Since us Hunter males are confessing skipping classes or lunches or pulling fast ones on teachers and principals it is only fair I drag a female Hunter in on it.
My 2nd cousin, once removed, D., was a year behind me in school. She was the studious kind that do everything right, and even worked in the principal’s outer office.
Normally, we stayed out of each other’s way.
One day, several of us, Paul, me, and I forgot who else skipped slipped off the Marietta High School campus to a friend George’s parents house. They were, what is now called affluent.
There we played on their new pool table and sampled the father’s moonshine that he bought in north Georgia. In fact, we did more than sample it, we got loaded.
We made it back to school at 1:00 or 1:30, just in time for the next class after lunch. I was trying to walk normally down the hall of the basement level when I saw my cousin D. approach me without smiling. Without saying a word, she handed me a note and walked on.
I read the note. It said that Mr. Cox was on to me. He had been looking for me all lunch period and couldn’t find me and she overheard him tell someone in his office he had me to rights now.
I had to think fast. After that moonshine I had just what I needed: The woozy look.
I went to the restroom and smeared soap under my armpits. I heard that would make your temperature rise.
As I was walking out of the restroom Lloyd Cox was walking in. He glanced at me and did a double take. He shouted where have I been the whole lunch period.
I told him right there in that restroom – I said I didn’t feel good.
He studied me a minute and said he thought I had the flu. He wanted to know if I had a way to get home. I told him I would manage,
D. and I swap Christmas cards every year. She is currently globe trotting seeing grandchildren. A couple of times I have thanked her in a card for saving my skin and she didn’t mention it back. It was her way of saying, “Don’t mention it – please don’t mention it again”.
I am shocked they ever let any more of the Hunter's into MHS by the time my generation started arriving in the 80s. The only reason they must have is that after surviving the 1930s/40s "Boys" and the 1960s with the "Kids", they had been beaten into submission for us Gen Xers!
ReplyDeleteJ3,
ReplyDeleteYour dad had to wait until high school to feel the wrath of the Hunter teach backlash.
I got my comeuppance at Waterman Street Grammar School. The principal, Mrs. Whitehead, taught my father, your grandfather, and all the other brothers and she had just about had it up to "here" when I came in from the cold. I could see red in her eyes when she looked me over.
ET,
ReplyDeleteLike I said, y'all wore the teachers out & they had mostly retired by the time we got there. Although, Rose Wing had the distinction of teaching through 3 generations of Hunters. Her 1st year at MHS, Stanley & Dick were in school. She then taught Dad & David (and others), then Haley & me at West Side. Kind of hard for a 5th grade teacher to hold any grudges :)
Luckily, I only had 1 teacher in high school that my sister had caused problems with, and she hated everybody, so I was just one more kid to hate.
j3
J3,
ReplyDeleteWas Edna Lee there when you were at MHS?
She was a holy terror to "our kind". One time she told Paul Roper (in front of me) that she had him figured out - every time he wore green tennis shoes there was vandalism on the campus. She was wrong. He was as surprised with her green shoes theory as I was.