Kindergarten Socialists

Remember the first day of school when you were a kid.  It was exciting.  Not only did you get to see all your friends after the summer, and meet the new kids in town, you got to go shopping for new school clothes and supplies.

We always made a trip to Fletcher's in Gruver for new clothes and shoes.  Fletcher's had a window display with a water faucet hanging with fishing line from the ceiling.  Water flowed from the faucet into a bucket on the floor.  We never could figure out how they did that.  I also remember how embarrassed mom and Judy were when one of the Lindsey boys came running to his mom crying, holding a mannequin arm.

Being Texans, we got Levis or Wranglers.  My favorite shoes were Trax.  They made you run faster and jump higher.  Talk about false advertising!  I remember picking them out of a big bin.  And digging for the match when the one shoe in my size was not still attached to its mate.  Also finding someone's old shoes in the pile.  I just thought they wore the new ones and didn't need the old pair anymore.  Later as a shoe store manager, I hated finding old worn shoes in our bins or in a box.  It meant someone had stolen from us.

For a boy anyway, clothes shopping was torture.  But we loved going to Spearman to the TG&Y to buy school supplies.  Looking back, I know we were on a tight budget, but it always seemed like we got what we wanted.  In my case, it was pencils with Dallas Cowboy logos on them, and most importantly, a pencil sharpener inside a plastic Cowboys football helmet.  

Most kids today don't get those choices.  Even many public schools today are requiring school uniforms.  Parents accept the idea because it takes the pressure off.  Don't have to give in to the peer pressure and buy high dollar brand names. Everyone wears the same styles and colors.  No one has to feel bad because they don't have the latest fad.


School supplies aren't yours anymore.  They all go to the teacher to be passed out to the entire class.  Since mom knows you won't necessarily get what you take to class, she buys the boring yellow pencils and square pink erasers and red, green, yellow, and blue notebooks.  No more Dallas Cowboys or Smurfs or Spongebobs today.  Everyone has the same blaaah stuff.

Socialism starts early.  Gets us accustomed to giving up choices.

Adobe Walls and Teaching History

How can educators make history boring?  A better question is why they would make it boring.  You would think that  someone who chooses to make a career of teaching history would have a passion for the subject and make it interesting for their students.  But that's generally not the case.  I had three years of history in Jr. High, three in high school, and 12 hours or four semesters of history in college.  Except for coach Bennett in seventh grade Texas history, I can't name one of my history teachers.  And coach Bennett was not a good history teacher, but he was a fun teacher.  And Texas history is interesting if you take it upon yourself to learn about it.

When I was in elementary school in Gruver in the Texas panhandle, my scout group went to Adobe Walls.  The scout leaders worked with the school to get us some background on Adobe Walls.  We were told it was the oldest adobe house in Texas.  So, that was kind of interesting.  We went out and looked and collected all kinds of old junk.  I came home with a cigar box (remember those?) full of rusty square nails and an old bedspring.  There was the remains of an adobe house, and spots that we could see where other buildings had once stood.  Interesting, but fairly quickly forgotten.

Then in about 1987, I read Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.   At one point in the novel, Gus and Lorena stay in an abandoned building at Adobe Walls on the banks of the Canadian River.  They play cards using buttons from soldier's coats as poker chips.  Gus tells Lorena that it had been the site of a great battle between Comanche warriors and Kit Carson's troops.  Since I knew that much of the novel was based on real events in Texas history, I decided to do some research.

Adobe Walls was actually the site of one of the first and most important trading posts on the old Sante Fe trail.  William Bent and Ceran St. Verain built a couple of adobe buildings, but mostly traded from tents.  They originally attempted to trade with the Kiowa and Comanche that roamed the area.  The Comanche and Kiowa were not willing trading partners though.  They were much more interested in taking what they wanted by force.  So Bent and St. Verain improved and fortified their settlement to trade with settlers migrating west on the Santa Fe trail.  Even with the fortifications, raiding Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache warriors made life so uncomfortable that the trading post was abandoned.  

In 1865, Kit Carson and his 335 troops took refuge in the abandoned buildings and held off an attack by an estimated 3,000 Kiowa and Comanche warriors.  Carson's troops suffered less than 10 casualties while killing or wounding several hundred Indians.  More recent historians have lowered the number of the warriors involved and killed or wounded.  As one historian said, if 3,000 Comanches ever followed a single leader on the warpath, they would have conquered all America, Mexico, and Canada.  So, I guess typical of Texans, the events were exaggerated, and probably greatly exaggerated.  Still a great story though.

About ten years later, an even more famous battle was fought at the site.  A group of buffalo hunters, skinners, and hunters, including soon-to-be famous lawman, Bat Masterson, used the site as a campsite during their travel.  Before sunrise, the hunters were awakened by a cracking roof timber.  While the buffalo hunters were repairing the ceiling, a group of about 700 Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes led by Quanah Parker attacked.  The hunters took shelter in the old adobe building and held off the attackers with their long-range buffalo guns for a full day.  One hunter, Billy Dixon, took a shot at one brave from almost a mile away.  And hit him.  Accounts differ as to who the brave was and whether he was killed.  But he was hit with Dixon's amazing shot.  And shortly afterward, the Indians retreated.

But we were taught that it was an old adobe house.

We received Raelynn's social studies (they choose not to teach history in middle school in Colorado) lesson plan a few weeks ago.  One of their planned lessons was "the Constitution and current events."  Wow, with the debate on health care going on at the time, this would be a perfect opportunity to show what amazing forethought was involved in the creation of our Constitution.  With the progressive mindset of many of our teachers, Cathy decided that this class would be very interesting to sit in on.  So, what was the focus of this very interesting class?  Mobiles.  You know, like you would hang above a crib.  Or maybe like you would make in kindergarten or first grade.  Did I mention that this was an eighth grade class?  The perfect opportunity to teach about what may be the most important and most expensive piece of legislation of our lifetime and its impact on their future.  And how our founding fathers felt about our government's role in our everyday life compared to the current administration's view.  And they got out the scissors, construction paper, paste, and yarn and made a mobile!

It has to be part of a plan.  No one could unintentionally make the past so irrelevant, could they? 

                  Read A Patriot's History of the United States