Calendar Books by Allen James - Daily Reading - My Story

Today's reading, April 22nd, is the story of "my mentor". I hope this motivates you to sit down and write your own personal story of "your mentor" and post or message it to me when you have it completed. (I got warm and fuzzy feelings when I wrote mine. Does a body good.)

“I think I can climb up the mountain. I think I can. I think I can.” Then the Little Blue Engine began to pull. She tugged and she pulled. She pulled and she tugged. Puff puff, chug chug
went the little engine. “I think I can. I think I can,” she said. Slowly, slowly, the train started
to move…Puff Puff, chug chug. Up the mountain went the Little Blue Engine. And all the time she kept saying, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can... But as she puffed down the mountain, the
Little Blue Engine seemed to say...”I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could, I
thought I could” (Piper, 1930).

Thus began my journey to personal success. The year was 1967 and I was a 1st grader at Dawson Springs Elementary School in Dawson Springs Kentucky. Without 342 television stations, mp3 players, Sesame Street, GameBoys, and the like, we children of the era weren’t expected to be able to read at a 12th grade level in 1st grade, let alone know our ABCs, tie our shoes, or be able to count to 100. We had spent the previous 6 years learning how to get along well with others and just having fun being children.

I hadn’t got nice Mrs. Tandy for first grade, instead I ended up with mean-o Mrs. Morrow! All I had heard about her from other kids was how mean she was. I knew from day one it wasn’t going to be a good year. Mrs. Tandy was so pretty, and everyone said how easy she was to get along with. She even looked like all the other moms around town, not at all like the teacher from hell Mrs. Morrow had been made out to be; which in the end turned out to be the total opposite from the kind of teacher she was to me.

Maybe Mrs. Morrow was just upholding the wizened advice I would receive from college education professors 25 years later, teachers “don’t smile until after Christmas break”; for it wasn’t long after the snows had departed the hills of the Western Kentucky strip mines Mrs. Morrow became the grandmother figure every child in 1968 America had at home ready to offer a cheerful shoulder on which to cry.

But I still was having difficulty with printing my alphabet. I was a left-hander, not something admired in a child of the time (I had 4 brothers and two sisters; every other one of us was a left-hander). Everyone knew left-handers weren’t as smart and couldn’t do ANYTHING nearly as good as a right-hander. I had even heard stories of my oldest sister, Sandra, being “forced” by her teachers to use her right hand with which to write. I was scared to death I too would be held hostage in the ancient, dark, bleak, brick building which housed Dawson Springs Elementary School down in the musty, grey, boiler room where coal was shoveled into a furnace to keep us children warm. I struggled every day getting my hand to hold the big, bulky green pencil correctly in my left hand. It just didn’t fit, and those letters turned out all smudgy from my hand dragging across the lead covered page behind what I was able to get printed.

Then one day in March, not long after I turned 7 years old, it all changed. Maybe it was due to my becoming so grown-up things turned around; but one thing I know for sure; if it wasn’t for Mrs. Morrow I very likely would not be writing these words today. It was after lunch (we walked home for lunch in those days. Our backyard butted up against the Renshaw’s house which sat at the end of School Street only a block from the school.) My belly full of more than likely a grilled cheese sandwich and bowl of tomato soup, I didn’t want to do Handwriting; I wanted to take a nap. Only last year we got to take naps on those pallets we brought from home. Why did growing up have to mean taking away naps? But handwriting was waiting, and so was Mrs. Morrow, stern today, standing at the front of the class with chalk in one hand, black eraser in other, those squinting eyes behind cat-eye glasses, scouring the classroom for her first victim to go to the blackboard and print the word of the day, “S E E J A C K R U N. S E E J A N E R U N. S E E S P O T R U N”. I hated Ss too; made me think of snakes and I hated snakes more than I hated Ss. As she scanned the room, I slumped in my seat. Don’t let it be me. Don’t let it be me. Then her voice echoed through the room, “Ricky, would you come to the board please?” Yes! I was safe for the day. (Ricky always got picked for everything. He was the smartest 1st grader in the world).

Following the nearly perfect printing of “S E E J A C K R U N. S E E J A N E R U N. S E E S P O T R U N” in stark white against the harsh black of the chalkboard we children were set to the task of filling one Big Chief writing table page with 10 sentences of “S E E J A C K R U N. S E E J A N E R U N. S E E S P O T R U N”. NO WAY! There was absolutely no way at all I would get through this assignment. I just knew it. It took me 4 hours at home to get just 3 lines of J I M M Y H A R R Y M A N printed, and those Ss. NO WAY!

I leaned over my red and silver tablet, refusing to open the cover to the lined pages. “I can’t. I know I can’t. No way. I can’t. I just know I can’t’, I murmured under my breath. It wasn’t long until the familiar odor of “old lady” wafted into my nostrils. There was no doubt. I knew I’d been snitched on by Jamie Dutton. He was always telling on me, while all the while looking so innocent of any misdeed.

Mrs. Morrow squatted down, modestly pulling her plaid, blue dress under her, all the while her black, patent leather black high heels staying in place beneath her. “Jimmy. Yes you can. I know you can. With a little more effort I just know you can. Remember the story we read before Christmas break of the ‘“Little Engine that Could”’? He just kept saying “’I think I can. I think I can”’ and he did.”

Yep, this was the day which changed my life forever. From then forward I never looked back. My mind was set. Never, and I mean never again would I think I couldn’t accomplish anything asked of me. Hearing those four simple words, I think I can, and seeing myself as the Big Blue Engine, powerful, strong, and determined to get to her destination, I realized we each have it within ourselves to do whatever we sit our minds to. Mrs. Morrow, my mentor, who never knew the impact she had, will never be forgotten, for this 1961 1st grader will never let her story go untold.

Allen James
(Jimmy Harryman)

 Keep looking up.  :)  AJ