Vnuchka Memoirs, Part 2

Three moves later

My interest in Russian was repressed for a few years. After the 5th grade, my family moved from Waco to Texas City to Bacliff and, finally, to La Porte, Texas. The move from Waco was caused by Hurricane Carla. My father was a roofer, and after the storm, the Gulf Coast was in dire need of his professional skills. We stayed in Bacliff while I went to 6th grade, then I started 7th grade in La Porte in 1962. That was the first year the school district integrated, so it was a tense year. The next year was huge, although I didn’t realize it at the time. One of the teachers got permission to teach Russian, if enough kids signed up for it. I jumped on it, as did a few of my friends. One of them, Jim, would become a lifelong friend. So in 1963 in south Texas,12 kids started learning Russian under Mr. Loyd Guidry. I’ll share a small anecdote just to illustrate a bit of my personality from then. One day, Mr. Guidry came in and said, “I’m going to give you a new Russian word, but before I do, I want to warn you. I don’t want to hear any silly jokes or stupid comments. It’s a Russian word, so just learn it.” He wrote the word on the blackboard “xop.” Translated, it is choir. Phonetically, it sounds pretty much the same as the English word “whore.” Mr. Guidry stared us down, practically daring anyone to say anything about the word. None of us did, until he turned his back on us to write something else. I seized the opportunity to lean over to Jim and whisper, “Does this mean Mr. Nesvadba is a whore leader?” Jim couldn’t help it - he just laughed out loud. Mr. Guidry whirled around and looked Jim straight in the eye and said, “What’s so funny, Jimmy?” Jim looked over at me, so I answered by telling Mr. Guidry what I’d said. Mr. Guidry said, “I warned you!” He told the class to work on their homework, then marched me down to the principal’s office. Texas was very much into corporal punishment back then, so I had to lean over a desk while Mr. Guidry swatted me with a paddle five times. It didn’t really hurt much, but it was embarrassing. I was one of the good kids, one of the smart ones. Kids like me didn’t get paddled at school. But it wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that I got “licks” at school.