THE ULTIMATE WAR EFFORT

It was 1942. I was between 11 and 12 years old, in the 6th Grade at Citrus Grove Elementary School in Miami Fla.

The US had entered World War II about five months before after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Millions of men and some women had gone to war to fight. On the home front, for those of us too young or too old to enlist or be drafted, there was plenty to do to help the war effort. They sold War Bonds, but who had any money. We were fresh out of the great depression of the thirties.

Behind our school, we had begun scrap piles, to aid the war effort. There was one pile for metal and another pile for rubber. All the students delighted in hauling junk to school to add to the pile. We would comb the neighborhood looking for anything metal that could be thrown on the pile. Some of the larger kids even started to dismantle old cars and bring them in a piece at a time. After all, gasoline was rationed and you couldn't buy tires, so old autos were just so much junk. Of course, the tires from the junk cars went on the rubber pile.

We had a principal named Clarabell Cason. She was a person to be feared. She even looked mean. Her eyes were not in an even line. They tilted up on the left side of her face and her mouth tilted down on the other side. To say she was unattractive is an understatement. She ruled that school like a prison warden. This was a time and age when corporal punishment was not just allowed, it was expected, if you broke the rules. Each teacher was allowed to spank, or hit your hands with a ruler, or what ever they thought just for the infraction committed.

However, the ultimate punishment, if you were really bad, was to be sent to the Principal's office where Clarabell Cason administered the most painful penalty. She had a rubber hose that she would whip you with. It was one of those red rubber hoses like the kind that attached to a hot water bottle for purposes we didn't even know about at our tender age. We did know that it hurt when that hose was lashed across your backside. Very few kids actually had the rubber hose treatment. Just the fear of it kept you from committing anything so bad that the teacher couldn't handle the punishment.

So, on a pleasant balmy day in May in Miami, the entire school was summoned to the play ground behind the school where the scrap piles were growing each day. It was a mystery why we were assembled there in mid day. It wasn't a fire drill. It wasn't recess. What was about to happen? When all were lined up, facing the scrap piles, Clarabell Cason marched out of the back of the school with the dreaded red rubber hose in her hands and proceeded to throw it on the scrap rubber pile. She was making the greatest contribution to the war effort we had ever seen. The entire school broke into a cheer, and for once in the entire nine years I went to that school, I think I saw Clarabell Cason almost smile.

Clarabell Cason substituted a wooden paddle for her rubber hose, so she could still administer the ultimate punishment if needed. By the time the War ended I was well into High school. I will never know if Clarabell Cason went back to a rubber hose after the War. I really didn't want to know. Those days were past. I was on the verge of becoming an adult looking forward and never backward.

Learn more about this author, Richard Davis.
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