Fourteen
____________
Mister
Richardson
Our new school was a
small country school with only one room and an elderly teacher named ‘Mr.
Richardson’ who always talked about wearin’ Tow shirts as a youngin. Tow shirts
were made out of hemp or jute gunny sacks. He said they itched him somethin’
terrible.
There was no one in first grade, second grade
had one boy and one girl, third had two boys and three girls, fourth and fifth
grades had five of each, and the remainin’ kids made up the rest of the whole
school’s students. There were about thirty youngins total in all of the eight
grades.
If we were really well behaved during the entire
week sometimes we went over to the teacher’s home after school. It was nearby
and the school owned it. Mr. Richardson’s wife would make us fudge, cookies, or
popcorn on those Friday afternoons. It had the feeling of being at one’s
grandparents’ house.
School was quite a distance and we walked most
days, but if it was snowing, we would ride one of our horses to school and
back. On rare occasions Pa would drive us all to school. We had a little part
collie dog named ‘Lucky’ and we just loved her. She was very small and never
grew all too much all her life. Pa rescued her from drownin’ in an irrigation
ditch and that’s how she got her name… she was lucky.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Lucky,” Rae Ann called out, “Come girl, come. I
need to get to school.”
Once the family dog was placed in the house so
she would not follow Rae Ann to school, Rae Ann ran as fast as her legs were
able until she arrived at the school moments before the bell started clanging.
The school received an 18 inch diameter bronze Mission bell as a gift from an
anonymous benefactor to celebrate the day it opened. The school staff found
many reasons to use the bell and ringing in the start of the school day was
just one of those reasons.
Once the students were seated Mr. Richardson
announced, “Today I will be teaching all of you together as one class, all
grades.”
Rae Ann raised her hand and waved it vigorously,
“What are we gonna be learnin’, Mr. Richardson?”
Students in this school were instructed to raise
their hands and wait for their teacher’s response, but not to wave their arm
and hand around.
Mr. Richardson looked around the classroom and
smiled softly, “As you all know, I’m up in my years of living on this earth. I
was born the same year as our 27th President, William Howard Taft.” Mr.
Richardson approached the chalkboard, picked up a piece of chalk and wrote down
the date. Turning to the class he said, “15 September 1857.”
Most of the class sat mesmerized, but Richard
appeared to be daydreaming.
“Richard Charlton,” the teacher addressed his
student dreamer.
“Yes, sir,” Richard replied.
“Are you with us today, or are you out in
dreamville somewhere?”
Richard sat up straight and answered, “Sorry,
sir. I was just wonderin’ about bein’ so old as you are someday.”
Some of the older students laughed.
“Well, son,” Mr. Richardson smiled, “I hope you
live that long and see as many amazing things as I have.”
Rae Ann whispered to her brother, “Pay
attention, Richard.”
Rae Ann sat to the right of her brother. Mary
and Teddy were closer to the front. The eldest children in the class sat
farther back in the room to allow the younger ones to be close to the teacher’s
desk up front in the event they had a question or needed to take a restroom
break.
“The teacher continued, “President Taft was also
the only person to have served both as a president and as a Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court. He was also an intramural heavyweight wrestling champion
during his university school years.”
Little Sally Turner raised her had.
“Yes, Sally,” Mr. Richardson responded.
“You must be pretty old.”
Both the class and teacher laughed. They were
accustomed to this second grader’s abrupt and straightforward questions. Rae
Ann felt this little girl was a lot like she was when she was younger.
“I admit,” Mr. Richardson said, “I am getting up
there in years, so is Mrs. Richardson, but that don’t slow us down none.”
The teacher related many stories from his youth,
including many historical facts related to the Oklahoma Territory and
Oklahoma’s most recent years’ criminals.
Many of the children had heard of Kate 'Ma'
Barker and her notorious family, Charles Arthur 'Pretty Boy' Floyd, George
'Machine Gun' Kelly, but not in the way their teacher presented them with so
many details surrounding their personal lives and criminal exploits.
Rae Ann was amazed at how much her teacher knew
about the Indian outlaws and their lives.
After the lunch period ended, Mr. Richardson
continued with his tales of local historic events. He talked about how his
brother was on aboard the Santa Fe train at Red Rock when a band of thieves on
horseback rode up and held it up, "Many of these outlaws lived in these
parts back in the days when this part of the country was Indian
Territory."
Reaching for the chalk, Mr. Richardson wrote
'The Cook Gang' upon the chalkboard.
