Always being plagued with a touch of the "wanderlust", I certainly didn't stay put in Hattiesburg all summer. I went somewhere almost every weekend, as well as some afternoons. I visited all the same places I had gone before ... as well as some new terrain. One of the most interesting trips was one where I just set out driving with no particular destination. As I drove northeastward, I decided to head toward what I had heard described as the "redneck hills" of Alabama. Two gentlemen in my education classes ... came from the town of Berry, a little bit of nothing carved out of the forest north of Tuscaloosa.
I went up to Columbus, Mississippi, and crossed into Alabama on state route 96. Just crossing the border, it was clear this was a different part of America (than Mississippi, even). A large number of people live in clearings just carved out of the woods. They have shacks or mobile homes without any utilities. Along the road (about every five miles) they have pull-offs that look like roadside parks. In reality they're service centers for the residents. They have faucets where you can get water, as well as huge dumpsters (that all seemed to be full) for trash. I saw set-ups like this in Newfoundland, but it's the first time I'd ever seen anything like it in America.
Eventually I came to the town of Fayette (FYE-it, which sounds almost like a swear word when people pronounce it), the main business center of the area. The town has a downtown area that is dumpy beyond belief (it looks as if nothing has changed there, save stores closing, in fifty years). Then I went out to the business strip, which consists of a tiny little Wal-Mart (smaller than many Pamida stores in Iowa), a Shop-N-Sav, a handful of convenience stores, and an auto dealer--everything on the strip was also dirty and in disrepair. The only nice thing in Fayette was the community college ..., which is dripping with government grant money. ...
After exploring the beautiful sites of Fayette, I headed eastward toward Berry. It was hard to find, as road signs tend to be non-existent (or vandalized to death) in Alabama. Eventually I got there, though, and I found it much more pleasant than Fayette. Berry reminded me of Bancroft or Armstrong--certainly a small town, but with business appropriate to its size. It was obviously dirt poor, but things were kept reasonably clean. It is also in a hilly (almost mountainous) setting, which makes it an attractive town.
I drove out to the school. ... I didn't go in, of course, but outside it didn't seem so bad. It's a turn-of-the-century brick building, not unlike so many small-town schools in the Midwest. The school served K-12, which you can tell from the combination of playground equipment and regulation-sized athletic fields outside. It wasn't much different from the Andrew school where John teaches, although from what I hear their money problems are worse than Iowa's.
Connie and Bobby were probably with their families in Alabama this weekend. However, since I hadn't told them I was coming, I wasn't going to stop in uninvited. So, after my sightseeing, I drove southward towards Tuscaloosa. ...
I headed back toward Mississippi, stopping for gas at a convenience store in Knoxville, Alabama. That was quite an experience. Imagine a combination liquor store and gun shop, that just happens to sell gas on the side. Alabama is truly a different kind of place.
Among my other adventures I pretty much went anywhere there was to go in Mississippi and Louisiana. Above all I spent countless afternoons on the beach down in Gulfport, which is to my mind unquestionably one of the nicest resort areas in America--largely because while it's a resort, it's remarkably unspoiled.
Toward the middle of the summer I seemed to be shuttling back and forth to airports all the time. It wasn't I who was going anywhere, but I was the taxi-driver for friends. Over the fourth of July weekend, for instance, Sandra met her sister for a weekend of fun in Las Vegas. I drove her down to New Orleans to catch her flight. ... Later in the summer, Norm flew back to Iowa for his sister's wedding. He flew out of Jackson, an airport that calls itself "international", even though you can't fly anywhere outside the country from there. You can tell they have pretentions, though. It's an enormous airport--the kind with the double-level road directing cars to arrivals and departures. Only two airlines fly into Jackson, though, ... and there are fewer flights out of there each day than there are from Mason City. ... You can't even fly from Jackson to New Orleans! Someone obviously wasted a lot of money on an airport on the theory that "if you build it, they will come"--they didn't.
* * * * *
The computer ... got quite a work-out typing endless papers for my education classes. My master's program did not involve a thesis, but it did involve a fifty-page paper (you explain the difference). I had recently assumed the position of Gifted and Talented Coordinator at Garrigan, ... so for my major paper I basically developed the curriculum for our new independent study course. It's not exactly original; I borrowed ideas from Margaret's school in Cresco and especially from Steve Brosnan's independent art course. All the USM people seemed to like it, though--I ended up with a perfect score.
