In the Dark Ages when verbs were conjugated using white chalk on school blackboards and sentences still diagrammed, there lived a teacher named Evelyn Luginbuhl.
I recently read in the Bluffton Senior Citizens January newsletter that she is turning 90 and will receive a life membership to the Senior Citizens Association.
Allow me to proceed:
At Bluffton, she taught eighth grade English among other subjects. Her classroom no longer exists - not physically, though it exists in the minds of this former student and probably others. The room was in the 1911 wing of Bluffton High School. Today that would place it on the top floor, first inside room as students walk toward Jackson Street between classes.
It was always too hot or always too cold. Enormous windows that rattled in the wind. The highest ceilings in the known world. Wooden floors. Light green prison-colored walls. A door that slammed shut so forcefully that your ears would ring.
As a teacher, Mrs. Luginbuhl introduced students to the most horrible ideas imaginable.
She made us read “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson. It’s a ghastly tale about…nope, read it yourself. The discussion that followed created lots of arguments. We thought the author should be locked up.
She forced Robert Frost’s Out, Out - - poem on us. Shame on you, Mrs. L. Poetry isn’t supposed to be about dreadful life situations, not to mention that Frost’s poem in question didn’t even rhyme.
She required memorization.
Words of infidels!
She tried to trick us in believing that some authors used phony names. We didn’t fall for it. Nobody writes stories without using their real name. But, she persisted by explaining that Saki, O Henry, Mark Twain, Walter Mitty, Diedrich Knickerbocker and Lewis Carroll were elements of writing style, so to speak.
Maybe Walter Mitty, but certainly not the guy who wrote The Gift of the Magi.
She even allowed us to experiment with creative writing. You know, essay stuff: What I did on my summer vacation, or How would I change the world if only I could.
I can’t recall for certain, but somewhere in her lesson plans lay the assignment titled "Write a column about your junior high English teacher."
So, Mrs. Luginbuhl, I thought I’d give it a shot.
Please grade me on the curve.
