Two Teachers

Two Teachers
by William H. Ruckle

The professor straddling the Gothic A-frame’s curving roof swung his hammer and drove the lastnail into the last shingle. He took a deep breath and savored a mild breeze that cooled some of
the sweat dripping from him. Then his eyes glanced over the dogwoods and birches on BeagleRidge to the North and relaxed. During that moment, a train of memories, surprisingly extensivefor so brief an instant and only partially related to his roof building flashed through his mind. Orperhaps it was not a complete sequence of memories at all but only two names, Chambers and Stone.
. . . . . .
Full of apprehension, but with a spark of hope as well, the fat boy approached the eighth gradewood shop classroom. He had always dreamed of creating with wood using lathes, band sawsand other power tools. But his efforts until now had been disappointing. Before he had come toDougherty, Georgia, he had spent some time in the wood shop at a boy’s club in Florida. Heproduced a wobbly table and a rickety bench, and the director had encouraged him to play at thehockey board instead of entering the shop. But the main source of the fat boy’s apprehension wasMr. Stone the shop teacher. Everyone said he was hard and demanding as well as a little sadistic.Each year he crafted a new paddle on which he allowed its victims to inscribe their names, and atthe end of the year it was covered. As most of the male teachers he had come to DoughertyJunior High about five years ago after serving in the Second World War. He often sprinkled hisinstruction with talk of duty, obedience and other references to the army. He also hinted ofimpressive military accomplishments, but never alluded to anything specific.

“In this class there is only one rule. Do right.” The fat boy sat absolutely still while Mr. Stoneexplained the rules for the class and outlined the projects they would undertake. Mr. Stone wasshort, wiry and well conditioned. His lips were thin and he had a look in his eyes that seemed tosay ‘don’t bother me.’ Although he did not mention it during the class a large virgin paddle hungostensibly behind him.

After his preliminary remarks Mr. Stone initiated the first project, a doorstop in the shape of apuppy - a doggy doorstop. The primary tool used to construct the doorstop would be the handplane. Mr. Stone gave a talk on the structure and use of the plane and issued each boy a board ofwood telling them to render it “smooth as glass and twice as shiny.”

Every class, thereafter, was a misery for the fat boy. He would plane at a board, inspect it’sflatness with a combination square and wait in line for Mr. Stone to verify that the board was flat.But Mr. Stone would always show him some light between the blade of the square and the wood.Then the fat boy would plane more until the board was too thin to use. Some of the boys werelucky to receive flat boards to start with. Others brought in a plane from their home with asharper blade. All of them planed better than the fat boy. Toward the middle of the semester theother boys had begun their second, third or even fourth project but the fat boy was still planing aboard for the doggy doorstop.

With three weeks left in the semester, and five previous boards reduced to shavings, the fat boyfinally planed a board to Mr. Stone’s satisfaction. The fat boy traced the puppy pattern onto theboard and cut it out with a jigsaw. He glued it to a wedge and painted the face black and white.Then he noticed a mistake. He had reversed the shape so the puppy was the mirror image of thatin the plan. There was no time to start over so Mr. Stone let it through. The semester ended andthe fat boy received an ‘F’ in shop. The fat boy took comfort from having avoided the largepaddle. Mr. Stone really didn’t use it often. In fact, five or six boys volunteered to be paddled sothey could sign it. Being a large paddle it was not cutting, but Mr. Stone wielded it with a stoutarm so its victim had to force back his tears.

More significant events overshadowed the fat boy’s failure in wood shop.Unexpectedly, hisfamily moved from Georgia to New Jersey.

Between Dougherty and Atlanta the family stopped at a diner where the fat boy made a surprisingdiscovery about Mr. Stone. The diner was not busy at the time so the proprietor spent timetalking to the family. When he learned that they were coming from Dougherty and that the fatboy had been attending the junior high school, he said, “You must have had a class with Mr.Stone. We were in the war together.”

“I guess you saw a lot of action,” said the fat boy’s mother.

“Not a bit,” replied the proprietor, “We handed out blankets at Hickam Field for three years. Butyou know what they say. They can’t fly without supply.”

They settled in Corlies Beach, a town that occupied a two mile strip along the Atlantic coast. Thefat boy enrolled as an eighth grader in Corlies Beach Grammar School, a pretty building ofyellow and red brick, the only school in town and the pride of the little community. On his firstday he encountered Mr. Chambers in two classes: physical education and mechanical drawing.Mr. Chambers was a big contented man who also served as the school janitor and the assistantprincipal. Later that day he saw the Mr. Chambers in a blue uniform and learned that Mr.Chambers was also one of the town’s two constables. He wondered why Mr. Chambers had so many jobs.

