WORD PEJORATION

       My mom, born in 1924 during World War II, sat with me on her front porch swing one balmy spring day last year. Out of the blue she quipped, "We had such gay times when we danced."
        
     What? Did she just say what I thought she said? Surely not. She was a straight as all get out.
        
      It was clearly a good time to tell her how language evolves. But word pejoration didn’t seem like a topic I should discuss with my mother. And I was not about to get into a linguistic oration about the Great Vowel Shift or the fact that Shakespeare spoke Modern English as opposed to Chaucer’s Middle English. So I decided to talk about how familiar words have changed meaning over the years.
  
Me: “Mom, what does hanky mean?”
  
Mom: “As in ‘hanky panky?’’
  
This was not going well.
  
Mom: “What’s the meaning of expletive?”
  
Me: “Bad word.”
  
Did she just steal my lesson?
  
Mom: “It means to fill out. Ex means out. The other part means to fill."
  
Mom: “What’s the meaning of harlot?”
  
Me: “No one you or I know.”
  
Mom: “Originally, it meant rascal.”
  
Me: “I didn’t know that.”
  
Mom: “Do you know the origin of idiot?”
  
Me: “Uh, no. but I think it means someone really stupid.”
  
Mom: “It originally meant a person who is not a clergyman, a layman."
  
Me: “Mom, how do you know all this?”
  
Mom: "I watch EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND.”

...Whew. All that in one little conversation. And I read Mencken's American Language.

THOMAS CONNORS DUGAS

       My only brother, Thomas Connors Dugas (Tommy), was born in 1967 in Loreauville, LA, our hometown. I was a junior in high school. He grew up in an estrogen war zone with six sisters and our mother. I sang "Little Robin Redbreast" to him as I rocked him to sleep at night. I left home two years later to attend college. After I graduated from college and married, I moved to Texas, then to Georgia, so I saw little of him as he grew up.

            He is a successful adult and an accomplished writer. His resume indicates that he is “above the fold.” He is brilliant and, I believe, has an eidetic memory. He escaped in books because reading was his manner of coping in our noisy household. I think he read our whole set of Britannica encyclopedias cover to cover. A conversation with him is usually one-sided. He can talk for hours about almost any topic. I am amazed by his repertoire; however, I can never get a word in.

            Our paternal grandfather hunted and fished all year long and was the source of Tommy’s hunting passion. Tommy cut his teeth on an arsenal which included a magazine fed .410 shotgun, a single shot shotgun in 20 ga., and a Winchester Model 61 Pump .22 rifle. He describes himself as a shot gunner. He is a member of the NRA, and despite, my reservations, has continued this practice.

            He was nurtured by our sister Cindy who took him under her wing. She was fifteen years older. I didn’t realize how close they were until I read Tommy’s memoirs of their relationship. She helped him to grow up and was the source of his passion for reading.

            He now lives in Virginia with his wife. We talk occasionally. If I could rewrite my life, I would wish I had not left home so soon. Perhaps being the eldest sibling was a misfortune.

            Happy Brother’s Week to you, Tommy. I love you.

I left Louisiana; it did not leave me.

To Teachers everywhere and to Kelsey

            I retired from a 40 year teaching career four years ago . . . sort of.

            Even now, every August, I prepare mentally for the Back to School rush. I dream about painting my classroom walls purple, setting up my classroom, hanging posters, decorating bulletin boards, and begging the custodians not to replace my ancient blackboard with an ugly white dry erase board.

            In my dream, I challenge myself once again to learn all 150 students’ names in three weeks before their parents barge through the school doors at Open House. I write objectives, fill out lesson plans and temporary class rolls reminding myself that class changes will occur for three to four weeks, so writing names alphabetically in permanent ink in a roll book the first week will just tick me off. Neatness is next to godliness.

           I picture myself in day long meetings every single “teacher workday/preparation day” before that first day of school . . . cockamamie, top-down directives and the powers-to-be figuring out creative ways to read the 100 page faculty handbook to our bright-eyed, smiling faculty. I’d rather read the darn thing at home and during faculty meetings catch up on everyone’s summer adventures and plan Friday afternoon Happy Hour.

