Caveman Principal

Caveman Principal

by Wil Bosbyshell

I was excited. I was six years old and beginning kindergarten at Newberry High School K-12 the only school in town in 1967. 

The year previous there had been two schools: one for African American kids and one for white kids. In 1967 my first year in kindergarten, the schools were combined, and all the kids went to Newberry High School. Newberry didn't have riots or protests over racial integration like other places. My mother's theory on this was that everyone in Newberry was poor: black and white. Everyone was too busy trying to put food on the table to get upset about kids of all colors going to school together. 

We were poor. My father was the Episcopal priest for Newberry and several surrounding communities. He didn’t get paid much but had a free house to live in behind the church. To compensate for this, we got free admission at my favorite local attraction Silver Springs where some of the Tarzan movies were filmed. On Sunday night my mother cooked the best meal of every week: spam and spaghetti with white sauce. Like I said, we were poor even if I didn’t know it at the time.

Newberry High School is a museum now. It was built as part of a statewide plan to build a school in every town in Florida in the late 1940s after World War II. It was a two-story brick building: hallway in the middle of each floor, three classrooms on each side of the hall. Kids entered Newberry High School in the first class on the left and moved clockwise to the next room each year until you reached sixth grade. Then you moved upstairs for grades seven to twelve. One room per class, twelve rooms total on two floors. Efficient.

The principal had their office on one end of the first floor and the school secretary on the other. In the 1940s there was no kindergarten so when that grade was added in the 1950s, they built a separate classroom just to the side of the original schoolhouse. That is where my mother dropped me off for Mrs. Bell’s kindergarten class.

Everyone remembers their kindergarten teacher. I loved Mrs. Bell. 

Kindergarten was fun. It was only half a day, and we took a nap on the floor or on small cots in the middle of the morning. On Friday of my first week of school, Mrs. Bell made an announcement, “Class we are going to go to the pep rally for the football game tonight. It will be very loud, so don't be scared. It's OK to yell when the cheerleaders lead a cheer, and we will sing a few songs.” At 11:00 o'clock Mrs. Bell said, “line up,” and we walked as a class to the gym. The grades entered by class: senior class first sitting on the top row of bleachers and kindergarten last. When we entered the gym, it was already very noisy with the whole school talking excitedly. 

Mrs. Bell and her class sat in the first row of bleachers with our feet dangling above the shiny basketball floor. The instant we sat down the pep rally began. 

The cheerleaders ran in with pom-poms, leading a few cheers. I didn't know the words. The kids in my class with older siblings knew the words. The cheers were fun, loud and silly. The boys on the football team came in and stood on both sides of a podium under one of the basketball nets. 

They all had their blue and gold varsity letter jackets on with NHS letters on their chests. They were giants to me. The principal came up to the podium, Mr. Pritchett. I knew the principal and feared him. Kids who were bad in school were sent to the principal’s office to be paddled. 

He had on a suit and tie in the un-air-conditioned Florida gym in September and was not sweating. He held up his hand and everyone got quiet. He spoke very seriously about how good the other team was. At the time, I did not realize how traditional this was in the south. He said the Newberry football team would have to play hard in order to win. He didn't talk long; the football coach took over talking. 

After that, a senior boy who was team captain came to the podium. He only said a few words when the double doors behind him burst open with a bang, both doors hitting the walls on each side.

A caveman ran into the gym, yelling and waving a big club! He had leopard skins on, like Tarzan, and furry boots. His face was blurry and dark. He had long, wild black hair sticking out in all directions. He ran straight up to the team captain and hit him with the club. I cringed, that was going to hurt. 

The boy jumped away, but I could see the club was made of foam. The caveman clubbed the coaches, and then charged the cheerleaders who screamed holding their pom-poms up over their heads to shield them from the caveman’s wrath. He clubbed a few more of the team members then ran to center court and let out a roar. The whole school roared back. He then swung from both basketball nets and ran up the bleachers to club a few of the seniors who seemed to enjoy this. “Why aren’t they scared,” I thought. 

