By Sam L. Martin
Our eleventh-grade English class was the last class of the day, and our teacher was Miss Gray, a young woman fresh out of college. She was from Philadelphia and had decided her mission in life was to deliver us West Virginia hillbilly kids from ignorance.
Miss Gray commuted every day all the way from Charleston in her gray 1951 Ford. Her clothes were gray, too, so her name really fit her. The only thing anyone would notice were her large, dark eyes surrounded by large, round horn-rimmed glasses, and her hair pulled back into a bun. She looked like an owl that had just spotted a lazy mouse in a newly-mowed field.
One Friday she announced, “Next week we will study the writings of Henry David Thoreau.”
Chuckie Wallace, the class clown, said, “Sounds like a baseball pitcher to me.”
“Strike one,” answered Miss Gray, who always allowed Chuckie two jokes a day, but not one more. Three strikes and he was out the door.
“Anyway,” she continued, “Thoreau wanted to confront life head-on, so he built a cabin in the woods at a place called Walden Pond.”
Richie Powers, who had to know the size of everything, asked, “How big is Walden Pond?”
Miss Gray smiled. “It’s one-half mile by three-quarters of a mile.”
“Well, I do declare!” said Richie. “That’s a lake, not a pond!”
Miss Gray nodded. “Today it’s called Lake Walden.”
“Where exactly on the lake did he build his cabin?” asked Homer Ferrell.
“As a matter of fact, Homer, he built his cabin on the north shore of Walden Pond. Actually, it wasn’t exactly on the shore. It was several yards from the water.” She seemed proud that she knew the answer.
All of us nodded and said, “That’s good. That’s real good.” We
were impressed.
Miss Gray furrowed her brow a bit and asked, “Why is it good to build a
cabin on the north shore of a lake?”
Barney Sword raised his hand. “Cause the trees protect you from the north wind in the winter. Yep. In summer the south wind’ll cool you off. Yep. Blows right across the lake into your face. Yep.”
Miss Gray sat down behind her desk, a slight smile trying to blossom into a big one. “Very good, Barney. Very good, indeed.”
All of us knew she hadn’t known the answer to her question, but we just let her pretend. After all, she was our teacher, and she was an adult woman. We respected her a lot.
We all knew Richie Powers had another size question, and, sure enough, he asked it. “Miss Gray, how big was this man’s cabin?”
Miss Gray relaxed. “It was ten feet by fifteen feet, and the walls were eight feet high.”
Charlie Morgan, who’d been sharpening pencils with his brand new pocketknife, said, “My dad’s tool shed is thirty by fifteen.”
“Mr. Thoreau would be living by himself, so all he needed was a small place he could heat,” explained Miss Gray.
Pete Landers asked, “Did the cabin have windows?”
“Yes, it did, Pete. Let’s all look on page 343. There’s a sketch of his cabin.”
The cabin looked okay. It had a good roof, not a flat one which always leaks. It had windows.
Barney said, “I hope the door is facing east and the stove is in the northwest corner. Yep.”
Miss Gray got that almost-smiling look on her face again. “Why would someone put the door facing east and the stove in the northwest corner?”
Barney answered, “Well, Miss Gray, the stove needs to be in the northwest corner cause in winter the wind blows from the north or northwest. Yep. The wind’ll help heat the whole cabin. Yep. Now, you don’t want the door by the stove, so it’ll have to be in the east end, not the west end. Yep. And when you look out the window, you’ll want to see the lake, so the windows should be on the north and south walls. Yep. Actually, Ma’am, I wouldn’t put a window on the north wall if I built a cabin, but if I had to, I’d put it as far away from the stove as I could. Yep. And I’d put the door near the southeast corner on the east end. Yep. Also, Miss Gray, if the stove is in the northwest corner and you’re cooking on it in the summer, the south wind’ll carry the heat away from the cabin. Yep.”
Miss Gray stared at Barney for a while, then stared at the ceiling like she was trying to get directions from God. She finally came to her senses and said, “Very good. Very good, indeed.”
Lewis Morrison, who was so good at woodworking that he once carved a model of the Taj Mahal out of driftwood, then used it as a birdhouse for purple martins, asked, “What kind of wood did he use, Miss Gray?”
“White pine,” she answered.
Lewis said, “Well, Miss Gray, white pine is easy to work with, but bugs like any kind of pine. Yellow poplar is better. It’s light and gives better insulation, and termites don’t like it.”
Miss Gray nodded. “I see.”
Lewis wanted to find out more. “Miss Gray, when did he chop down the trees, and when did he build the cabin?”
Miss Gray seemed to relax. “He began felling the trees at the end of March, 1845, and he moved into his cabin on July 4, so he completed the job in a little over three months.”
Bless her heart. She was young and from the city, so she didn’t know any better. She thought we’d be impressed, so she was shocked when every kid in class laughed.
When the laughter finally quieted down a bit, Birdie Parsons, who’d been knitting a blanket for the baby she’d planned on having in three or four years, chirped, “Sap’s up! Sap’s up! Sap’s up!”
Miss Gray nodded a little slower than usual, then said, “You mean Mr. Thoreau should have felled the timber at a different time. Is that correct?”
Birdie put her knitting needles down. “Yes, Ma’am. I’ll bet working that sappy pine was a mess.”
Miss Gray thought real hard. “As a matter of fact, Birdie, he did mention something about getting pitch on his hands.”
Chuckie had been waiting. “I told you he was a baseball pitcher.”
“Strike two,” answered Miss Gray, this time pointing her finger at Chuckie.
Lewis, though, wasn’t through talking about wood, his favorite subject. “Miss Gray, Mr. Thoreau should’ve chopped down the trees in November when the sap’s down. Leave the bark on and let the trees cure out of the weather for about a year to a year and a half. I reckon Mr. Thoreau’s logs shrunk and split and twisted a lot after he built his cabin. I learned that when me and my grandpa built a cabin a few years ago. It was a good one. We used dove-tail notching.”
