MAPLE CREEK MEMORIES IX
LANTERN JAW
He was a really good man, I guess. At the time I knew him I really didn't think so. But time has a way of smoothing out some bumps and glossing over a few of the disappointments and torments we had as kids. And, as kids, maybe we didn't know as much as we thought we did. It is always much easier to think well of someone than you you may have earlier in your life.
Lantern Jaw was a teacher at the junior high school in town. He taught Industrial Arts classes--Metal Shop and Mechanical Drawing. I can't say whether anyone ever really learned anything useful in any of his classes. For me, I never saw any works of art turned out by any of his students while I was in school there. Some fairly nice, but nothing outstanding.
I first met him when I was eleven years old (I started school when I was five) and he was trying to tell us how to make a small metal pan. This pan was to be made out of a Number 10 tin can, flattened, rolled, traced and cut to shape, bent, polished and soldered. Easy, right? It would be now . But at eleven years old, I didn't even know what tinsnips were, much less what solder was.
OK. You have four class periods to get this done.
First class period--
Get a #10 can
Remove paper label
Remove bottom of can
Using tinsnips, cut can along seam to make sheet of metal
Roll metal flat
Trace drawing of shape on sheet, using awl
Insert cut lines and fold lines on shape, using awl
Secure teacher approval of shape drawing, cut and fold lines
Using tinsnips, cut out shape drawing in rough
Trim blank pan to correct configuration per shape drawing
Secure teacher approval of pan blank, as cut
Bend pan blank along fold lines
Secure teacher approval of bends
Polish corners of pan with steel wool
Solder corners
Polish finished pan
Secure teacher approval of completed pan
Ah, that was easy. Let's see how far we came along--
Got the can, removed paper label--oh, oh--can opener broken.
We sit the rest of the period in a dingy, dusty and stinking room. Lantern Jaw lectures us for about an hour on nothing anyone is in the least interested in. Actually, I cannot remember what he talked about, only that the talked. And talked. And talked.
So, how does it go in the second class period? Not too bad. We actually got to cut the bottom out of the can and roll it flat (the trick was to roll it so that the rings around the can were removed, and then turn it over and roll it the other way to flatten it.) But the hard paper drawings were all cut and frayed plus there are only four or five awls and there were about forty of us in the class. Now, after two full class periods, we were about where we should have been halfway through the first. But, that is okay, we still have eleven weeks to go at two classes per week. Oh, after the awl fiasco, he again devoted the rest of the period to talk, talk, talk.
When we got back the next week for the third class period, we got some really good news. No, I mean reallllly good news. The ninth grade classes had taken the seventh grade classes projects and placed them in the trash barrel and the janitors had dumped them. No one knew this until we came in for the third class period and we found our cribs empty. Back to the old drawing board, so to speak. Peel, snip, rool, trace, etc. By this time we actually knew what the machines were--mostly anyway, and we zipped right along until we discovered that the bender did not want to work properly and would only bend about half the line correctly, the other half having to be done by hand. About three people actually got their pans done that day, the rest of us did not. About a half hour before the period ended, someone threw some water in the forge and the resulting explosion resulted in sore butts for us all (since no one would rat out the perpetrator of such a deed) and a twenty minute stand in the rain while the smoke cleared.
Period four was forty-five minutes of lecture on the dangers of throwing water in a hot forge and the fact that it took a couple of hours or a couple of days to regain proper temperatures--I never did get which he meant as he said both a number of times (but what the heck, I was just a seventh grader and wasn't supposed to be smart about such esoteric things, anyway, right?) The other thirty minutes, we tried to find our projects--no luck, so back to the drawing board again.
To shorten the sad tale, my metal shop project for that first year turned out to be THE PAN. Two class days before the twelve weeks ended, I turned in my pan. Lantern Jaw was his usual sarcastic self but gave me a B on it. He then told me that my grade for the twelve weeks would be a D, as I had not completed any other projects. In point of fact, only two kids did, and they were two of the three that had gotten their pan done in the very beginning. The rest of us had no chance to get anything accomplished as our projects kept disappearing between class sessions. All of went to the Principal and he directed that we receive the grade we got on THE PAN for the twelve weeks. Good move, Baldy. OH, sorry, you don't know about Baldy yet. We'll get there in another post, sometime. Maybe.
