A ‘favorite daughter’ shares ‘Memoirs of Carl Bates’ - Part II

A ‘favorite daughter’ shares ‘Memoirs of Carl Bates’ - Part III

Note: This is the third segment of a multi-part series on the life and times of a well-known Clinton County native, Carl Bates. He lived in the Elsie area for many years of his life, and is perhaps best remembered for the 20 years he served as Superintendent of the Clinton County Intermediate School District, retiring in 1969.

These ‘Memoirs’ are presented in his own words, written in his latter years – and, as he says at the conclusion, retyped and appreciated by his "favorite and oldest daughter," Dorothy (Bates Bakita)." The copy and photographs are provided courtesy of Dorothy Bakita – who herself served for many years as a teacher at St. Johns Public Schools.

Chronological History of Myself

Born on the Meridian Road and lived there about eight years. My recollections of this home are that Dad built a new barn there, he farmed his own 24 acres and rented land that was available for his farming operations. The creek that was one-half mile south of us furnished a lot of swimming and fishing. I suppose the deepest holes might have been two feet deep, a whooping big fish might have been a seven inch chub. Regardless of the size, they had to be cooked.

It was from this location that I started school, and I remember quite vividly my first day there. I wet my pants and accumulated a puddle under my seat on the floor. The teacher came back and wanted an explanation. The only one that I could come up with was that it must have been the little girl sitting in front of me. I don’t think the teacher bought my explanation. Right after that incident, we got a little dissertation on how to raise our hands with one finger up if we wanted to leave the room and go to the old outside five holer.

At seven or eight years of age, we moved to the Ridge Road and were in the Meachum School District, three miles north of Elsie or two miles east of Bannister. I was in the third grade. My Dad was cleaning up his new farm and for that period of time kept a supply of dynamite around. I stole caps from his supply and got quite proficient in leaving the school room, going out to our outside two-holer, wrapping a dynamite cap in a roll of paper, laying it on the seat of the toilet, and setting fire to it.

The timing was about right for me to be coming in the school, when there would be a loud blast out back. Teacher never responded to those unexplainable blasts. The teacher’s favorite means of punishment was to have the culprit stand in front of the room for a period of time. I got pretty well acquainted with the rest of the room, because I could see them well from that vantage point.

My folks talked it over, apparently at home, and decided to pay tuition to Elsie School for us the next year. I had passed the third grade in the Meachum School. The next fall my mother took her little boy, Carl, to the front door of the third and fourth grade room, knocked, and the teacher came out.

Mother said to the teacher, "This is my boy Carl, and he went to school in the rural school last year. He passed his grade, but I don’t think he learned very much. I would like for you to try him in fourth grade and if you’re not satisfied, put him right back in the third grade again."

I could not believe my ears and thought what chance have I got with an introduction like that? Well, it worked about the way I predicted. I lasted about a week in the fourth grade and back I went, and again, I thought I was doing just fine.

Eventually I got to High School and I think I passed all subjects in the ninth grade, and early in the fall of my sophomore years, the English teacher told me to stay after school. I did, and I stayed just one hour and she never appeared. I knew my mother was in the hospital and Dad had chores to do alone, so I walked out and went home.

Next day, the English teacher said that there are some people in class that won’t do as they are told, so at this time he can leave the room. I did, and refused to make any effort to get back in class. Even then, I knew enough to know that I was wasting my time, especially when my Dad was home trying to keep things together, so I notified everybody concerned that I was quitting school. I helped Dad do the fall work, and then I took the train to Lansing in 1917. Must have been 14 years old; the men were overseas.

I got a job at the Reo for the winter and I went to work every morning, and after I got in the plant, I did not have any idea what the weather was like outside. Well, I worked there until it was getting spring. When I went to work in the morning, weather looked like a good day coming up and when I got out at night, it looked like it had been a nice day. I got a small case of related homesickness.

On one pay day, I told my boss that I was going to quit on the next payday, two weeks hence. I thought he would raise a little hell and he calmly said O.K. Well, I thought that over for a day, and then went to see him again. I said, "If it’s all right with you, I will quit at the end of this week," and as I walked out of there and took the train home, I knew that I never again would work in a factory.

