Monk Lewis

My neice reminded me of something I had forgotten -- my dad's school days.

My father was NOT the best student, although, he did very well in penmanship -- he had beautiful handwriting, even when he was 90 years old and arthritic hands hampered his endeavors at writing. He was a good typist also. Of course, those skills had nothing to do with school work. He didn't like calculators when they became very popular and preferred using his own arithmetic abilities rather than depend on a "machine." I have to agree with him on that.

Think about it. If you put the wrong number into the calculator you get the wrong sum. What are the odds that you'll do that -- pretty high when you get up in age, like I am, and like what my dad was when they were "invented." I know this is true because we used to have "adding machine" wars when I was in high school -- given a list of numbers we would race to see who could finish the list first -- correctly of course, and while we all finished quickly, all of us had mistakes at one time or another in what we put into the adding machine. And then we'd "war" and see who could get it done more quickly than an adding machine and the accuracy of those who did it in their head, rather than with the adding machine. The "head" counters were more accurate more times than the "adding machine" counter. I rest my case, and get back to Monk Lewis.


My father was extremely smart -- he had to be because I know he had the entire Bible memorized and he could cull out parts of it, chapter and verse, quicker than you could bat an eye. But school was not his forte.

I'm sure he wasn't a less than perfect student on purpose -- he was certainly academic enough to do the work, but he was a boy, and a boy without a mother -- which in that day meant he had one parent and coped. Today, they would assign all kinds of afflictions and disabilities to him because of his "one-parenthood" but not the fact that he was a boy and preferred to do "boy" things rather than academic things.

My father had one teacher he told us about often -- mostly when we were being rowdy or not quite obedient fast enough. And, I'm sure my siblings can relate to this -- MONK LEWIS! The name we feared most when growing up. I picture a heavy, pock-marked ugly man, mean demeanor, etc. Actually, my dad told me in later years that he was a rather nice-looking man. But my dad's faces when he told us about this man would not allow me to visualize anything other than this horrible personage on this horrible person.

So this is what dad told us about MONK LEWIS!

Monk Lewis was dad's fifth grade teacher (I'm pretty sure it was 5th grade) and he had a reputation of being very, very strict (and mean). Although when you think about it, it was all "show". But the students didnt' know that.

Monk Lewis had a book, and in that book he would write student's names and put a mark next to that name depending on the infraction of the rule that had been broken. He would make an ugly face (as my father made an ugly face, I supposed that was what Monk Lewis had done), he would point his pencil at the person who had made a mistake, while leering at that student, and put a dot or a number of dots next to the name, dependingon the rule infraction, in this little book he kept on his desk.

The face my father made -- he would stick out his tongue, cackle, point at me (or my sister or one of my brothers), then lick his pencil, and put a mark in this little spiral-bound book. It was scary.

My father told us that story many times, and daddy had a book, and he would get it out and pretend he was Monk Lewis, lick his pencil tip, leer, and put a dot in that dreaded book -- which was blank, by the way, except for a bunch of dots! Dad never counted the dots, and he really never used the book against us children, but we lived in fear and trepidation of that book which mimicked what Monk Lewis did when my father was a child in 5th grade.