           Every August I reach for a 200 page ring binder that is filled with notes, letters, and cards from students, parents, and colleagues that I received over my long career. I kept that binder on my desk at school. When I was stressed out about school matters, I thumbed through the binder so I would be reminded that I was reaching students, and I was making a difference.
           

One of my 12^th grade students in 2008,

Kelsey, created an eighteen page scrapbook for me the year I retired.

She must have spent hours writing that parody of

“The Night Before Christmas”

 to describe my classes’ adventures through World Literature.

It is funny, moving, creative, intelligent, poignant, and clever.

I stored my teaching career in twenty boxes that live in my basement.








This gift I keep in my home office so I could relive her moving and adorable memories of that one semester she was in my class.
           

            I don’t think Kelsey realized how much that gesture meant to me, and I don’t know if
I conveyed to her how moved I was by her gift.

It was not a class assignment. She intended it to be a going away gift.

She had no idea how stressed and sad and relieved I was about retiring.

My dad was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. He lived ten hours away, and it was difficult for me to visit as often as I would have liked. Career and family commitments got in the way. 

I took Kelsey’s scrapbook with me when I visited him in June, the month after I retired. 

I read it to him and told him how much I was going to miss teaching and how much I appreciated the opportunities

I had to help students excel. He smiled, but I don’t think he understood what I was saying. It still felt good to be able to talk to him about my life.

            Kelsey’s scrapbook symbolizes the most important outcome I tried to instill in my students:

the ability to think creatively and synthesize learning concepts.

She achieved that in a

spectacular way.

And, in the process, she gave me a gift that takes on multi levels of meaning and touches my heart every time I read it.

           

There is so much in my head that I could tell teachers from the experiences I had in the classroom. Educational philosophies aside, I would tell them to know their students. If they do, they will figure out that subject matter means nothing unless it is delivered to each student’s needs and expectations.

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.

         Clay P. Bedford

Have a good school year.

           

Mom and Pop Wick

My maternal grandparents, May Segura Vaughn and Willie Wickliff Vaughn were both born in 1898. To put things in perspective, the first insurance policy in the US was issued that year, the first automobile was sold, the US declared war on Spain about Cuba, and  Louisiana adopted a   new constitution with a "grandfather clause" designed to eliminate black voters.

A common practice then was to name a grandmother after her husband; thus, as the wife of my grandfather, Willie Wickliff Vaughn, she was addressed as Mom Wick by her ten grandchildren. We called my grandfather Pop Wick.

Born in 1946, I was her first grandchild. Because my Catholic mother birthed children every two or three years until 1967, my grandmother made me a priority and babysat me at her house next door to my family home. I have fleeting memories of both her and Pop Wick when I was four or five. I remember my Pop Wick holding my hand as we walked down the sidewalk from his house, across Main Street, to his General Merchandise store. He sold everything from tractor parts to costume jewelry. He propped me on the meat counter and fed me ham that he sliced with a big machine. I watched him handwrite customer receipts and punch numbers on a huge NCR cash register. Farmers bartered chickens, milk, pigs, and cows in exchange for food, clothing, or other necessities. He forgave debts to struggling townspeople.

Pop wick had a metal ice container in the back room of the store where he kept ice he bought from the icehouse in town. He lifted huge blocks of ice with a large forceps-like device to cool down some food before refrigeration was common.

Pop Wick hired my family’s next door neighbor and Mom’s best friend, Mrs. Dan Decuir, affectionately called Bebe, to manage the clothing department. She taught me how to measure fabric by turning my head to the left and stretching the cloth from my nose to my right outstretched arm. I never understood why she did that because a yardstick was nailed to fabric table. We wrapped gifts together. I curled the ribbon with scissors while she measured and taped the paper to the gift. We washed cotton feed sacks to sell to seamstresses. I think I wore flour sack clothing until I was a pre-teen. Bebe babysat us sometimes. When we misbehaved,she chased all six of us girls. Like squawking geese, we scattered under beds and in closets. 

My uncle (Parrin) and godfather, and my mom’s only sibling, worked with my grandfather at the store. I loved him like a father. He had an infectious laugh. He let me eat Hershey bars, jawbreakers, Sky Bars, Pay Days, and Oh Henrys until I was green in the face. We drained glass bottles of Coca Cola, Seven Up, Nesbitt, Frosty Root Beer, Cream Soda, and Orange Crush. My dad told me that Pop Wick would go broke because of all the candy and soft drinks we “borrowed.”

