Author: John Morris Benson

Husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, friend, veteran, retired, grow veggies-eat meat

Trouble in School: part 2

As I said before, during my many years in the classroom I got in trouble more than once.

Elem – jr hi – hs – ba – ms, etc, and while teaching.

I was supposed to start in third grade in Alexandria, MN, but started late in Houston, TX.
But I don’t remember being in ‘swat in the hinie’ trouble there.

I was eight, and not sure where or when I finished second grade. All I remember is that I went to second grade for a while in Pasco, WA.
That’s another story, but not about school.

I learned to call ladies ma’am and men sir at school in Houston. My trailer park friend tried to warn me, but I didn’t learn the lesson until the teacher confronted me.

The teacher asked me a yes or no question and I said, “Yeah or yup.”

She told me my response was slang and not to be used in school. She asked if I understood and I answered, “Yes.”

I was quickly and firmly informed that the correct response to such questions was, “Yes ma’am,” or “No ma’am.” Not doing so was considered inappropriate and even insulting to an adult. The tone of her message was effective! And I also learned that y’all could be used in place of you, you all, or even all of you.

The whole class practiced for a Christmas musical. Perhaps because I was the new kid or had no apparent musical ability, my part was small and would have no impact on the program if I wasn’t there. My role was to toot a small tin horn at the appropriate place in “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.

“Little tin horns, little toy drums.
Rudy-toot-toot [I toot the horn.] and rummy tum tums.
Santa Claus is coming to town.”

It could have been that I didn’t listen well or just couldn’t hear well. I missed the cue most of the time. The teacher rebuked me in front of the class every time I missed. I don’t remember being in the pageant.

I know we moved to Kansas some time that school year, but I don’t remember school there. My next trouble was in Van Hook, North Dakota.

Trouble in School: part 1

Dring my many years in the classroom, I got in trouble many times.

There were the early times, the post early times, the secondary times, the post-secondary times, and the teaching times.

I missed more school than I attended before I was in third grade, so I had little opportunity to be in trouble. I remember one incident quite well.

School had already started when I entered the second grade in 1943 at Moxie, WA. My migrant worker parents were picking end-of-the-season hops.

Two boys I didn’t know asked me to leave the school grounds with them during lunch recess so they could buy some candy. I didn’t have any money to spend but walked with them. The boys shared with me. We lost track of time, and the kids were in class when we returned. When the teacher asked, we didn’t lie about what we did.

He lined us up in front of the class and explained that he was going to give us a reminder. I wasn’t sure what to expect. We were told to take everything out of our back pockets. Many boys had red and white plaid hankies, and a few had wallets. I had nothing so that was easy for me; but I still didn’t know what to expect.

The teacher separated the first boy from us, so he was facing an open space between his desk and the students’ desks. When he took a long wooden paddle from his desk drawer and said, “Reach down and touch your toes,” I knew what was next.

The crack of the paddle on tightened denim was impressive as he hacked the first boy. “Did that hurt?” the teacher asked.

The boy said, “Yes sir,” and was sent to his desk.

It went the same for the second boy. He gave me my hack and asked the same question.

Being the new kid, being stubborn, and not wanting to appear weak.
I said, “No.”

The teacher hacked me several more times and after each swat he asked the same question. I gave the same answer. The pain increased with each hit, and I realized that if I wanted to sit without a constant reminder, I’d better say, “Yes.”

I did! He stopped! Lessons learned!

I don’t know where I was in school next, but I was in third grade for a while in Houston, TX.

I don’t think I was in real trouble there, but a story from that time and place is my next post.

I’ve been thinking

I think my title implies, “I think, therefore I am.” 1”cogito, ergo sum,” René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, 1637

I’ve never read the source, but I know I exist, because I see me every day – the mirror tells me so.

In my youth, I was often asked, “Just who do you think you are?”

After seeing myself every day, I’m sure I think I am really me.

But just because I exist, do I really think.

