Middle School History Class in the Middle of Michigan in the Early 1980s

Our eighth grade US history teacher Mr. I. was considered mean, demanding, and more than a little bit strange. Students were afraid of him, and maybe his colleagues were too. I’d heard a rumor that he had been kicked out of every Big Ten university with an M in its name.

During the first week I was in his class, I was seated as far away from him as possible, and I breathed a sigh of relief at this bit of good luck. If his desk was in the northwest corner of the classroom, I was happy to be seated in the southeast. That changed pretty quickly, though.

One day he threw a question open for class discussion. “What is currently the 4th largest cash crop in the US?”

“Corn!”

“Nope”

“Beans!”

“Nope.”

“Wheat!”

“Nope”

“Marijuana,” I said fairly quietly, mostly thinking I was making a joke.

“Who said that? Jackson? Get up here.”

I walked up to the front of the room in fear of death, or worse for an 8th grade boy, public humiliation.

“That’s right,” he said. “You sit up here now.” Then he motioned to a kid seated a couple of desks from the teacher’s to vacate and take my former spot in the boonies.

It became a pretty interesting year, seated up there near the mean Mr. I.

He liked foreign cars, and being the son of a GM worker (a lot of us were) and grandson of the World War II generation, foreign cars, especially Japanese cars, were not considered good things in our family. Mr. I. loaned me copies of Car and Driver, and would ask me if I saw anything imported that I liked.

“I guess the Alfa Romeo looks pretty good,” I said, pronouncing Romeo as most of us pronounce the Shakespeare character.

“Good choice he said,” after correcting my pronunciation. I didn’t really like the Alfas that much, and in retrospect I wonder if I chose them because they were made in what had been the weakest of the Axis powers.

Mr. I. and I also talked politics. I supported Walter Mondale in the Democratic primaries, while he supported Gary Hart. He gave me all the very good reasons for choosing the younger, outside-the-box thinker over the obvious, mainstream choice. I countered that Mondale had the experience, and the backing of organized labor didn’t hurt. Mr. I. and I would read the latest in the newspapers and newsmagazines, and I was shocked when Hart gave Fritz a run for his money. I was also very glad when Mondale won the nomination, because winning was important to me. In retrospect, perhaps Hart would have given Reagan a better challenge. Probably not though, given the Gipper’s unmatched ability to hoodwink the people.

During the chapters on the Civil War, Mr. I wanted to show Gone with the Wind in class. Doing so required signed approvals from the parents or guardians of every kid in the class. We missed by one. Mr. I explained it to the class in words that if written on the page would make it sound as if he calmly accepted the parental wisdom, but whose tone indicated what he really thought: this chicken shit town…

To be clear, the objections to showing the film centered around the use of the word “damn,” and not the film’s racism or support of the Confederate “Lost Cause.” This was Birch Run, Michigan in 1983, not a particularly “woke” place.

One of the things Mr. I. was best known for was a 200 (or so) question exam on world War II. Students who had already endured it let the rest of us know how hard it was, and we all dreaded it. I am bragging a little bit when I report here that I got exactly one question wrong, and nearly forty years later I still remember what it was. In the space provided, draw the Nazi symbol known as a swastika. I messed it up by pointing the ends wrong somehow. I wish I had gotten all of the questions right, but if I had to get one wrong, I guess not being able to draw that thing wasn’t the worst.

Mr. I. was so impressed with my performance that he asked me to work with him on developing a section of the course on the Vietnam war. I don’t recall that project getting very far, but it felt good to be asked.

Near the end of the school year, Mr. I jerked me out of my desk for some reason I don’t remember now. Maybe I said something smart, or his hangover was hurting more than usual (it wasn’t uncommon for people to find him sleeping on the classroom floor in the dark during his preparation period). In any event, it didn’t hurt that much, but I told the science teacher Mr. Y. about it.

Mr. Y and I decided to pull a prank on Mr. I. Mr. Y. had the materials to make casts in his classroom, and we fashioned one for the arm Mr. I had pulled. I sat in the classroom with my “broken” arm and Mr. I looked terrified. I told him he could be in big trouble if I decided to tell anyone he had broken my arm. I didn’t have the patience to really play it up, and pretty quickly revealed the ruse, while Mr. Y. laughed his ass off in the hallway.

I don’t know if Mr. I was a good person or bad person, because I only knew him in the context of being his eighth grade student. Other students likely had very different, and possibly much worse experiences than I did. But this is what I remember.