About that train trip from Lansing to Elsie. In those days, there was a third rail electric car that ran from Owosso to Lansing and likewise, one that ran from St. Johns to Lansing. When I left Lansing, I got on the St. Johns car instead of the Owosso car, and of course ended up in St. Johns. Had to wait all day to get a train on the Grand Trunk to Owosso from St. Johns, and then had a big wait in Owosso to get the 9 o’clock train on the Ann Arbor for Elsie. An all day deal to get from Lansing to Elsie.

My folks had sold the farm and bought a house in Elsie when I arrived, and I quickly got a job with the local Ekenburg milk plant as a truck driver. The truck was an old two-ton Republic, hard tired, dual wheeled truck that held 55 ten-gallon milk cans on it.

My job was to do any trucking that the plant required, but a regular assignment was taking cans of condensed milk to Elsie and Ovid Railroad Depots for shipments to ice cream manufacturing places around the state. Another daily job was to get a truckload of ice out of the icehouse and back up to the milk plant, and shove that ice through a door into the ice-cooled refrigerator inside.

There was not a sign of a brake on this truck, and the only such control was to downshift until a slow speed was attained, and then shift into reverse, and ease into the power gently. I recollect that after I felt master of the situation (about a week), I would get the motor revved up and turn the switch off, let the motor turn over a few times with the accelerator pressed down and then when the switch was turned back on, I got some beautiful backfires.

Sure enough, it did not take many of these before I blew the muffler off and that was just the way I wanted it. Now at every opportunity I made my route by the High School, gave them a few backfires and then a take off with no muffler, knowing full well that my girl inside knew I was saying "Good morning" to her, "I am going by now," "See ya later."

Well, that fall, Dad said to me, "We are living right here by the school, and maybe it would be a good idea for you to start school again this fall". As the football weather came on, I got the fever and went back, now a tough little guy that had been out in the world.

I finished High School on schedule from there on, and in my last year began to give some thoughts to .......then what?

It was here that I took an attitude that I was a normal guy, and then I looked at older people that I thought were normal. I studied their situation in life, what they were, what they had, their apparent goals and found a lot of them that I did not care to copy. So, I decided on college and my main interest had been in athletics, so I would become a coach.

As I looked at other people in their walks of life, I did not develop an attitude of ever setting a goal of obtaining a lot of money, but I did develop a horror of being an old man, past working days, without sufficient money to care for my wants. Every county had a "poor" farm in those days, not Social Security, etc.

Had a very rough time getting through the first year, as I did not know how to study; made it in due time and in the fall of 1925, took my first job of coaching in Breckenridge, Michigan, salary $1100. The superintendent was in Mt. Pleasant at the time I was enrolled. He was in a degree program, went for his first superintendent’s job at Breckenridge in that same fall. He was also a minister (Glen McCarty).

We had a few talks before going to Breckenridge and he wanted to be real sure that I knew football, because he did not know the difference between a touchdown and a touchback. I was there two years when Ernie Knight, my High School superintendent wrote me a letter and said the board voted last night to offer me the job of coaching in Elsie, and a PS said I might be interested to know they also voted to offer Beulah Clark (my girlfriend) the third and fourth grade room.

So, Beulah and I talked it over, and as I knew now that coaching was not to be for very long, but I did like the idea of being invited to come back to my old High School to coach. Result was to be rather ironic; they then hired Beulah Cumberworth to teach third and fourth grade room, and I was to eventually marry Beulah Cumberworth.

Taught there two years and went to Alma College the following year for the first semester and paid $95 tuition for that one semester. I stayed one semester. State schools, at that time, were charging $7.50 per term, or $22.50 per year. Well, Alma was on semesters, and normals were on terms, and I had now decided that I would go to Western for spring term. So, I enrolled in a few correspondence classes from Central, and then in the spring term I enrolled at Western. Roomed with Jock Moore from Lansing, a professional fighter, that taught boxing at Western.