The Beagle Connection

The Beagle Connection part 1

Fred was a veteran teacher at the middle school when I first started teaching.

My wife described Fred as a throwback soldier from WW One. 

Think of stiff button up uniforms of the German officers and stiff rigid straight spine, 

but the coup de grace was the flat top that was on top of a rapidly declining hairline.

 Add the huge biceps and you would nail how Fred looks like.  

Fred taught 6th grade math;

He was good at making small talk, never really talked shop (work) or like other teachers and complain about kids. 

Fred lived with his wife Jo, just on the outside of Bexar county in a little parcel of land. 

They had a nice trailer home with fruit and nut trees surrounding the home. 

They also had a beagle.

Now Fred and Jo’s beagle was their life at home. 

He was king of the roost and he couldn’t have better owners who loved him so.  

When my dad bought a few acres nearby Fred’s place, my wife and I would drop by Fred's place and visit for a few minutes.  

That beagle would get so excited at having visitors and and would bark and bark.  

 Barney1 as he was referred to later on would just be as excited to receive visitors as if they were visiting him.  He would just wag and wag that tail and try to lay on one’s lap as would expect and ear rub or someone to give him special attention. Fred normally would get embarrassed at the antics Barney would do, and offer to take him away to and lock him up in the bathroom. I’d say  “No, he’s fine”and we would continue with our visit, and Barney 1 would just be naturally part of the conversation.

Barney 1 met his demise by getting shot by some burglars.  Fred and Jo were not at home at the time.  I later heard about the incident and asked if everything was ok?  Fred did have a very, very sad look about him, but assured me that he and Jo were just fine.  

Call it coincidence, call it Karma, call it whatever some time went by and our school secretary was bragging how she was going to get a Basset hound (mix) from a friend of hers.  I was just passing by when I heard the conversation, and budding in I joined in on Gladys new pup talk. She told me that she was getting the dog free from her friend because she raised pure bred Bassets and this one female mated with a beagle... Gladys would be getting the one that looked most like a Basset and that her friend would deliver it a couple of days later.

Hmm? I thought to myself, “What about the other pups”?  I asked. Well she is selling them for about $200.  “$200?”I asked and she went on to explain that even though they were mix pups she could get a very good price for them. “Oh, well you know Fred lost his beagle and, I never finished that line. Gladys got all excited and said that she would call up her friend and secure a pup and maybe get a discount.

I collected money from the faculty on the “down-low”, we got over $200 hundred dollars. The trick here was to keep Fred from finding out, which was not hard since he pretty much kept to himself. (also teaching out in the portables which were located on the school grounds but not in the campus proper)

Now a couple of days later, Glady's pup arrived, and it was a beauty. She put it in a box and showed it to Fred and the look on that face of his was just something else. He held that pup real close and just cooed over it for the longest time. He finally put the pup back in the box, and since out bell rang  for classes to begin we left. 

 That Friday we had a workday at school with an in-service in the morning with a celebration right before we started our Spring Break.  This year our spring break in-service was going to celebrate some birthdays for the month and we needed to buy some cards so that all the faculty members would sign it and presented to the teacher's celebrating their day.   So I took Fred with me to look for cards at the local store, and found some nice ones but the nicest card he found had a picture of a beagle on it..Well, he bought them and went around getting the teachers to sign them, when I got word that Fred's beagle had arrived.  So that afternoon, when we got together we presented the cards out to the faculty members but held back one, the one with the beagle picture.   We called Fred up to the front of the room and presented him his puppy with his own card that he went around getting everyone to sign, not knowing he was to be the  recipient.   Funny it paled in comparison to his face when realized his biggest gift was Barney 2.

The Big Dog

The Big Dog

As a little boy growing up in the late 50’s early 60’s my parents owned a small two bedroom one bath house in the southside of San Antonio. The street our house was on, looked huge to me, as a youngster and my backyard was a huge park filled with plum trees, grapevines and my swing set. I remember walking out to the backyard from the kitchen and running to the back fence and looked at the wild alley that grew back there. It seemed like wild country, but it was just an overgrown piece of access that separates one yard from another.  I played soldiers, hide and seek, and all kinds of outdoor games you played when it started to get dark outside in South Texas.  