Turning back to face his classroom full of eager
listeners he inquired, "Do any of you know who the Cook Gang was?"
Rae Ann quickly raised her hand and blurted out,
"I do!"
Seeing than no other student had raised their
hand, the teacher addressed Rae Ann, "Yes, go ahead, Rae Ann."
"In the early 1890s Cherokee Bill Goldsby
killed a man, or thought he did anyway, and ran off into the Creek and Seminole
Nations to hide. He partnered himself up with a couple of other outlaws, two of
the Cooks. By June of that year Thurman 'Skeeter' Baldwin, Henry Munson, Sam
"Verdigris Kid” McWilliams, Jess Snyder, Lon Gordon, William Farris, Jim
French, Curtis Dayson, Elmer "Chicken" Lucas and George Sanders all
joined up together. It was—”
"Thank you, Rae Ann, for being so energetic
with learning. That’s enough information for the time being."
"I just love learnin', Mr. Richardson. I
think all them names are correct. Sometimes I get a bit mixed up with learnin’
so many names from so many different times and places."
The teacher smiled and nodded, indicating that
he understood.
Rae Ann smiled back.
"Anyway, back then in 1894," the
teacher continued with his tales, "when I lived for a spell in Chandler
over in Lincoln county... one morning, now this was the day after my brother's
train got robbed, mind you," Mr. Richardson glanced shortly out of the
classroom window then continued, "it was about ten in the morning I
believe, and I was at the barber shop sitting in the chair and looking out the
front window while the barber cut my hair, when all of a sudden I saw four men
walking across the street. Something seemed strange to me because I could see
that three of the men were wearing blue arm bands and one of the men had on a
red one. They were also carrying guns. They passed the jail and court house and
went straight to the bank and robbed it."
The room fell into suspenseful silence.
“During the time the men were in the bank, I
told the barber what I had observed. We heard gunfire, so the barber went and
got his own gun and stood in the doorway of his shop. One of the outlaws killed
him right there in front of me. I felt so bad for telling him what I'd seen.”
The children could tell that this memory was
painful for their teacher to recollect.
“Were you ascared?” Sally Turner asked.
“Frightened, scared, afraid, I think none of
those words can accurately describe how I felt at the time. I was sort of numb
feeling.”
Rae Ann commented, “That's terrible.”
Mr. Richardson continued, “I hurried out the
door to see what was going on, sort of a dumb thing to do at the time. I saw
two men riding on one horse. Someone had shot one of the gang's horses and it
was lying in the roadway by the bank. One of the robbers also got shot and
captured by the sheriff.”
Turning back to write on the chalkboard, Mr.
Richardson informed his class, “Many of the townsfolk showed up at the jail
around midnight that night with a rope and wanted to lynch the man right then
and there, but after another fellow got himself killed around one or two in the
morning, or so I read in the newspaper later, the crowd dispersed. A few days
later thirty-odd men took that robber during the dead of night to another jail
over in Guthrie.”
Mr. Richardson drew a swirly cone shaped figure
on the chalkboard then turned and continued, “Not too long following all of
that mayhem, it was close to five o'clock in the afternoon if I remember right,
a huge twister pert near destroyed our whole town. Twenty-five folks lost their
lives that day and between one and two hundred more were injured. I moved away
from there shortly after. That's how I got here, got married, and eventually
became this school's teacher.”
To progress the mood of his students toward
happier feelings and thoughts, Mr. Richardson spent the rest of the school day
explaining different farming techniques unique to Oklahoma. He also talked
about an acquaintance he had known once, Claud Hatcher, a pharmacist from
Columbus, Georgia, and how he had developed a special kind of soda drink back
in 1905.
Mr. Richardson spent a considerable more amount
of time relating the achievements of the Indian peoples to society, including
the invention of the syllabary by an Indian named Sequoyah. “The syllabary is a
device that created the writing system the Cherokee Nation has. George Gist, as
he was known by his English name, was a Cherokee silversmith. Many Cherokee
Indians eventually surpassed the white folk in the area with their reading and
writing abilities.”
Richard and Teddy had wished, however, that they
could hear more outlaw stories. The two boys especially enjoyed hearing about
one of the most notorious Creek Indian outlaws who was responsible for over a
dozen killings of lawmen and soldiers. Mr. Richardson knew the grandson of the
outlaw and had come to understand a slightly different angle of historic view
on the subject. He was told that the man’s grandfather was being chased
continually by people trying to kill him for no reason, or so he thought, so he
just killed them first.
I guess we know who the better warrior was, Richard
thought to himself.
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