Cookie salesmen, Lejeune’s French bread, Holsum, and Evangeline Maid delivery trucks parked in front of the store on Main Street. I remember the aroma of Lejeune’s to this day. When I visit home, the scent of that bread evokes powerful memories of my childhood.

 The porch extending across the storefront became a gathering place for men who smoked unfiltered Lucky Strike, Old Gold, Chesterfield, and Camels. Some even rolled their own “tabak,” a practice popular even in the sixties. Nonck “Uncle” Fat, my dad’s uncle, had a hunchback, a curvature of the spine. He could tell stories and jokes that made the other men fall out of their chairs. He lived in a cabine “cabon,” on Lake Dauterive road, a few miles from Pop’s store. Another porch sitter was Uncle White, Uncle Fat’s older brother, who pounded horseshoes on an anvil in his shop across the street. He was a quiet man who loved to listen to Yankees games on his shop radio. His wife Nanan knotted her long gray hair in a bun at the base of her neck. She cooked white beans with salted meat for our family. One day I found a white hair strand in the beans. My dad told me it was protein. I wasn’t convinced. Yuk!

Carlos, a beloved black man in our village, hitched his horse to a railing in front of the store and offered rides to children. Pop Wick had an outhouse [bathroom, privy] behind the store. Cindy and I locked Carlos in the outhouse one day. We told Pop Wick that he needed to rest after riding all those children on his horse. He made us sit on a bale of hay for 15 hours, or so it seemed.

One of my youngest memories is about my great grandmother’s wake. She lived in a small white wooden house behind Pop Wick’s store. I remember her open casket displayed in the center of her parlor. People dressed in black surrounded the coffin or stood nearby. Someone lifted me above the coffin so I could see my great grandmother. I can visualize that moment very clearly. My mother said she could not believe how clear my memory was because I was two years old when my great  grandmother died.

Pop Wick had store clerks deliver groceries to Mom Wick every day. I don’t ever remember seeing her in the store. She could not read or write, as it was uncommon for rural women during the depression to attend school. She could read numbers, but Pop Wick created recipe cards for her by drawing pictures of ingredients and methods. She made homemade bread, cush cush, smothered chicken, Jambalaya, cakes from scratch made with Royal Baking Powder, and cooked frosting that she made with clear Karo syrup. On Halloween she made Tac Tac, popcorn balls made with Steen’s syrup. At Christmas mom Wick made coffee colored pralines with melted marshmallows. My Aunt Pat, her daughter-in-law, called Mom Wick a short order cook. She whipped up any dish her grandchildren requested. I loathe egg whites, so, for my breakfast she fried an egg yolk with bacon or bologna [we called it baloney].  She invented the first microwave oven. When I attended Summer School at USL, she kept dinner [lunch] hot for me by simmering water in a deep Magnalite pot and setting my food on a plate covered with aluminum foil on top of the cooking pot.

Mom Wick and my mother attended Home Demonstration meetings held in homes. This government funded organization was formed to establish agricultural extension work by trained men and women agents. They disseminated educational information on agriculture and home economics to individuals who did not attend college. She and my mother learned how to preserve and can foods correctly, which they did with large groups of women in the cafeteria of our small high school. They had meetings on nutrition, hygiene, child rearing, crafts, and flower arranging.

Pop Wick bought Mom Wick a black 1050’s Chevrolet that looked like the Batmobile. I was learning to drive my paternal grandfather’s road grader at thirteen. He worked for the Police Jury. I was very young when I sat next to him as he graded ditches. I learned to drive a 5 movement stick shift. Mom Wick, afraid that she would sideswipe other cars with her bat wings car as she drove down Main Street, negotiated the car halfway on the street and halfway down the sidewalk. I sat in the passenger seat and recited my Act of Contrition as people walking on the sidewalk jumped out of her way. She drove this way at five mph all the way to Granger’s store, about one-half mile away. I begged her to park across the street in the church parking lot rather than parallel park. I was determined to learn to drive that car very soon. Because of my road grader driving experience and because few people checked driver’s licenses in our one cop town, my grandfather let me drive the Batmobile as soon as I was thirteen and one-half.

I do not remember days; I remember moments.