I really didn’t have friends, at least not the kind you think of; I had imaginary friends when I was at least 3 years of age.  Two characters by the name of Jillys and Cobert. I couldn’t describe them, I never really saw them, all I knew they were the best playmates and I played with those two “friends” when there was no one else to play with..  It turned out, which was a good amount of time.  

I also had “seasonal” friends, some little girls who only showed up around November and would leave around late March.  Their father owned a huge truck with wooden panels on the bed. 

My mom told me that they would go where the harvest was happening.  My friends were part of a migrant family that traveled to Michigan to pick the cherry harvest in early spring and follow “the crops” till it was time to come home to Texas during winter. 

I would play those outdoor games, including stick ball, that and all sorts of activities, but the one thing we would do is go to the little store and buy treats for ourselves.  Now that required that (mom insisted) we go in a group to the “tiendita” little store. Back then sodas had to be finished there because there was an extra 3 cents a bottle, unless you had and empty soda bottle to trade. So we would carry our empties from our house, walk down the street, walked on to the next block to the huge flood control ditch and have to cross that ditch by way of a large water pipe that stretched across the span or walk all the way down cross the muddy little stream at the bottom (and get muddy) then walk up the other  side of the ditch and voila there was the little tiendita. The tiendita had chips, bread, milk, candy galore along with big chest filled with cold sodas of all varieties (many that are not sold today, which is really too bad).

The one thing that we were all afraid of was the “big” dog that was owned by a man who worked for a soda bottling plant as a delivery man. The girls were always in ghastly fear of that huge animal, and big he was. He was German Shepard, and that meant if he chased you and caught you it was going to be disastrous.

The girls older brother swears he was chased on the  way to the tiendita just getting away by doing his best tight rope walking on the water pipe that crossed the ditch. I never really saw that Shepard up close, but the few times he did run from the house, which was set way back on the lot toward the gated fence (which was always closed). I usually started running so I would be well down the ditch before that dog would even get near the fence. I would hear his barking. Very loud barking.

One late Summer day, it was hot and I wanted some candy and a cold soda. So I asked my mom if I could go by myself.  I had gone before to the store with no problems and she said “ok”. But first I had to ask the girls down the street if they would go with me; it turned out that they couldn’t go. ( I later found out they were terrified of the big dog.) So I was entrusted to go by myself, and that I did. So I had my money in my pockets and was thinking what kids think about like. The warning those little girls told me about the big dog.  He was always gated and I did walk on the other side of the street, so I should be o.k.!? Well, I was walking by the Dog’s yard and then I noticed it, the gate was wide opened and who should see me from way back in his yard...yep you know it. He did what most dogs do, that peculiar little lurch just when they start running and as for me I was flying for my life toward the ditch. 
Hoping that I would reach the water pipe before the dog would get to me.  No, I was not really athletically inclined and I could hear the dog, right behind me.  I mean I could hear his breathe. (I swear I did this in 1962 before Gene Wilder’s Young Frankenstein) I only had one option, quickly turning around I said “ Hi Boy” and I reached out to pet him.  He stopped, cocked his head to one side and then put his front paws on my shoulders and started to lick my face. “Good puppy” or whatever to my little, young self kept on saying over and over. I realized he had only been chasing the kids to play with them and not tear them to shreds...I made a friend that day. The rest of the kids refused to go the tiendita, and they  wondered how I could get by that big dog.  
He He.. 

Sophmore HS year...

My Sophomore year was a "Ying Yang" year.  I finished my Fish time...freshman year by failing Algebra 1 with a 0.1 average. I could not for the life of me get math. At that point in my teen life I was at the lowest ebb of my high school scholastic life.  So, I signed up for regular freshman Math 1, in my Sophomore year.  I made up my mind that I would not amount to much and I better at least try the “easier” math class so I can at least graduate from public high school.  Depressing at it seemed the classroom was wall to wall freshman and I was the only 10th grader.  So I felt really out of place; this coupled with the Yang part of my high school life is that I really must have hit a spark in the one class I really didn’t care about...lol...R.O.T.C.   The old sarge really took a liking to me and promoted me as a Sophomore to a Staff position...So now when I walked into math class with a bunch of freshman I was decked out in my Rot C uniform with rank of a senior classman, I was caught with the notion that I was in a spotlight. I couldn’t do as I did in Algebra the year before, in that math class, I just couldn’t.