Other huge "crank out the B.S." assignment included developing a complete curriculum guide for a 7-12 secondary system. This was one of those group projects where one person (me) ended up doing most of the work. It's convenient that Iowa requires schools to have on file pretty much everything that was required for this assignment. I called Gene Meister at Garrigan, and he sent down copies of all the work we did a few years back. All I had to do was re-write it in a uniform system.
There were endless other writing assignments, too--mostly reactions to various journal articles. That was good preparation, though, for the climax of the summer--COMPs. I took my master's comps on Saturday, July 11, at 8:30am. All of us in Curriculum and Instruction crammed into a science classroom that had broken air conditioning. ... We had four hours to write on five questions.
According to the people in charge, over a third of those who take comps on any given occasion fail. That was really hard for me to beileve. I got the impression that anyone with half a brain and a reasonable amount of writing ability should be able to pass. Ahead of time they give you nine possible questions. Of those seven are actually on the test, and you select five of those for your essays. Your answers are supposed to include both facts and personal insights, the latter of which leaves the door wide open for a pile of good old-fashioned B.S. They score each question on a scale of 1-5, and you have to average at least "3" overall to pass. I averaged "5", and everyone I know managed to pass. I wonder if the 1/3 failure rate they sight isn't just given to scare people.
If you're interested, here's what I wrote on:
- Describe a standard method of curriculum design (something we studied in several classes), and react to it.
- Trace the history and development of your subject area (if you've taken a history of math course, as I have, that's easy).
- Describe and react to various methods of curriculum modification for above and below average learners (what was my paper about?).
- Describe he major types of educational research and the conclusions that can be drawn from each type (we had an entire course in this).
- Describe and react to any national standards that have been proposed for your subject area (the Standards issued by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics are the model for every other subject area).
Getting comps out of the way was a major relief, and the rest of the summer went by rather quickly. Finally it was time for things to draw to a close.
FINALS WEEK: August 3 -- 9, 1993
Things came to a weird sort of close this week. Most of my friends left early in the week, while I stayed around for graduation. That meant a series of somewhat emotional farewells and the strange experience of being in a dorm that was virtually empty.
Monday night I had my "final" in ... the secondary schools class. I use the quotation marks here, because she gave us a series of take-home questions (which I seriously doubt she ever actually graded). We went over to her home for a cocktail party where we turned in our exams. The party was about as thrilling as most cocktail parties are (which is to say not at all), but visiting her home was interesting. [The professor], who is single (divorced I think), lives in the Oak Grove section on the west side of Hattiesburg. An Oak Grove address is synonymous with elegance. Her home was set in a wooded lot on one of those little circles to nowhere that one finds in suburbs all over America. Inside it was more home than I could ever imagine one person ever using. She has a very formal living room with blue and white leather furniture and lace accessories. There are also two separate "sitting rooms" that are somewhat more casual, but meticulously cared for--at least when we were there. The kitchen was enormous and stocked with every appliance known to man. There were also three bedrooms (each with a distinctive decor) and an office (with beautiful oak woodwork).
The conversation at the party was intriguing, if just a bit scary. They talked mostly about gang violence, which has apparently become a serious problem all over the South. People told horror stories about incidents at the shopping malls in Jackson and Biloxi. Apparently there is a certain gang that has an initiation rite where they have to cut off a finger from some person. Several people (in different conversations) told of people who would go out to their cars in the parking lots by the Jackson malls. People would hide under the cars and jump the shoppers as they opened the car doors. Then they would cut off a finger, often stealing jewelry in the process. I think this especially bothered me because these were malls I had gone to several times just to kill an afternoon doing some shopping. I never felt unsafe in those malls; I wondered if I should have.
Apparently there have been attacks on people who stop their cars on highways. Writing this a year later, what they described sounds a lot like what happened to James Jordan, Michael Jordan's father, when he was killed after pulling off a road in South Carolina. Again, I had never given a second thought to driving around the area--almost always alone. Thank God, nothing ever happened to me, but the conversation made me wonder.
