Darrell Huckaby

My friend Vickie Hammond, who is an elementary school teacher, bless her heart, posted on Facebook last week about the bad weather. She was bemoaning the fact that her kids would miss recess for the second day in a row. She wasn’t sure she could tolerate that.Vickie’s post sent my mind hurtling back through time. That happens a lot these days. For a brief while 50 years had been lopped off my life and I was a jug-eared 9-year-old, wearing overalls and a pair of Thompson-Boland-Lee’s finest brogan shoes, sitting on a see-saw on the Porterdale School playground. Linda King was probably on the other end.

I knew we kids looked forward to recess back in those days but never stopped to think that the teachers might look forward to it as much, if not more, than the little lintheads in their charge.

It was a magical time. We got to blow off steam and burn up some energy, and a kid can learn a lot of important lessons through unsupervised play. One of the most important was that self-esteem cannot be awarded, like a plastic participation trophy.

We actually had to come up with ways to entertain ourselves on the playground. The younger kids would play games like Red Rover and Drop the Handkerchief and tag-out-of-jail. Once we got older the boys would break off and play pitch-up-and-tackle, which was a game about the survival of the fittest. A ball would be thrown into the air — any kind of ball would do — and the person who caught it would run around like a chicken with his head cut off while the rest of the boys in the class tried to tackle him. The game could really get rough and those who weren’t up to it could go see-saw with the girls.

See above reference to Linda King.

I had a lot of fun on the playgrounds of Porterdale School during recess. I also experienced the most embarrassing moment of my life — at least to date.

Remember the recurring dream about showing up at school without your clothes? I lived it.

I was in the third grade and back in those days wore the same pair of overalls to school every day — as opposed to the present day when I wear the same pair of khakis to school every day.

I had outgrown my only pair of overalls and Mama told me to stop by White’s on the way to school and let Bobby Smith put me in a new pair. White’s was where people in Porterdale bought clothes and they opened at 7 a.m. so folks getting off the third shift in the mill could shop on their way home from work — or so little burr-headed boys could get a new pair of pants on his way to school.

Alas, on this particular day, White’s didn’t have a pair of overalls in my scrawny size. That was not going to prevent Bobby Smith from selling a pair to my mother. He put me in some overalls that were about three sizes too big. He cinched up the straps and rolled up the legs and told me that I would “grow into them.” The stride of those pants was down around my knees. I was ahead of my time. I was busting slack before it was cool.

Believe it or not, nobody in my class made fun of me when I walked in the door in my new ill-fitting garments. Our mamas were all children of the Great Depression and knew what it was like not to have nice clothes. They would send us to cut a switch if they found out any of us had made fun of what someone wore to school. Everything was fine until recess.

Now understand this, we had great playground equipment in Porterdale. The machinists in the mill made it and we had a giant sliding board. The fun of the sliding board was to wait until the teacher wasn’t looking and then climb out and slide down the support pole — like a fireman — instead of the slide.

It was my turn on the slide and I caught Miss Elizabeth Willis not looking and I slid down the pole. My pants, however, with all that extra fabric, caught on a bolt and stayed at the top. Ripped right off me. There I was in front of God and everybody in just my T-shirt, my brogans and my step-ins.

I did what any other 9-year-old boy would have done. I ran home.

When I got there I found my daddy — who worked on the second shift — sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. When he asked why I was home from school and practically naked I said, “Daddy, we’ve got to move!”

Thankfully we didn’t.

Recess. What precious memories. I bet Vickie Hammond didn’t see anything like that last week!

“I’m sorry. You have the wrong number.” If you are like me, you don’t find yourself saying that as often as you used to. Have you noticed?

We still get plenty of solicitors at my house, and robo-calls, particularly during the election season, and a plethora of folks wanting me to take part in this or that survey. But I get very few wrong numbers. I think the reason is because we don’t actually dial numbers as much as we used to. Now we have numbers programmed into our phones. If your phone is programmed correctly and hit the right name, the phone will dial the right number.

My friends and I arrived at this thesis over Valentine’s dinner Tuesday night when the conversation turned to wrong numbers. Each of us had had a number that was one digit off from a place of business and each of us had a story about how we handled the almost daily misdials we received. Allow me to give you a for-instance or three.

One couple had a number that was one digit away from a urologist and constantly came home to answering messages describing burning sensations and worse. What’s up with that? Don’t people even listen to answering machine messages?

Wait. Don’t answer that question. The urologist in question was actually my own and I have had his office on speed dial lately. I found myself praying that none of the errant messages had been mine. The worst part of that revelation was that the man of the couple admitted that he simply deleted the messages, although if he actually answered one of the calls he would give the correct number to the caller. His wife, bless her heart, said she would actually call the parties back. She happens to be a nurse but insisted that she only dispenses phone numbers, not medical advice.