But as usual my Ying sparked up as a twofer...that means two good things. First I sat down at my desk with the fish, and stared up at the blackboard, listened to the instructions on how to do our first set of problems and like magic, it made sense?.. Oh my god!! What the hell, I actually looked at the problems and it made sense.  (later I think, actually very much later, I surmissed I must have been lead poisoned by mom who insisted on cooking pinto beans in a Mexican clay pot called a comal.  When the pot broke and mom switched to a shiny new stainless steel pot at the end of my freshman year. Alas back to my revelation that I was getting math and even more so I was making A’s.  

Ying 2… It was in the same math class that I noticed, two good looking girls.  One, sat behind me, and the other on my right side on the next row. I really didn’t know anybody so eventually they struck up a conversation with me. One of the girls older brother was one of my cadets that I was in charge of and we had that in common, but the other girl, was on my bus route that I rode to school in the morning.  She didn’t always take the bus, but some days she did.  I really didn’t talk to Ruth, but only at school, and only at math class.  In retrospect, I wish I did. I really was infatuated with her, she was nice but also kind of serious sort of way.   I was pretty shy around girls, as a matter of fact, I just didn’t really talk to girls. But these two made it easy to at least have a conversation, even if it was only in math class.

Yang...Oh yeah Yang...I kinda liked Ruth, I thought that she was a nice kind of girl.  So I did what most adolescent just feeling their Cheerioats do...buy a football mum for Homecoming...Football Homecoming that is.  (Side note:  football homecoming is the time that any girl whose has a sweet heart receives a huge mum, with ribbons, novelty medals of little footballs, mascots etc.)  Generally they have the girls name on it and other sweet things from their admirers. Girls wore them like badges, in girl world; the more mums the better.  Well I told my mom that I wanted to buy a mum for a girl and she gave the money to order it.... I ordered it at a crowded, fold-up table and I placed a relatively simple mum but I froze at what I should have written on the ribbon. Instead of saying” happy homecoming”, or for “Ruth”, or any sappy saying...I said put my name on it.....let me spell it..F..e...l...i...x.....F....and the rest of the letters of my long last name....    Needless to say she got the mum so she could wear to the game...I really didn't see her at the game that night. But the next day, I get..."you got me a mum?..why did you put your name on it?......ok....I did not know what to say....  I never really talked to Ruth after that...but I used to ride my bike past her house when I went to visit my best friend, hoping she would be outside, but that never happened.  In retrospect I moved on rather quickly, since the life of a Sophomore going on to be a Junior in High School is such a big deal... well I thought so at least....

Yang 2....46 years later, I'm looking at Facebook at one of the many sites that I am part of a "group"...The high school group, that I belong to has it mix of followers who peaked and trying  to relive their glory days, those who peaked later and like to let folks know that that they might not have shined in high school, but now they are successful. Along with those who generally are curious to revisit their past and see how everyone has changed....I hope I fit the last category but still it had some info on some long lost friends...I noticed that I have lost several friends including my best friend, whose house I used to go to when I biked by Ruth's house. When "K" passed away I was upset since we were about the same age and a vicious form of cancer took his life.   But, when I saw Ruth's obituary announcement. I at first had not heard or even thought of her for almost a half century, and the memories started coming back. I looked up her FB page, and saw a fine looking more mature, person but still the same girl...she had a son, who pictures of her and him literally were almost the only pictures posted in the last 3 years of her FB page.   I later found out that her son passed away, the same, 3 years earlier...she aged visibly those last 3 years, I can only imagine she passed on with a broken heart.

Miller Wins the Race

I spent 13 years at my former district. I was enrolled in graduate school and felt I needed a change along with my new degree.  I planned a timeline that would make me a suitable candidate for becoming an administrator by gaining different experience as a elementary/primary teacher.  Since my current district did not pay in Social Security just for teacher retirement, I transferred to a district that did both, SSI and Teacher retirement.  Remember teachers did not really make enough to put money aside for a 401k or even a decent nest-egg so if I could qualify for two “checks per month”, when I retired, I chose the latter.  Too many teacher’s I talked to who stayed at the other district, deeply regretted  not “jumping ship” when I did.  Even with administrators pay and no SSI..it would have been a tight squeeze..