Several people had had incidents of gang violence in their schools. One woman taught in a tiny little town called Phoba (pronounced FEE-bee), Mississippi. The woman was white, and she described Phoba (population 511) as an all-Black community in northeastern Mississippi, between Tupelo and Starkville (pronounced STORK-ul). In her words, there's nothing in Phoba but a textile mill (where they crank out athletic socks). There's a school, too, and they had five shootings and countless stabbings there during the past year. She said the gangs argue over the rights to drug distribution, which come into town from Starkville, where Mississippi State University is located. I kept trying to imagine this kind of thing in a place like Whittemore (which is about the same size as Phoba). I'm sure they have drugs there, but there's no way I could envision violence like she described.
I soon got enough of that up-beat conversation, and I made an excuse to leave early. Sandra was leaving Monday night (driving to San Francisco, where she would then leave for her new home in Hawaii), and I met her one last time at Cuco's. She's a fascinating lady, and I wish her the best in the islands.
Tuesday was the big test day for me. I had tests in my Algebra class (8:00), my Inservice Math class (11:00), and my Curriculum class (5:30pm). None of them was easy, but they all went smoothly, and I did well. Margaret had arranged her vacation so she could be in Hattiesburg for my graduation, and she arrived this evening. She and her friend Vicki Cline were staying at the Motel 6. I went out there after my Curriculum test, and we went out driving on a little city tour. ...
Wednesday I had my last final--an 8am test in Graph Theory. I finished early (with 100%, I might add), and headed out to join Margaret at the Motel 6. We had a late breakfast at the Waffle House next door to the Motel 6 and then went out exploring the area. We spent pretty much all day Wednesday and Thursday visiting many of the tourist attractions in the area--the Gulf Coast (including Ship Island and the Stennis Space Center), Natchez, Vicksburg, and Jackson. I've described all these things elsewhere, so there's no need to repeat things now. I will say that if you happen to be travelling to that area, Hattiesburg makes an excellent base for travelling. ...
Friday was my graduation day. We didn't really go anywhere (except around Hattiesburg) that day. I finished packing things in my room, got my cap and gown from the rental shop at the bookstore, and posed for the requisite photographs. Master's gowns are an amusing sight, with big boxy arms and brightly colored hoods (mine was a light blue, for education). Around 5:30 we went over to the Bernard Reed Coliseum for the ceremony.
Commencement actually began at 6:30. We graduates were seated on the floor at the beginning, with friends and frelatives in the stands of the coliseum. There was an endless processional, as pretty much the entire faculty marched in attired in their academic garb. We had an invocation (which is interesting and probably of questionable legality at a state-supported school) and then a welcome from the university president. The commecement address was a rambling series of recollections by the head of the Southern Association (the local accrediting agency ...). Then came the conferring of degrees. They began with doctoral candidates, and the thirty-three of them alone seemed to take forever. Then they did the master's degrees, and there were hundreds of us. I received the degree of Masters of Education, with highest honors. Then they got around to the bachelor's degrees. There were more of them than master's, but comparatively not that many. The undergrad programs mostly follow the academic year, while the graduate programs at USM are mostly summer programs. After passing out all the degrees, President Lucas wished us well.
You know how they say, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." Well, she did. ... An associate professor of music sang the rousing strains of "Alma Mater". ... There was a religious benediction, and then a grand recessional. I apparently exited much more easily than Margaret and Vicki, getting to the car well before them.
We planned to go to an elegant restaurant for dinner, but others appeared to have the same idea. The place we had in mind was packed. We went instead to Pizza Hut, and we had a pleasant, if rather late, dinner.
I had already checked out of my dorm (which was easier this year than last, mostly because I had a better R.A.) and into the Motel 6. Saturday Margaret, Vicki, and I went to New Orleans for the day. We saw all the vital sites, rode the streetcar, and all. I finally got my graduation dinner in the form of lunch at New Orleans' Royal Cafe, which is still probably my favorite restaurant anywhere.
There was confusion when I got back to the motel; they had locked me out of my room. Somehow their records got goofed up, and they thought I hadn't paid my bill (it was on credit card). So they "pinned" the door, locking me out and my luggage in. It was late at night when we returned from New Orleans, and I must confess that I was frankly quite rude when I woke up the manager and argued about the situation. It took a lot of time, but eventually they cleared everything up. (They also screwed up the credit card billing on my room, but eventually that got cleared up too.)
CONTINUED IN PART NINE
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