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Bill Butler
You guys are resurrecting a lot of vivid memories about grade school. Those air raid drills hiding under desks was sure fun. I remember telling Mary Jo that she should hide in the cubby-hole cabinet. After I pushed her in, the lock closed. Gosh, I sure hope they found her when they razed Franklin School. And those Show-&-Tells we got about rolling up in a rug if our clothes caught fire…. Didn’t we do it to Emma Lou as a demo, but accidentally covered her head and she suffocated? And those kids who were flush because they got 25-cents a week allowance… Yeah, we knew who you were! Good thing we had 10-minutes for potty breaks ‘cause we could make an easy 50-cents in the boys room in the basement using my crooked dice. Once I even sold a rock to, ...well we won’t mention names; I told him it had gold in it. Wow, another easy 75-cents.
And don’t you remember first grade when Ms. Thompson pulled out the book Dick and Jane and said we would conjugate the verb “to see”? I remember this like yesterday now that Jim Crusius has blown my cover and I must defend myself. As she began pointing to the pictures, I said, “Hey, I can read that. It says, ‘see Spot run’ and the next page says, “see Spot make a deposit, but Spot doesn’t have a bank account’, the next page says, ‘see Mr. Jones chase Spot”, and the last page said, ‘see Dick and Jane in court because Mr. Jones has sticky shoes, and he did a face-plant in the rose garden. Now see what happens when you’re drunk and try to run after Spot!’”
Ms. Thompson was not impressed. She said, “OK Billy, you know where the dunce chair is.” I said, “Aw, not again. Can I bribe you with a rock that has gold in it? Please Ms. Thompson, instead of reading about Spot’s messy adventures, can we go over the proof for four of Maxwell’s famous vector statistical equations that show the interdependence of light, electricity, and magnetism – they’re the fundamental concepts of charge conservation as demonstrated by Faraday, Gauss, and Ampere? He formulated some rules in physics that predicts flux when current is flowing. I think all my friends here would much rather learn about magnetic waves. Maxwell’s theoretical work in the mid-1800s paved the way for Einstein studies of relativity, …. and even for cell phones that everyone will have in 2021!” She looked very stern and muttered, “dummkopf”. I said, “All right, all right, please don’t tell Ms. Buzzbee!”
Well, yeah, it is what it is. And now that you also reminded me of Fell Avenue Playground…… man, what fun! I’d show up and Phil Hershey would say, “Bill, go find a baseball.” Gerry Dalrymple would say, “Bill, go find some trashcan lids for bases”. Jim Crusius would say, “Bill, go find a bat.” Bob Spahn would say, “Bill, go find a baseball glove.” Rod Brent would say, “Bill, go home and make some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everyone here.” Henry Schlenker would say, “Bill, go find the Holy Grail”. I’d say, “OK, OK, give me 5-minutes, I’ll be right back ,so don’t start without me!” It was great to be appreciated by so many.
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