He ran to the podium and yelled in caveman English, “We win tonight… ugh!” The terrifying caveman jumped around crazily leading the school to chant “N” “H” “S” over and over. The gym went wild, and the caveman ran out the door with one more swing on the basketball net for good measure. 

I looked over at Darlene Laird, one of my friends, she was white as a sheet. She was hiding behind Mrs. Bell. 

My eyes were wide. 

My mouth hung open. I was in shock. 

“There is a caveman loose in Newberry,” my six-year-old brain thought. I had seen cavemen in cartoons like Dino Boy, but I thought they were make-believe, not real. No one, including my parents, had told me that cavemen were real and lived in Newberry! If cavemen were real, what about dinosaurs and the yeti? 

While I was pondering how dangerous the town was now that I knew about the caveman, the team captain spoke briefly, the band played, and the cheerleaders lead more cheers. Principal Pritchett came back to the podium and seriously wished the team ‘good luck’ finishing with, “School dismissed.”

I came home and told my mom about the caveman. She was not surprised at all. She knew all about the cavemen. “That's the team caveman,” she said. “It's like the second mascot to the school’s Panther.” 

I said, “The school doesn't have a live panther running around, does it?” This was not an impossibility in Florida. In Gainesville, at the University of Florida, a live sixteen foot alligator was chained to a flatbed trailer for each game. This was decades before PETA. Parents sat their children on the giant chained alligator and took photographs. What could go wrong? Take a moment to contemplate that scene. 

That night my whole family went to the Newberry High School football game. In fact, every person in the town was at the game. In Newberry, the weekly high school football game was the most important event of the week in the fall. I didn't watch the game; I played football on the grass behind the bleachers with my buddies from kindergarten: Bruce King, Alvin Langford and Robert Peirce 

I was on the lookout for the caveman. No sighting at the game. 

I discussed the caveman with my best friend Bruce King. He was as scared as I was. We were in kindergarten, Scooby-doo scared us. We were genuinely scared by the monsters on Jonny Quest. And both were cartoons on TV Saturday mornings. The next Friday we had another pep rally and the caveman appeared again, as he did for every Friday that fall. After football season the caveman disappeared. Thank God. 

Over the summer my friend Bruce overheard his two older brothers say that the caveman was Mr. Pritchett the principal. We were in one of our many tree forts when he told me this. “No way,” I said. “That's what my brothers said,” Bruce replied. I was incredulous; however Bruce’s older brothers did know everything. It must be true. Wow, I decided to be more observant next year. 

Mr. James Pritchett was a beloved principal at Newberry High School for many reasons, one being his caveman alter ego. He was principal for several years. The town begged him to return, and he served a second term as principal a decade or so later. I went to a Newberry High School through the middle of third grade when I moved to Seminole Florida.

It's interesting to think about each grade of new kindergarten kids learning about the caveman at their first pep rally. It's an intelligence test. If you didn't figure it out by first grade that the caveman and Mr. Pritchett were the same person, then your parents should worry about your intelligence.

I had many principals after Newberry High School, but never one as good as Mr. Pritchett and his alter-ego the football pep rally caveman. Who could top that? 

Note: If you know the years Mr. Pritchett served as principal, let me know. 

A boy, his dog … and a monkey by Wil Bosbyshell

A boy, his dog … and a monkey.
By Wil Bosbyshell

I needed to leave on time to get to my 3rd grade class, which was 10 minutes away on my bike. Just like every day, I cautiously peeked out of our side door and looked across the porch. Nothing there. I was looking down as I crept, silently across the screened porch and opened the door to the side yard. The monkey howled just like in Tarzan movies, showing me his four big fangs as he shook the tree right next to the door! He got me again! This was a game we played every day, his game, and he always won. I was startled and truly frightened.

