Even though it was the early 1960s, we farm kids still attended a one-room school, Elsworth School, with one teacher, Miss Haddock. It included all grades from first through high school, and it was not until the next year that it was finally consolidated into a larger school system and we were then bussed to large elementary and high school buildings. For now all thirty-two of us walked to school every day. It was two miles distance for me and hard going in the winter when the snow was heavy.
The school had been named for one of the founders of Elsworth Center, a two-store town of no more than twenty families and a little Baptist church in southern Ohio. When my father went shopping for a new car or farm equipment, he always drove to the city, some thirty-five miles from our home. And occasionally my brothers, sisters, and I went with him so that we could go to a movie. But for the most part we just stayed at home, shopped at the little local grocery story, did our daily chores, played with friends, and went to school.
I was fifteen at the time and I was the oldest boys in the school. Two of the girls were older. Since I was the only high school sophomore, Miss Haddock gave me a lot of personal attention. But it was still difficult to learn much in a one-room school where all the other classes were conducted simultaneously by the same teacher.
In retrospect, it is interesting to note that the people in the Elsworth area didn't seem aware of the dangers of child abuse, a subject so much debated at the time in other communities. Our parents liberally administered corporal punishment whenever we deserved it, and had no objection to Miss Haddock doing the same. After all, the teacher was an authority to be obeyed, and most parents were happy to leave as much disciplining to her as possible.
One day in early spring during recess I was smoking behind the school house, something that was not permitted for boys under age eighteen by either teacher or parents, when the school bell rang. I tossed my cigarette away, not realizing that it fell into a nearby stack of hay, hay that belonged to the farmer who owned property adjacent to the school. I entered the school with the other students oblivious of the fact that the smoldering end to the cigarette was beginning to ignite some of the hay.
Fifteen minutes later, as Miss Haddock was teaching the first graders their alphabet and I was trying to read my history book, she looked out of the window to see the haystack ablaze. With lightening speed she ordered us outside to form a bucket brigade to deliver water from the outdoor pump to the hay inferno. Her alertness put out the fire just as the owner came up. He had seen the blaze from his living-room window, and had run over as fast as he could.
It didn't take Miss Haddock long to determine who had set the fire--some of the younger students tattled on me. The farmer said that she should keep better control over her students, and that he would telephone my parents to inform them of the incident. Miss Haddock, for her part, told the farmer that she was going to punish me severely at the end of the school day.
We all returned to our seats, but I couldn't get much out of the history book that I was trying to read for the rest of the afternoon session. My mind was on the two pending discipline sessions--what Miss Haddock had in mind and what my father might do to me when I got home. I was miserable.
Three o'clock came and Miss Haddock dismissed the other children, telling me to remain in my seat. Several of the students shot knowing looks in my direction as they left the room.
"George," she said in a very stern voice, after all had left, "what do you have to say for yourself."
"It was an accident," I answered with a tremble in my voice. My stomach was turning cart wheels. Although I was fifteen years of age, I still didn't know any way of maintaining control over my fears.
"Smoking is an accident?" Miss Haddock put the question in such a way as to show how ridiculous my statement was.
"No," I said, still shaking in both my voice and body, "I mean that the haystack caught on fire by accident."
"It doesn't appear to be an accident to me," she said with emphasis on the 'me.' You were smoking and you started the fire. Don't you realize that the haystack is close enough to the school to burn the building down."
That fact hadn't occurred to me, and frankly I now wished the fire had done just that. "I'm sorry," I said feebly.
"That doesn't explain why you were smoking, which you know very well is not permitted. And it doesn't explain why you were so careless as to leave a cigarette burning when you came into the school room. Now does it?"
"No..."
"I'm going to have to punish you, George. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, mam."
She then took out her extra large and thick blackboard ruler and instructed me to come up to her desk. I recognized the instrument as one I had seen and felt several times before over the years. She placed it on the seat of her chair.
"I want to be sure that you really feel this," she said, "or you'll never learn. So take down your overalls."
My father often whipped me without my overalls on, but this was not something I would have expected from Miss Haddock. Yet I was too anxious to lodge a protest, and I imagine Miss Haddock would have increased the punishment if I did. I pulled the straps off my shoulders and let my overall trousers down. Fortunately I still had my underwear to protect me somewhat.
Miss Haddock told me to bend over her desk. The window, which was now in back of me, gave her plenty light to see my buttocks when she was ready to apply the stinging instrument. I lay in position anticipating her first stroke, but she seemed to be surveying the situation carefully before going into action. I lay there on my chest wondering what she was waiting for.
Then, to my complete surprise, she grabbed two corners of my underwear with her two hands and pulled them down to my ankles, where my pants were.
"Now," she said, "You are ready, George. I am going to give you eight whacks with the ruler for smoking and twelve for setting the haystack on fire. How many is that?"
I hadn't been expecting to have to answer a question in this awkward position and so I hadn't really been listening to her very carefully. I had to hesitate for a moment in order to calculate the number on my fingers. I never did mathematics well in my head. "Twenty," I finally said in response.
"You seem to be a little slow on your third-grade addition," Miss Haddock said. "Perhaps I should give you some remedial homework or place you back in the third-grade section again until you learn your numbers better."
"Yes, mam," I said, my voice somewhat muffled by the fact that my face was against Miss Haddock's desk.
"Now since you're so weak in your numbers," she continued, "I want you to count each time I blister your backside with this ruler. And if you can't keep the numbers straight, I will keep working you over until you get it right. Is that understood, George?"
"Yes," I said. I wished she would stop all this talking and get the whole thing over with. I wanted to get off her desk and out of that room as soon as possible, even though I realized I might be in for another whipping when I got home.
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my butt. Miss Haddock had delivered the first blow.
"Ouch," I said, jerking a little. And then, "One, mam."
The next stroke didn't take long in coming. Again the pain was greater than I had expected. "Two, mam," I almost shouted. I hadn't realized how painful the ruler could be on my unprotected rump. Whenever Miss Haddock had punished me in past years, it was always with my overalls for protection.
I struggled to keep my hands at my sides as she laid on the ruler though several times they seemed to move involuntarily toward protecting my bared bottom. I counted the number of each stroke with great care so that she wouldn't "work me over more" as she had threatened to do. By the eleventh stroke I was counting through my tears. The pain, and I'm sure the redness of my backside, seemed even worse than when my father took his belt to me. I almost missed saying "twenty, mam" on the last stroke I was so choked up from sobbing.
At this point Miss Haddock told me I should stand up, turn around to face her, and pull up my overalls. I turned, wiping the tears from my eyes as I did so. Then, to my horror, I noticed that almost the entire school was standing outside the window watching the performance. I reached down as fast as I could to pull up my pants. I had no idea how long the other students had all been standing there--probably from the moment Miss Haddock bared my bottom. From then on, I realized, I would be the laughing stock of every one in Elsworth School.
The students had disappeared by the time I left the building to trudge my two miles home, my bottom aching from the bite of the blackboard ruler. When I think back on the whole incident, I am no longer sure whether I spent more time worrying about what my father was going to do to me when I got home or bemoaning the embarrassment I suffered in front of all the other kids.