When he wasn’t doing assistant principal duties, i.e. lecturing and punishing bad kids, Mr. Teague taught South Carolina History. I had him for that subject and that part of our relationship wasn’t too bad. He had a wonderful collection of historical artifacts. I remember actual envelopes of letters written by survivors of the Confederate war that were re-used by steaming off the glue and turning the envelope inside out and re-gluing it. Such was their desperate state of poverty after Sherman had killed all their livestock and burned their farms. He even told us how starving survivors had to pick undigested grain kernels out of cow dung for food. Ugh!
With this education from Mr. Teague, you can surely understand my outrage when a kid in my class named Terry Stull (That’s his real name; he deserves to be outed.) called me a Yankee one day at recess. I couldn’t catch him so I threw a rock and bloodied his head. I was promptly marched off to Mr. T but I was sure there would be no punishment for anyone but Terry. Surely Mr. T would understand that such an insult could not be left un-answered. He didn’t understand, even though I explained to him it was only a small rock. He kept insisting that even a small rock could put an eye out. I tried to explain that Terry was running away so his eyes were on the far side of his head from me.
One time the art teacher, Ms. Craig, marched me off to Mr. T for drumming on her garbage can lid. We kids were all queued up for something and in good spirits. The garbage can was right next to me, and the lid seemed to call out to me to make music, so I did. I had no idea there was a rule against drumming on garbage can lids. Ms. Craig never even told me to stop. She just hauled me in for discipline where both she and Mr. T poked fun at me, lampooning my musical aspirations. This scarred me for life and is probably the reason I never learned to play the guitar well.
Foote Jr. high included grades seven through nine. Each grade was divided into about 14 sections (classes) based on how smart you tested. I’m some sort of a genius so I was only about two sections down from the top. When I reached the 9th grade, they decided to try something new with the 9th grade. I’m sure Mr. T was behind the idea. They made two of the sections exclusively for male troublemakers, one for boys who didn’t test well academically and one for those who tested well. I’m proud to say I was in the one for boys who tested well. Still, it was hell. The class was filled with devious rowdies and bullies, and there were no girls. There went my chances of finding a sweetheart in my class. The kids were so bad that the homeroom teacher was forever keeping the whole class after school for being rowdy. This infuriated me because I had an afternoon paper route, being an industrious young man with an entrepreneurial spirit. I only made about a dollar a day and if I was late, customers called in complaints which were assessed to me at the rate of 50 cents per complaint. One day the kids were going berserk and I was sitting quiet as a mouse hoping the whole class wouldn’t get detention. We did. Worse yet, the teacher forbade us to utter a single word during our detention. That was the most disempowered I had ever felt. Finally I raised my hand but was ignored. I blurted out that I needed to go to the bathroom. Still I was ignored. I protested that it was pretty urgent and I couldn’t wait. This was an exaggeration, but how was she to know? Finally she dismissed me to the bathroom, ordered me to return afterwards, and, worse of all, to suffer detention again the next day. Ooh! After a couple of days of me refusing to stay after school (because of my innocence) and my homeroom teacher bursting into tears, I was marched off to Mr. T. My case was weakened by the fact that when I arrived at the bathroom on that initial detention afternoon I found, to my horror, Mr. T in the bathroom, probably erasing graffiti. He regarded me so suspiciously that I was unable to relax enough to relieve myself and I had to return to the classroom un-relieved.
There was a rule against fighting. That’s reasonable of course but Mr. T (being a step ahead of today’s insurance industry) had a no-fault amendment to that rule. It said combatants involved in a fight were punished and punished equally, no matter who was the attacker and who was the victim. Of course I was always the victim or at most, the reluctant party mercilessly taunted into combat. Once Mr. T suspended me for getting into three fights in one week and my father had to meet with him to arrange my re-admittance. I can’t remember the fights per se, but I am certain I was innocent in all cases. I do remember one fight when a lunatic kid arrived late for class and ordered me out of the desk where I was sitting. I refused to budge because it was open seating and he had no right whatsoever to a desk I had already occupied. He charge like a bull and overturned both desk and me. That meant I was involved in a fight and had to take detention and more complaints on the paper route.
If you’re still with me, you need to get a life. No, actually you’re wondering what all this is leading up to. Here it is. I listened to one more lecture from Mr. T last evening! I hadn’t laid eyes on him since 1959, but he is still alive. He looked pretty good for his 86 years. He had a full head of white hair and was commendably trim for an old man in the land of BBQ and hushpuppies. Sponsored by the Edisto Museum, he delivered a very engaging lecture about finding ten unmarked and forgotten Union soldier graves on Otter Island (an uninhabited island between here and Hunting Island).
I had a chance to talk to Mr. T beforehand. Of course he didn't remember me. I didn't expect him too. I told him I was sure he had a thousand Bart Simpsons pass through his office in his teaching years. Nevertheless, I apologized for hitting Terry Stull in the head with a rock. Mr. T’s adult granddaughter and her son were with him. She seemed to find it amusingly incongruous that a white-whiskered old man was calling him Mr. Teague (instead of Harley) and apologizing for hitting a kid in the head with a rock.
But enough about me; what about the lost soldiers of Otter Island? It is an inhospitable place. Yes, boaters party on the beach at Otter Island but they never go into the interior because it is a tangled jungle of brush and vines infested with mosquitoes, chiggers, snakes, and alligators. The amazing part of Mr. T’s story was not just finding previously undiscovered graves with no marker stones in that thicket, but also actually discovering who was in them. The latter discovery was by wild coincident when he somehow found a diary of an Otter Island Union soldier held by an antiquities dealer somewhere near the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Mr. T bought the diary. He wonderfully communicated the emotional experience of finding not only the resting place, but also the identity of these long lost and forgotten soldiers.
Mr. T no longer works to reform bad boys but he still does important primary historical research in S. Carolina. He has donated many artifacts to the Edisto Museum. I no longer want to kick him in the kneecaps. Forgiveness is liberating.
