To Be A Yankee

I was once told that to be

a Yankee was to have at

least two broken, major

household appliances on

your porch.  The man was

the new superintendent of

schools brought in from

otta state to get some

new blood, doncha know,

and he was reading from

a mimeographed sheet.

All in the room were

teachers at the beginning

of a new year and we laughed

politely, but all thought

this guy was just the south end

of a north bound cow.  

All of us that is except Miss

Lee who all but prayed:

Give me two more years and

I’ll just dismiss my tenant

farmer up north and sit on

my own front porch with

my same-sex partner of a lifetime

who endured with me in secret

all these hellish years. 

We will just sit and look out at the

at the field - look out  as nature

slowly but surely, day by glorious

day, retakes the field.

FG  2/21/2015

Marjorie Lee taught English at Meredith High School for, I’m guessing, three decades.  She was a great teacher and a Yankee through and through.  I think she was well past retirement age when I knew her and probably had been grand-mothered in by the district.  She was my “Master” teacher for my first three months of teaching, but just about the only thing she ever confided in me on a professional or personal basis was when she said, “I have to take care of myself.”   This, I think is the mantra for public school teachers to survive in the politically charged school atmosphere.   She was a Yankee.

I have no idea of her sexual orientation, nor do I mean to speak ill of her (I’m again guessing that she would be 100 or so by now), but the idea of appliances on the porch and worn out teachers suggested this poem.

We had a thunderstorm here yesterday which seems too early as the rainy season usually starts in May.  The climes they are a changin’, I guess.