In proving who I am to the DOL for an enhanced driver license I had to show proof of existence and residence documents. 2It was the same for being permitted to vote.

My Social Security number was required for the enhanced license, but the DOL wouldn’t take my word that I had it memorized and current SS cards do not show a person’s SS number. 3Well it is now a Medicare account card. I had to make a second trip to prove to the DOL clerk that it was printed on the card that it could not be used for identification.

It is worse for a married woman who was divorced to prove identification – they also need proof of their first marriage, proof of divorce and proof of second marriage, etc.

Kawo! I think I got off track as I often do.

Well, I wonder now if wondering is within thinking parameters. I’ve often said I wander as I wonder, so is wandering through and around a topic thinking. If so, I do think and therefore I must be.

More about Reading

I‘ve wanted to read some books over, some I have not. It’s taken me months to get through Bill Bryson’s At Home: A short History of Private Life. I’m sure I will finish it someday.

I use Bryson’s A Writer’s Guide to Getting it Right fairly often, but that’s not a re-read.

I never finished Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, but I read his A Walk in the Woods twice.

Good writers get a reader into their work in an opening paragraph or at least in the first few pages. I read Henry Gregor Felsen’s Hot Rod (1951) several times when I was getting interested in cars. Weren’t all teenage boys in the 1950s interested in cars?

The first paragraph of Hot Rod grabbed our interest.
“Bud Crayne rounded a curve at fifty and faced into the setting sun. For the next ten miles the highway ran straight and level across open farmland. Ninety-nine out of a hundred drivers rounding that curve and coming onto the flat immediately increased their speed. Bud held at fifty. He had his reason for staying at fifty. Bud always had a reason for driving at a particular speed.”

Felsen set the hook with the first line of the second paragraph.
“A new green Plymouth sedan came up behind Bud, honked imperiously and swept by.”
What do you think was going to happen?

Why do I mention Bryson and Felsen in this post? Bryson starts his book At Home: … with:
“In the autumn of 1850, in Hyde Park in London, there arose a most extraordinary structure: a giant iron-and-glass greenhouse covering nineteen acres of ground and containing within its airy vastness enough room for four St. Paul’s Cathedrals.”
Maybe, perhaps, or possibly a 1950s teen would continue reading, but I think not – I would not have.
Even as a soon to be nonagenarian, I wonder what a giant greenhouse had to do with the title At Home: … but kept reading out of curiosity.

In my own writing, I’ve struggled with my point. Both Bryson and Felsen knew for whom they were writing.

I have a copy of another of Felsen’s Street Rod (1953). Not the one I read in 1954. I bought it for a dollar or perhaps fifty-cents at a garage sale in Vancouver, WA. Ironically, it is a ‘discard’ from Kelso High School Library, but I didn’t see it there when I was teaching there in the 1990s.

Murder in the Yard and Garden

I’m not sure if it’s the same murder1group or family of crows or not, but it seemed like the murder had the intent to murder me yesterday.

A murder can be very, very loud and it was. The murder was flying low as if practicing or intending to murder me from the sky. Well sky might not be the right word – the murder wasn’t flying high.

One year, and I may have mentioned this before, the murder is the prime suspect in the murder of my corn.

I have never seen the murder act as if it had the intent to murder a member of the colony2group or family of rabbits that frequents our yard. Well colony is the right word for the group, but it might not be the right word for what we see. The most I’ve seen is three, but the three in the yard at the same time appeared to be juvenile or younger.

The only murder of a colony member in our yard that we know of was committed by a single member of a local cast3group or family of redtail hawks. But we are also sure that a cast member murdered a member of the scurry4group or family squirrels that lives in or around our yard. The evidence is that I saw one of the cast members carry carrion to a perch5but not a fish in a neighbor’s tree.

The murder doesn’t seem to have an interest in murdering any of a gaze6group or family of racoons that used to frequent our yard. Some or perhaps all members of the gaze must have thought the yard was a bank because one or more left a night deposit.

