A three-fold cord, proclaims Ecclesiastes, is not quickly broken. During the week of teacher orientation, sitting in a stuffy upstairs room, I started to see exactly what I’d signed on to do, including expectations I’m not sure the principal and I covered in our two phone conversations. One was our absolute allegiance to the church that sponsored the school, which he expressed crudely as “No visitee other churchee.” We were expected to be at all services and to take part in the Thursday evening visitation program, but with a twist. We were to visit not prospective members, but the homes of students in our classrooms or home rooms. We always went two by two, which was how Jesus sent out seventy of his followers to preach and heal. The fact that I had six sophomores in my home room did not excuse me from going with someone else after I’d visited those six families. The rationale was based on a simple idea: “If you know the parent, you know the child.” The school also believed in a “three-fold cord,” which Scripture said was not quickly broken. If parents, teachers, and the church were all working together for the same goal, it was more likely to happen. At least we weren’t making cold calls; we were to phone the family of the week and set up a convenient time (always on a Thursday evening, though). All teachers know that Thursday is one of the worst evenings to go back out; we’d almost survived the week, had only one more day to slog through—but had to be charming and intelligent for parents, say something encouraging about their adolescent. Occasionally, we got lucky and were invited to dinner, saving the cost of a meal at home. Visitation was agony for an introvert like me, but I did this for the seven years I worked at the school. At one point our principal, who wanted to ensure our compliance and possibly had a sadistic streak, passed out our paper paychecks on Thursday evenings when we met at the church. That was before he started passing them out Friday afternoons at staff meetings. Either way, it meant a frantic run to the bank on Friday after school, hoping to avoid bounced checks.
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I found this photo at https://www.vintag.es/2021/03/daytona-beach-1970s.html Paul wanted to stop at Daytona Beach on Day Two of our trip; back then, you could still drive onto the beach and park very near the ocean, while mindful of the incoming tide so that your car didn’t get stuck in the sand. We rented inner tubes (anything aquatic beyond dog paddling or floating was beyond me). The tube and I were blissfully on our way to Morocco when I heard the lifeguard’s whistle. But I was too far out; he had to swim out and tow me back in. I slightly twisted my ankle, so for the rest of that day, I propped it on the cooler with ice on it. Paul had a sunburn, so we made quite the pair. The principal had sent directions to the home of a married couple, my new colleagues, with whom Paul would stay; the school would pay for me to stay in a hotel, alone. Somehow, we missed a turn. Because of our stop in Daytona, it was already dark, and we were in a neighborhood that I found a bit scary. “Pull in at the Burger King,” I told Paul, “So I can use the pay phone.” I called Mr. Griffith. “We’re at a Burger King next to a hospital. I think the street sign says Dixie Highway. Can you give me the directions again?” “I know exactly where you are. I’ll come get you,” he said. And so, sunburned, gimpy, wearing shorts (verboten, I would soon learn), I met my new boss. I had a week before teacher orientation began to find a place to live. I suppose Mr. Griffith gave me a list of places; Paul and I went searching. I chose a small, partly-furnished detached building behind a large home. It boasted one large room—the first thing we saw upon entering was a double bed, followed by a rattan chair and space for a sofa, capped by a small kitchen table with two chairs set in front of a window. Two short legs were built off the living area, one for a kitchen and one for a bathroom, reached via a hallway open closet that housed a dresser. There was a window air conditioner but no heating unit. That didn’t bother me. This was southern Florida; when would I need heat? It was near the school—a left turn and a right, only a few miles away. We carried in all my worldly goods and headed off to Montgomery Ward to buy a sofa. I’d never had so much as a checkbook; I doubt I knew how to reconcile my balance with the statement. My new Ward’s plastic, used to pay for the sofa, was my first credit card. I had no idea what a mess I would be in shortly. The plaid sofa bed I bought was ugly, but it was 1973, when décor options ran to orange, brown, and olive green. It fit in the space, that was the main thing, and I was ready for company, should any decide to appear. With my upside-down life, I was home, asleep in the basement when the door opened and my brother yelled down, “Judy, phone call!” I came to reluctantly and clambered upstairs, picked up the black rotary dial phone’s receiver in the kitchen, and said hello. “Hello, this is Ken Griffith from Berean Christian School in West Palm Beach, Florida,” a voice rapidly boomed. “I’m calling to see if you are still interested in a position teaching English.” Like Roethke, I take my waking slow. I heard Marine Christian School, and was fuzzy on exactly where in Florida West Palm Beach might be. He told me his English teacher had just gotten engaged and wanted to prepare for her wedding, not to teach. She’d graduated from the