Someone else had a number that was almost the same as a local taxi dispatch. She got call after call after call, often late at night, from inebriated bar-hoppers looking for a safe ride home. This party pleaded with the cab company to change their number, to no avail, of course. That is, to no avail until she started telling everyone that called that she would have someone pick them up in 10 minutes. After a few weeks of complaints from irate would-be customers the hack company got a new number and my friend got a lot more sleep.

Another guy knew of someone whose marriage almost broke up because of a wrong number. This was obviously in the pre-caller ID era. Every night he would get half-a-dozen calls from people who would hang up when he answered. Apparently the jealous sort — not to mention suspicious — this person convinced himself that his wife had a boyfriend who was hanging up when he answered. It turns out that his number was one off from one the local bank used to offer time and temperature.

Naturally I had a story of my own. Don’t I always?

Our home phone number used to be almost identical to that of the cable TV company. Every time it rained, folks started calling to complain that their television service had been disrupted. I finally got tired of explaining and started telling everyone that their spouse had neglected to pay the cable bill and their service had been discontinued. There is no telling how many quarrels started because of that bit of erroneous news.

Once, during the buildup that preceded Desert Storm, I got a call from a frantic lady whose television had suddenly gone out. I have no defense for my response except “the devil made me do it.” Hey, it worked for Flip Wilson.

I told the lady that I couldn’t comment but that if she turned her radio dial to WSB radio she would get all the details she needed. The poor lady was convinced we were under nuclear attack and I felt bad for a few minutes after she hung up — but got over it after the next four or five calls reporting the same outage.

My favorite wrong number story, however, was one my daddy used to tell. He was working third shift in the mill and tried to sleep during the day. Unfortunately, for him, his phone number was almost the same as that of the drug store in town. One day, after being awakened one too many times, he found himself on the line with a lady wanting to know how to take the pills the drug store had sent over that morning.

My father allegedly told her to “take them all at once.”

“Is this Standard Pharmacy?” was the startled reply.

“Hang, no,” he told her. “This is Homer Huckaby!”

Well, I have found a sure fire way to avoid the few wrong numbers I might still get. I just don’t answer the phone. Please leave a message after the beep.

When will we ever learn? Or when, I should ask, will they?

Tommy Dorsey was 51 when he died in his sleep. It may sound like a peaceful way to go — until you learn that the wildly popular orchestra leader choked to death because he was oversedated on sleeping pills.

Hank Williams’ death is still shrouded in mystery, but his self-destructive behavior is legendary and the fact that he was taking morphine, often mixed with booze, is well-documented. Thus the world was deprived of Hank’s genius far too soon. “Luke the Drifter” was only 29 when he died in the back seat of his own Cadillac on New Year’s Day in 1953.

Elvis Presley was the king of rock ‘n’ roll, but he couldn’t have looked particularly regal in death. He was only 42 when he died of a drug-induced heart attack, reportedly while straining to have a bowel movement. I know that’s not a pretty image. It wasn’t intended to be. I’m still mad at Elvis for dying so young. I loved Elvis.

The Doors’ Jim Morrison died of a heart attack, too. He was 28. When a 28-year-old musician dies of a heart attack, drug abuse is a pretty safe bet. Sam Bernett, in whose club Morrison died, claimed that heroin was the culprit in this particular case. Come on baby, light my fire.

Heroin killed Janis Joplin, too. It’s a long way from Port Arthur, Texas — which was Joplin’s birthplace — to superstardom. It’s not such a long way from heroin addiction to an early grave. Janis Joplin was 27 when she died. I can’t help but wonder if she would have traded all her tomorrows for that single yesterday in which she first allowed someone to inject her with the drug that would eventually claim her life.

Jimi Hendrix wasn’t in a purple haze when he died — also at the age of 27 — but he was in a stupor created by mixing alcohol and barbiturates. So still another genius was taken from us. The list, like Sonny and Cher’s beat, goes on and on and on.

Kurt Cobain, 27, died of a self inflicted shotgun wound, while under the influence of heroin. Amy Winehouse, 27, succumbed to drugs just last summer. Michael Jackson made it all the way to age 51 before having his own physician administer a lethal dose of sleep medication.

Jerry Garcia, Ike Turner, Keith Whitley — and let’s not forget Judy Garland, who didn’t find a pot of gold or dreams-come-true over her personal rainbow, but a barbiturate overdose.

And now, Whitney Houston’s name has been added to the ever-growing list of young men and women who entertained us and mesmerized us with their incredible talent, but who could not cope with the notoriety and riches their fame and fortune afforded them.

Didn’t she almost have it all? Ironically, she absolutely did. She was born into an entertainment family. Her father was a record executive and her mother was a singer. She had great bloodlines. Dionne Warwick was her cousin and Aretha Franklin was her godmother. Raised in Baptist and Pentecostal churches she got her start, like so many great singers, in gospel music and rose to heights that few have reached. She was an actress, a model, a recording artist — a true entertainment icon. The Guinness Book of World Records called her the “most awarded female of all time.”

