Walter, you have an uncanny knack for titles that hit me hard. Your rural titles hit hard enough - Ouch. But this one hit especially hard, because I went to private school - a very expensive, college-prep high school to be exact. If not for that private school, I would have a 6th grade education.
After a long bad spell, my family finally settled down again, and my mother enrolled me in 9th grade at the local public school. When the public school discovered that I had not been in school since 6th grade, they put me back in 7th grade. I’d learned a lot since I left elementary school and sitting in classes with eleven- and twelve-year-old students was so defeating, I quit school and looked for a job.
Since no one asked my age, and I didn’t volunteer it, I was soon employed as a stock girl. Everyday, I walked a mile and caught the bus that took me to the shopping center. It was a 45 minute-long bus trip, so I used the time to keep up on my studies. Each night, at nine o-clock, my mother made the drive to pick me up after work.
On my way to the bus stop I walked past a pretty brick school. Compared to the chaos of public schools in the poor inner-city neighborhood where my mother had managed to find us an apartment, the sight of parents in their super expensive, shiny new cars dropping off girls in their sharply pressed uniforms was appealing.
I still have no idea what gave me the idea, but one day, I walked up the steps to that school and asked a girl where I could find the principal’s office. I still have no idea what made me say what I did, but I told the nun at the counter that I had not been to school since 6th grade, but I wanted to enroll in 9th grade at this school. Without blinking an eye, the nun summoned the principal, who took me to her office.
My family always said honesty is the best policy, so that is how I answered all of Sister Rebecca’s questions – and boy did she have a lot of questions. Until that day, I had not realized I had what Mama called, a long and sordid story. Sister Rebecca called my mother at work and confirmed my story. After she got off work, my mother met with Sister Rebecca and came home with enough money to buy me a uniform.
The very next Monday, I started 9th grade at a private, college-prep, high school, where the rich still send their kids (tuition today is $27,500., plus a ton of other expenses). Every night, I washed my uniforms and pressed them in the morning. Every two weeks, I had my pleated wool skirt dry cleaned. Since I wore uniforms to work too, I had very little need for street clothes.
Unfortunately, chaos still haunted my family, and I was already living on my own when I finally graduated high school at 17. That private school was brutally hard. Not only did I have to complete all my core classes from 7th grade on, I had to keep up with my grade level classes, but they made sure I was fully prepared for college. More than fifty years later, I still talk to my old girlfriends from high school.
After I graduated, I spent the next eight years paying off my high school tuition bill, my college tuition, building my savings and credit, and earning certifications and degrees. All the way through high school, college and university, I was a vegetarian because I could not afford meat.
By the time I graduated University, I’d worked my way up at my job and was earning more than twice what I would earn when I started my chosen career. Three years later, I said f-ck these exploitive corporations and their career positions and started my own company. Twelve years of management and bookkeeping experience served me well. It wasn’t long before I was able to move back to the mountains where my roots began. I worked for myself until I retired.
Like it or not, believe it or not, I am not unusual. I’ve known dozens of people who followed similar paths. Truth be told, public schools cannot accommodate kids like me, any better than our families’ can accommodate public schools’ one-size-fits-all rules.
Nonetheless, my life in the city taught me that I was lucky. Today, the thing I value most in rural Americans is that they are self-educating people. Just as my grandfather and uncle taught me how to educate myself, I taught my kids how to educate themselves.
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Unfortunately, urban and suburban Americans have become so dependent on someone educating them, it never occurs to them that they can educate themselves. Telling someone to do their own research today is a frigging joke. Americans don’t know how to educate themselves, because no one ever taught them how.
After I moved to Kentucky, I visited the childhood home of Abraham Lincoln. When I walked inside his old log cabin, I closed my eyes and could see the pages of the books he’d read as he educated himself. Later I visited the childhood home of Mary Todd Lincoln; it was a very fine mansion where they imported education, the same way they imported their China.
Walter, I may not like your titles,, but I usually like your stories beneath them. :)