This aside I was in my 2^nd year at my new school: Miller elementary; it was named after a black WWII hero who came up from the kitchen galleys of a battleship (name eludes me) and manned an AA gun (antiaircraft) and shot down some attacking Japanese planes. 

Forward to the present, I have a 4^th grader whose last name was Miller and wouldn’t you know it he is a grand nephew of the WWII hero too.  Very smart, but had to be the smallest kid in his class. That’s not to say he was scrawny either, on the contrary he wiry tough; just one thing, that youngster had different priorities and his school and his subjects weren’t one of them. 

Between his mom and I we put a modicum of pressure for him to make “just” passing grades and he even did just pass the state assessment test that year, where he hadn’t before.  Little Miller, really wanted to be good at athletics, but his size just kept him a bit overwhelmed by his much larger and faster peers.  This went on all year, till the announcement of field day on a date selected close to the end of school.  That year the kids had to sign up for the different events and the all the events were getting lots of signatures except for the MILE run….  I asked why no one signed on and it was made very plain to me that the 5^th graders dominated that event and no 4^th grader even had a chance to compete or win.

I looked at the list and realized that little Mr. Miller had not signed up for any of the events.  So I asked him to sign up for the Mile run.  He looked and me and said “nahuh…”.  Well, I knew he was pretty fast, again not as fast as the other kids, but a mile race was different I explained to him.. “It’s not how fast you are but how determined you are to win the race.”  He still said “nahuh…”  “Ok you know we always do races at recess right? Well why don’t we practice and come up with some strategy to beat the 5^th graders?” I said, “and if you still don’t want to, you don’t have to enter the race.

Every recess for the next two weeks the kids and along with Miller ran around the playing field, practicing all the events from short races, to relays and the dreaded mile. 

When we set up to practice for that Mile race, I noticed that Miller would run like the wind and was leading the pack the whole time but that last quarter he would get tired and the other kids would pass him up.  

“You were winning then you got tired right?”,  a small, very sweaty boy looked up to me and said “yeah but I got beat” and in the same breath “ I don’t want to race.” “Look “ I told him “Lets do this.” I recanted his race to him, telling him he was running and winning at the start but then he ran out of energy.  Why not save it till the end?” He looked at me like I was from outer space.  “This is what you do just follow the leader of the race when we practice, but on the day of the real race you watch when I give you the signal and you can put on the afterburners and make a race out of it.  Just remember stay behind the leader till I tell you..”    

The day of the race our kids were making a fine showing.  We were winning or placing on almost every event. So it came down to the final event, the MILE. 

Coach called for all the contestants to line up at the marker run two laps around the field (approximately 1 mile).  I went over the strategy with Miller. “.  Just remember stay behind the leader till I tell you..”    Miller lined up and  ran just hard enough to stay behind the leader.  The leader was the best runner in the 5^th grade and was easily setting a pretty fast pace, the kids started slowing down about ½ way it came down to a steady pace (greatly slower) than from the beginning of the race.  I was waiting to about the ¼ mile left and I had to tell my self , wait, wait, wait…NOW! I started waving my arms and hands over my head. Sure enough the leader and Miller saw me both started speeding up but like a lot of races, if you’re the leader, you can sense if someone is just behind you, and being kids you put extra exertion to maintain that lead.  But Miller had no such pressure, he just held back till he got the signal and then like a thing of beauty he poured it on.  Everyone on the track saw it happening, Miller pulled and passed the front runner as if were standing still, you could tell he tried to keep up, but to no avail, he had no more energy, Miller won by at least 15 feet from 2^nd place.

 4^th grade went crazy! It was as if little Miller had won the Olympics. Kids were chanting “ Miller Miller Miller” teachers were crying, the Coach had a grin from ear to ear. 

That ribbon was better than an Olympic medal on that day..

