hogs ourselves on cold days with the assistance of neighbors. I recall how they were killed (usually be slitting their throats). They were bled. Then dropped in hot water so that the hairy skin cold be scraped off. We had wonderful fresh pork and also preserved smoked sausages and hams (and occasionally also the stomach). One of my jobs was to keep the bark of logs smoking in the smoke house where the pork was cured.

We ate lots of eggs and chickens. My mouth still waters as I recall my mom catching a young rooster, chopping its head off, getting the feathers off and then frying that wonderful chicken in home-made lard. The price I paid for getting those always fresh and tasty meals was two-fold. 1) Feed those chickens plenty of corn and 2) Keep scraping the chicken “droppings” to keep the hen houses clean.

Summertime meant it was time for us to earn some cash for the family. (We kids never kept a penny of those earnings for ourselves and we never had an “allowance”. Those meager resources all went into the family coffers. While others “chopped cotton” I never had that chore. It entailed hoeing very close to the young cotton plant, removing weeds and surrounding the cotton plant with fresh soil. I think the fear was that if I were given this task I would too often chop out the whole plant. But I could ”pick cotton”. An 8 to 10 foot long bag was strung over our shoulders and dragged behind. We “crawled” between 2 rows of cotton plants and extracted the soft cotton bolls. The load was weighed, placed in a wagon and when some 1300 pounds had accumulated was taken to the gin. There the lint was separated from the cotton seed and debris, then packaged into 500-pound bales and sold. On a really good sun-up to sundown day of picking I might make between 50-75 cents. But I was such an inept cotton picker  (my sister out-picked me every time) that rumor has it that the verdict was, “Melvin will never make it on the farm. He’d better go to work for the church as a teacher!

And that is what I did.”

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.8: Primary School: Physical Health

My memory is that I was a healthy strong boy. Of course, I together with my siblings and friends had all the usual childhood illnesses, none of which was considered dangerous. We had the mumps, measles, chickenpox, red eye and scarletina. I don’t think any of these were serious enough to have to go see our family physician, Dr. Wedemeyer. But Mr. McGuiness, the druggist in the 55 residents-town of Walburg, regularly filled our prescriptions.

There were, however, 3 specific health issues that stick with me to this day.

The first is a tooth filling. My cousins who drank “Walburg water” never had decayed teeth. There was something in that water that discolored their enamel but preserved their teeth. I was not so fortunate. I had to have a tooth filled (probably hastened by the reality that as a child I never brushed my teeth).

My memory is that in the mid-1930’s the dentist used no anesthesia and the drilling was painful. But that’s not what was the most painful. What hurt most was that the after-school dentist appointment came on the exact date that Zion school played softball against another school – a rare event. I simply could not believe that my parents thought it more important for me to go to the dentist than it was to play this softball game. I knew my team would miss me. I knew my substitute at the shortstop position, Wimpy K, could not play up to my standard.

So it was with mixed feelings that I learned the results of the team having to play without me. We won and all the students said that Wimpy was a great shortstop, made 2 great plays and hit a double. (As stated above, this was nearly 70 years ago and I remember it still. (And Wimpy grew up to be called ”W.A.”, was a successful banker and married my cousin Genelle.)

Second health memory. We went barefoot all the time, except that we needed to wear shoes when we went to church on Sunday. There are consequences of always going barefoot. The soles of the feet become hard as leather, but not hard enough to avoid being pierced. We stepped on glass which lacerated our feet. We stepped on nails protruding from boards and they pierced our soles. We would come home from the cotton fields with thistles embedded in our feet. We dug them out with needles or tweezers. Mercurochrome treated the wounds and if there was a slight infection we had a famous “black salve” that cured everything.

But some 15 years later a surprise reminder of those barefoot adventures suddenly was revealed. I played college football and broke my ankle. The doctor who examined the x-rays noted the break but had a more interesting question. “When did you step on that needle now firmly embedded in your heel?”

