Jodie McClure Memories- The Home Stretch
Cafeteria Food
School cafeteria food
sucks today in most places. Today, kids (and teachers) are fed pre-processed
food that has to be warmed up and which tastes like cardboard. No salt, no
seasoning, nothing fried; just what they call “healthy” food. Bottom line, it’s
terrible now. Back then, the highlight of the day was eating in the school
cafeteria. Jodie McClure had one of the better ones, and the workers sincerely
cared about what they feeding us. Mrs. Owens, my classmate Renee’s mother,
worked at Jodie McClure back then in the cafeteria, and she helped put out some
really good food. My sister and I normally took our lunches to school, but on
certain days, we almost would beg our mom to let us not take our lunches and
eat whatever was on the menu that particular day. Especially on Wednesdays and
Fridays. Wednesdays meant fried chicken, hot rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy,
peas, and a decent desert. We’re not talking no generic, tasteless crap; we’re
talking real food which was fried and/or baked with care. The chicken and
mashed potatoes tasted really good, and the rolls were probably the best rolls
I’d ever ate. In fact, since the 5th graders always ate last, if
there were any rolls leftover at the end of the lunch period, we’d just about
run back to the line just to get them when it was announced that there were
some left. Even if I’d brought my lunch that day, I’d still jump in the line
for the leftover rolls. They were that good.
Fridays was
hamburgers and fries day. Plus, one of the most underrated pieces of chocolate
cake was usually served that day. Hamburgers were my favorite food back then,
so as long as it was edible and tasted good, I would eat it. It did not taste
bad at all, and it tasted like a hamburger, not like something totally
different (like mackerel and brown gravy- brother/sister private joke). One
thing me and the guys would do back then with our burgers would be to put our
french fries on our burgers along with the lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and
onions. It was delicious. Speaking of delicious, the chocolate cake had a taste
that I’ve never experienced before or since. Sometimes there’d be slices of
chocolate cake left over at the end of the day, and I’d run and grab two or
three of those, too. They tasted better than Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker any
day. I truly miss just how good they were.
Return to East Ward
For one day (actually
one evening), I got to return to the school I attended in the 1st
and 2nd grades. On Halloween night, East Ward Elementary held a
Halloween carnival not only for their students, but for students from other
elementary schools as well. At least, I guess that was what they did; maybe I
was an exception since I used to go there. Anyway, I put on my Batman costume
that I literally had begged for the last couple of years after being a devil
and a clown the previous Halloweens. I don’t remember what costume my sister
had on, but she went along, too. When we arrived, everything was situated in
the cafeteria; they had games, bobbing for apples, and a “haunted house”, which
was the school stage. I saw and (barely) recognized a few of my classmates, who
I hadn’t seen since we were all in the 2nd grade, and because of
that length of time, we kinda had a hard time talking to one another. It wasn’t
hard to talk to Jennifer; I talked to her mostly- but Deyavor, and Joanna, and
JohnYoung, and the rest, I just said “hi” and that was it. I did have fun, and
for one night, I missed East Ward Elementary.
Getting Ready for Middle School
One day while we were
sitting in Mr. Taylor’s science class learning about atoms or something, Mr.
Taylor told us he was going to have a middle school student come and talk to us
about what to expect in middle school. He was going to be a former Jodie
McClure student of course, one of Mr. Taylor’s favorites, and he was coming in
to put some fear in us, I guess. I had no idea who the student was going to be,
because this was my first year at McClure and I didn’t know any of the older kids
who had attended Jodie McClure before I came, except for Micheal and Mark
Simmons, Willie Simmons’ twin brothers, who stayed down the street from me. My
classmates had a feeling of who was coming to speak to us since they knew him,
and so when he showed up the next day, they weren’t too surprised.
Of all people, it was
Tommy Davis.
I wouldn’t get to
know Tommy until a year later, but I remember clearly that it was him who came
and spoke to us that day. Why he wasn’t in school that day didn’t occur to any
of us back then, and we were more interested in what he was telling us anyway.
Looking back, there are two things which come to my mind now- First, he was
going to Foster at the time- That would change less than a year later for a
bunch of us sadly- Second, his sister, Nancy, was and is my classmate, but she
wasn’t attending Jodie McClure at this time- she obviously was at Hudson Pep. I
don’t know if Tommy had ever attended Hudson Pep, but I know he went to Jodie
McClure. Anyway, Tommy was telling us about all the homework he had every
night, how you had to get to your classes before the bell rang or you’d get a
tardy (first time ever hearing that term), how you had seven classes everyday,
how you had lockers that kids would break into and steal your stuff, how lunch
only lasted like 30-35 minutes, how much bigger Foster was compared to Jodie McClure,
and how the bigger kids would bully you, and so forth and so on. After hearing
all that, I was wishing I could stay at Jodie McClure another two or three years.