Mr. Chambers was not a firm disciplinarian. He allowed a constant chatter in the mechanicaldrawing classes, but he prevented the noise from spreading beyond the class room. Once a weekhe made a ten minute presentations about a new drafting project, and, strangely, the boys paidclose attention. In physical education he was content if the boys kept moving for about two thirdsof the period no matter what they were doing. The fat boy at first considered Mr. Chambers easygoing and detached, holding the job of teacher primarily for the paycheck.

A week later this opinion altered when Mr. Chambers spoke to him during gym class. “What doyou think about wood shop?” he asked.

“It was the only class I ever flunked.” replied the fat boy timidly. He did not know what Mr.Chambers was driving at, and he did not want to reveal himself.

“Tomorrow we are going to begin six weeks of wood shop. I want you to do the best you can.”

“I’ll try, sir.” That was all. The fat boy was nervous, and was glad to be finished with theinterview. Later he realized that Mr. Chambers had looked at the transcript from Doherty JuniorHigh and noticed the ‘F’.

The next day the eighth grade boys met in the schools wood shop instead of the drafting room. Afew of the boys resumed projects that were already in progress. Others glanced through oldmechanics magazines for some project to start. The fat boy came upon a plan for a table lampand brought it to Mr. Chambers because he wanted to learn to use a lathe. Mr. Chambers glancedover the plans and said, “I’m afraid this will take too long. Look for something else.” Eventuallythey decided on a pair of bookends, each one with a board curved at the top and notched twoinches from the bottom to hold a rounded strip of metal that would fit under the books thus usingthe books weight to support them.

The fat boy cut two boards the required length and sadly picked a hand plane from the tool bin.As he began to plane, Mr. Chambers approached him. He removed the board from the vise andsaid “Let’s do it this way.” and walked toward the power sander. Joy and love welled within the fat boys heart.

By the end of the class both boards were sanded and squared. Mr. Chambers began the first one and watched while the fat boy finished it and started the second. In the next week the fat boy fashioned the curved tops on the boards. In trying to give them the same curvature he reduced the length of the board to an eighth inch less than the plan called for. Mr. Stone would have tossed out the board and made him start over, but Mr. Chambers only took note of it saying, “This will keep you from getting an ‘A’ for the project.

They notched the boards using a table saw. Mr. Chambers ran the first one through and gave the second to the fat boy. The fat boy became apprehensive. Then Mr. Chambers said, “The most important thing to know about a table saw is that it can give you a bad cut if you are not careful. If I see a boy who’s not nervous when he’s using it, then I get nervous.”

The fat boy shaped the aluminum using a baseball bat as a Jig and then drilled screw holes in the bottom of the metal. He fitted the metal into the notches in each board and then attached it at the bottom. He had wanted to finish the boards in a natural color and leave the aluminum bare, but at Mr. Chambers decided that he should spray a suede textured finish over both wood and metal. The resulting bookends were useful and not bad looking but far from perfect. The fat boy received a ‘B-` for the project.

There were no more projects with Mr. Chambers because the eighth grade girls were going to take over the shop and the boys would take six weeks of cooking.

That summer the fat boy’s family moved again, to Newark. From his ninth grade mechanical drawing teacher, Mr. Stam (Why were New Jersey schools so eager to teach boys drafting?) he learned why Mr. Chambers had so many jobs in Corlies Beach. “He was their only war hero so they wanted to reward him. His story is fascinating. He was a corporal at Guadacanal. Whenever he found a wounded Jap he insisted his squad bring him in even though it would have a lot easier to kill him. The officers tried to discourage this, but couldn’t order him to kill a wounded enemy. Then the command discovered the prisoners were an asset because the empire had assumed they would fight to the death and never prepared them for being captured. When the marines finally found somebody who could talk their language they told him everything they knew. A lot of their information was dead wrong, but enough was true to make a difference in the battle. When it came out that Chambers was responsible for so many of the prisoners in his area his commander put him in for a bronze star. He received another bronze star at Iwo Jima for pulling three wounded men away from machine gun fire. When he returned to Corlies Beach every one made a big fuss over him. When he graduated from teachers college they gave him the extra jobs from the school and the town to make sure he stayed there as well as to show their appreciation. He’ll certainly become the principal there when the job opens.”
. . . . . .
The professor breathed deeply and stuck his hammer under his belt. Coming off the roof would not be easy or pleasant. He crawled along the ridge to the center then edged down a steep incline toward the top of a dormer window. As he lowered himself over the edge of the window and felt for the beam of a scaffold he muttered “Chambers and Stone, two teachers. No. A teacher and a jerk!”