It is amazing how certain things stick very clearly in your mind only because of something else that really had nothing to do with the first thing. One of my most vivid early school memories involved the day our elementary school class was scheduled to go to Farmville to see “Old Yeller”. This movie was release in 1957, so I was likely about 11 at the time and in the 5th or 6th grade. This was a four-room rural school 10 miles from the (as “Life” Magazine described it two years later) “Sleepy little market town of Farmvlle, Virginia”. Actually, the vivid memory was from the afternoon before.
Other than softball games with nearby schools, and a second grade trip by train to Farmville, we never had “field trips” in elementary school”. This was a BIG DEAL!
We were reminded as we were leaving school that we were going the next day. As I often forget (even then) important stuff without a reminder, I kept repeating a jingle to myself all the way home on the school bus and up the half-mile road to the house on foot from the bus. “8:30 old Yeller, 8:30 old Yeller, 8:30 old Yeller I’m going to see” Over and over and over and over. As soon as I got home, I told my mother, so I transferred the memory problem to her. The main reason for the need to remember it was that we were going to leave on the school bus for Farmville as soon as we got to school, but I needed to have the money for the movie. No money, no movie. It was probably a quarter or so, but that was more than I had on me on any normal school day. A dime was a lot to have then. That would buy a coke from the vending machine, and there simply wasn’t anything else to spend money on at school. Nothing other than lunch and that was paid for at the first of the week. I think lunch for a week was 75 cents, but it may have been a $1.25. Otherwise, you had to bring your lunch or do without. There was no free lunch program in my school. For years, I had brought my lunch but in the fifth grade, the cafeteria cook had gone to Florida for three weeks and my mother had worked in the cafeteria for those three weeks. She was assisting the usual assistant.
She had for years wanted me to eat in the lunch room, but the mere smell of food that she or my grandmother did not cook, made me ill. Sounds funny and it may have been psychosomatic, but it was a fact. It was always difficult to eat out or visit with me in tow. We seldom did either, anyway.
For those three weeks, after dreading even this for the first day, I got used to it and rather enjoyed it. After the three weeks were up, Mama said if I wanted to eat, I was going to eat in the lunch room. She said Mrs. Luckadoo had cooked everything anyway and Mrs Campbell, who was back now, was even a better cook. Again, the dread came back. But once again, lunch was fine. I never took my lunch to school again in elementary school.
But that was not the event that triggered this vivid memory of the day I hummed that silly ditty all the way home.
The morning of “Old Yeller”, I woke up with the worst pain in my jaw I had ever suffered. I had an abscessed tooth. It had swollen up in a knot on my jaw the size of a marble overnight. From zero to intense 10 in just the few hours I slept that night. As a result, I lost all desire to see the movie.
It was the worst physical pain I had ever had in my life to that point and I doubt any of the subsequent pains were really any worse. Equal perhaps, but not worse. I hated the idea of a dentist and went along reluctantly, only to learn the dentist could not treat the pain until the abscess subsided. He gave me a shot of penicillin , a prescription and sent me on my way. This took a few days and when the pain was gone, I no longer was willing to go back to the dentist. He had told me it might abscess again or it might not. Being in no pain, I now was ready to take my chances!
To wrap up the movie part of this tale, Mama took R B Oliver and me, who had also missed the movie with the flu, to the movie a few days later. It was a “tear jerker” and to this day, I do not like animal movies with sad endings. I have never seen and do not want to see these movies. “Marley and Me” is a good example of one I have avoided.
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