Lantern Jaw's jaw hung just a wee bit lower and he was not a happy camper.
We next encounter Lantern Jaw as eighth graders. A year wiser--or dumber. Guess what we were supposed to do? Correct. We got to do THE PAN again. But I think we were smarter. We had four or five guys who knew how to make them and to do it quickly. They became our 'helpers' and made all forty pans themselves. We all went through the charade of presenting them to Lantern Jaw in the proper sequence and all got an A on THE PAN--every single one of us. He was overjoyed, he thought he had a bunch of geniuses working there.
We all then had to select our projects for the balance of the twelve weeks--and we still had eleven of them to go. We all got together and decided to make knives. There was a twofold thing going on here of course. There was not nearly enough metal for the blades for all of us and the other classes too and we left notes scattered around as to the reasons we wanted to have our own knives--gutting squirrels, deer, cutting wicks off lanterns. All in fun.
So he decided we would all be able to make knives, except that, as materials were in short supply, we would do it as teams. One would do the blade, another the sand work in the foundry, and the third would do the finishing (knocking the burrs off the handle, filing, shaping and polishing.) This was an ideal solution for Lantern Jaw. No one would be allowed to take the knife home with them, after grading the handles would be melted down for reclamation and the blades would be blunted and used again another time.
It was also the ideal solution for us. We had those same guys do the work while Lantern Jaw was kept busy near his desk answering stupid questions all us dummies came up with, along with bringing poor quality fakes up to show him so he could demonstrate his expertise in correcting them. But it worked great. We all ended up with an A minus or a B plus for the twelve weeks. And no more Lantern Jaw until next year.
When we returned to school for the ninth grade, we were hit with terrible news. The Mechanical Drawing instructor had left over the summer and no new teacher had been hired. As Lantern Jaw had some experience in this, he was assigned both Mech Drawing and Metal Shop. As the rooms adjoined, he would have two classes going at the same time. So we had him for Metal Shop in the winter and Mech Drawing in the spring. And believe me, Metal Shop in the winter was no fun at all.
We had a cold, snowy winter. The Metal Shop was at the top of the hill and we had to walk up that hill after the gym teacher had driven his car down it and made it icy. I never could understand why he felt it necessary to drive up a street and then down that hill on the narrow unpaved lane. Maybe he didn't know how to back up or maybe reverse gear was gone in that old Nash and he couldn't turn around like any normal person would do. hatever, that has nothing to do with Lantern Jaw.
The heating system in the Metal Shop was basically the foundry/forge and the soldering ovens. The overhead heaters worked about one day a week and the floor heaters simply did not. we had the class the very first thing in the morning so the shop had set overnight with no heat since the foundry was turned way down overnight and the soldering ovens were turned off. Most days we had ice on the floors and it was impossible to see outside unless you scraped the frost off the windows. But we muddled through. We again made THE PAN, using our proven system. And this year we did welding.
Well, some of us did. We took on a class project, a section of fancy wrought metal fencing. Six feet high and twenty feet long. All we had to do was bend it, weld it, polish it and paint it. Yeah, right--we also had to come up with ways to do it too. But we got it done and it looked great. We put it in as the front wall of the tool room. Got an A on that too, as a class. Of course, you know as well as I that most of us didn't do a whole lot on the project, a little grunt work here and there, and let the guys who knew what they were doing do their thing. But that was okay with Lantern Jaw, it gave him an audience for his talks. And he used it to his advantage.
He regaled us more than a few times with tales of what he and his buddies had done while in the service. And those were not always nice things. That led us naturally to discuss among ourselves some of the things we might get by with if we had the guts to do them.
Dull winter turned into spring and we were freed of Metal Shop and went next door for Mech Drawing. Now how mechanical can drawing get. You know by now what we did in Metal Shop. Care to guess about Mechanical Drawing. Right, we drew THE PAN, from all perspectives.
