And the
Blackboard Came Tumbling Down
by Don Drewniak
Sam Attar was
my eighth-grade math teacher decades ago at the
Slade School in Fall River, Massachusetts. He
prepared me for high school Algebra I, Geometry,
Algebra II and Advanced Algebra. I have always
been grateful for that. Nothing shy of a brain
transplant could have prepared me for calculus.
He cared about
kids and enjoyed interacting with them. Whenever
there was a pick-up baseball game on the
playground, he would do the pitching.
During the
course of the year, he met a small group of us
several times for duckpin bowling at the Durfee
Bowling Alley on North Main Street in Fall River.
He dominated the lanes, often to friendly cries
of “Cheater!”
Those were the
days before automated pinsetting machines.
Instead, the duckpins were picked up manually and
reset by human pinsetters, usually teenage boys.
In place of machinery occupying the space behind
where the pins were placed, there were black
barriers made of a mystery material.
Attar was not
only tall (6'6"), he was strong. His first
roll of every frame was sent down the alley with
tremendous velocity. The ball would usually
explode through the assembled pins and, more
often than not, bounce back off the barrier and
knock down some or all of the pins that had been
left standing.
No one dared
mess with him, so there was virtually no fooling
around in his classes. He kept the classes
interesting. We learned. The chalkboards (or
blackboards as they were then called) were made
of black slate and were most likely held in place
by glue that was first applied to them when the
school was built in 1928. Two separate
blackboards covered most of the front wall.
On those rare
occasions when the class was not paying attention
or getting a little noisy, he would use his right
index finger, which resembled a small tree trunk,
to pound on one of the front boards. The
resulting repetitive booming was the signal to
stop whatever crime we were committing.
It was shortly
before Easter when it happened. The Big Guy
walked over to blackboard closest to the
classroom door and pounded it upwards of a dozen
times. As he turned to face the class, the board
was noticeably vibrating. That was something I
hadn’t witnessed in the past.
The last chunk
of glue holding the board in place apparently
gave up the battle. He glanced back in time to
see the top of the board pulling away from the
wall, and managed to jump out of the way. Kaboom!
As it hit the floor, it broke into dozens,
perhaps hundreds, of pieces flying in every
direction. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
Following a
clinking sound made by the last piece of slate to
succumb to Earth’s gravity, there was
nothing but silence born of shock. That is, there
was nothing but silence until a kid named Harry
bellowed from the back of the room, “Wait
’til Mendoza see this, you’re gonna be
fired!” Mendoza was the principal.
That did it.
Howls of laughter broke out in every corner of
the classroom, including from two or three kids
who probably laughed for one of the few times in
their lives. Attar appeared to be in shock as he
stood, eyes wide open, in silence for what had to
be one or two minutes. Finally, he returned to
the world of the conscious and sent one of the
kids to get Mendoza, or Attila the Hun as I liked
to call him.
When the Evil
One stepped into the room and saw what seemed to
be a miniature war zone, he looked as if he
wanted to say, “What the hell (or worse)
happened?”
Before he
could speak, Harry yelled out, “It just fell
out of the wall. Mr. Attar was really lucky he
wasn’t seriously hurt.” No one else
said a word; however, most of us nodded our heads
in agreement.
“Are you
okay, Sam?” asked Mendoza.
I could tell
that the Big Guy was wrestling over whether or
not he should correct Harry’s version. In
the end, he simply said, “Yes.” And
that is the way it was.
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