Cell Phone in School

The issue of cell phones in schools in back in the news. Even before it was an issue, it was an issue. Many if not most teachers didn’t have cell phones in the early 2000s, but some students did. In those days, students using their phones at the schools I worked at was strictly prohibited.

I was working at a middle school as a substitute vice-principal. Like most admin subs, I was charged with routine student discipline and supervision duties. It had been a slow day with zero physical territorial or opinion disputes in the lunchroom or other places. It’s indeed a rare day to have no classroom disruption referrals in a school of nearly 600 students. I was typing my report to the VP for whom I had substituted after making my last walk through the halls before going outside for bus duty.

There was shouting from the school counselor area, and I rushed there. The regular VP was already there and asked me to take the shouting girl to my workspace so he could find out what was happening without the seventh-grade girl’s continuous interruption.

The shouting was about her not wanting to give up her cellphone when using it in class. She had claimed to the counselor that she’d passed it to a friend when escorted by the security officer from her classroom, but she wouldn’t name the classmate. Men, of course didn’t do girl searches, and she’d vehemently refused to allow the woman counselor to do so.

Her cellphone rang while she was sitting in my office. She told me she had to answer it because it was her grandmother calling. What she didn’t know was that the school secretary had her grandmother on the school line with a request that she come to the school and pick up the girl.

I didn’t know at the time that the grandmother told the regular vice principal she could not drive and the girl would have to take the bus home.

There’s more to the story than I care to tell, but she broke loose several times and flailed her arms when the VP and I were attempting to escort her to the bus. For those who wonder why two men could not physically restrain a non-compliant seventh-grade girl, you should try it sometime.
Well probably not!

In the aftermath, the school secretary said something like, “Boy, she sure laid one on you.”

I felt a blow during the scuffling but thought it was just from the girl’s random flailing. The swelling and pain were clear when I looked in a mirror and touched the spot. The closed-circuit hallway video the secretary had watched and recorded in real time showed her taking an aimed punch at my face followed by another that missed.

Legal action started, and there was a ‘rest of the story’ but not for this forum.

Remember when unpermitted calculators in the classroom were the issue? I could say more, but … (Perhaps I will say something about the real issues1I saw the same issues in Christian schools as I did in public schools. as I saw them in a later post.)

Running or Not

When I see the candidate signs on nearly every corner, I think of the time I ran for public office. Some men already serving on the Kelso, WA, city council asked me to run, and I had the support of the local police union.
I’m sure of why I didn’t win but it was probably not from what I’m saying below.

My opponent could have said, “Candidate Benson was disciplined by the Army, associated with an American Nazi, and investigated by the FBI and CIA.”

Each of the above is true.

Several of us were late for morning formation at Ft. Devens. We were all punished under the Army’s Article-15 and restricted to base for the weekend.1But weekend passes were not allowed while we were in training.

I hired a clerk named John Patler. Later, during the FBI investigation of his shooting of Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi party leader, I learned that the clerk had been a captain in the American Nazi Party and the editor and cartoonist for the party’s magazine, Stormtrooper.2My store manager told me to hire him.

Every applicant for service in the Army Security Agency had a background investigation by the FBI as a requirement for a security clearance.3I served with a TS clearance plus several special riders.

I met a man in Frankfurt named Frank Baxter who told me to send him my resume when I was ready to leave the Army. He interviewed me at a Company called HRB Singer. I didn’t know until the interview that a background investigation had been completed by the CIA. I had a second interview with E.D. Echols, CIA director of personnel.4I still have the letter saying, “As we have not received any response to the letter which we sent you on 5 August, (1964) we assume that you are no longer interested in employment with this Agency. Accordingly, we have placed your file in an inactive status.”
Echols was the director’s real name; Frank Baxter was probably a cover name.

An opponent could find more events, but I’ve hopefully made my point about how I might be viewed if I chose to run for another public office.

