At the risk of holding someone up for ridicule, I’m not going to name names here, but three surnames in Gallatin labeled you. Why? Townspeople considered these families the lowest of the low–unkempt and poor families said to be on “welfare,” whose fathers didn’t work hard enough and who had too many children to properly care for.

“Lola is your girlfriend,” I said to my classmate, Jerry, one day, referring to one of the children. “Oh, yuck,” he replied, though at that age any girl would have been yucky, I suppose.

“You look like a _ _ _ _ _,” I said to my friend, Jone, one day. “Why would you say that?” she said. It was the biggest insult one child could hurl at another. And you hated to sit in front, behind or next to one of “those children” in school.

Starting the 4-H Club in Town

Some people cared. In fact, County Extension Agent Eddie Binney started the in-town 4-H club in the city of Gallatin in large part to help some of these families, though they didn’t stay in the club very long. My friends and I, however, learned to sew and cook through belonging.

At Christmas, the churches offered charity for these families preparing boxes of food, clothing and toys, and I’m sure others in the town tried to help in other ways, as mentioned above. But the children, of course, could not help the families they were born into, and we–their classmates–were simply unkind.

 

Children Came to School Dirty and Ragged

The children of these families came to school in dirty or wrinkled clothes with stringy, unwashed hair, hands and faces, and no one wanted to associate with them during recess or lunch except their own brothers or sisters. I don’t recall these children being bullied, but we certainly shunned them. It was really unfair. 

She Didn’t Spit on Me

I’ve been haunted by one incident involving a child who sat behind me in the fifth grade. She didn’t talk well, apparently suffering a speech problem of some kind. She also walked with a limp, given that one leg was shorter than the other and kind of dragged that leg behind her. One of her shoes was built up to help, something the county Extension Agent provided, as the youngster lived with her grandparents who didn’t have money for special items. She came to school in ill-fitting clothes and, while she seemed clean, her hair was generally tangled.

One day I told the teacher, “Jean spit on me.” The teacher, Mrs. Volk, asked her if it was true and she replied, “I never (did that).” But the teacher believed me. I remember hearing Jean getting spanked with the wooden paddle in the cloakroom adjacent to the class. In fact everyone heard. Jean had done nothing to me. I just didn’t like her because she was different, and I’ve carried that guilt with me. As for paddling, yep, that was allowed in Gallatin schools in the 1950s.

Some Got Breaks

While most of the youngsters with these last names dropped behind in school and then dropped out, they didn’t all do that. A doctor’s wife worked hard to see that one of the young teens was given a college scholarship. Some others moved forward on their own to have successful lives, generally in St. Joseph or Kansas City. There, I suppose, they escaped their Gallatin family reputations. A couple of them married well, developing a higher standard of living for their own families.

I’ve often regretted the snubs I gave those children. I only feel lucky to have the parents I had. We weren’t rich, by any means, but ragged, unwashed or hungry was not part of my life experience. Of course, I’ll never forget the injustice I did to Jean.