Oak Grove School

At Oak Grove School, I had my first teaching experience. The school was four miles (6.4 km) of unpaved roads from Woodstock and close to where J H Johnston had his three hundred acre (120 hectare) farm. Usually, my mother drove me to and from the school, or I rode one of Grandpa Dial s horses, but for several days I had boarded at a farmhouse near the school, because Noonday Creek had flooded the road Kevin Boston and I had tried to wade through flood waters to reach my mother s car on the other side, but the water was too deep (Figure 1.2(a)). 

Figure 1.2b. Students at Oak Grove School, Cherokee County, Georgia. Unclaimed in-school photographs taken by unknown traveling photographer, 1939.

This was the first student evaluation of my teaching. At family gatherings or in a group of intimate friends, a southern tradition is to relate a long elaborate joke that is a true story, where the speaker turns out to be the butt of the joke. In this tradition, I had memorized sections of Hugh Lee s paper, including authentic pronunciation and rhythm, and used it as the conclusion to my story about the Oak Grove School experience. 

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