Mr. "X" and the "Blimp"

All science classes in the small-town high school from which I graduated were taught by a poor soul whom, for out of respect for his memory, I will not name.  Consider him “Mr. X.”  Mr. X became infamous for the total anarchy that reigned in his classroom.  This unfortunate man had almost no teaching equipment other than textbook, blackboard and a few artifacts of science in a glass covered cabinet along one wall.  We knuckle-dragging students in CHS were quick to take advantage of the opportunity to add to his misery anytime he turned his back to the class to write on the blackboard.  He almost learned to write on the blackboard with his hand behind his back.

A classic and oft-repeated misdeed was to release a condom that had been filled with natural gas from one of the outlets on the “hands-on” science tables in the back of the room.  They were there to light Bunsen burners.  The “game” was to keep it hidden until the right moment.  Natural gas being lighter than air, the condom, when released, would rise toward the ceiling and float above our heads like a miniature Goodyear blimp over a football stadium.  Mr. X’s inevitable reaction was to take his yardstick (actually a meter stick and bat at the obscene little floater hoping to bring it down.  Sometimes the miscreant in a hypocritical expansion of his first offense would volunteer to stand on a chair and grab the prurient little “airship.”  The chaos in his classroom became legendary, passed down from elder to younger for years. His classroom was the only classroom Mr. Yeargan, our School Superintendent (We did not have a principal.) ever had to come into to restore order.

In later years I realized that Mr. X was a kind, sweet, scholarly man who deserved much better.  He lost his job, probably fired, in 1949.  He truly loved science, especially physics.  There was a folk tale that said, in an experiment to discover if a front wheel drive car was more efficient than one with rear wheel drive, he once drove his car in reverse gear from Havana (KS) to Caney.  It was probably what is now called an urban legend but it did tell something about Mr. X’s scholarliness.  He certainly deserved better from us but school kids can be sharks.

Shortly after The War the government began disposing of all sorts of “war surplus” materials. Pilots bought airplanes for “peanuts.”  Office equipment was sold cheaper than the price they would bring as scrap iron.  Half-tracks and trucks were snatched up by construction companies.  Mr X acquired two huge radial aircraft engines and an assortment of instruments from aircraft instrument panels. The following year he taught a new course called “Aeronautics.” Those materials were intended for him to use as real life teaching aids.  By the end of that first year those engines had been reduced to their irreducible mass and most of the instruments had been gutted or disappeared.  Recalcitrant boys had carried out any part that could be unbolted or unscrewed from those engines. The Aeronautics course died after two years.  Caney’s high school students were no longer challenged to contemplate the mysteries of flight.  Not, at least, in any scholarly way.

There were a couple of other things that made Caney High School an interesting place. On the first floor, which was slightly below ground level, there were a few classrooms, a students’ locker room, the only boys’ and girls’ toilets in the entire building, and the janitor’s room.  The janitor’s room served as a de facto smoking room for male teachers.  It was a room that some boys were privileged to enter, sit, and shoot the bull with one another, the janitor, and any male teacher that happened to be there.  Our janitor was known as “Curly” Rollins, a name that was an ironic recognition of the fact that he did not have a hair on his head.  “Curly” was more than a janitor. He was an objective adult we could talk to.  CHS did not have a guidance counselor.  It is likely the school board had never heard of one. To some extent “Curly” filled that void.

Any discipline that teachers did not handle in their own classroom was meted out by a fantastic lady named Yetta Liberman. Yetta was the supreme authority in the school building; attendance clerk, disciplinarian, and class scheduling counselor. Mr. Gordon Yeargan, whom we called (behind his back) “The Warden” was the superintendent of schools but he had almost no contact with students. There was no principal.  Yetta did what principals of today do – except in many cases she did it better.  She was masterful at catching students who “played hooky” and then, forging their mother’s name, wrote their own excuses.

“Spike Jones and his City Slickers” were a popular musical entertainment group of the forties.  “Spike” brought his group to Tulsa.  My friend Wes and I just knew our lives would never be complete if he was only 70 miles away and we did not see him perform.  Early in the morning on the day of “Spike’s” appearance and without our parents’ knowledge, Wes and I boarded a Greyhound bus headed for Tulsa.  We saw the performance and enjoyed every minute of it before getting onto the bus that brought us back to Caney.

The next morning I went into the school office to present an excuse for my absence.  It was a forged note from “my mother.”  Yetta looked at it disdainfully and then crumpled it up and asked “Did you and Wes enjoy “Spike Jones?”  Denying the accusation in her question was pointless.  I don’t know how she found out and I do not remember the punishment.  Whatever it was, it was worth it. 

Yetta was a force to be reckoned with, yet most of us loved her.