IIGS™ Newsletter - September 1998
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IIGS™ Newsletter - September 1998
You should have visited the Teachers Institute this week. Such a red-letter day as this red-letter day have I in all my red-letter days never seen before! There were all kinds of teachers there. And what women! Pretty, ugly, big, small, fat, thin, smart, and stupid. They dressed with more style than I've ever seen before in my life, and their dresses were dazzling. Where they all got their gum for chewing I wouldn't know, but each one was chewing so loudly that the noise reminded me of the sound of cows chewing their cud at midnight. Under the seat of every chair in the courthouse stuck globs of chewing gum--not unlike the mud nests that barn swallows build. The men looked dignified and smart, and they acted the part. Dress gloves, Sidney neckerchiefs, patent-leather shoes, and their hair parted in the middle--like women.
It wasn't like this in older days. Instead of silk dresses the women wore cotton, and instead of chewing gum at five cents a pack they chewed dried peaches. The men wore cow-leather shoes, and their hair was combed to one side. Those were times when a golden watch made a man look rich, and a piano was out of the question. Now they are all as common as stray dogs, and we still have hard times.
There is also a big difference in styles of learning nowadays. We used to have to recite from world maps. Now geography is studied with detailed pictures and textbooks. Every year we had to go through our grammar and had to learn all the rules without learning what they were good for. In reading, the teacher would have us read to the end of our texts, then we'd start all over again from the beginning. We'd learn how to recite the multiplication tables backwards and forwards, and there were times when solving something like nine times eleven meant having to recite the whole table to oneself silently. We could all read almost as well as a pastor, but without understanding a word, since it was all in English, and we spoke nothing but Dutch. At noon we'd open our lunch pails, and there'd be cold liverwurst, together with apple butter bread and hard-boiled eggs for eating. While our mouths were busy eating, our feet would be drumming restlessly on the floor. In a corner of the room would sit a boy who had trouble with lice. No one would offer him any walnuts or pound-apples, since he was also the only republican in the school. The last I ever hear of him was that he became a state senator in one of the western states, and the fellow who teased him the most is still struggling for a living here at the Mountain. You never know what a lousy person can make out of himself.
One of the biggest days at school was when the superintendent came to visit. We thought of the superintendent as a bigger man than even the President of the United States. Every time he paid his yearly visit he gave us the same speech which consisted of a reminder that if we'd apply ourselves hard enough we all stood a chance of becoming a President, and the girls had a chance of becoming the President's wife. As far as I know none of his prophecies ever came true, but after seeing Cleveland make it, I wonder if just about anyone with half the normal common sense could make into the presidency. This got me to thinking that I ought to try running again for President, since my chances could be better than ever if I could just get the Republican nomination. * * *
Note: This collection of Boonastiel stories was written by H. A. Harter in the original Penna-Dutch dialect and was published in the Keystone Gazette, Bellefonte, PA, between 1894 and 1904. They were translated and transcribed by Bob James of Alaska and they are being reprinted here with his permission.