New Girl In Town!

When my dad passed away we had to relocate from a medium sized city in Texas to a very small rural Louisiana town. My mom said she couldn’t remember some of my early troubles in trying to adapt to my turned upside down 3rd grade world. For one thing the kids in this small town did not wear jumpers with short pants. They all wore either overalls or blue jeans. I guess I showed up in what some might call an outfit and at recess time they had a fit and I soon knew I had to get a new wardrobe if I was going to survive.

As if this wasn’t a shock, I remember going with my granddad for my first time out to the Sabine River bottom where some of our kinfolks lived. (My grandmother always made it clear these were my granddad’s people, not hers.) Here I was at eight years of age dealing with all kinds of new and different surroundings but nothing could have prepared me for this expedition. These were no doubt good folk but they did live back in the sticks, I’m talking way back. All the adults, women included, dipped snuff and you had better been ready to dodge whenever they decided to spit. I remember going down to the creek with a bunch of my distant cousins and all I can say is they spoke in a language I had never heard. Much of it was their poor speech but it was also laced with curse words that I had never even heard. I later heard some of the curse words but there are probably a few I never was able to match. Wow. Welcome to my new world.

These were the times that tried men’s souls and young boys too! One of the things I did to escape my troubles was to draw. When I say draw it was more sketching than anything else. I could fight wars on behalf of the Foreign Legion or be my dad as a gunner on one of the 3rd Armored Division tanks during the battle of the bulge. Often I did more sketching than almost anything else. My mom says I drew pictures on every grocery sack we had. My 4th grade teacher literally destroyed a spelling book on my back because she said she had told me at least 100 times to stop drawing. That’s right. She banged me with it until it fell apart. Because I could sketch a little and no one else could do it as well as I could my classmates more or less appointed me as the class artist.

In fact, many of the guys used to hang around and watch me draw. I enjoyed being the center of attention for something I could do. I had this following until one cold morning when I was in the 6th grade. A new girl showed up for school. I didn’t take much notice of her until one day at lunch a couple of my buddies grabbed me by the arm, marched me off the playground and back to the classroom. There she was standing by the blackboard beside some pictures she had drawn. The entire gang of 6th grade girls had gathered to see what I was going to say.

This new girl could actually look at something and draw it! Her stuff in chalk was much more lifelike than my best work. As William Bendix used to say as Riley on the 1950’s TV sitcom, “What a revolting development this is”. All the girls were snickering their little snide snickering giggles. The boys with me were standing there sadly shaking their heads. We had not had too many dethroning ceremonies; therefore, we were not sure what the protocol should be. The new girl looked half embarrassed and half pleased. This made it worse. She was feeling sorry for me but also pleased that everyone liked her artwork.

Girls! Who needs them any way? How dare her show up and show me up! Some people! After this event, I didn’t draw as much in public but I still used my sketching to escape to places where only imagination and dreams will take you. She may have won the day in 6th grade but I was still king of my own private world. It may have been a flat world while hers had dimension, depth, and shadows, but it was still my world.

The new girl had come to stay and stay she did. I think she was still around when we graduated and never looked at me without that half grin that spoke volumes. Maybe it was a precursor to the soon to be heard: “I am woman watch me roar!” or maybe she was still feeling sorry for me some six years later. Do I still doodle? You betcha! Believe it or not some of my grandchildren have even wanted me to sketch something for their friends. How do you like that little miss half grin ‘new girl’? As you can tell I hardly even noticed this event ever happened. I’m even puzzled why I thought of it fifty years later. Now don’t you start giving me your version of that half grin either! More later………….