16 Surge Narrows School Days

The transfer to the Surge Narrows school was a bit of a shock the first day as it was a new one room steel Quonset hut with thirty six students from grades one to eight; but all under the firm command of Miss Steele, a good looking nineteen year old girl just out of normal school. She was an in control kind of person and ran a tight ship, standing for no nonsense. I secretly kind of liked her, as she was young enough to appear good-looking to me even as a kid. Maybe it was because of that, that I got along with her and kept out of trouble.

Teacher number two, Miss Featherstonehaugh, was a thorn in the side, but not my worst nightmare.  Even though I was sometimes in trouble, the students liked me.  The first scrape with the law was during practice for our Christmas program that year.  Some of us were mimicking a song while she was practicing it with another group.  I unwisely did it one to many times and her wrath descended on me.  She came flying over in a mini rage and broke the ruler she had been using on my hand.  Some weeks later her sensitivity to me had reached a breaking point during class when we had doubled up for an assignment.  My inability to curb my talking was again my undoing, when after a few warnings she unexpectedly called me to the front of the classroom, hauled out the dreaded strap and laid it on me. The pain from the strapping was insignificant, what really hurt was the pain and humiliation of having it done in front of the class.  And to humiliate me further, after sending me back to my seat for a few minutes, where I had already concluded that anymore talking would be unwise, she suddenly and without notice sent me outside to sit on the step.

Of all the teachers through those five years at the Surge Narrows school the last one was my worst nightmare.  It is far better to be tolerated or even disliked, but to be the teacher’s pet that is really “the worst nightmare,” It means that before long you are despised by many of the other students and even your once best friends.  Miss Muir was an old maid and for some reason loved little Bobbie Betts. Slowly after she started to teach at Surge Narrows my once best friend Wayne Anderson gradually turned on me and in so doing turned the whole school against me.  He was the leader of the lets make fun of Bobby movement along with Glen Fair.  Most of the other kids would have been indifferent to my fate, but as Wayne, and his friend Glen, and maybe at times, Bruce, in the shadows, turned on me the rest of the kids followed their example. What saved me from any form of physical abuse was that I was big enough physically to take any of them on, but I wouldn’t because I was taught that a good Christian boy would not fight.  I remember getting into a fight with Paul Poitras however and I took him down during a lets pick on Bobby moment, because he was the most convenient to confront, but I never had any hard feelings against Paul then or now.  As I think back on those last couple of years in grade school I wander if I had whomped the lot of them my relationship with them may have turned out better.  I can remember that last year and a half sitting all alone eating my lunch with kids all around.  I used to dread going to school but would not let them win in their verbal threatening.

I look back on most of my time at the Surge Narrows school with fondness as during my first few years there I enjoyed the kids in class and on the playing field.   Scrub was one of my favorite games and we played it every day during our lunch break.  We would eat as fast as we could to get out on the play field as quick as possible.

Even though most of the kids in school were from homes where their father’s were loggers or fishermen there was very little swearing on the play field. The worst I ever heard was when Miss Muir got into an altercation with Bruce and he called her a SOB so everyone could hear, and our mouths dropped open in amazement.  What his punishment was escapes me, probably not much as by now Miss Muir had already lost control of the more defiant students.

Christmas time was one of my favorite times at school and a time that I looked forward to with great anticipation. I loved being in the Christmas play.  Some times I even got to sing. I remember Dawna and I sang a duet and I can even recall playing the part of a king in one of the plays.  The play escapes me but I will never forget my last line, which happened to be the closing line of the play, “I love creampuffs,” and I said it with all of the fervor I could muster.  I loved everything about Christmas especially when the Rev. Alan Greene, the skipper of the Mission Vessel the Columbia, came by, and dressed up as Santa and passed out presents to each student after the play.  It was even a bigger hit when he would fire up his generator and show black and white silent films.  This would be the only time each year that we would see a film.  I think our parents loved the movies as much as we did.

15 Walking to School in the Snow

After our year at the Read Island School my parents decided to transfer us to the Surge Narrows School on the north side of the island.  This meant that the Read Island School had to close down, but by switching it saved us about a mile of biking. The winter of ’47, as well as the next four or five winters were particular brutal with lots of snow, but this saved us a mile of walking through the deep snow and cold.  When we walked we would walk in single file, I, my sister Dawna, then Karen, and David somewhere in the line, each placing our foot in the steps of the one in front.  This was much easier them stepping through fresh snow in a separate track

I remember a big snowfall, when we were still going to the Read Island school and the snow was particularly deep, so dad took us by boat, to the amazement of even our teacher, Miss Evans.  Even this was sometimes very difficult as the bay would freeze over and we had to break ice to get out. The ice would cut through the hull of the boat if not broken first.   Sometimes the ice was to thick to break so we had to stay home until a trail was tramped through the snow first by an adult.  This was one of the things to consider for us switching to the Surge Narrows school.

