I went to school in a small 3 room school at Jollyville for my first 7 years. Starting the 8th grade in Marble Falls was the first and only time I ever switched schools. I had it pretty good over a lot of kids moving to a new school. I already knew a lot of the kids there. I had been around MF almost every weekend and summer for my whole life. Running around with Glenn Lewis gave me the chance to meet a bunch of people and be exposed to a lot of situations.
Jimmy Frasier was the one person that probably knew best. When we made it to science class that first day, the desks were arraigned to where in alphabetical order Jimmy was directly across the aisle from me. Another new boy, Holland Lester was directly in front of me. The school officials that year had decided that separating the boys and girls was the best way to keep order. Jimmy, being the agitator he was he keep goading me to jab Holland with in the back with a sharp pencil. I suppose with me wanting to fit in, I was happy to cause a little confusion. After I did it a couple of times with him jumping with each poke. Holland finally had enough and jumped up ready to attack me. The teacher, Lanny Thompson not wanting to let things get out of hand on the first day called Holland to the front. He said he wasn’t going to allow that kind of conduct in his class and bent Holland over and swatted him 3 little licks with his wooden paddle. Jimmy and I both were laughing because the new kid got licks the first day.
When Holland returned to his seat, he said “Mr. Frasier and Mr. Lewis, come up here”. He then showed the two of us ten each of the hardest licks you could even imagine. He had been paying better attention to our actions than we realized. From that day on we all knew that if we got out of line, it was going to hurt.

This happened in the Old Granite Building that now houses the Falls on the Colorado Musuem. I was there in the building a few days ago for a meeting. There are renovations going on and I was invited to go upstairs (it has been mostly off limits to the public) to take a look around.

I couldn’t help but recall which teacher was in which classroom and of those teachers who was the most likely to take an unruly child out in the hallway to administer some learning at the end of a wooden paddle.

Then the thought was “how many licks did I get in that old building?” There is no way to put a number on it, but I’d say a bunch. It seems like almost every day something would happen to rile up a teacher. I guess they weren’t very tolerant back then.