A Minion Reasons to Love 2nd Grade...

Once upon a time
                 there was a classroom
Where we used to raise a marker or two
                  Remember how we laughed away the hours
 And think of all the great teaching we would do
                 Those were the days my friend 
We thought they'd never end
                 We'd Read and do Math forever and a day

We'd live the life we choose

                We'd learn and never lose

 For we were young and sure to have our way

A e i o u
A e i o u
A e i o u and sometimes y

Then the busy years went rushing by us
                               We lost our second grade on the way
If by chance I'd see you  at Taco Cabana
                                We'd smile at one another and we'd say
Those were the days my friend
                                 We thought they'd never end
We'd Read and do Math forever and a day
                               We'd live the life we choose
We'd learn and never lose
                               Those were…

apology to Mary Hopkins,  song :Those Were the Days

Ford J Car

I really liked Hot Wheels when I was growing up. They appeared at stores in (1968) and the cool futuristic designs were awesome.  I remember my first car was the Silohuette with a bubble top and lime metallic green body. Awesome!... I later got another car, but this one came with a track.  The race set came with just enough track to make a decent run of about 5 feet on an incline (usually from the back of a chair) It had a clamp that would hold the track in place and you positioned the car on top and zoom. Gravity did the rest.   It wasn’t long before Mattel (the mfg of HW) Came up with a racing car track set, where two cars could race down their own track and set off the winning flag at the end… . Well by that time my friends and I put together all of our track and made a super long racing track.. With the extra track  my friends added, it was long, duel tracks that extended about 30 feet !

It started with me trying to figure out which car was the fastest in my collection.  I had a red Torero, that beat all my cars hands down...Man I thought I had the fastest car ever made...It was awesome.  But, you know, for every Ying there is a Yang...and my friend down the block had a Hot wheel car also…. It was his only car.. And wouldn’t you know it was the Ford J Car… Pretty hard to find car.  I mean absolutely not found anywhere. We set up the track carefully so it was straight and even and I watched all my cars get beaten by this Ford J Car. Even my beloved Torero which was the only car to come close lost by at least a track length.

And so it began, my search to buy any car on the chance it would beat that Ford J Car..Every contender went up in flames (lost).. I did get faster, newer cars, and my beloved Torrero soon was not quite up to being my fastest but it was still in the top 5.  My search led to large collection of cars, I was up to almost 50 cars! Still no challenger… . My friend who owned the Ford J held on to being the fastest in the block for about a couple of years. That’s a lifetime. When you’re 11 years old.

What Happened? The very first Chess Tournament

What Happened?

We started our club with a bunch of kids but ultimately ended up with just a few kids who came in every day after school to play chess. Odd I really didn’t have them for my regular classes but we played every day after school…

“Guys you want to go to a chess tournament at Leal Middle school on Saturday?  Well meet me on the parking lot at 8 a.m. and we’ll go from there.” I took my pickup truck and threw the kids in the back and we went.  I did not know what to expect…We entered the school cafeteria and I walked over with my boys to what looked like the registration table...  The adults looked up and I swear they saw ‘fresh meat’ written on our foreheads… “Hey I  wanna register my kids for the chess tournament.. “  Little that I know the 3 clubs that played regularly there were honed to perfection, not just a few kids but big clubs with about 20 or more players a piece all with several years of competition experience…Does it make a difference?

Round 1

The kids found their places started the game and almost to the man they came back within 2 minutes. “Whoa, what happened?” I asked really puzzled, since our games had gone at after school practice at least and hour or more and they were regularly beating me… “ They beat us in 4 moves “ almost to the man they replied.  I set up our cardboard set, and told me what they did…It looked like this:  Our guys brought out their pieces (we played any pawn out or knight not really knowing any fancy openings) but they described what happened to a ‘T’…  

Scholar’s Mate

The other kids knew the minute they sat across the board that we were ‘noobs’.  They could tell by the pieces our guys opened with that we were really just beginners. 

So to not stay playing long they all went for the fast kill.

Scholar’s Mate is where the Kings pawn comes out followed by the Queen diagonally and the Bishop on the other diagonal. From there they focus on the pawn next to 

opponents King and Bada bing …check mate.