The Groundhog Lied

Well, here it is, thee weeks into February. Back on the 2nd that old groundhog saw his shadow which means six more weeks of winter. I’m still looking for the first six weeks of winter to happen. This teacher needs a few snow days. The sad reality is that he’s not going to get them. I’m ready for all the snowman decor in the house to come down. How long is it to spring break?

BASKETBALL
The Bears have had a good season this year and we’ve had a lot of fun watching them play. The regular season is over and we placed fourth in the district tournament. I’m still confused as to how this works, but the top four got to go on to the regional tournament so Wednesday night the Bears traveled to Knoxville only to lose to Knox-Webb.

Ben has come a long way with his skills since the season opened in November. The one thing I look forward to next year is that Ben will only play in the varsity games. I think I’ve said this before, but those bleachers get mighty hard sitting through three games. Of course, now he’s wondering what he’s going to do with himself until cross country training starts up this summer. His friends are trying to get him to play soccer. He really wishes there was a boys’ volleyball team.

LET’S DANCE
A few weeks ago Nate went to the middle school dance. We encouraged him to go last year, but he sat it out. I think he realized he missed a lot then and was determined not to let that pass him by again. Vicki and I dropped him off at school and then went out to eat and see a movie (Passengers) to enjoy our own evening.

All the parents were invited to watch all the kids dance to the first song before leaving and arrived in time to see them dance to the last couple of songs. I don’t know what other deejays do, but this fellow had all the kids doing group dances for the most part. Nate was staying on the fringes of the crowd when we left so we were curious to see what he was doing at the end.

When we first got there we were scanning the moving mass of kids. Failing to spot our son, Vicki wondered aloud to me if he had had a good time. About that moment I found him and said, “Well, if the tall kid in glasses who is jumping up and down in the middle of a wad of kids over there is any indication, I’d say yes.” When the party was over and all the decorations were torn down he was full of happy news from the evening.

FABULOUS FOURTEEN
Nate had a birthday last Tuesday. Hard to believe that boy is 14 and looking me at my eye level when we stand next to each other. We asked Nate what he wanted to do for his birthday and he said he just wanted to have a dinner with his family. So, Saturday night we, including Jenna who came in for the weekend, took the meal he requested, potato soup with Red Lobster rolls, over to Mom’s house and celebrated. We also enjoyed chocolate cake and ended the evening with a game of Spades.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC
Jenna also came in for the weekend because we had tickets to see The Sound of Music at TPAC. We went out to eat just a few block away from the theater and then walked back to enjoy the show which was phenomenal. All too soon we were dropping Jenna off at her dorm and heading home.

BILL CHATMAN
Mr. Bill Chatman has passed away. He was 79. I have mentioned Mr. Bill in passing several times over the years of these writings, usually in reference to what he was doing on the farm whether plowing, planting, working in tobacco, or the like. Indeed, he tended the crops on Uncle Paul’s farm for 54 years and on Mom’s farm for about as long.

Mr. Bill, like Mr. Carl, whom I wrote about back in July, was one of the men I worked with on the farm when I was growing up. He is part of that small fraternity of wonderful men God placed in my life in the absence of my own father that set a high standard by modeling manhood before me. I will always treasure his patience with me, the example he lived before me, and the advice he gave me. So much of what he would say would guide me in fathering my own children. I don’t know that he would have expressed it this way, but he made me realize that I needed to raise my kids with the end in mind.

If you enjoy reading the Swann Family News you can thank Mr. Bill for it’s existence. I had kept a daily log for some time, but after Jenna came along and life got more demanding that dropped off. One day I ran into him at the shop and in our conversation, completely unaware of my journal, he mentioned a journal he had kept for years and how some nights he, Mrs. Anna, and their boys just enjoyed going back and reading what they had done years ago.

I didn’t see Mr. Bill as much after heading off to college and pursuing a career in education, but I still ran into him on occasion as he was working in one of the fields near the house, repairing some broken piece of farm equipment at the shop across from Uncle Paul’s house, or at Mom’s after work as he was stopping by to drop off a check from one of the crops. Mr. Bill loved people and enjoyed connecting with everyone he met.

DEALING WITH FEELINGS
I have found it very hard to write up this edition for a couple of reasons, so much so that I put it off for at least a week. First of all, with the passing of Mr. Bill half the men in that small fraternity I mentioned above are gone. I’m 50 now so that comes as no surprise for me, but it still hurts, not so much because I’m only three decades behind them, but because I’m losing those who showed me the way.

Another reason I have struggled is that Mr. Bill, for me, has been one of the best ambassadors for racial relations I have ever known. For those of you who are not part of this community, Mr. Bill was African American.

I always found Mr. Bill so positive about life no matter if the weather wasn’t cooperating for the crops, or it was dealing with the hardships of life like the loss of his son (Randy passed away eight years ago and was the first loss for my graduating class.), or talking about how he grew up, very poor and raised by his grandmother. I would listen in horrified fascination as he would recall his teenage years and dating Mrs. Anna in the days of segregation. He graduated from Bransford High School in Springfield which was the only high school for black students in Robertson and Cheatham Counties. He would simply sum up those times by saying, “That’s just the way things was.” He could have harbored resentment, yet in the midst of all this I always saw him to be kind and gracious to everyone he met.

You see, this was all in the mix of feelings I had as Vicki and I gathered with Mr. Bill’s family and friends at Friendship Baptist Church last Wednesday. Just the day before the math department at our school had scheduled a school wide field trip to see Hidden Figures. This is an excellent movie and the timing for me couldn’t have been more poignant as I recalled many of Mr. Bill’s tales while the story unfolded on the screen. And all this happened for me against the backdrop of a national conversation that reveals not just extreme polarization but rifts developing within the fabric of our great nation which have become even more apparent since November even among the students who sit in my classroom.

There are many things I took to heart as I watched Bill Chatman, Carl Swann, and all the rest live out their lives before me. I hope that kindness and graciousness for others, no matter who they are or how they treat me, is a characteristic I live out well.

Joe