5th Grade at Nankipooh School

"5th grade at Nankipooh School" The summer between the 4th and 5th grades was great.  I had some new friends to play with, and we spent countless hours running through the woods around Nankipooh,  playing Cowboys and Indians, or Army.  Just about every Wednesday Grandpa took me fishing with him.  He had a man come in on Wednesday and run his store for him in the afternoon, and we went fishing at The Blackmon's place out on the Whitesville Road. The Blackmons were cousins of ours, and they had a fabulous place.  It was a fishing paradise, because they had three lakes, and the fish were always biting in at least one of them.  So when it came time to go back to school, I was not that thrilled about the idea. That all changed after I started school in the 5th grade.  First I learned that I had a chance to play softball on the Nankipooh Softball Team, but even more important than that, I met my first true love.  She was a goddess, just about the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  It was her first year at Nankipooh, and she was straight out of college from Tennessee, and she was the new 5th grade teacher at Nankipooh, Linda Ledford.  I still am in love with her, even though I was only ten years old at the time. I had never bothered to comb my hair except when I went to church on Sunday, and most of the time my mother combed it for me, cause after all, who cares about your hair when you are ten years old.  Well after that first week in Miss Ledford's class, I asked my mother to get me some hair tonic, and she brought home a bottle of Vasoline Hair Oil.  The next morning I put about half that bottle on my head, and was slicked down better than a greased pig, except for a cowlick in the back, which stood straight up no matter how much oil I poured on it. I guess I looked a lot like Alphalfa from the old Spanky and Our Gang TV show.  When I showed up at school, I didn't think the kids would ever stop laughing.  I'm not sure what effect it had on Miss Ledford, but she didn't laugh, and was always kind to me, even though I don't think she ever knew what a crush I had on her. The good thing about all this, was that because I didn't want to disappoint her, I got all A's for the whole year, even one for good conduct and behavior, which never happened again, ever.  In fact for the rest of my life as a student, I rarely ever got any A's at all, but I got lots of bad marks for behavior.  The other really good thing about the fifth grade was that I started playing softball, football, and basketball for Nankipooh School, which continued for the whole time I was there.  When I look back on things, I guess that 1957 was just about the best year ever.  On top of meeting Miss Ledford, I got to take an airplane flight to St. Louis, where we went to the baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Braves, which featured Stan Musial and Hank Aaron playing against each other  I got an autographed picture o "Stan the Man" when we had dinner at his restaurant, and Hank and the Braves went on to win the world series that year.  While at the airport, I had a chance to meet my favorite TV cowboy, James Arness , who played Matt Dillion on "Gunsmoke".  To cap off that wonderful year, I got to go to the Georgia - Auburn football game, which was played in Columbus in those days.  Auburn won the game, and went on to become the 1957 National Champions.  I became a n Auburn fan right then, much to the dismay of my mother who went to Georgia. I also fell in love with automobiles that year, because the folks at Chevrolet produced the 1957 Belair Convertible, one of the prettiest cars ever made and still in great demand today.  But, despite all of these terrific things happening to me in 1957, the best of all was going to school at Nankipooh in the fifth grade with Linda Ledford as my teacher!  NBB