Maybe It Was Spring Fever

As we find ourselves surrounded by the glorious season of spring, I always recall how challenging as a teacher it was to "corral" students inside the four walls when perfect weather awaited those winter-weary young people. My grandfather had a constructive solution for this malady.

In the late 1920s, Finis Ewing Rippee and his wife, Elizabeth, arrived in the Big Bend community to teach at the Woodland School. (Lester Anson’s home is located where the Woodland School once stood.) Mr. Rippee captured the interest of his students as a creatively innovative teacher. He was one of the first people with a radio in the Bend. On historically momentous occasions, F.E. Rippee brought the radio into the rural school building, introducing the wide-eyed scholars to a world of which they knew nothing.

Even though my father, Edmund Gates, Jr., found Mr. Rippee fascinating as a teacher, when he was around 10 years old, he began loafing instead of studying in school.  Mr. Rippee visited with Edmund, Sr. about the situation. My grandfather, Edmund, Sr. told Mr. Rippee, “Just let me keep him out of school a week to help me clear walnut trees.”

Eighty years later, my father explained the process this way. He and my grandfather dug down around each of the tree stumps about a foot and a half, with both of them using a shovel. This allowed a place wide enough to maneuver a crosscut saw effectively. Then Dad and his father each got on one end of the crosscut saw and began pushing and pulling. Some of the walnut trees had trunks with 10-inch diameters. My father exhibited unparalleled strength for his small size. He was so agile that he could easily climb a tree to get a squirrel. (Steve Gates, his nephew, would later categorize Dad as a squirrel on the rafters of a new dwelling. Dad was in his 70s and 80s at that time!) Even with the sturdy physique of my father in his boyhood, he characterized the week out of school as very hard work. I'm sure he collapsed his work-weary body into bed each evening that week. 

When Monday morning rolled around, Dad was the first one in the buggy to go to school. He had learned the value of education on the end of the crosscut saw.

My father, Edmund Gates, Jr.,
as taken from a group photograph
 taken at the Woodland School
located in the Big Bend. Notice
the hat on backwards and his
bare feet.

Both my father and Ruby Martin Rice conveyed the respect they had for Mr. Rippee as an educator and a person. They related how he taught them principles for life that made them better people after they graduated from the eighth grade at Woodland School. A teacher who can impart to his students the qualities that make a responsible employee, a reliable parent, a trustworthy spouse, and a dependable neighbor deserves the loftiest of accolades.