ALMA'S REVENGE

With Halloween just around the corner at the time this piece is being written, we’re reminded of an incident from long ago, when we too were kids out seeking edibles ruinous to our teeth on the eve before All Saints Day.

First, though, we have to lay the background. The grammar school we attended from ages five through twelve was headed by an old maid principal. Since those were the Great Depression years, necessitating that staff costs be held to a minimum, the boss lady’s duties required doubling as the sixth grade teacher for three days each week.

In order that she might handle her administrative chores adequately, the school had engaged a substitute teacher to fill in the other two days. This had been the practice for a number of years.

The substitute was a widow somewhere in her forties. By temperament, she may have been mankind’s most mild-mannered person since Melanie Hamilton of Gone with the Wind fame. In fact, her demureness had become known to the extent of making her a virtual local institution among the student gentry.

Having Mrs. Alma Horn as a part-time teacher in place of the bulky and gruff principal was a pleasure we kids actually looked forward to while working up the ladder sixth-gradeward. Older lads would revel in describing how they’d incessantly gotten the poor lady’s goat with mischievous acts during their own school attendance at age twelve.

Finally, the blessed day arrived when Mrs. Horn first presented herself to a fresh new band of cherubic-looking but rather mean-minded pupils. The girls all seemed to be polite and respectable, but not our little band of male troublemakers.

To put it mildly, a small corps of us made the woman miserable countless times throughout the year with minor pranks and antics. She became extremely frustrated on more occasions than we can recall. Although never moved to tears during our particular reign of terror, she’d been known to do so in the past.

However, the days tolled on until our crew of impish Dillinger and Nelson types moved up to junior high. No more Mrs. Horn.

Not quite, though. On Halloween night, when we were “grown up” seventh-graders, a pair of us former vagabonds began our annual house-to-house patrol to load our huge paper sacks with goodies.

The writer’s companion was Alan Hunt, a longtime buddy, who happened to live in the sector of town near the Horn residence, which was our chosen area for the evening. In due course, we rang her bell and dutifully awaited response.

Mrs. Horn opened the front door and had no difficulty recognizing two of her former adversaries. She’d already been busily dishing out candy to other trick-or-treaters, and now our turn had come – or so we believed.

We jointly rendered the lady a polite smile-laden greeting. It’s certain that our facial expressions conveyed the message “Mrs. Horn, we brought you a great deal of misery in days past, but that’s over, and we’re obviously your true pals now”.

With the door just half-open, the mild-toned lady stared at us unemotionally for perhaps ten seconds, before calmly stating “Well ….. you’d better run along”.

A bolt of lightning suddenly struck both Alan and the writer. She wasn’t going to give us any handout! An unforgiving Mrs. Horn had seized an opportunity to extract vengeance on a couple earlier enemies. After having let us drive her to distraction in the classroom, she hadn’t the slightest intent of accepting us a short year later as matured chaps claiming her friendship.

We stood dumbfounded as she slowly closed the door.

Understanding this mildish person’s basic demeanor, we can almost guarantee that, following her abrupt refusal action, the lady sat down and cried her eyes out.

We’ve never forgotten this disruptive (at the time) event. However, we must concede that Mrs. Alma Horn gained our everlasting respect for having the nerve to stick to her guns in failing to offer us so much as a small lollipop.

There’s no question but that Alan and I deserved the treatment she exacted.