Now Lantern Jaw was a real creature of habit. The administration was another case. Every twelve weeks, the administration juggled our gym, art and music schedules around. In winter, we had Metal Shop as our first class (actually two class periods) and art or music afterward. In the spring, they shifted us to gym for first period and Mech Drawing for the next two. Anything to confuse you. In any event, every morning after second period started, about 9:15, the teachers all gathered in the kitchen for morning coffee. Some took only a few minutes, some took most of the period. Lantern Jaw was a talker so he usually took the whole period.
As he left each morning, he would always get a drink at the fountain and turn and say, "In a few minutes, guys," and disappear. When he got back, it was always, "I got held up this morning," walk to the fountain, take a drink and then sit down at his desk.
Our last class period before the year end, the process was normal. He took his drink, made his statement and walked out the door. We sat and talked until we saw him leave the kitchen to make his return, then each of us urinated on the fountain. He arrived, said, "I got held up," and leaned over to take his drink. We all burst out laughing. "What's so funny, guys?" And I couldn't believe it, but not a single person finked. We all got one whack with the paddle while laughing our fool heads off at the puzzled look on his face.
As we walked out the door for the last time, we were all saying that it must be something in the water, our last tribute to Lantern Jaw.
I didn't see Lantern Jaw for a number of years, but when I did see him he was only older, still Lantern Jaw. He was a volunteer at as local hospital at the time. He still lived in the same place in town where he always had. It had been about thirty years since I had seen him. He passed away a few years ago at 87.
He was a really good man, I guess. At the time I knew him I really didn't think so. But time has a way of smoothing out some bumps and glossing over a few of the disappointments and torments we had as kids. And, as kids, maybe we didn't know as much as we thought we did. It is always much easier to think well of someone than you you may have earlier in your life.
Lantern Jaw was a teacher at the junior high school in town. He taught Industrial Arts classes--Metal Shop and Mechanical Drawing. I can't say whether anyone ever really learned anything useful in any of his classes. For me, I never saw any works of art turned out by any of his students while I was in school there. Some fairly nice, but nothing outstanding.
I first met him when I was eleven years old (I started school when I was five) and he was trying to tell us how to make a small metal pan. This pan was to be made out of a Number 10 tin can, flattened, rolled, traced and cut to shape, bent, polished and soldered. Easy, right? It would be now . But at eleven years old, I didn't even know what tinsnips were, much less what solder was.
OK. You have four class periods to get this done.
First class period--
Get a #10 can
Remove paper label
Remove bottom of can
Using tinsnips, cut can along seam to make sheet of metal
Roll metal flat
Trace drawing of shape on sheet, using awl
Insert cut lines and fold lines on shape, using awl
Secure teacher approval of shape drawing, cut and fold lines
Using tinsnips, cut out shape drawing in rough
Trim blank pan to correct configuration per shape drawing
Secure teacher approval of pan blank, as cut
Bend pan blank along fold lines
Secure teacher approval of bends
Polish corners of pan with steel wool
Solder corners
Polish finished pan
Secure teacher approval of completed pan
Ah, that was easy. Let's see how far we came along--
Got the can, removed paper label--oh, oh--can opener broken.
We sit the rest of the period in a dingy, dusty and stinking room. Lantern Jaw lectures us for about an hour on nothing anyone is in the least interested in. Actually, I cannot remember what he talked about, only that the talked. And talked. And talked.
So, how does it go in the second class period? Not too bad. We actually got to cut the bottom out of the can and roll it flat (the trick was to roll it so that the rings around the can were removed, and then turn it over and roll it the other way to flatten it.) But the hard paper drawings were all cut and frayed plus there are only four or five awls and there were about forty of us in the class. Now, after two full class periods, we were about where we should have been halfway through the first. But, that is okay, we still have eleven weeks to go at two classes per week. Oh, after the awl fiasco, he again devoted the rest of the period to talk, talk, talk.