The last time I had to have that ankle x-rayed was when I was in my 60’s. The needle continues to rest comfortably.

My mother always worried that the needle would move, get to my heart and kill me. I ignored it. In 1958 I played basketball in Hong Kong, had an x-ray and heard the doctor asked in Cantonese, “Where did that needle in your heel come from?”

My third health episode was the most serious. I think I was in the second grade. When I complained about a “stomach ache” my parents assumed I was getting the measles (as 3 of my siblings already had them). But the pain got worse and my skin didn’t get red.

Finally Mom stayed behind with the measled kids and Dad and Uncle Reinhold took me to King’s Daughter’s Hospital in Temple, Texas. There I had a moment of extreme embarrassment. When asked to provide urine sample I simply could not urinate lying down. So they had me stand. Then I couldn’t stop. How ashamed I felt.

But the diagnosis was serious: appendicitis. And when I was under ether and opened up the severity of the situation raised a serious alarm. The appendix had ruptured. Peritonitis was all over. There were no anti-biotics yet discovered. My condition was declared “extremely dangerous”. Three tubes, each a foot long were inserted to drain the puss. I survived. Survival brought with it 2 wonderful extra benefits: a relative brought me a beautiful 10-inch play sailboat. And I had a nurse named Ms. French. She told me I was handsome, so handsome, she said, that she would wait for me to turn 18 and then she would marry me. I believed her and then doubted, but I did not share my doubts with her. I recovered but my mother said that I never ran as fast after that surgery as I had earlier.

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.7: Primary School: The Fourth “R”: Religion

In this series of blogs on my elementary school I have called the fourth “R” to be religion. I am sure that the founders of my elementary school, namely Zion Lutheran School, Walburg, Texas would insist that R for Religion should be the first R. The primary purpose of the school included teaching the Christian faith to the children of congregation members (and only to them). Usually a separately listed goal was “to prepare children for the ritual of confirmation.” This was such an important aspect of congregational life that I recall a discussion as to whether parents who chose to not send their children to Zion should actually be excommunicated from the church as they were deemed to be neglecting the best resource for learning to grow as Christians.

So, obviously, religion was the critical component of our curriculum. We had a formal class on religion every school day, each class lasting from 30 minutes to an hour. At the heart of our lesson was learning Bible stories (also called Bible History.) We learned the narratives well. The teacher told the story. We were questioned about the story. We students told the stories to the class or we asked the class questions on the story – or we volunteered to stand in front and have our fellow students ask us questions about the story. We had large colored pictures of the Biblical events posted on the wall. They all came from Concordia Publishing House and I think were the only pictures in our classrooms. We had the stories in printed form also (in both English and German). I learned those stories and loved them and to this day am grateful for the experience.

The second aspect of our religious instruction was learning Dr. Martin Luther’s Catechism and an extended version of this with appropriate questions, answers and Biblical references. I memorized the catechism first in German, then in English (and much later in Cantonese). My recollection is that the primary teaching method was “question and answer” and my grades 4-8 teacher was an absolute master at that.

The third aspect of our formal religion classes was music. We learned to sing hymns. By the time I was in the sixth grade we were singing them in three-part harmony. One strong memory: When I was in about the fifth grade a schoolmate burned to death. She had gotten up before her parents arose, decided she would surprise them by preparing fried bacon and eggs for breakfast. Unfortunately the kerosene stove exploded costing her her life. We sang at her funeral, “I am Jesus Little Lamb”. We sang it in German and my entire being recalls the moment.

When we reached the 7^th grade we were excused for the first hour of the day to go to ‘confirmation class” taught by the pastor. My reflection: “Total disaster!”

It is now some 73 years since I was taught that fourth R and for much of it I am forever grateful. I learned, among many other things at least an important life lessons 1) God is for me, not against me, God forgives me, accepts me, loves me. 2) The Christian life is a life of grateful responses, daring fullness, filled with service to neighbors around the world. 3) The power of prayer: God hears and responds. 4) Eternity is a mystery, but wonderful. 5) My teacher continues to be a model of what it means to be a Christian.