I always went to bed with great anticipation if the snow was falling heavy with the wind howling in the eves because I knew we would be able to stay home from school the next day.   We would get up with excitement and I would look at my mom and say “Do we have to go to school today?” And when mom nodded her head, “no” we would jump with delight as we knew it was a day of fun sliding down the big hill in front of my cousin David’s house.  Dad had made us all ski’s and a real toboggan as well that had a front sled to turn with your feet.  We would come in well after dark but not before mom would finally demand that we come in for supper.  Mom was not someone to turn a deaf ear to.

14 A Day I don’t Want to Repeat Ever Again

 One of the highlights of my year at the Read Island School was when I played Little Black Sambo in the school Christmas play and wore a black stocking pulled over my head, with only my face showing.  For hair, black wool yarn was pocked through to resemble the curly hair of a little black boy. My hands and face were covered with charcoal.  I can still remember one of my key lines.  “I love pancakes” I used to love being in school plays as a child.

One thing about that school year that I will never forget and it had nothing to do with school except that is where it took place.  When I first realized something was out of place it was about an hour before the closing bell rang.  I asked Miss Evans if I could go to the out-house which was out behind the school, and I got there none to soon.  I made it back to the school and was more then ready for another trip when the closing bell finally rang.  This time I retched my guts out.  My sister, David, Ronnie, and I had barely gotten on our bicycles for the ride home when I hastily got off my bicycle violently sick again. This happed so repeatedly that I became too weak to ride my bicycle any farther.  I got home through the kindness of some acquaintances the Upton’s.  Mr. Upton who took me home in his small open boat and I can still remember sitting on the seat with my head resting on the gunwale of the boat retching in agony the rest of my way home.

My mother thanked Mr. Upton for his kindness.  And shaking with fever and so weak I could hardly walk; she brought me into the house where I immediately hung my head over the toilet to continue my retching.  It was some hours later before I started feeling well enough to climb in to the tub for a warm bath, and oh it felt so good as it pulled the poison out of me.  This was one experience that I hoped I would never have to go through again.  The only explanation for this episode was possibly from a venison sandwich that I had eaten for my lunch.  The question still remains, why did my sister Dawna escape, as she had the same lunch.

13 Read Island School Days

 As a kid my schooling began when I was 6 years old, but normal it was not.  My first year was at a little log cabin school right in the middle of the island.  It had been around some time even by ‘44 when I attended, and by then it was very old and run down, as it had been built by the first crop of settlers to homestead on Read Island.  There was only a half dozen kids counting all of the grades and one of them was a native lad by the name of Gordie McMillan, he would come up to you put his arm around you like a buddy and then unaware to you, place his leg behind you and flip you over on your back.

Because of the difficulty of getting to school that first year, I only attended briefly before my mother pulled me out.  The half-mile by boat and a mile down a narrow trail, through the dark forest, infested with cougars was more then my mother could handle.  She did not want her little Bobby eaten by a cougar. This caused the decision to send my sister and I off to our grandparents, and it was not until our move to Bird Cove that our schooling began on Read Island. 

I will never forget my first full year at the Read Island school with Miss Evans, an old maid schoolteacher who read from the Bible every morning but for story time after our noon lunch break she would read adventure stories and exciting accounts from the Greek mythologies which I found quite fascinating.

That year we all played our own version of football a game we really loved to play except for Ian who was different and didn’t fit in.   I have often thought about Ian over the years.  You see Ian today would be considered mentally handicapped or we might say had a learning disability.  I have felt sorry for Ian but realized that I learned a valuable lesson about accepting the less fortunate because he came into my life.  Today we used terms that show respect for those thus challenged but back then he was referred to as an idiot as he had a pointed head and would easily lose control, and in his excitement poke his fingers up his nose and whinny like a horse.  Because of this he was subject to much teasing which bothered me and I vowed to respect those less fortunate then myself.

The school had an old gramophone that we all loved to play.  As it was a one-room schoolhouse we could only play the gramophone during the noon hour.  We all loved to gather round and play the half dozen or so records that we had but the one we used to play over and over again was “Love Letters in the Sand.”  As the school had no electricity, in order to get the gramophone to work you had to wind it up with a crank. The tone arm had a needle the size of a darning needle and the music came out of a large built in horn, it is amazing to me that it made music at all.  I thought it was a cool machine.