When we got back the next week for the third class period, we got some really good news. No, I mean reallllly good news. The ninth grade classes had taken the seventh grade classes projects and placed them in the trash barrel and the janitors had dumped them. No one knew this until we came in for the third class period and we found our cribs empty. Back to the old drawing board, so to speak. Peel, snip, rool, trace, etc. By this time we actually knew what the machines were--mostly anyway, and we zipped right along until we discovered that the bender did not want to work properly and would only bend about half the line correctly, the other half having to be done by hand. About three people actually got their pans done that day, the rest of us did not. About a half hour before the period ended, someone threw some water in the forge and the resulting explosion resulted in sore butts for us all (since no one would rat out the perpetrator of such a deed) and a twenty minute stand in the rain while the smoke cleared.
Period four was forty-five minutes of lecture on the dangers of throwing water in a hot forge and the fact that it took a couple of hours or a couple of days to regain proper temperatures--I never did get which he meant as he said both a number of times (but what the heck, I was just a seventh grader and wasn't supposed to be smart about such esoteric things, anyway, right?) The other thirty minutes, we tried to find our projects--no luck, so back to the drawing board again.
To shorten the sad tale, my metal shop project for that first year turned out to be THE PAN. Two class days before the twelve weeks ended, I turned in my pan. Lantern Jaw was his usual sarcastic self but gave me a B on it. He then told me that my grade for the twelve weeks would be a D, as I had not completed any other projects. In point of fact, only two kids did, and they were two of the three that had gotten their pan done in the very beginning. The rest of us had no chance to get anything accomplished as our projects kept disappearing between class sessions. All of went to the Principal and he directed that we receive the grade we got on THE PAN for the twelve weeks. Good move, Baldy. OH, sorry, you don't know about Baldy yet. We'll get there in another post, sometime. Maybe.
Lantern Jaw's jaw hung just a wee bit lower and he was not a happy camper.
We next encounter Lantern Jaw as eighth graders. A year wiser--or dumber. Guess what we were supposed to do? Correct. We got to do THE PAN again. But I think we were smarter. We had four or five guys who knew how to make them and to do it quickly. They became our 'helpers' and made all forty pans themselves. We all went through the charade of presenting them to Lantern Jaw in the proper sequence and all got an A on THE PAN--every single one of us. He was overjoyed, he thought he had a bunch of geniuses working there.
We all then had to select our projects for the balance of the twelve weeks--and we still had eleven of them to go. We all got together and decided to make knives. There was a twofold thing going on here of course. There was not nearly enough metal for the blades for all of us and the other classes too and we left notes scattered around as to the reasons we wanted to have our own knives--gutting squirrels, deer, cutting wicks off lanterns. All in fun.
So he decided we would all be able to make knives, except that, as materials were in short supply, we would do it as teams. One would do the blade, another the sand work in the foundry, and the third would do the finishing (knocking the burrs off the handle, filing, shaping and polishing.) This was an ideal solution for Lantern Jaw. No one would be allowed to take the knife home with them, after grading the handles would be melted down for reclamation and the blades would be blunted and used again another time.
It was also the ideal solution for us. We had those same guys do the work while Lantern Jaw was kept busy near his desk answering stupid questions all us dummies came up with, along with bringing poor quality fakes up to show him so he could demonstrate his expertise in correcting them. But it worked great. We all ended up with an A minus or a B plus for the twelve weeks. And no more Lantern Jaw until next year.
When we returned to school for the ninth grade, we were hit with terrible news. The Mechanical Drawing instructor had left over the summer and no new teacher had been hired. As Lantern Jaw had some experience in this, he was assigned both Mech Drawing and Metal Shop. As the rooms adjoined, he would have two classes going at the same time. So we had him for Metal Shop in the winter and Mech Drawing in the spring. And believe me, Metal Shop in the winter was no fun at all.
We had a cold, snowy winter. The Metal Shop was at the top of the hill and we had to walk up that hill after the gym teacher had driven his car down it and made it icy. I never could understand why he felt it necessary to drive up a street and then down that hill on the narrow unpaved lane. Maybe he didn't know how to back up or maybe reverse gear was gone in that old Nash and he couldn't turn around like any normal person would do. hatever, that has nothing to do with Lantern Jaw.
