PE is the high school equivalent of recess, and the only refuge boys have in a long day of ciphering, spelling, reading, and learning lessons from history. It is the place boys can make noise, run, jump, and even fight without getting in too much trouble, but in 1977, the balance between common sense and advanced education was altered. That year, school experts decided freshmen boys were having too much fun at school, and in order to curtail their enthusiasm, they decided to cut back on PE and add a new class called "Health".
Coach Wamble was our PE/Health teacher. I say teacher loosely because there wasn’t much for him to do in PE. Aside from a jock strap check and pre-class warm ups, old Coach basically had a free period. When you take a group of boys in shorts and t-shirts and throw them a ball or lay down a mat, they entertain themselves.
Making an A in Coach Wamble’s class was a given as long as you did two simple things. First, you had to dress out for class. I couldn’t understand why anybody would not dress out for PE, but there were always a few goofballs sitting in the bleachers in school clothes. Greg Crippen said it was a menstrual issue, but it would be a few more years before I knew what that meant.
The other requirement for a good grade in PE was to take a shower after class. For freshmen, taking a shower was no big deal (no pun intended). How hard could it be to dress out and take a shower before going back to class? But regardless of how easy it was, every now and then one of our classmates thought he could save time by skipping his shower and going straight to class, smelling like an old, wet shoe. The first week of school, one of the teachers discovered an offensive odor and tracked the scent to the culprit. The way I heard it, the teacher confronted Coach in the Teacher's Lounge and said something like this: "Coach Wamble, Wann Baughman came into my class today and smelled like a locker room! His arm pits were disgusting! Don’t you make those boys take showers when they get done with PE? If you can’t take care of the hygiene requirements of those boys I’ll tell Mr. Yancey, and he’ll take care of it!"
Well, you know what happens after a conversation like that...there was hell to pay. Coach Wamble lined us up single file, and on command we bent over to touch our toes. With his paddle "Old Faithful" in hand, he lit us up like a string of firecrackers. The sound was akin to Babe Ruth taking batting practice, and when we got to the showers, we had a bright red line across our butts because gym shorts and jock straps were no protection against Old Faithful. From that day forward, nobody left PE without a shower, and everything was fine until mid-September when our days of Bombardment, Kill Ball, and Smear the Queer were cut short. The new rule required us to have Health class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Instead of reporting to the gym, we were assigned a classroom, but fortunately, Coach Wamble was still in charge, and we were confident Coach thought the whole Health thing was as stupid as we did.
We rumbled into class on that first Tuesday expecting to have a subdued PE class in Coach Wamble’s room. We figured there were plenty of activities we could do on the carpet, like wrestling, Indian holds, or maybe relays. After all, what Coach ever cared about classroom stuff?
When we filed into class, Coach Wamble, a hulk of a man, sat silently behind his desk. He didn’t look left. He didn’t look right. Coach was a cross between Hoss Cartwright and Buford Pusser. It was September, but he wore his blue coaching jacket buttoned up to his throat and a pair of blue polyester coaching shorts that fell just above his knees. His white socks were high on his ankle, and his shoes were Spot-Bilt. In winter, Coach changed his attire only slightly with gold polyester coaching pants instead of shorts. Not once do I remember Coach wearing something other than his blue jacket, a Trojan pullover shirt, polyester pants or shorts, and Spot-Bilt coaching shoes…blue and gold every day.
When it came to the classroom, we discovered Coach had a brand-new set of eccentricities. He was on his feet in PE or on the football field, but in the classroom, he never stood up. Some teachers had heavy oak chairs at their desk, but not Coach. Coach's chair was a short, office chair with wheels on it, and he could scoot across the room and never get up. When he had to write something on the chalkboard, he wheeled back, reached up, and scribbled the assignment from his chair.
And there was something else. As our PE Coach, Coach had two rules that were simple and consistent, but as Classroom Coach he was a referee who capriciously enforced every rule, even the ones we never heard of.
While we were still finding a place to sit, the bell rang, Coach watched us but didn't say anything. We continued talking but became increasingly uncomfortable under Coach’s statue-like stare. The noise gradually faded until it was completely quiet. Coach scanned the room like an oscillating fan and spoke for the first time.
“It’s been five minutes since the bell rang. This is not the Southland Mall, it is a place of higher learning where you have disrupted the peace of other students who are eager to learn. You’re old enough to have some respect. Line up beside my desk and get your lick right now!”
When we came into his classroom, we mistook Coach's quietness for indifference. Now we were seeing Coach like we had never seen him before, and we couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. He pulled Old Faithful from his right top drawer like a gunfighter drawing a pistol.
While the others sat wide-eyed in confused stupor, I jumped up to be first in line. I was well acquainted with Old Faithful and gambled on the possibility that it would take Coach a few swings to get warmed up, and the first person in line might garner some sympathy. Today we call a victim's cooperation with an offender the Stockholm Syndrome, but what I was actually experiencing was the dumb ass syndrome…there was no sympathy.
I expected Coach to stand up, but he pushed his chair back, rolled to the side of his desk with a single push of his left foot, brought the paddle back with his right arm until it almost touched the floor, and snapped it up across my arse like flipping the paddle of a pinball machine. My gamble that he wasn't warmed up was sadly wrong, and as the year progressed, I watched with amazement at Coach's consistency. Each lick he delivered was supplied with the exact measure of force necessary to alter reality without rendering the victims unconscious. Common sense said Coach would wear down after swinging his paddle thirty times in a row, but it never happened. Each stroke was precise like a piston in an engine, and each one stung like lightning. All of us had the same painful experience that day, except one. Billy Cagle got the double tap.
