King 4ever
New member
Not sure if you remember the King kids (Mike, Joe, Jim and Julie) from Benton. I think at least 2 of us were in your sweet mom's 2nd grade class (and I believe you were in school with either Mike or Joe). What a wonderful teacher she was! She instilled a love for learning about everything inside of me that I have never gotten over. 
Her songs of "There's a hole in the bucket", "Anne Bolen - With her head tucked underneath her arm...", "I don't know why she swallowed a fly", and "There's a bump on the log" all had us kids rolling with laughter as she dramatized them while we sang. She had as much fun in our class as we did and we knew it.
In this day of political correctness overdrive, I remember a great lesson your dear mother taught a little blonde haired, brown eyed little girl. You see, my grandmother was VERY old school. She would have been well over a hundred by now. She spoke the language of her era and was not apologetic for it. She counted the people across the tracks as her friends and they would come up 2nd street and trade vegetables out of their gardens for her hot peppers. The color of their skin did not matter to her. She had a keen eye for character flaws though and would call one out in a minute if she didn't trust you. Everyone respected her and she respected them. Still, she called them what she'd always called them, the "n" word. She never used that word in disrespect. Now, if she called you a thief, a cheat, or a liar, you knew you'd been disrespected, but not the "n". That was just another one of her "friends" and she had many of them. Your mother, Mrs. Vick, knew that I thought the world of my nanny and would never believe she was saying anything in any way to hurt her friends. The day she overheard me talking to my friends in the same manner as my nanny; she pulled me over to the side, hugged me up close and talked to me. She explained to me that as times change, people and rules also change, but sometimes older people don't understand the changes or can even remember them.
Then Mrs. Vick told me how we had changed the rules of calling people the "n" word or any other word so we didn't hurt our sweet friends' feelings. She said it in such a way that I didn't feel scolded at all, I didn't feel bad towards my Nanny, or my friends. Most of all I knew I had not hurt my dear teacher. I have drawn on this experience so many times in my life in sharing with children a different approach than the way they are headed and I have had many come back to thank me later. Your parents always showed respect to us kids as well as other adults. That meant a lot to me even then.
Being in her class, we got to see Cactus Vick 3 or 4 times that year. I only remember him bringing the carruosel one time, but he would come read to us, talk to us about important things like what our world would be like when we got older and what we would do. I distinctly remember him coming one day towards the end of the year. He brought your mom some flowers and Twinkies for all of us kids. Then he started telling us about what great kids we were and how much he appreciated us being so good for his sweetheart. He told us of how much he loved her and how he'd "rope a 1,000 horses" for her. The whole time she sat over there hanging on his every word but shaking her head as she laughed. He thought she hung the moon and she thought he had. Being from a divorced family that was very broken at the time, this was exactly what I needed to see. Your dad was a great man and definitely a hero in my eyes; and your mom? They just don't get any better than her!
Julie King
Her songs of "There's a hole in the bucket", "Anne Bolen - With her head tucked underneath her arm...", "I don't know why she swallowed a fly", and "There's a bump on the log" all had us kids rolling with laughter as she dramatized them while we sang. She had as much fun in our class as we did and we knew it. In this day of political correctness overdrive, I remember a great lesson your dear mother taught a little blonde haired, brown eyed little girl. You see, my grandmother was VERY old school. She would have been well over a hundred by now. She spoke the language of her era and was not apologetic for it. She counted the people across the tracks as her friends and they would come up 2nd street and trade vegetables out of their gardens for her hot peppers. The color of their skin did not matter to her. She had a keen eye for character flaws though and would call one out in a minute if she didn't trust you. Everyone respected her and she respected them. Still, she called them what she'd always called them, the "n" word. She never used that word in disrespect. Now, if she called you a thief, a cheat, or a liar, you knew you'd been disrespected, but not the "n". That was just another one of her "friends" and she had many of them. Your mother, Mrs. Vick, knew that I thought the world of my nanny and would never believe she was saying anything in any way to hurt her friends. The day she overheard me talking to my friends in the same manner as my nanny; she pulled me over to the side, hugged me up close and talked to me. She explained to me that as times change, people and rules also change, but sometimes older people don't understand the changes or can even remember them.
Then Mrs. Vick told me how we had changed the rules of calling people the "n" word or any other word so we didn't hurt our sweet friends' feelings. She said it in such a way that I didn't feel scolded at all, I didn't feel bad towards my Nanny, or my friends. Most of all I knew I had not hurt my dear teacher. I have drawn on this experience so many times in my life in sharing with children a different approach than the way they are headed and I have had many come back to thank me later. Your parents always showed respect to us kids as well as other adults. That meant a lot to me even then.
Being in her class, we got to see Cactus Vick 3 or 4 times that year. I only remember him bringing the carruosel one time, but he would come read to us, talk to us about important things like what our world would be like when we got older and what we would do. I distinctly remember him coming one day towards the end of the year. He brought your mom some flowers and Twinkies for all of us kids. Then he started telling us about what great kids we were and how much he appreciated us being so good for his sweetheart. He told us of how much he loved her and how he'd "rope a 1,000 horses" for her. The whole time she sat over there hanging on his every word but shaking her head as she laughed. He thought she hung the moon and she thought he had. Being from a divorced family that was very broken at the time, this was exactly what I needed to see. Your dad was a great man and definitely a hero in my eyes; and your mom? They just don't get any better than her!
Julie King