Bruising memories

Catholic school terrors and a creature from the Alabama swamp. Plus a new Birds-of-a-Type card.

TALES OUT OF SCHOOL

Choose your weapon

MY FRIEND PAUL still has nightmares from his days at Catholic school in the 1960s. Brothers and Sisters, he told me, specialized in particular instruments to mete out God’s justice. Punishable infractions included unbidden speaking in class, missed homework, or a wrong answer. This helps explain why Paul once gave me a copy of The Atheist’s Bible and ordained me as a Pastafarian in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (“He boiled for your sins.”)

In his words, these are some of Paul’s Catholic teachers’ top hits:

A. Paddle: The favored weapon of Brother Gonzalez. The handle was eighteen inches long and the head had air holes to limit wind resistance. The entire “persuader” was sanded and varnished. Brother Gonzalez stood no more than 5’5”—small for a batter, but he always hit it out of the park.

B. Clicker: Used by nuns to order us around. Made of hardwood and similar to a sock darning egg, it had a split handle wrapped in a rubber band. Pull the handle and release. Click, click. One click to stand, two clicks to sit, three clicks to come forward for punishment. Since left handedness was considered unholy, a god-loving nun used a clicker to try to beat the southpaw devil out of my brother. He still has a lump on his head.

C. Yardsticks & Rulers: Slacks were the Catholic fashion of the day. We were not allowed to wear blue jeans or tight-fitting trousers. Brother Lewleyn lined us up in front of his desk and, one at a time, we climbed up and pulled our slacks above our knees. If our trousers didn't cascade to our shoes, it was three whacks on the shins with the narrow side of the yardstick. To this day I carry those Catholic-school tattoos on my shins.

A ruler was a favorite of those fun-loving Carmelite nuns, who rapped us on the knuckles with the thin side for our transgressions. Saying “Yeah” instead of “Yes, Sister?” Talking during mass? Three quick thumps with twelve inches of pine.

D. Strap: Once used to put an edge on razors, but repurposed to keep young Catholic boys in line. We lived in fear of Brother Connelly, also known as Brother B.O. due to the foul odors that emanated from his tunic, especially when he opened it to pull out his weapon of choice, the razor strap. “Mister Smith, come to my desk and hold out your hand. Don’t flinch or it’s three extra licks over the five I'm giving you for not standing up quickly when called upon." B.O. would rear back until the strap touched the ground, give a small grunt, and swing the strap with a mighty vengeance. Praise Jesus!

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TALES FROM ALABAMA

Daddy goes back to work

By Barbara Ramsey

ORTHOPEDIC SURGEONS in the 21st century can be a highly specialized bunch. They do only hip replacements or practice sports medicine or limit themselves to shoulder repair. But when my father practiced orthopedic surgery in the middle of the 20th century, his practice ran the gamut.

Daddy performed joint replacements, corrected spinal deformities, and removed musculoskeletal tumors. His main stock in trade was repairing injuries. But despite seeing thousands of such injuries, he never accepted the fact that human beings can be clumsy, careless, or downright stupid. People who didn’t wear seatbelts enraged him. He thought woodworkers who failed to take precautions when operating power saws were idiots. And children who ran with scissors? Don’t ask.

Still, he was fascinated with the injuries themselves and was especially obsessed with repairing hand trauma. He loved the planning and ingenuity it required. Orthopedists’ work can be crude and heavy—mending large, dislocated joints or amputating limbs— which accounts for the old saying that an orthopedic surgeon is “strong as an ox and half as smart.” But when repairing the delicate fretwork of nerves in the hand, my father was part neurosurgeon. His skilled hands restored the function of other skilled hands.

IN THE 1970s, my parents retired to Alabama, where my mother was born and raised. I knew she’d find lots to do, but I was worried about my father. How could a person go from decades of working 60 hours a week to having no occupation whatsoever?

He did fine. He started an EMT training course for the local fire department. He bought a small tractor and helped my mother grow vegetables. He loved chopping wood to stoke their winter fires. He wrote weekly letters to his five daughters. And occasionally he resumed being a doctor.

One morning when mother was off at a library board meeting, my father heard a loud knock at the back door. Answering it, he found two unknown men, curiously alike, with unkempt blond hair, matching sunburned faces, and identical blue overalls. The one in front clutched his cap with both hands and cleared his throat.

“We heard you was a doctor. That right?”
“Yes, that’s right. My name is Dr. Ramsey. And you are...?”

He said they were the Perkins brothers, that they lived nearby, and that his name was Leroy.  Woody was the fellow behind him. Woody was hurt and needed a doctor.

My father invited them in and all three sat at the kitchen table. Woody unwrapped the towel around his hand and held it out. Beneath a lot of dried blood my father could make out an even row of puncture wounds on top of his hand. Most of the bleeding had stopped but the hand was swollen and badly bruised.

“How’d that happen?” he asked sternly, preparing to hear some typical story of carelessness or inattention.

Woody shifted in his chair, reluctant to speak, so Leroy began the tale.

“Well, we went out this morning early to drain that swampy patch behind our fields. Everthin’ was fine, the swamp water was drainin’ out real good. Then we saw the gator.

“He was lying in the mud like he owned the place,” Leroy continued. “And this might sound awful strange to you, but we felt bad for the old thing! That swamp’s been there a mighty long time and who knows how long he’s lived there.” 

They’d agreed the alligator deserved a new home and resolved to move him to a much larger swamp down the highway. They figured the gator was small enough to fit in the back of their pickup truck, so they drove it down to the edge of the former swamp. Leroy, clearly the mastermind, decided he’d grab the tail. Woody grabbed the other end. Mayhem ensued.

My father sat back, momentarily speechless. He’d seen hundreds of puncture wounds in his life but never one like this. Preventable injuries usually made him furious. But this time, he smiled and went to grab his black bag.

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BIRDS-OF-A-TYPE CARD SERIES

Garamond Gollinule

THIS HAWAIIAN GALLINULE and its mate—members of an endangered species—woke me each morning for a week. I looked forward to it. They broadcast a series of loud and regular high-pitched cheeps from the creek next to a house Barbara and I rented in Koloa on Kauai Island. Mornings, the birds foraged in a calm part of the stream below our kitchen window. The creek drained into the sea at nearby Koloa Landing, once a place to load sandalwood on sailing ships and now our favored place to snorkel with sea turtles. Originally distributed throughout the islands, surveys indicate less than three hundred Hawaiian Gallinules remain on Kaua’i and O’ahu. The bird’s outstanding feature, the scarlet forehead, enshrined it in Hawaiian myth as the fire-giver. 

In contrast, Garamond is one of the most widely distributed typefaces in the world. I’ve long had a special affection for it. First engraved by the Parisian Claude Garamond in the sixteenth century, the face has undergone dozens of additions (swashes!) and revisions, and generated many a knock-off. Grounded in calligraphy and Roman forms, Garamond consistently conveys an unstuffy elegance—not unlike our gallinule. Lately, I’ve been fond of the Light Display, shown here, from an iteration entitled Garamond Premier. The font family was designed by Robert Slimbach after studying Claude’s original metal punches in Antwerp and was released by Adobe in 1989. I recently used it to design a small book of paintings and poems, entitled Nine Notes and Visions, by my friend Linda Okazaki.

Birds-of-a-type has evolved into a regular feature that combines two of my obsessions—birds and typography. It’s a blast for me to design these cards and I hope you enjoy them.

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