Billy was a smart aleck kid with long hair which was totally inconsistent with Coach’s world view. Billy had the opinion that Coach’s foray into corporal punishment was unjust, and Billy was unable to hide his attitude for the perceived injustice. He gave Coach a look of distain as he bent over the desk, and Coach snapped the paddle like he was swatting a ball across the court. When he connected, Billy’s hair flew forward, and before he could regroup, Wamble caught him a second time with perfect one-two rhythm.
“Don’t you look at me sideways boy!”
Years of sports made old Wamble adept with any device that could be swung, thrown, or hit, but his tool of choice was Old Faithful, and he swung her the way a tennis pro swings his favorite racket...with skill and efficiency. We thought we were tough, but there was not a man among us who didn’t have a tear in his eye after a single stroke of Old Faithful.
On the second day of Health class we filed in meek as doves. We learned our lesson the first day, and we weren’t about to take any chances by upsetting the big guy. Wamble sat at his desk, watching us like a cat watching a flock of birds. We were quiet and orderly, and everyone was sitting in his desk when the bell rang. We thought all was well, but Coach ordered us to step forward. As he picked up Old Faithful. We looked at each other in confusion. Coach explained, “I know you are going to do something in class today that I won’t catch, so come on up here and get your punishment now.” I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to be a sissy.
Just like before, Coach gave each of us a lick, and from that day forward, he started class the same way. Every day we got at least one lick and sometimes more.
In one short week, freshmen Health class became the best-behaved group in the entire school. Say what you want about corporate punishment, but there is no doubt about its ability to change attitudes and behavior. During his social experiment, Coach transformed a bunch of rowdy boys into compliant students, eager to behave. Perhaps even more amazing than that, our coach, a man who loved sports and the outdoors, was serious about our health education. He taught us all kinds of useful stuff like: how to avoid drinking water with feces in it, the necessity of wearing mosquito repellant when visiting Africa to prevent malaria, and how to keep our ears clean. Coach was big on clean ears, and to reinforce his lesson, he had a daily ritual of dipping a Q-Tip in alcohol and swabbing his ears. Due to his diligence, the freshman boys had the cleanest ears in the entire school.
Our daily class routine involved quietly answering chapter questions in our book. Coach strictly forbade cheating and made it clear that anyone caught cheating would be punished. One day Cagle was looking over the shoulder of the guy in front of him and getting an answer to an important health question.
“Cagle…bring your paper up here and stand beside the desk!”
Old Billy Boy was caught red handed. I looked away not wanting to see him suffer, but I heard the smack of Old Faithful doing her work of deterrence. Before Billy returned to his seat, Coach took his paper and graded it. All of us expected Billy to get a big red zero on his paper, but to our surprise, Coach gave him an A. Being quick learners, we discovered cheating was a corporal offense, but it did not affect our grade. From that day on, we all had an A average.
That spring, we had an assignment on the World Health Organization and studied in silence. Coach, as always, was seated behind his desk. Occasionally, I looked up from my book to find him watching me like the Warden watching the yard at Rec time. Feeling intimidated, I held my head in my hand while reading my book and slowly raised my head and peeked through my spread fingers to find him staring at me. I didn’t look up again until Spencer Nix unwittingly made a public announcement.
Spencer and I had been friends since the second grade. He was the funniest guy at school, but Old Faithful had a way of restraining his creativity making Spencer a mere cog in a gear. But creative genius has a way of overcoming obstacles that beset the rest of us.
Our solitude was suddenly shattered. Spencer sneezed. Maybe it was a response to a strange fragrance, a rogue speck of dust, or even photic sneeze reflex (involuntary sneezing when exposed to a bright light), but whatever the cause, it rattled us awake. Fortunately for my old friend, sneezing alone was not enough to incur Coach’s wrath, but Spence did not stop there. With perfect timing, he topped off his sneeze with a bi-lateral fricative. To this day it is debated rather Spencer snarted, feezed, or merely snooted, but the result was all the same...the tranquility of Coach’s classroom was compromised.
A public gastric release always elicits hearty laughter from adolescent boys, but not in Coach’s class. Anticipating the natural reaction of his audience, Spencer burst out laughing, but the rest of us remained stoic…the somber effect of Old Faithful hovering over us like the Sword of Damocles. Spencer’s laugh was a clear and obvious attempt to garner support from his closest friends, like Spartacus and the slaves, but the room was silent. There was no rebellion. Instead, Coach held him dead in his sights.
“Nix come on up here and get your licks for disrupting my class.”
Wamble did not find Spencer’s faux pas amusing. Spence pleaded his case, claiming lack of control and no specific intent, but Coach did not waver. Spence pleaded for mercy, but to no avail, and his groveling was only making matters worse.
The rest of us were sorry for our buddy, but not enough to join him at the gallows. When Spencer leaned over the desk, Coach nailed him with a grand slam that echoed in the room like a gunshot and followed it up with a second one before he had time to recover. Nix got the old "one-two" and stood red cheeked and speechless. It was like watching a track star trip over a hurdle and fall face down in the cinders with the finish line only a few feet away: tragic yet humorous. Spence did his best to suppress his tears while the rest of us avoided eye contact. No shame there...each of us had stood in the same spot. We kept a straight face until the bell rang, and we hurried out, got a safe distance away and roared. Meanwhile, Spencer lived on to entertain us another day.
Freshman Health left a lasting impression on us. It taught us the value of corporal punishment, how to be efficient, the importance of having clean ears, and the necessity of controlling ourselves when sneezing. It is unfortunate that modern education has overlooked these essential elements of manhood. It is also unfortunate that there are not more men like Sam Wamble who took great interest in teaching little boys how to be men.