I jumped back inside. “Mama the monkey won't let me leave the house,” I whined. “He won't hurt you, and don't be late for school,” my mom said from the kitchen. No sympathy there; she knew the monkey was playing with me. I stared at the monkey. He stared back smiling a scary monkey grin and showing me his fangs again, In case I had missed them a few seconds ago, which I hadn’t. I took a big breath, ran onto the yard past the monkey and jumped on my bike.

In 1969, I was eight years old and lived in Newberry Florida. Newberry was a very small town then, one traffic light and the main road leading to Gainesville home of the University of Florida. Steve Spurrier won the Heisman trophy three years earlier as the college’s quarterback. My father was studying for his Ph.D. in psychology. We lived in a house that was originally built in 1890 for open pit phosphate mining company. Phosphate was discovered in 1883 in Alachua County in a town just a few miles away from Newberry. The mining was done with wheelbarrows, picks and shovels, then mule-drawn scrapers and finally steam shovels around 1905.

The mine office later became an episcopal church. The mine manager’s house, now the church rectory, had two porches: the front porch and a large wrap around porch that looked out to the back and side yards. Round wooden pegs served as nails and unpainted; cedar shingles seven feet long covered the outside. The mine closed in the early twentieth century and now it was the home of the Episcopal Minister and his family. The small church sat in the front yard of the house surrounded by 10 acres of woods.

On my bike, I rode down the dirt country road, farms and woods on each side. At Mrs. Hunt's house I pedaled furiously. Her dogs barked and gave chase. They never caught me that day or any other day. I thought it was because of my speed. Now I realized they just loved the chase.

Arriving home after school, I wasn’t going to let the monkey surprise me again. I quietly lowered by biked to the ground and peeked around the fence gate on my hands and knees. Where was the monkey? I looked in all the trees in our wooded yard. Nope. My sister was sitting at the picnic table in our yard reading. Ah ha! There he was sitting next to my sister Frances. He had his own book in front of him on the picnic table, turning pages in unison with her. He wasn’t a baboon, but looked like one. He stood 3 feet tall when he walked on all fours but stood close to five feet tall when standing on his two back legs. He sat taller than my sister.

I ran inside to my room. The house was big and dark, my room was the original foyer with double doors that had windows leading into the rest of the house. I threw my books on the bed and went out the front door to the front porch that served as the “puppy” porch. My dog Cissy always had a litter of puppies. I pet each one as they jumped all over me. One of my chores was to hose off the puppy porch every day. I called each puppy by name and cleaned up after them. Finished with my chore, whistling to Cissy, she and I ran through the house and out the back porch door, hoping the monkey couldn’t see me. Cissy was named after a character on our favorite TV show: Family Affair.

We were in luck! At that point, the monkey was busy raking leaves with a rake we left leaning on a palm tree in our backyard. The monkey imitated what he saw humans do in the yard: reading, pushing doll strollers, etc.

My mom insisted Cissy accompany me in the woods to protect me from the rattlesnakes. We passed the fence and entered the woods which were full of 100 year old open mine pits left over from the phosphate mine. The edges of the pits had softened over the years and trees grew tall from the bottom and the sides of the pits. The pit walls were full of caves. Some were just indentations, others too deep and scary for me to go in. Cissy ran around me to scare away the rattlesnakes.

My father and the other men on our street shot at least one six foot rattlesnake every week. My mom saw to it that we had lots of puppies and kittens to distract the snakes from me and my two sisters. My mother is deathly afraid of snakes to this day!

My sister Frances, my friends and I had created paths all through the woods. My mission today was to check each cage set out to recapture the monkey. We had learned he liked to eat oranges, not bananas. Our favorite TV show to watch while we got dressed for school each morning was Ranger Rick. He and his monkey lived in the Okefenokee Swamp and the monkey ate bananas like all normal monkeys were supposed to. We were afraid of our monkey, but we didn't want the research scientists from the University of Florida to catch him.

