MR. BROWN READS by Janet Lynn Oakley

Mr. Brown Reads

Janet Lynn Oakley

In my life, I have had wonderful teachers: Mr. Walker and Miss Rizzo who flamed my love of history and Miss Love who taught me to write, but scary, raucously funny Mr. Brown tested my courage and inspired my imagination.

Sixth grade was the last stop at my elementary school and literally sky high as the classroom was on the top floor across from fifth grade. It was like being crowned. On the first day of school, all my chums and I gathered on the post World War II era playground all a-buzz about our sixth grade teacher. It would be the first time in our elementary career to have a male teacher. Everyone was apprehensive. Would he be like Mrs. Michaels, a replica of Mamie Eisenhower with a not so sweet tongue? Or Mrs. Bates who rapped my fingers in fourth grade with a ruler for some infraction long forgot, but still a loving teacher with cheerful smile? As we approached the last flight of stairs ensemble, our questions were answered.

No.

“Morning pupils,” he said in a deep voice as we came one by one into the classroom.

Mr. Brown wore glasses and had a face that looked like it still needed to grow up. His dark, short hair rebelled against the combed-down-and parted-to-the-side style of the day, rising up like some wave in the middle. He stood over six feet and like my father towered over us. His broad shoulders were flat as anvils and tested the padding in his suit. Mr. Brown was someone with whom to be reckoned.

Already shy and intimidated by him, I looked for a desk to sit at. I chose the back. Now I only had to find out his teaching style. I put my supplies into the lift top desk and settled down at my seat, smoothing down my skirt as I did so. I kept my head down looking at my new penny loafers.

From the back of the classroom in the cloakroom there was a squeal from one of the girls, and after a shadow whipped behind me, a clatter. A silence as profound as one after a nuclear attack pervaded the room. Mr. Brown came out followed by the class bully looking limp. I found out later that the boy had teased one of the girls, taken her supplies, but upon leaving the space, Mr. Brown had judo flipped him. Or so we believed, but for the first time in six years, that student behaved and never acted up again.

Of course, it was a different time. The boy would have been in special Ed today, but it was the first clue to Mr. Brown’s teaching style. He took no guff. But he had, I soon found out, a soft spot too and genuine desire to connect with kids. He was funny and creative in his way of teaching math and English. He encouraged storytelling and played a mean game of dodgeball. And Mr. Brown loved baseball. He often rolled the television into the room on Fridays when all our work was done, especially when the Pirates were doing so well. He told jokes and stories and when it was time for our class to go to a week-long camp, he set up cots in the cafeteria and taught us how to make a bed military style.

First you lay the bottom sheet on the mattress and put the tops and bottoms under. Bring up the corners and fold back like a triangle before tucking them under the sides. Repeat with the top sheet at the bottom. Lay the blanket on the same way, fold back the top sheet, tuck, and you’re done, but only if you can make a quarter bounce on it. I still make my bed this way, yet we often wondered how he knew how to do that. By chance, we learned Mr. Brown had served in the military.

One day he came to school upset. There had been a terrible accident at a military base. There had been a demonstration of parachuting for either President Eisenhower or some top brass. The parachutists came down in a hard wind and as they landed, they were dragged away. Some were either killed or severely injured. I never got the story straight, but all day he fretted, his emotions close to the surface. He finally told us the same thing had happened to him. He had been dragged and seriously injured. No wonder he had a bad back. My view of Mr. Brown changed. I worked hard to gain his approval.

Teaching is an art and it takes a certain person to deliver the promise of educational success to a child in an encouraging way. Mr. Brown was not a great scholar as far as I could tell. I don’t remember any kind of intellectual epiphany while in his class yet he had a way of connecting that was honest and real. The best way he did that was reading to us on Fridays.

We had been into the new school year for a while when he made an announcement. “From now on, after lunch, I’m going to read to you. Not from your readers, but stories I think you will like.” He proceeded to bring out a large book of fairy tales. He sat back at his desk, opened the book and began to read The Princess on the Glass Hill, one of my favorites. When he was done, we begged for another and so it went on. When the book was exhausted a few weeks later, he began to read Greek and Roman myths such as Pandora’s Box, Jason and The Golden Fleece, Zeus, Persephone and Demeter. We were enthralled and often took our imaginations out to the playground and after school in plays and drawings. By Christmas, he was reading the Norse myths of Thor, Balder, Frigga and Loki. Opening the world to ancient times, we felt like experts of these fabled places. Then in early January, he ran out. And we had the rest of school to finish.

All week we worried that he wouldn’t be able to read to us any more. What was there to take the place of all the wonderful stories? When reading time rolled around we got into our seats and waited.

Mr. Brown sat down and from his desk took out an old, much loved book by its cloth cover. He cleared his throat. “Didn’t know what to bring, but I decided to share my favorite boyhood book.” Thus began my literature education, my love for adventure. The book was Tarzan of the Apes.

Now, there were plenty of good books for children in the 1950s. I was reading the Little House on Prairie series, discovered Narnia and entered the world of Mary Poppins. I read some more adult books too like the Prince of Foxes, but the story of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, aka Tarzan so lovingly read to us opened me to the power of writing and true storytelling. It was like being let in on a secret for the books were nothing like the movies. Set in 1912, there was an innocence of its delivery and sense of adventure, of right and wrong. Above all there was the love story of Tarzan and Jane, more chaste and tender as it went along. What husband builds a house with a veranda for his wife with all the comforts of home while he’s off swinging in the trees and having adventures? For six graders, it was a thrill. By the time, Mr. Brown finished the first book, we wanted more. Some began checking the books out of the library. I preferred my Friday addition, read by someone who cared. It was fun to watch him blush when he read, “And Tarzan beat upon his breast.” He went on to read The Return of Tarzan and The Beasts of Tarzan.

School ended before Mr. Brown could start another book in the series. We were left in a terrible cliffhanger. Jane was dead. I wouldn’t find the answer to that storyline until thirty years later, but life moved on. We said goodbye to our elementary days and Mr. Brown. Summer came and I got ready for junior high. For the rest of my school years I went onto other books, devouring non-fiction stories of WW II, history and eventually fell in love with Dickens, Jane Austin. Mitchner, Louis L’Amour, Tolkien, James Clavell, and Bernard Cornwell came later. I began to write my own stories.

I saw Mr. Brown many years later while passing through town. I was finishing college, had just come back from France. He had moved onto the junior high where he was a popular principal. When I was ushered into his office, he rose from behind his desk, tall as I remembered and still trim. I think he wore a mustache.

He seemed surprised that of all people I would want to come and see him. Truth was, all my favorite teachers from junior high had moved on, but I really did want to see him, to tell him that I enjoyed that year with him, that it meant something and stirred my imagination. I hadn’t had the courage to tell him before.

“Thank you for being my teacher.” I suddenly felt shy and silly again. “Especially when you sat down to read.”

As I look across the years, I thank him again.

Award-winning author, J.L. Oakley, writes historical fiction that spans the mid-19th century to WW II with characters standing up for something in their own time and place. Recent awards have been the 2020 Hemingway Grand Prize award for 20th century war time fiction and an Honorable Mention Writer Digest Self-pubbed Ebooks for The Quisling Factor.