RIVER CITY JOURNAL: AFTER HALF A CENTURY, MRS. RAYFIELD'S ADVICE STILL USEFUL

(Before you read this column, please turn to the Opinion page in Section B and read what Mayor Albert Spradling III has to say about Cape Girardeau's street work. He makes some good points, and you owe it to yourself to digest this information.)

OK. I'm assuming a lot of you just ignored the directions above and skipped right to this.

Shame on you.

If you had been a student in Ola Rayfield's first-grade class, you would have been gently reminded to listen carefully and follow instructions.

Mrs. Rayfield, as many of you already know, was the first woman I ever fell in love with. With her wavy black hair and her shiny black Ford, I thought she was a movie star.

But she wasn't. She was my first-grade teacher.

I have reached that age-advantaged point in my life where some of my memories are being divided into half-century segments. My first day at Shady Nook School in Greenwood Valley -- uphill both directions from my own beloved Kelo Valley -- was 50 years ago.

Eleven years later I was a freshman in college, thanks to my second-grade teacher at Shady Nook School who decided Alice Brinkley should not be the only third grader in the building, which had eight grades in one room -- 60 students in all. In reality, I think my second-grade teacher -- not Mrs. Rayfield -- was less concerned about Alice than those 16 squirming second graders who had all started to school together with Mrs. Rayfield.

In my very first class in college, which happened to be an English composition class under the watchful eye of the head of the English department, we were handed a test. I couldn't believe it. I had been in my first college class less than five minutes, and already there was going to be a test.

The test started like this:

"This test should take less than 10 minutes to complete. Please read through the entire test before answering any of the questions. After you finish the test and hand it in to your instructor, you are free to leave."

The test was three pages long. There appeared to be about 25 questions. How in the world did this professor think anyone could finish the test in under 10 minutes?

I wondered if I was ready for college.

I read the first question. It asked me to write an essay of 100 words about going to college.

Good grief, I thought to myself. That question alone could take more than 10 minutes.

The gloom in that classroom was getting darker and darker. I could hear other students muttering and moaning. The head of the English department, a prim, mostly bald man who liked bow ties and new authors like James Baldwin and John Updike, sat on a stool at his lectern reading a book. His lips were either clamped into a sliver of disgust or suppressing a smile. I couldn't tell which.

I tried to think of 100 words I could say about leaving Kelo Valley and going to college all the way across the state on a campus that once served as a Civil War battleground and still had a battlefield trench around the oldest building, Jewell Hall, which had been used by Union troops as a hospital.

Sure, the words came easily enough, but I can barely write legibly, and if I hurried the professor wouldn't be able to read my words at all.

After writing a sentence or two of the essay, I glanced at the next question to see what was in store: "Give 20 examples of interrogative words."

What?

Well, there was one.

By this time, much of the class had fully realized that it might not be possible to complete this "10-minute test" even in a full hour. More moaning and groaning.

In my despair, I remembered that first year at Shady Nook and the patience, kindness and perseverance of Mrs. Rayfield. And I remembered my teacher's oft-repeated reminders to listen carefully and follow instructions. I looked at the top of the test. "Please read through the entire test before answering any of the questions."

I started to smile.

Quickly, I glanced through the questions. Anyone trying to respond intelligently to all of them would have been sitting in that classroom all day, let alone a full hour or the advertised 10 minutes.

The very last question read like this: "Please sign your paper and hand it in. You are free to leave. Do NOT answer any of the questions. This is a test of your ability to follow instructions."

I had already wasted more than five precious minutes. But I never think of that class without remembering what I learned in first grade: follow directions.

I learned a lot of other stuff too. I learned how to whistle, sort of. I learned most the rules of Red Rover. I learned how to prime a pump when there's no water left in the bucket. (Most of you who grew up with farm wells will figure that one out.) I learned how to read, which to this day is still one of the most magical things I know how to do.

And I certainly learned that Mrs. Rayfield was the best teacher any first grader could ever have.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my mother in my favorite hometown in the Ozarks west of here -- which, if you read all the way through Mayor Spradling's Opinion-page column like I told you to, you now know the name of -- and we had lunch at the Zephyr Cafe, which has been there longer than 50 years.

On the way out, I paid the cashier at the counter near the front door. I didn't see anyone I knew, but I wasn't really looking. My mother stopped to visit with someone she knew, so I went outside to wait. My mother came to the door and motioned me to come back in. "There's someone who wants to say hello."

At the table right next to the counter holding the cash register was Mrs. Rayfield. She still looks like a movie star. "Come here and let me give you a hug," she said.

That's another thing I remember from first grade: hugs.

Do they still do that?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.