PS: I’ve chosen to not run for anything except to run around a topic.

Remember and Honor

On this 25th day of May 2026, we remember and honor those who died in military service. This is for all who went to serve and didn’t survive. Any one of us who served could have been one of them, and any family could be related.

I know of only one relative who died while serving. Uncle Arne Gerhard Benson died at Ft. Lewis, WA, in 1943 while serving with the US Army. Some family letters talk about his service as a civilian in the Army Corps of Engineers before he enlisted.1 Whittier, Alaska, January 29, 1942, Dear Mother, … This is a Gov. Defense project, so I’ll be here until next year sometime. I hear that they are censuring the mail now so will not say anything about it. I can’t think of much to say except that we have plenty of ice and it’s cold. Give everyone my regards, and love to you. Arne

Jan. 16, 1943 Dearest Mother, … We had some pretty tough going up North, and also in the Orient so it seems quiet and peaceful here in comparison. I can’t tell you much about it now but hope to be able to soon. I have two months of intensive training left here and then the Lord only knows what next. If they have any more Hell and High water to dish out I guess I can take it.

Ft. Lewis Wash Jan. 16, 1943, Dear Dot, … I didn’t tell Mother as she would have worried. I transferred my Service Nov 3 when I got out of the Hosp. I was with the Army Eng. in Alaska water and also the Near East. I got broken up during a heavy Blow in the Bering Sea. My collar bone, three ribs, two vertebrae in my back and my left leg below the knee. It sounds like a lot but wasn’t so bad. 2Did the COE have fishing boats? There are pictures of Arne on one during that time period.

There may have been others, but Walter Trisko was the only high school classmate3Central High School, Alexandria, MN, class of 1955. I remember dying while serving Vietnam. Classmate Walt

So, remember and honor those who died but be aware that for many survivors absence from war is not the same as peace of the soul.

China, etc.

The niece of Pearl S. Buck went to my high school for a while in the 1950s and I read The Good Earth during my junior year.

FYI: I am not a Sinophile, a China scholar, nor do I have Sinophobia.

Reading Bill Lascher’s Eve of a Hundred Midnights, James Bradley’s The China Mirage Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby’s Thunder out of China, and Ilona Ralf Sues’ Shark’s Fins and Millet gave me better insight to why China and our relationship with it is the way it is today. I also learned more about the political, economic, and social environments that set up The Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War.
Reviews of these books is not my reason for this post. Except for Shark’s Fins and Milletthere are multiple reviews on line, so I want to say what about each author makes them valid.

Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth is fiction, but she grew up in China with her missionary parents.

Ted White and Annalee Jacoby were war correspondents with access to leaders of all factions in the region. Annalee’s husband Melville (Mel) a Time-Life magazine war correspondent was killed accompanying General Harold H. George on a trip to inspect air bases.

Ilona Sues had personal contacts with leaders of all factions and commoners in China during the 1930s while on a League of Nations mission to help eradicate the flow of opium. She had intimate knowledge about meals of shark’s fins and millet and the societies who had those meals.

Bill Lasher had an advantage many writers do not —Mel and Annalee’s personal papers, films, and documents saved by their families to work with for Eve of a Hundred Midnights.

James Bradly, a historian, cited over 400 verifiable references for his work on The China Mirage.

The overlapping content of each book verifies the fidelity of the others and the experience or research by the authors added to my learning experience.

Urgent Need

About 100,000 people are waiting for a kidney transplant in the US. At least 13 people die every day waiting for a kidney. A Kidney from a living donor kidney can last 20 years or more. A deceased donor kidney lasts about 12 years. One kidney is all you need — donors live full, healthy lives.

Our grandson-in-law “Eli is entering the final stages of chronic kidney disease and is actively searching for a living donor. A single act of generosity will bless he and his family immensely and will keep a husband, dad, son, and friend present for every moment that matters.”

Read A Kidney for Eli to learn more.