I'm wandering into the smarmy world of nostalgic musings typically reserved for George Miller and Phil Cole (Madison Courier columnists) when I bring this up, but it came up when Rosie heard me saying, "This is the land of heart's desire. One may do as one wishes." She asked me where the saying originated.
"Doc" Rothert, the Madison schools music teacher, used to give "tea parties" after school, to detain us when we misbehaved in his classes. He was being sarcastic when he would say that, over and over, as part of a performance he would do for us. Kid that I was, I was kind of amused by it, but the more mature girls in our class hated it, quickly concluding that it was tiresome and not making the mistake of repeating an infraction of class deportment that would result in an "invitation" to a tea party. I would actually forgive him and hang around after a tea party to get him to play classical music (Ravel's Bolero comes to mind) on a nifty phonograph he had. The records were 78's in those days.
Doc was kind of a dandy for Madison, having a couple of music degrees, and, it is said, having studied some in a Paris conservatory. He was single all the years I had dealings with him (I was in the high school choir), but late in life he married the French teacher at Hanover College. This dispelled certain suspicions about his practice of taking us young bucks skinny-dipping at night in the crik up at Manville.
For choral pronunciation he taught us what he called "general American diction" and, having somewhat of a flair and a keen interest in language and elocution and having a horror of being regarded as a hillbilly or hick, I paid close attention to his instruction, forever after changed my speech, and as a result I have people still ask me, "Are you from around here?"
This is an installment of my memoirs, I guess. I have a lot more to say about Doc and will some day.
3 comments:
I guess that's why we three kids sound the way we do--not from Southern Indiana, for sure.
Did you really go Skinny dippin' at the Manville swimmin' hole? I used to go there, but never got nekkid.
I really did, Bebe. It was pitch-black of a moonless night and Doc illuminated the place with the headlights of his '53 Chrysler Windsor. Doc stripped and went in too, of course. He would be crucified by the false pietists of today. Although there were several of us, the only other one I can recall being there was Tom Weber, who spent twenty years in the Marines, including combat in Vietnam, and a few years after coming home died of an aneurysm while chatting with somebody on the street.
On jakey speech: my father spoke the way he learned while growing up in Kentucky, being unaffected, but not proud of bad grammar, etc. He did not get much education at Buck Creek Elementary School in Trimble County and rued it all his life, and he was proud of all of his kids for getting as much educaton as we did.
Post a Comment