Continuing on my day’s journey, I stayed clear of the sinkhole pit where the edge could cave in and drag me down to a certain death. I thought about cutting across the cow pasture, but the bull was out in the field. He would surely chase me if he saw me. Again, certain death. I also stayed away from the electric fence that surrounded our neighbor’s hogs. I didn’t stop to swing on any of the tire swings or dig in the Boy Scout fort. After all, I was on a mission and it involved a monkey.

Each trap had been reset by the research scientist that day with fresh oranges. I used a stick and sprung the mechanisms, BANG the doors slammed down. I laughed. Cissy smiled like a dog and panted happy to be in the woods with her boy. Co-conspirators.

A man was standing in the yard talking to my father when I returned home. It was the scientist trying to catch the monkey that had escaped his lab a year ago. The men stood next to the church in our front yard. My father was the minister of three episcopal churches in the area. I stood next to him and listened to the conversation. The scientist was saying that all the traps kept being sprung mysteriously. My sister Frances came up and stood beside Papa on the other side. I looked at her. The scientist glared at the two of us. If adults were talking we were not to speak unless addressed directly. We knew not to make a sound. Papa assured him that we would not interfere with the traps. Papa didn't look down at me and Frances. The man looked hard at my father, with priest collar around his neck, deciding whether or not to accuse the preacher’s kids of tampering with University property.

Just then Mama called out the back door, “Dinner is ready.” Frances and I ran in the house. We escape, the “dinner bell” was just in time.

Our mother put food out for the cats and the dogs before we ate. The cats had a perch so their food was off the ground out of reach of the dogs and snakes.

The dining room had a big window facing the woods. Outside the window was a bird feeder so we could always count on birds to watch while we ate. It was not uncommon to see other animals: possums, raccoons, neighborhood dogs, deer, armadillos and one night even a herd of cows strolling through the yard at dinner time.

Frances and I had convinced our parents we needed to have “backwards” dinner that night. This was a scheme we had hatched so that we could have dessert first before the main course. I can't remember how we cooked up that scheme. As Mama served dessert of chocolate cake before dinner, our younger sister Mary Helen screamed and cried. We were breaking our routine and she was a baby just two years old and just couldn't handle the change. After dessert we had dinner: spaghetti and white sauce with spam cut into ribbons. The very best! In 1969, ministers got a house to live in rent free and free admission to Silver Springs, but the pay was pretty modest. As a boy I didn’t notice.

Frances and I were schemers, and at this point we instituted part two of our plan. “Mama, can we switch back to regular dinner?” we asked. “And have dessert a second time?” my mother inquired. She was not fooled a bit. I looked at Frances and gave her the ‘we tried’ look. “Sounds like a good idea to me” said Papa. We all laughed at how silly we were being. Mary Helen burst into tears again and knocked over her milk glass. She spilled her milk every meal and we were all tired of the spilling. Mama had had enough. She picked up the pitcher of the Carnation instant powdered milk and poured it all over the baby's head. Mary Helen was shocked, the milk ran down her face and onto the floor then she screamed even louder. Mama took her to the bathtub to get cleaned up while Papa, Frances, and I had second dessert of chocolate cake with chocolate icing.

“We like the monkey Papa” I said. “So do I” he said.

After dinner I got a jar and went to the edge of the yard where it met the dark, thick north Florida woods. There was a wall of light made by thousands of fireflies, which made catching them very easy. I put the jar next to my bed full fireflies, donned my pajamas and joined Mama, Papa and Frances in front of the TV. The whole family was excited to watch the first moon landing. We had a black and white TV with “V” shaped rabbit ear antenna on top. The screen was fuzzy with static on the one and only channel. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, but I missed it. I had fallen asleep on the floor in front of the TV, next to my sister. My parents watched the rest of the moon landing after they carried us to bed.

“Bill, you know I saw the monkey walking down the street this afternoon. He looked back at me, turned around and just kept walking,” my mom commented to my father. She continued, “I don't think we will ever see that monkey again.”

The monkey sitting on the picnic table outside the side screen porch. 

 Wil, Frances and Mary Helen in 1969.