same college I had (I knew her slightly), and they’d been happy with her. So he’d contacted the education department there, where my résumé was on file. I was being considered, along with another woman from my graduating class. We talked for a bit longer; he promised to call again in two days for an answer. He told me they were prepared to fly me down to see the school or to give me $100 toward my move. When I told my parents about this unexpected possibility, they were opposed to the idea. After I left for work, they discussed it, deciding they would intercept Ken’s second call and tell him I wasn’t interested. They would not tell me he’d called back. I didn’t learn of this plan until much later. Staying near family was the model for their lives, visiting frequently with parents, siblings, and their children. Why would I go a thousand miles away where I knew no one? God works in mysterious ways. I called Ken back the next day to ask more questions; the only one I remember is whether the school had been founded to keep Blacks out, which I’d learned was one of the underlying causes of the growth of Christian schools, especially in the South. He assured me that was not the case. He asked me if I had a “teachable spirit.” I had no idea what he meant, but I knew the right answer was yes, so I said I did. At the end of that conversation, he offered me the job, and I took it, accepting the money toward the move rather than a plane ticket to visit. I’d been to Key West during college, hated it, and had promised myself never to return to the state. I knew southern Florida would be hot and there would be bugs, but this clearly was God’s answer to my pleas to serve Him and earn a living. I would teach grades 6-10 English (they were adding a grade a year, like an add-a-bead necklace, and tenth was then the pinnacle). I wasn’t remotely qualified to teach sixth grade, but I didn’t want to spend my life living in my parents’ basement and working with troubled kids, for which I had no real training or aptitude. I would redeem my failure to find a job or a man who wanted to marry me. Years later, I learned from Ken’s wife that he’d had second thoughts once I accepted the job offer. He’d hired a disembodied voice and a résumé. No Facebook, no LinkedIN, no Instagram—he had no idea what he was getting. In that environment, there was only one important question left, and he couldn’t ask me. “Barb,” he asked his wife, “what if she weighs 300 pounds?” “Then you’ll get a lot for your money.” If I wasn’t going to teach in a public school, and I wasn’t ready for the mission field, how then could I best serve God, who—from everything I could gather—appreciated sacrificing oneself? Clearly, I was meant to go back to live in the same city as my parents, so that I could be appropriately miserable. Convinced of my calling, I applied to the only Christian school in the area.
I interviewed—and did not get the job. In my own eyes I was doubly a failure; the expectation in those days and in my church was that a young woman would have a dual degree at graduation: BA and MRS. I had no plan B; I rarely do. I had set myself up to be supremely miserable and self-sacrificing. I would go not just to my parents’ city but also to their home and look for work when I got there. I had no idea what I was doing and not a clue as to what God might be doing. The Akron Children’s Home, based in a multi-story brick building not far from the rubber factories in town, wanted to provide a home-like atmosphere away from the smog for young people. Multiple buildings had been erected just down the road from my high school, not two miles from my parents’ home. With no experience in supervising teenagers, I was hired as a houseparent, for no reason I could see. I was an English and Bible major, with no social work background. Two adults shared the responsibility of live-in parents, each working four days round the clock, three days off, sleeping there with the young people. The director had assigned me to Kibler Hall, a dozen girls ages 13 to 17, known to be problems. Boys climbed in the second-story windows, girls climbed out, marijuana was prevalent. Why he placed me—only five years older than the oldest girls and naïve—among them is a mystery. One afternoon we were in the kitchen/dining area, making sandwiches for lunch, when a thirteen-year-old girl brandished a butcher knife in my face. I don’t recall why she was angry or which of the other girls calmed her down. Paralyzed with fear and shock then, I’ve blocked it all. I decided it was time to quit, even though I’d had the job only about a month and had no other options. Memory picks up in the director’s office with his refusal to accept my resignation and instead making a counteroffer. The girls of Kibler clearly needed a different model of house parenting, with someone awake on night duty to keep the boys and drugs out and the girls in. Would I take on the night shift? Dealing directly with the girls would no longer be my responsibility. Having no better option, I agreed to try. So, I entered a strange existence of staying awake, reading, praying, and journaling, checking on the girls, and talking to the night watchman, who turned out to have been my beloved junior high school bus driver. During the day I slept in my parent’s partially finished basement, which my mother had divided into living spaces, and which was cooler and quieter than my bedroom upstairs. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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