Mrs. Leakey

What a nice day – nowhere to be, nothing on the calendar, a day to do what I choose to do. Which is nice, but my choice began with cleaning because not doing it would have driven me batty. I felt much better once things were clean and in place. Some days it doesn't take a lot to keep me happy.

It's a great time of the year. Graduations have started, smaller schools are already coming to the end of the year, and this weekend is Mother's Day. And tomorrow is one of my favorite teacher's 80^th birthday. I hope she'll have the outstanding day she deserves.

Erlene Leakey was among everyone's favorite teacher as we went through school. She was younger than most of the other teachers, she was pretty, and she was very nice. She was one of those teachers who made everyone anxious to get to high school so they could have her as a teacher.

Like most of the teachers in our small school, Mrs. Leakey was qualified to teach multiple subjects. She taught all our business classes and also history. For freshman year, I only had her for Civics. History was one of my favorite subjects, and she made it even more so.

By sophomore year, I had her for multiple classes each year. With some teachers, that would have been a “personality overload” - but not with Mrs. Leakey. I had her for history both sophomore and junior years. Typing class was our sophomore year. Junior year I also had her for accounting, shorthand, and a practical business class. I can't remember what the exact name of that class was, but it was where we put together the monthly school paper and the yearbook.

When we started typing class, we had manual Royal typewriters. I believe there were two electric typewriters in the room, but I'm not sure we got to touch those that school year. When we started doing the school paper, the two electric typewriters were put into use. I don't want to say that this was “the olden days” - but our school paper was done on a mimeograph machine. We used the two-part paper that had an inked page on the back that left a reverse purple imprint of the typed letters on the back side of the white page.

That special white paper was then put, ink-side out, on the metal cylinder of the mimeograph machine. A really stinky fluid was added to the machine, and the copies of the school paper pages were cranked out one by one. We were fortunate that school was small enough that we would put out the paper for every family with just one mimeograph master sheet per page – it didn't wear out.

Those two electric typewriters were specialized in that they had a half-space key. The school paper was printed on regular 8 ½ X 11 sheets, with two columns in full-block style (meaning that both sides of the columns were straight). So we had to count words on each line and either add extra spaces to make it fit the column, or use the half-space key to squeeze letters together. If you made a typing mistake, you had to pull the white sheet away from the purple sheet and scratch the purple ink off the back with a razor blade. It could get really tedious when the deadline got away from us.

I had Mrs. Leakey during senior year for more shorthand and another year of doing the school paper and yearbook. My added advantage with her was that she lived just a block or so down the street from my Grandma in Norborne. When I stayed with Grandma for a few days in the summer, Mrs. Leakey was always gracious about having me stop by and see her. She was just a fun, lovely person.

Mrs. Leakey was also our class sponsor our senior year, so she was with us through all our graduation preparation. She and her husband also traveled with us as chaperones on our senior trip. Mrs. Leakey was, for me, the best part of high school. Students need more like her. A very Happy Birthday, Mrs. Leakey!