Rocky Gap Interviews - Ms. Pansy

Pansy

Rocky Gap was good. I studied geography, arithmetic, reading, spelling, English, the ordinary stuff. The teachers were wonderful.  I wished they had teachers like that now. And I remember one teacher. Honey, she brought for her lunch, she would bring corn bread and beans. See, back then, everybody was equal. And the teachers, they had no special ones, they had no pets. All of the teachers treated their students equal. They didn't pick one out because this one lived in a brick home, and that one lived in a board, a plank house, all children was equal. Whenever one needed to be whipped, they would get the person in front of the class, bend them over the desk, and use a wooden paddle on them. And I remember they was going to whip one boy, Ralph Graves. He knew he was going to get whipped, he had stuck his geography book in the seat of his pants. And Mr. Reynolds was the principle. He made him take that geography book out and then he whipped him twice. Ralph was too mean to cry.  It hurt, but he would've died before he would've cried. But the kids, they were good kids.