Missing Latin Test for Sports

Tom: Well, I was active in sports. I was fortunate enough to be good enough to be on the track team, basketball team, and that’s about all they had. I won the 220 and qualified for state. I went down to state and someone beat me down there, but I held up pretty good in track.

But the unfortunate thing was, while I was gone at the Athens state meet, they had the Latin test, and I got back and Mrs. Boardman said “you have to take your Latin test.” And I said “Mrs. Boardman, you know, and I know, I don’t know enough about Latin to take a test.” She said “well, you have to have it to graduate.” I said “well, I just don’t know.” And she said “well, I’ll give you a test to take,” and said “I want you to translate, conjugate” — whatever it is — “ten sentences and read this chapter in Latin. And I’m going to give you a test and I may or may not ask you some of those questions, but I want you to learn all that.” So I sat down, and I mean I memorized that, and when it came time to put on the board what I knew, she asked me exactly what she told me she would. And I had that thing so pat — “[Latin phrase]” — I still remember it. [laughter]

Martha: Goodness.

Tom: But she let me graduate, and that’s when my dad put me at Emory. And Rainwater was the county superintendent, and they didn’t know I could hear what they were saying, but standing on the corner in Decatur, and he said “Mr. Rainwater, I just registered Tom out at Emory.” He said “Ben, that would be the biggest mistake you ever made — they would eat that boy up in three weeks.” So he said “what should I do?” and he said “you take him somewhere they’ll take the time to straighten him out.”

So we were sitting in the car on the way home and he said “How would you like to go to Young Harris?” And that was up in North Georgia, and I said “Oh, I would like that.” And he said “well, let’s just do that.”