Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Run Jimmy Run
Run Jimmy Run!
The 5 minute early release from school – 1963-64
I switched from Ogalla Community School, the Bureau of Indian Affairs School in Pine Ridge to Pine Ridge Public School (PRPS) for my fifth grade year. Supposedly there was going to be a ruling that all non-Indian children would not be allowed to attend OCS any longer. (There were some non-Indians who still hadn’t switched schools when I graduated from high school.) The only incident with fighting I had in fourth grade was when Johnny One Feather kept poking me in the back. He sat directly behind me. I turned around one day and stabbed him with my pencil. He had to go see the nurse to find out if there was a possibility of lead poisoning. There was none.
There was one other non-Indian in my class as OCS and only one other non-Indian in my class at PRPS. Fifth grade was 1963-1964. Our teacher that year was Ben Tyon, who was a first year Native American teacher. His Lakota nickname was Maste’, which roughly translates Sunshine. I remember when a student called him by that name. Mr. Tyon came unglued and I thought he was going to beat the student with his yardstick. He told him never to call him by that name again. Mr. Tyon went to our church and later became an indigenous priest. I remember several years later some of the other churchmen calling him Maste’ and he didn’t seem to mind them using his Lakota nickname. He must have felt it was disrespectful for students to call him by that name. I asked Mr. Tyon on the first Tuesday of November if we were going to have a presidential election that year. He said he didn’t think so. It was only a couple of weeks later that President Kennedy was shot. Mr. Tyon shared the news with us and said the school administration had decided that we should go home for the rest of the day. I remember my dad saying that evening he heard on the TV news that chicken bones had been found in the book depository where Oswald ate fried chicken as he waited for the motorcade to pull into his gunsight.
We lived right across the street from PRPS. The church had a ten acre plot of deeded ground that was on the southern edge of Pine Ridge. There were four residences, a parish hall and Holy Cross Church on the property. The first residence past the parish hall was an older house that was no longer occupied and being readied for demolition. Several times that fall a group of four or five boys followed me home and would corner me. They would take me into the abandoned house and tease me and beat me up. I used to try to run home as fast as I could to try to escape the gang. Somehow the word got back to Mr. Tyon and he felt this wasn’t right. He decided I should get an early release from school to get a head start and a better chance of getting away from the boys. Later that year our school was remodeled and we moved into the new section of the school building. When he let me out early I had to jump over a fence because a gate hadn’t been installed in the fence yet. I was pretty successful in avoiding the boy gang and they lost interest in chasing me eventually. I was later competitive in track and I think some of the endurance necessary for distance running was the result of those early dashes for safety.
The 5 minute early release from school – 1963-64
I switched from Ogalla Community School, the Bureau of Indian Affairs School in Pine Ridge to Pine Ridge Public School (PRPS) for my fifth grade year. Supposedly there was going to be a ruling that all non-Indian children would not be allowed to attend OCS any longer. (There were some non-Indians who still hadn’t switched schools when I graduated from high school.) The only incident with fighting I had in fourth grade was when Johnny One Feather kept poking me in the back. He sat directly behind me. I turned around one day and stabbed him with my pencil. He had to go see the nurse to find out if there was a possibility of lead poisoning. There was none.
There was one other non-Indian in my class as OCS and only one other non-Indian in my class at PRPS. Fifth grade was 1963-1964. Our teacher that year was Ben Tyon, who was a first year Native American teacher. His Lakota nickname was Maste’, which roughly translates Sunshine. I remember when a student called him by that name. Mr. Tyon came unglued and I thought he was going to beat the student with his yardstick. He told him never to call him by that name again. Mr. Tyon went to our church and later became an indigenous priest. I remember several years later some of the other churchmen calling him Maste’ and he didn’t seem to mind them using his Lakota nickname. He must have felt it was disrespectful for students to call him by that name. I asked Mr. Tyon on the first Tuesday of November if we were going to have a presidential election that year. He said he didn’t think so. It was only a couple of weeks later that President Kennedy was shot. Mr. Tyon shared the news with us and said the school administration had decided that we should go home for the rest of the day. I remember my dad saying that evening he heard on the TV news that chicken bones had been found in the book depository where Oswald ate fried chicken as he waited for the motorcade to pull into his gunsight.
We lived right across the street from PRPS. The church had a ten acre plot of deeded ground that was on the southern edge of Pine Ridge. There were four residences, a parish hall and Holy Cross Church on the property. The first residence past the parish hall was an older house that was no longer occupied and being readied for demolition. Several times that fall a group of four or five boys followed me home and would corner me. They would take me into the abandoned house and tease me and beat me up. I used to try to run home as fast as I could to try to escape the gang. Somehow the word got back to Mr. Tyon and he felt this wasn’t right. He decided I should get an early release from school to get a head start and a better chance of getting away from the boys. Later that year our school was remodeled and we moved into the new section of the school building. When he let me out early I had to jump over a fence because a gate hadn’t been installed in the fence yet. I was pretty successful in avoiding the boy gang and they lost interest in chasing me eventually. I was later competitive in track and I think some of the endurance necessary for distance running was the result of those early dashes for safety.