Miss Gray looked at Lewis like a steer staring at a fence post. Finally, she asked, “What is dove-tail notching?”
Lewis smiled. “Can I draw a picture on the blackboard, Miss Gray?”
“Certainly,” she said, and walked to the back of the room.
Well, now, Lewis was the top student in mechanical drawing class and the second best in geometry, so he took the chalk and said, “Thank you, Miss Gray,” then started drawing angles and circles and dimension lines, and when he’d finished, there were three perfect drawings of regular notching, dove-tail notching, and modified dove-tail notching. Lewis explained the benefits of each type of notching and what to look out for because a mistake could ruin the log, and he explained that each log would have one end bigger than the other end and that you should alternate the big end and the small end on each corner, and he finished up by telling how good chinking should be made out of clay and grass plus his secret ingredient, a little dishwashing detergent so the chinking could be smoothed out. Then he sat down.
Miss Gray looked at the blackboard, then at Lewis, then at the blackboard, then back at Lewis. As she walked up to her desk, she said, “I wish I had a camera. Thank you, Lewis.” Her voice seemed a little gravelly, and she cleared her throat.
Miss Gray sat down and continued talking about Henry David Thoreau. “He lived in his cabin for two years, two months, and two days. He learned a lot about life and about nature. One of his experiences was observing ants.”
Birdie stopped knitting and said, “I used to watch ants, Miss Gray. There was red ants and black ants. They liked to fight. The red ants usually won since they was bigger, but sometimes the black ants outnumbered them and the black ants won. The red ants had a hill in the ground, but I’m not sure where the black ants lived. Maybe in the stump of a pin oak behind our house. That was the summer before I began first grade.”
Homer added, “Sometimes when you chop down a black oak, it’ll be full of carpenter ants. They’re big fellers.”
Miss Gray began to chuckle, not at us, but like she was
happy. She stretched out her arms with her palms up like
she was
going to catch
something
large but not heavy, then looked at the ceiling and whispered, “Thank you, Lord.”
We all reckoned if God was everywhere, then He could certainly
be in the ceiling, so nobody said anything.
Miss Gray continued, “We have 10 minutes left today, so I’d like to know what you think of one of Thoreau’s main ideas. He gave us his idea in the form of a metaphorical statement, and it goes like this: ‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.’ Does anybody understand what he is talking about?”
We’d been waiting for John Allan, the smartest kid in school, to speak. He’d been doing his math homework with one half of his brain and listening to English class with the other half, just as he did every day. John raised his hand, and Miss Gray nodded.
“Well, Ma’am,” he began, “most folks do the same thing without thinking. They follow the popular drummer. Other folks, the ones that are a little different, follow another drummer, or maybe lots of drummers. These folks are trying to become independent. Mr. Thoreau didn’t mention the third type of folks, Ma’am, and that’s us.”
Miss Gray said, “Please explain.”
John Allan continued, “You see, Ma’am, we don’t follow any drummer. I mean, if we want to, we’ll make our own drum and come up with our own march.”
Barney jumped in. “I made a drum out of an old shine barrel and some deerskin last summer. Yep.”
John Allan went on, “Also, Ma’am, if we don’t want a drum or a march, we’ll make something else, like a fiddle.”
Lewis popped up. “I’m making a fiddle out of maple. Gonna make the bridge out of cherry. It’ll be good for square dance music.”
Birdie swung her knitting around her shoulders with a flourish. “Or maybe a waltz!”
There were only five minutes until the bell, so John Allan tried to sum things up. “What I’m trying to say, Miss Gray, is that we don’t follow anybody but ourselves. Well, actually, Ma’am, we believe in three things. We believe in God, we believe in Jesus Christ, and we believe in the West Virginia state motto.”
Miss Gray sat down. She seemed to be a little older than
she had been at the beginning of class. “I plead ignorance. What is the West Virginia state
motto?”
In his best baritone voice, John Allan said, “Mountaineers are always free!”
Barney shouted, “Yep!”
For some reason known only to God, who really must have been in the ceiling that day, all of us kids started laughing and clapping, and when we finally settled down, there was Miss Gray sitting at her desk, her face buried in her hands, sobbing big, deep sobs like she’d just finished watching a tear-jerker movie with a happy ending.
Then the bell rang, and we left for the weekend.
Well, now, Monday was different, real different. We walked into English class and stopped in our tracks. Our mouths popped wide open.
Birdie said, “Well, I swan!”
Chuckie added, “Well, crown me with glory!”
John Allan topped it off. “Well, fan my brow and call me Moses!”
Then we sat down all quiet-like and just stared. There stood Miss Gray all dressed up in a red and black skirt and a bright red sweater. Her hair had been curled and fell down past her shoulders and seemed to shine. We could see the faint color of lipstick, and even some makeup on her cheekbones. She was certainly a pretty lady. She looked very happy, and we were happy for her.
For the rest of the school year Miss Gray treated us different. She didn’t lecture as much. She was more relaxed and even asked us questions. Then she listened. And for the rest of the school year she dressed in bright colors and always looked real nice.
We’re not sure why she changed so much. Maybe it was Mr. Thoreau. Maybe she was looking for a husband. Whatever the reason, she seemed happier at the end of the school year than she had been at the beginning.
That was her only year as a teacher at our high school. Some of us figured she went back to Philadelphia. Some figured she went somewhere else to deliver more hillbilly kids from ignorance. Maybe she got married and had a dozen wonderful kids and lived in a big log cabin, one with the stove in the northwest corner and the door facing east - - on the north shore of a beautiful lake, of course.