There were also some significant weaknesses and failures in my elementary school religious training. Probably the most serious is what I call “religious arrogance”. We were taught the official teaching of the Lutheran Church- Missouri Synod that it was the only body of Christians who believed and taught “the Word of God in all its truth and purity”. We had it like a clear glass of water. Others had part of it, but their glasses of water were filled with lots of dirt. We were never to worship or pray with or even play softball against other Christians, like Roman Catholics, Baptists, Episcopalians or even Lutherans who were not Missouri Synod. If a graduate of our school married a spouse of another Lutheran denomination and that spouse joined our congregation we called him/her an “adult convert”.

A second failing in my religious upbringing related to the above was the importance of the “proof-text” manner of teaching. We were taught a certain piece of doctrine which was stated as truth and then there was a small verse from Scripture to prove this teaching. I now know that it is probably true that one can find a particular “proof text” in Scripture for anything. Sometimes this proof-texting was taken out of context and the true teaching was distorted. 

The third failure was in the area of skills and practices for personal reflection. I went to Lutheran schools and college for 16 years and not once was I asked to “just observe a few moments of silence”. Not once was I taught how to meditate. Not once was I given any real guidance on what it means to “be still and know that I am God.”

But I must end this blog on a positive note. Certainly the grounding of my faith in Zion Lutheran School has given me the faith, strength, courage and hope to live a wonderful life following the One who said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life - No 6: The First of the Four R’s: Reading and Riting

Everybody learned to read at Zion Lutheran School. There was really only one method of teaching reading and that was phonics. We used the same Bobbs Merrill Primer million of others did after its first printing in 1929. We both read and memorized the immortal first pages about The Gingerbread Boy. “I am the gingerbread boy, I am, I am. I can run from you, I can, I can.” From that primer we went directly to the phonics charts. “can, man, pan” and “fast, last,, past”. It worked.

Unfortunately there was no library at school or at home. It was the time of The Great Depression and nobody had money for books. I never owned a “child’s book”. I had no public library card. When I was in about the 6^th grade the school suddenly received a treasure: a collection of some 60 books of the classics. Each story was condensed to about 30 pages. I devoured them all, finishing them within 2 weeks.

In addition to reading English we learned to read German, using the German alphabet and style. We began with a book called, “Die Fiebel”; then “Erste Lesebuch” and after that “Zweite Lesebuch”. This was taught from grade one through grade 8.

As I reflect upon my reading instruction I wonder where and how I developed my life long love of reading. Maybe it was the deprivation in the early years or maybe it was my father who was my grades 4-8 teacher and who would read to us with a great animation. Something stirred up within me a passion for reading which remains very strong to this day.

“Riting (writing), the second R had two points of stress: correct grammar and good penmanship. Proper grammar was drilled into us. By the 6^th grade we spent hour after hour diagramming sentences. In retrospect I am very grateful for this experience. We learned all about subject, predicate, object, prepositional phrases, major and sub-ordinate classes, and the parts of speech – carefully noting transitive and intransitive verbs etc. etc. I loved it. I still remember in the 8^th grade being challenged to diagram one of the longest sentences Martin Luther ever wrote (at least it came out as only one sentence in English.) Imagine diagramming this sentence. “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sin, from death and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.” Just imagine your teacher saying to you, “Melvin, I want you to diagram that one sentence – do it on the blackboard.”

Handwriting was taught as a separate subject and given a specific grade on each report card. And I never made an “A” in that subject. I remember my teacher using something called “The Palmer Method” which was supposed to involve one’s entire arm and not just one’s fingers. I failed miserably.

Regretfully my elementary schooling did not stress actually writing reports, essays or anything creative. When I now see what my grandchildren are doing in elementary school writing assignments I am regretful at my never receiving that kind of inspiration. Yet I am grateful that at least my grammar is usually correct.