A heap o' dough...


The discussion of what factors might be considered in CU's Predictive Index got me thinking of this poem I memorized in my childhood:

This bathroom cost a lotta money,
Shore set me back a heap o' dough.
You may think it kinda funny,
But pleeze folks,
Pay as you go!
5 cents.

A plaque sporting these words (with a slot for the nickel) were right at a new-reader's eye level, beside the toilet-roll dispenser, in my grandparents' bathroom. I read them every time I was in there, and wondered if I needed to put a nickel in myself.

It was a humorous gift from one of my aunts, to celebrate the addition - at last! - of real indoor plumbing in my grandparents house, the year I was born. My grandparents raised five children in that farmhouse, but not until all were grown and gone could they afford to put in a bathroom. My aunts told stories of washing hair in the kitchen sink (which got its water from the rain-catching cistern - precious drinking water came from well, pumped once a day... the bucket and its dipper sat on the sideboard of the sink, handy for all to drink from), and of hasty races to the outhouse in frosty air.

Four of those five children are still living, and last summer, nearly all the descendants of the occupants of that house got together for a joyful reunion; there were some 50 or so, counting small children and the baby-on-the-way. Among the number were a university professor of mathematics, an attorney, a director of a hospital, several small business owners and operators (lithographic printing, plumbing, construction, fast-food franchises), a resort operator, a chiropractor, a designer of circuit boards for minaturized cell phones, an officer of the electrical utility company for Long Island, a flight controller, several engineers, and, oh yes, myself.

Above is a photo of the school house where those five children got their first eight years of education.

I guess what I'm pondering is the proposed relationship between elementary/secondary education to adult income. All of us were products of public schools, educated by the shared expense of neighbors and friends and strangers. I cannot help but observe that the outcome seems more related to work-values developed in the home, than to the school quality. Then again, the building or the size of the school is no measure of its quality. And the value of the experiences found there can have very little relation to the dollars spent on it by the community.

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