My Parents' First Teaching Jobs

A true prose story of life in rural Alabama in the 1930s.

My Parents’ First Teaching Jobs

 

By Elton Camp

 

This is a true story set in north Alabama in the 1930s.

 

Since few elementary or secondary schools were accredited during those times, local principals and trustees were largely at liberty to select anyone they chose to serve as teachers. A major step forward was the establishment of what were called State Normal Schools. These colleges were created for the express purpose of training educators.

 

The two most important for north Alabama were Florence for the western part and Jacksonville for the east. Training usually stopped after two years and the newly-minted teachers were sent out into an uncertain job market associated with the hard economic times of the Great Depression.

 

My parents met and married while enrolled at Jacksonville. After completing the rudimentary training, like many others, they had considerable difficulty finding employment in education. My father was forced to resort to a year as a share-cropper to his father-in-law on the unfamiliar red clay soil of south Alabama. He had grown up doing farm work, but on the lush, sandy soil of Sand Mountain. In the new environment,he found the going extremely difficult.

 

“This is the worst dirt I ever saw,” he complained to his wife. “It’s hard as a rock and sticks together in big clumps. No more than half the seed even come up.” 

 

The fields performed so poorly that he made almost nothing from months of backbreaking labor.

 

Finding a year of that life sufficient, the couple returned to north Alabama where he located jobs for them both at a small country school in the Lattiwood community of Marshall County. The building was a crude, frame, two-room schoolhouse without plumbing or adequate heating. It was surrounded with massive oaks. No grass grew on the grounds. Two crude outhouses served for bathrooms. The roof was of gray wood shingles. He was designated principal and she as teacher, although both actually taught students in three grades.

 

“It sure doesn’t pay much, but they’re building a house right next to the school that we can live in free. That’ll help since we don’t have a car and can’t afford to keep paying rent,” my father remarked to his young wife.

 

The community provided the tiny, unpainted, frame house to help teachers survive. It had neither running water nor electricity and they had to use an outdoor toilet. It was an accommodation little better than that seen in Third World countries of today, but the two kept the cottage and its grounds neat and clean and planted a productive garden at its side.

 

“Fifteen dollars a month for me and twenty for you, Mr. Principal,” she said with a rueful smile when they drew their first checks.

 

The pay was provided only during the months school was in session.To make matters worse, during some months the board of education paid the meager wages in what was called “script.” It was a written promise to pay and could be used as currency only with merchants willing to accept it on the basis of the credit of the State of Alabama.

 

During the Great Depression, when jobs of any type were scarce, they took what they could find.  Judged by current standards, it might appear impossible to live on such low wages, but the cost of necessities was far lower as was the standard of living.

 

To supplement the food from their garden, parents of students sometimes gave them produce. The school was important to them and they did what they could to keep it open. The couple “made do” with what was available. Almost all people were forced to make their own clothes, forego vacations, and eat at home. Even a trip to the movies was out of the question. The austere life style was widely shared and so taken for granted.

 

The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt had proven initially ineffective at the solution of the problems of American society.

 

(If they get enough reads, I plan to make this a series on rural life in the South during the past century.)