Anyway, later on, somewhere
in April of 1979, some representatives came to the school to visit with us
fifth-graders. Both Miss Stone’s class and Mr. Taylor’s class met in the school
cafeteria with these people, who said they were from Foster Middle School. They
wanted us to fill out some sheets based on what we were going to be taking in
the 6th grade. I remember putting down all regular classes, we had
to have a PE class, and a music class. I put down choir because all they had
was choir, band, and strings to choose from, and my current experience with the
piano was souring me on all musical instruments. And although I signed up for
regular math and English, I got changed to Advanced Math and Advanced English.
Either that was my mom’s doing or they looked at my grades and decided that I
should be taking those classes instead. I didn’t care one way or the other at
the time, but later on, that would change. I looked forward to going to yet
another school, my 5th in the last 6 years, and yes, that statement
was pure sarcasm, but little did I know I was in for a sad surprise with that
as well come that August.
PE Blues
PE at Jodie McClure
was mostly fun, but there were a few dark moments, too. PE usually occurred
after lunch at around 1:30 every day. We used to start off PE by doing
exercises, jumping jacks and all that, before we would go run, play football,
kickball, or basketball. Our coach was named Coach Stroud, and if you were to
look up the word “redneck” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him with
the cherry-red nose and with some tobacco in his mouth. I don’t want to say he
was racist, but I don’t think he liked black kids all that much, not unless
they were great-to-excellent athletes, and even then, he basically just
tolerated even them. I got off to a poor start with him at the beginning of the
school year when he decided that I wasn’t doing my exercises right and so he
decided to hit me with his paddle (board). I wasn’t the only one who got hit,
but I’d imagine the rest were used to him and his ways; I wasn’t. So I was mad.
This happened somewhere around the first few weeks of school, but by the time
school had ended that day, I’d forgot all about it and I never did tell my
parents about that. Later on, Coach Stroud was timing us in the 40 and 600, and
seeing how many sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups we could do, basically just
doing track stuff, and he said, “Anybody who walks on any of the runs will get
busted (paddled)!” I took him literally, figuratively, seriously, and whatever
other adverb one can think of, and ran my butt off. I had to run the 600 three
times in one day, and I ran it each time without walking not once. And coming
in first each time. Then I noticed that some of my classmates were walking, in
the areas where Coach Stroud couldn’t see them. And here I was running like a
fool. This particular day, though, I would pay dearly for it.
When I got done, I
sat on the ground totally spent. It was like I couldn’t get my breath. Plus I
was more thirsty than I’d ever been. We went inside and I went straight to the
water fountain and I just about drank all the water out the water fountain. And
I still was thirsty! And I still was breathing hard like there was absolutely
no oxygen in the air. Daphne asked me if I was allright, and I told her I’d be
OK, but I felt absolutely drained. I had never felt like that before, and when
I went to sit at my desk, I sat there hot and feeling like I wanted to throw
up. Miss Stone let me go to the restroom, but before I went, I stopped at the
water fountain and slurped down some more water, but all it did was make me feel
worse than ever. I went into the restroom and proceeded to throw up everything.
Somebody went and told Miss Stone I was throwing up, she had my mom called, and
my momma came and got me early from school. Usually I would’ve felt better by
the following day, but for the first time, I didn’t. The next day, I did
something I had not done since I was in kindergarten: I was absent from school.
I had never missed a minute of school from the second semester of my
kindergarten year all the way up to the fifth grade- I’d had bad colds and
still went to school, or been sick only for a little while, but not enough to
stop me from going to school. But this was the first time I could not and did
not overcome what was wrong with me. I just kept throwing up, I couldn’t keep
anything down, and pretty soon I was dry heaving non-stop. Obviously I had gotten
extremely dehydrated, and it took me a while to recover.
When I got well, I
was back running and doing everything everybody else was doing, only this time,
I paced myself and made sure I had enough liquids in me. We played basketball a
couple of times, but I had no idea what I doing (it was the first time I had
ever played basketball). We also played kickball, and we usually played Mr.
Taylor’s class, but unlike football, we probably came out even as far as wins
were concerned. We had people like Robert Taylor, Charlie Templeton, Orlando,
Marion, and Roy who could kick the ball high and far, but as for myself,
everytime I tried to kill the ball, I’d wind up kicking it straight up in the
air, it would usually get caught by somebody, and I’d be extremely pissed off.
