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Alamo Elementary School Days
November 28, 2007My first experiences with what I'll call organized education -- unorganized being my mom reading "Fifty Famous Fairy Tales" before naptime -- was at Alamo Elementary School.
It was a fairly tough school with playground fights and classroom warfare regularly featured.
My math experiences there weren't the best, but I'm pleased the school is getting kudos for math.
"Texas Monthly" named it as one of the 800 "Best Public Schools in Texas," according to today's article by Ann Work in the Times Record News.
But I can pinpoint the exact time that math went off the rails for me at Alamo.
It was third-grade algebra -- granted, more than 30 years ago.
The teacher was a sweet, well-meaning woman who wore bright red lipstick, corkscrew curls and thick polyester dresses.
The class was a beast that blasted spitballs, paper airplanes, notes and chaos at any and all opportunities.
The teacher just couldn't control us.
It got so bad that students loudly carried on conversations while she was trying to explain concepts.
I remember feeling sorry for her and even trying to listen.
At some point, I gave up and started carrying on the conversations, too, like little girls will do at the slightest opportunity.
Downstairs was the classroom of Mrs. S, a frightening teacher who taught those considered incorrigible.
She was getting close to retirement and never smiled. She ruled with fear, but she ruled.
I remember seeing her smile one day -- a big grin that changed her whole face, and the bottom fell out of my world briefly. I never imagined she actually could smile.
Rumors started circulating that if we didn't straighten up, we were going to get Mrs. S.
Well, we didn't straighten up. Eventually, the school administration stepped in and changed our teacher.
But it was too late for me and algebra.
Years later, I managed to wring a "C" out of college algebra and was thrilled.
But the school gave me other things, in spite of the dicey atmosphere.
I had an English teacher, Mrs. Maxi, who drilled us in sentence diagramming. This did me more good than anything else in learning how to use correct grammer and understand the English language. It might not always show in the harried world of newspaper writing, but that's what good editors are for, right?
Another English teacher handed out a list of "great books." Pretty soon, I was plowing through "Tale of Two Cities" and "The Three Muskateers." I probably didn't understand all of those books, but I did read them.
Mr. Hathaway's history classes drew me in like never before. He told the most interesting stories about that previous boring thing -- history.
He also explained to the class that he used to be a mechanic, but he went to college and got his teaching degree. At the time, it was pretty unusual for anyone over 30 to go to college for the first time or go back to school.
Thus, the idea was born that a person could be mobile and didn't have to settle for whatever life seemed to be dishing out at the moment.
I also made two best friends there who I still consider some of the best friends I've ever had. One of them left me a message on my cell phone yesterday that she'd just moved.
She doesn't do a bad job of keeping in touch after more than 30 years.
Ann Work's story in today's newspaper notes that 92 percent of Alamo students are economically disadvantaged.
I don't know if I and my three siblings fit into that category.
But we certainly weren't economically advantaged at the house on the corner of Elizabeth and Harrison.
Still, we got a decent education at Alamo overall, and it's good to know the school is dedicated today to giving youngsters something that everyone should have no matter what economic category he fits into:a shot at a good education.
Posted by Trish Choate at 12:01 PM | Permalink
Was "No Country for Old Men" Texas Country?
November 26, 2007How many times have we seen films that supposedly took place in Texas with little or no sense of what the state is actually like?
On top of that, actors' attempts at Texas accents are usually pretty heinous.
But "No Country for Old Men" scored some points in at least one of those categories.
The movie is based on a book by Cormac McCarthy.
The book is partly a chilling study of a crazy-scary hit man who's like a force of nature, showing about as much mercy as a tornado tearing through Texas.
He is a hit man, that's true, but he seems overdedicated to his work.
The movie stars Tommy Lee Jones (a native Texas son), so I guess we can't fault his accent.
But some of the other actors seem to go too far.
On a drive up from Texas recently, the folks in Arkansas, Tennessee and southern Virginia sounded like they had much bigger southern accents than anyone born and reared in Texas.
Also, it seems that -- outside of the sheriff's wife and the wife of one of the main characters -- women in Texas back in the late 70s or early 80s (when the movie was set) had no idea what the 18-hour bra could do for them.
Overall, the people in the movie were almost caricatures of real Texans.
I apologize in advance if I'm hurting anyone's feelings, but the Coen brothers really shook the ugly tree during casting -- with some exceptions.
A man from San Angelo played and looked his part -- a friendly chicken farmer -- just about right.
Richard Jackson said in this story in the San Angelo Standard-Times that it was filmed in Marfa.
And the landscape in the movie has the wide open, wind-whipped feel of a desert-like West Texas.
So thank goodness for that.
The urban scenes involving low-rent hotel rooms were convincingly Texas, too, although I'm not sure if they were actually filmed there. But I think I stayed at a hotel that looked just like the ones in the movie back when I was a kid.
In general, the movie has an eerie scariness that's almost as spare and unadorned as the book. You don't realize how quiet it is or how you've been gritting your teeth until somebody starts shooting or what have you.
They call it a thriller, but it's within spitting distance of being a slasher horror movie.
What saves it is that leanness that doesn't exaggerate or try too hard to say what it's got to say.
Instead, it's an elegant, dusty tale captured on film.
Posted by Trish Choate at 05:44 PM | Permalink