The heating system in the Metal Shop was basically the foundry/forge and the soldering ovens. The overhead heaters worked about one day a week and the floor heaters simply did not. we had the class the very first thing in the morning so the shop had set overnight with no heat since the foundry was turned way down overnight and the soldering ovens were turned off. Most days we had ice on the floors and it was impossible to see outside unless you scraped the frost off the windows. But we muddled through. We again made THE PAN, using our proven system. And this year we did welding.
Well, some of us did. We took on a class project, a section of fancy wrought metal fencing. Six feet high and twenty feet long. All we had to do was bend it, weld it, polish it and paint it. Yeah, right--we also had to come up with ways to do it too. But we got it done and it looked great. We put it in as the front wall of the tool room. Got an A on that too, as a class. Of course, you know as well as I that most of us didn't do a whole lot on the project, a little grunt work here and there, and let the guys who knew what they were doing do their thing. But that was okay with Lantern Jaw, it gave him an audience for his talks. And he used it to his advantage.
He regaled us more than a few times with tales of what he and his buddies had done while in the service. And those were not always nice things. That led us naturally to discuss among ourselves some of the things we might get by with if we had the guts to do them.
Dull winter turned into spring and we were freed of Metal Shop and went next door for Mech Drawing. Now how mechanical can drawing get. You know by now what we did in Metal Shop. Care to guess about Mechanical Drawing. Right, we drew THE PAN, from all perspectives.
Now Lantern Jaw was a real creature of habit. The administration was another case. Every twelve weeks, the administration juggled our gym, art and music schedules around. In winter, we had Metal Shop as our first class (actually two class periods) and art or music afterward. In the spring, they shifted us to gym for first period and Mech Drawing for the next two. Anything to confuse you. In any event, every morning after second period started, about 9:15, the teachers all gathered in the kitchen for morning coffee. Some took only a few minutes, some took most of the period. Lantern Jaw was a talker so he usually took the whole period.
As he left each morning, he would always get a drink at the fountain and turn and say, "In a few minutes, guys," and disappear. When he got back, it was always, "I got held up this morning," walk to the fountain, take a drink and then sit down at his desk.
Our last class period before the year end, the process was normal. He took his drink, made his statement and walked out the door. We sat and talked until we saw him leave the kitchen to make his return, then each of us urinated on the fountain. He arrived, said, "I got held up," and leaned over to take his drink. We all burst out laughing. "What's so funny, guys?" And I couldn't believe it, but not a single person finked. We all got one whack with the paddle while laughing our fool heads off at the puzzled look on his face.
As we walked out the door for the last time, we were all saying that it must be something in the water, our last tribute to Lantern Jaw.
I didn't see Lantern Jaw for a number of years, but when I did see him he was only older, still Lantern Jaw. He was a volunteer at as local hospital at the time. He still lived in the same place in town where he always had. It had been about thirty years since I had seen him. He passed away a few years ago at 87.
posted by tanstaafl | 11:44 AM
4 Comments:
I had Lantern Jaw too--only by then he was only teaching Mech Drawing---a liked the class--all you had to do was be precise in your drawing and measuring. I remember my friend Mandy and I would, as well as the whole class, would be listening to WKEE on the radio--the whole post disco era stuff, and drawing away. The girls behaved pretty well--he had a lot of problems with the boys, though, especially our jocks. Paddles were used......
Is Mrs. Goodman still alive????
Ms. Goodman, if you please. The last I heard, about two years ago, she was still attending every class reunion over at Barboursville Park. I did see where her mother died about five or six years ago, but as far as I know she is still alive and kicking. We usually called her Penny, although her name was Carolyn.
I will never drink from a water fountain again.
:) lol
Then again, Mrs. Van Nostran passed away recently---she was the one who taught the health class in 9th grade where we had to bring home the eggs that had their insides blown out and were decorated to look like babies and we had to take care of them---what a birth control measure for teens----worked for me, the eggs were a pain in the butt.....If I had only remembered the lesson as I grew up----nah, I love my kidlets, even if they can be rather ummmmm interesting to deal with!!!!LOL :)
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