A few times though, I
did really good. Once, we had one of those days where everyone on our team was
kicking the ball far and over everyone’s heads, and Mr. Taylor’s class couldn’t
get any of us out. Our stronger kickers were kicking for some of our weaker
kickers, but I went up there and kicked for myself. And for the first time, I
kicked a ball that went over everyone’s head and way out into the outfield. I
was so stunned that I only got to first place because I stood there and admired
the kick instead of taking off running. After I scored, a couple of the girls
wanted me to kick for them, and I didn’t let them down, I kicked the ball far
both times. I thought that this would be the start of something great, but the
next day, I kicked another pop-fly and got out.
Another time, I came
up again and decided I was going to kick it far or else. Else was kicking it
hard…right to the pitcher. The pitcher was Billy Craig, one of my least
favorite people at the time, and he got the ball and ran toward me as I ran to
first. I knew and could see from the look in Craig’s eyes that he wanted to
nail me with the ball, preferably in the head or thereabouts, and so I timed it
just right: Just as he threw the ball, I hit the ground (dove on my stomach),
and the ball went flying over me into the next county. Billy cussed and ran
after the ball, while I went tearing around 1st and 2nd
base. When I got to 3rd, he still hadn’t retrieved the ball, so I
headed home. He got and threw the ball to Tracy George, who threw the ball at
me just as I slid into homeplate. Though the ball hit me in the head, I was safe,
and my class celebrated like I’d won the Super Bowl.
Another time I made
three straight outs- I was playing third base, and the first kicker up kicked a
ball up in the air on the other side of 3rd base. I ran and caught
it, and that was the first out. The next kicker kicked one in between 2nd
and 3rd base. The shortstop tried to get it, and it went over his
head…and right into my hands. I had to slide to my knees to make the catch.
That was two. The next kicker came up and kicked one up in the air on the 3rd
base side again, and this time I had to run down the line and make a running
catch. I’ve never forgotten that because everyone was impressed.
We had more athletes
in our class than Mr. Taylor’s class, and we’d try to do incredible things like
double plays. If I played first base and somebody was on first, I’d cheat a
little more toward 2nd base, hoping the ball would be kicked
straight to me, and I’d tag the person running to 2nd base, then run
to first base and tag it. A one-man double play. I did that a few times until I
got someone hurt (Bridget Wallace was running to 2nd one time, and I
got the ball and tagged her a little too hard and wound up knocking her down- I
forgot about the person running to first and checked on Bridget, apologizing
the entire time while asking if she was allright.), then I stopped trying to do
it. We’d also try to make diving catches, leaping catches, throw the ball
behind our backs, run without stopping, and stuff like that, which probably
caused us to lose more games than we should have.
Final Farewell
The last days of school
at Jodie McClure were spent having our class picnics and attending award
ceremonies. I received three or four awards that year for different things, but
the one thing I remember about the award ceremony was that Momma had me wearing
these hideous blue and yellow checkered pants which looked way more ridiculous
than anything a circus clown would ever wear at the top of his game. It was
horrible, and I was smiling like I was styling. Awful.
During our class
picnic, me, Rhonda, Chris Edwards, Tammy Allen, and another student were
sitting with Miss Stone. The picnic was held outside on the eastern side of the
school, and the rest of the class were in different spots- I heard that some of
them were sitting (hiding) in the bushes and not doing any eating. However,
those of us who were sitting with Miss Stone got to know her a little more
better (we learned she was the daughter of the Chief of Police), and she got to
know us a little better, too. I’ve mentioned before that although she was
white, the black kids adored her. She treated everyone the same, and didn’t
judge us or make assumptions based on race or skin-color. We had some teachers
(and a coach) at Jodie McClure who did just that. However, Miss Stone did not
have a racist bone in her body, and she was probably the nicest teacher I’ve
ever had. And she knew her subjects. We had her for spelling and reading
mostly, and I don’t think it’s no accident that my sister and I became really
good spellers because we both had Miss Stone for our 5th grade
teacher. My class was her first ever class, and she told us she would never
forget us.
She didn’t lie. Seven
years later in May 1986, I went to go see my favorite teacher of all time and
give her my graduation invitation and to thank her for helping make my 5th
grade year as enjoyable for a new student as it could be. She was still in the
same classroom and when I came in there, she knew exactly who I was without me
telling her. She gave me a hug and told me how proud she was of me, and other
than my parents saying it, her saying it meant more to me than she or anyone
else would ever know.