A Student Finds His Third-Grade Teacher

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We made our summer pilgrimage to Schlitterbahn recently, a family tradition that consists of spending a day getting waterlogged at this venerable waterpark in New Braunfels. Then we feast at the Grist Mill in Gruene, which is not air-conditioned but worth the sweat. I am too old to ride real roller coasters. A trip down a Six Flags roller coaster a dozen years ago sent me to a chiropractor. But water slide rides offer staid thrills, not to mention relief from the heat.

My Beautiful Mystery Companion, daughter Abbie, and I stayed at a hotel up the highway in Buda because it was cheaper. Plus we planned to head to Austin for the final leg of this brief vacation. We were staying across the interstate from Cabela’s, the massive outdoor store with a menagerie of stuffed exotic animals, including an elephant. This sparked outrage from the female contingent when we paid a brief visit. Who shoots elephants, they demanded to know. I read the sign at the display, which explained that controlled hunts in Africa were actually helping to restore the elephant population. They were having none of it. We left forthwith.

My BMC is still mourning what happened to the Buda she remembers from a quarter-century ago, a sleepy little town where she taught third and later fifth grade, lived on a sheep farm, and rode her bicycle down the back roads to San Marcos on weekends. The first time we passed through Buda, a few years ago, she decided to try to find the farmhouse she rented for a pittance, in exchange for watching the sheep. She kept all manner of critters — mourning doves, hamsters, the landlord’s sheep and a pair of horses. She also grew corn and other row crops. It clearly was an idyllic time in her young life, as she began her career in education.

My bride came back practically in tears. “It’s gone. It is all gone.” The sheep farm, the pond, all of it had disappeared, replaced by rows of subdivision homes. She couldn’t really even figure out where the farm had been, so thoroughly had it disappeared under acres of homes that all looked alike. Each time we pass through Buda, she begins muttering about what happened to the pastoral little town she recalls so fondly. Time does march on, and after all that was a quarter-century ago. Still, I wish I had gotten to see the little farmhouse and sheep farm that my BMC recalls so fondly.

Then a gift from her idyllic years in Buda arrived a few days after we got home from this trip. It was an email addressed to me with the subject line,  “Love Your Articles.” That’s always nice to hear, of course. But what especially intrigued both my BMC and me was what the writer revealed about himself. Drew found my site because he was looking for my wife. She was his third-grade teacher back in Buda, when she lived on the sheep farm 25 year ago.

I replied, and he sent a follow-up email that indicates my BMC as a young teacher had quite an impact on this curly haired blond precocious boy, as my wife recalls him. He wrote that she, in her late 20s at the time looked far younger than her years (she still does). He fondly describes her “crazy antics in the classroom,” her love of music, the director’s chair she often sat in while teaching, and that, thanks to my BMC, Drew learned how to write his name in cursive and do his multiplication tables. He was especially impressed that she “let us bring tapes from home to be played while we worked on various things in class,” and that she used an overhead projector instead of the chalkboard so she didn’t have to turn her back on  the students. She read “The Indian in the Cupboard” to his class, a novel about a magical cupboard in which the action figures inside come to life. He loved the way his teacher, my wife, brought the characters to life.

Drew spent quite some time sleuthing on the Internet to find his third-grade teacher. Through that medium, he managed to narrow it down from a few dozen with the same maiden name, figure out we had gotten married last year, found the wedding pictures posted on flickr.com, finally found my website and that she now taught at the college level and had received her doctorate. It turns out we both are married to women named Julie and have daughters named Abbie. And his wife was raised about 8 miles from where I was born and raised in New Hampshire.

My BMC was, of course, touched to be remembered so fondly by Drew, who also is saddened by what happened to his hometown, especially that piece of land that now is home to Cabela’s and other Big Box Retailers.

Time does march on, but at least we have our memories. For a teacher, it is a gift when a student remembers you and believes that you made a difference in his life. For a writer, it is a gift when someone writes to say he enjoys your modest offerings. So Drew gave us both a gift with his email, and we thank him for that.

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