HEART, ARTS, LAUGHS AND INSPIRATION

PUBLIC SCHOOL MUSIC CLASS
BY JERRY CLOWER

I took public school music at East Fork Consolidated High School.  That was the only mandatory course we had in the whole school system.  You didn’t have no choice; you had to take it.  Miss Minnie Lee Stone was our teacher, and whenever she knocked on the door and come in, it didn’t make no difference what course you was a studying, you shut them books up and paid attention to her.

One day she entered the ninth grade class.  Me and Marcell Ledbetter, his younger brother Claude, Ardell, and Burnell, Wilma Nell and Raynell, and Christine and W.L.., and Sonny made  up that class.  Miss Minnie Lee Stone come walking in and she had two young guns with her a-totin’ pasteboard boxes what had public school instruments in them.  We was going to be members of the public school band.  If you acted real nice she would let you whip them sticks together, and if you was good for two class meetings hand running, you could whop that tambourine.  And if you was real good, you could hold that little triangle and take that little steel bar and tinkie, tinkie, tink on that triangle, that was the leading instrument in the public school band.

This particular day she was all excited.  Miss Minnie Lee Stone said, “Class, you know I have always regretted very much that none of y’all have never heard no world-renowned musician, but Mr. Dellsey, what’s a world-famous piano player, is coming to McComb to visit his mama.  I have written to him, and he is coming to East Fork and play for the chapel program, and y’all are gonna get to hear a world-renowned piano player.”

The day he showed up, they made all of us go into the main big room where the piano was.  They roped off the public school music group — made us sit as a group.  Miss Minnie Lee Stone explained to us that this here Mr. Dellsey was going to be playing one of them concerto overtures what he had been playing in the minors — or for the minors, one or the other.  I remember distinctly, them minors were involved in it one way or the other.

She said, “Class, if you will pay attention to this great artist, you can see in story form what it is he’s playing.”

And we listened real good.

Now, folks, that ain’t the first time he’d ever played one of them pianos.  Oh, he could forevermore whip up on a piano. Ever now and then he’d forget what piece it was he was playing and he’d just freeze, but in a second or two he’d think of it, and, brother, he would take off one more time.

Soon as he got done playing, they dismissed everybody except that group that was roped off.  Miss Minnie Lee Stone had started squalling.  It had done got to her.  She was squalling and saying, “Class, wasn’t that wonderful?  Now, tell the teacher, what did you see?  Some of you girls, what did you see?”

Christine throwed her hand up.

“Yes, Christine, what did you see?”

Oh, Miss Minnie Lee, I saw a little deer running through the woods.”

“Oh, marvelous, Christine.  Wonderful, wonderful.  You thrill me to death!
Wilma Nell, what did you see?”

Wilma Nell jumped up and said, “Oh, Miss Minnie Lee, I saw the little deer take a drink out of the bubbling brook while the water was pouring over the dam.”

“Oh, God bless you, Wilma Nell!  I’m so proud of this class.  Let’s hear from some of you boys.”

“Claude Ledbetter, what did you see?  Claude?”

Claude rammed both hands in his overall pockets up to his elbows.  He commenced to squirming and rubbing his bare feet on the floor.  He spun all the way around in the desk — desks weren’t anchored to the floor at East Fork School.

“I ain’t gonna lie about it.  I ain’t seen nothing, but I heard that dam when it busted.”

~ STORIES FROM HOME, by Jerry Clower
story is reprinted with permission of University Press of Mississippi