She won Grammy Awards and Emmy Awards and Billboard Awards — you name it and if it has to do with the recording industry, Whitney Houston won it. She had seven straight number one hits and came into her own in the latter half of the 1980s — when my lovely wife, Lisa, and I were coming into our own as husband and wife. She played the background music while we began to raise our family. She convinced me, through song, that children really were our future.

And when our nation went to war to liberate Kuwait, she caused every American’s heart to swell with pride prior to the 1991 Super Bowl with perhaps the greatest rendition of our National Anthem ever performed.

And yet, with the world at her feet, Whitney Houston couldn’t keep from stumbling over her own successes. Her once sparkling image was tarnished as her behavior became erratic. She began to show up late for interviews and miss scheduled performances and had several brushes with the law. Her tumultuous relationship with husband Bobby Brown was well documented and eventually Houston admitted in interviews with Diane Sawyer and others, that she was a habitual abuser of drugs and alcohol.

And yet despite all the warning signs, the world was not quite ready to hear the news of Saturday last. Whitney Houston was found dead in the bathtub of her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton. Drugs had claimed the life of another pop music icon.

How many deaths will it take ’til we know? How many magnificent songs will remain unwritten and unsung? How many senseless deaths will we have to endure?

Too many, I fear. Far too many.

Last Sunday I had the distinct honor of addressing the GAEL winter meeting at the Classic Center. GAEL stands for Georgia Association of Educational Leaders. There were superintendents and principals and all sorts of bigwigs from all over the state. I was in pretty high cotton, understand.

As I was preparing my remarks for the meeting I began thinking about all the changes that have taken place in education since I began my teaching career 38 years ago. Trust me — they are myriad.

Back then teachers were still sending kids out back to dust the erasers on the boiler room wall. I still remember the time I got a plastic chalk-holder for Christmas. No more chalk dust on my good pants.

We don’t use erasers anymore — not the kind that absorb chalk. I use a dry erase board but I can also write on a little slate and have my words projected onto a large screen if I choose.

Back in 1974 you could reward a kid’s good behavior by letting him or her advance the filmstrip when the record dinged — and we were still showing 16 millimeter films we ordered from the state Department of Education. Believe it or not, most of them played “Dixie” during the introduction. Now I have a projector attached to the ceiling of my classroom that can pull movies out of the air — not that we have time to watch movies.

Teachers were still dealing with attendance registers when I entered the profession. They were done in indelible ink and turned in every 20 days. Heaven help you if they didn’t balance. Now I take roll four times a day on my computer.

Teachers have always loved giving out handouts. They were prepared on Spirit Masters and run off on something called a ditto machine. If you are from back in the day you may recall the distinct smell of those Spirit Masters and several of my colleagues weren’t allowed to even use the ditto machine for fear they’d return to class high.

Nowadays we have elaborate machines in our schools that can run off copies, collate and staple the packets. We can make hundreds of copies in a matter of minutes. We don’t always have paper and toner for the machines, but we have the machines.

I still remember when we had libraries in our schools. Now we have media centers. If I assigned a student a research project on a particular subject 40 years ago that student would use an antiquated tome called an encyclopedia to dig out the pertinent facts about said subject. Now my students can bring up any tidbit of information imaginable on their smartphones in a matter of seconds. Sometimes the information is even accurate.

We live in a marvelous age, to be sure. But despite all the technological advances we have made, we are also faced with tremendous challenges. First and foremost may be the breakdown of the family unit. My mama sent me to school with the understanding that I was there to mind my teacher and to learn. Truth be known, if it came down to a choice, mind the teacher would have probably been my mother’s first priority. I suppose my mama assumed that if I did, indeed, mind the teacher, learning would follow. I never remember having to go and cut a switch because I made a poor grade. I can’t say the same for disciplinary issues.

There are a lot more external pressures on school performance these days, too. Some are for the better because schools are by necessity paying a lot more attention to students that might have been ignored in earlier educational climates. In other ways, however, we are missing the boat. Someone, somewhere has decided that the best way to evaluate a school’s effectiveness is by having every student make a particular grade on the same battery of standardized tests, and since so much emphasis is being placed on those test scores we are often guilty of over-emphasizing the testing procedures and sometimes forget that we also need to teach students to think and to reason.

We often lose sight of some of the most important facets of a well-rounded education. I had wonderful teachers when I was growing up and the best ones didn’t simply teach me facts — facts that are accessible by iPhone in 30 seconds. The best ones inspired me to want to learn more. They whet my appetite for knowledge. They taught me that learning for the sake of obtaining knowledge could be a rewarding experience.

Sometimes I believe that if the Department of Education had been in charge of the Renaissance they would have handed Michelangelo a paint-by-numbers kit and insisted that he use it.

Education has changed dramatically in the 38 years that I have been a teacher — but the greatest constant remains the importance of the classroom teacher.

Selah.