Roy Caldwell
The Springfield Story is a short satirical novel, loosely inspired by the first chapters of Candide. It tells the story of an American high school which decides to make its small contribution to the counter-terrorist efforts organized by the big boys in Washington. The Principal of Springfield High, legendary ex-football coach Stonewall Johnson, determines that his institution, “best of all possible high schools,” must be a target for the next round of terrorist attacks. He responds by arming the football players with automatic weapons, and ordering regular sweeps of school property.
This book makes no attempt to give a true likeness of a real American community. Through black humor, caricature, and systematic grotesquerie, it denounces the violence, the ignorance, and the xenophobic hatred which are eating away at America. Its story is a parable of a profound failure of leadership. Springfield High is a mirror of a society where the fathers are betraying their children.
Roy Caldwell was born
in Dixie, but resides now in the far north of New York, where he teaches literature and sometimes
film. He has written a number of essays
on literature, as well as a James Bond novel and a book on the year he played
college basketball in France. The
Springfield Story is the first volume in a planned trilogy.
THE SPRINGFIELD STORY –
Chapter Three
Principal
Stonewall Johnson’s first official act was to hire Big John Erwin to teach the
Spanish classes the State Board ordered Springfield High to open. Big John did not know the first word of
Spanish, but he had done one hell of a volunteer job these last three years
working with the football team’s interior linemen. This Spanish is just a passing fancy,
reasoned newly appointed Principal Johnson, and besides, if you can teach
football, you can teach anything.
Big John had
two degrees from State, but in the great land of opportunity that was America at the dawn of the new millennium,
he had been unable to find steady employment in the teaching industry. The Education President up in Washington had
decided that what American education needed were more Federal standards, less
money for classrooms, fewer teachers, and a trillion-dollar invasion of a
distant land to teach American children that what they learned from the
schoolyard bully applied to adult life equally as well.
Big John’s
field was history, but America wanted no historians these
days. This was really nothing new. Had Americans not come to the New World for the very purpose of escaping
Old Europe and its bloody history? But
in the early days of the twenty-first century America seemed more suspicious of the past
than ever, more than ever determined to forget the lessons of history and barge
ahead into the future.
Finding no work
in the history business, Big John had sought employment elsewhere. He had worked as a carpenter, landscaper,
dishwasher and hushpuppy-man at Pigsfoot, the barbecue joint down on Main Street.
He had turned to football out of desperation. His volunteer work with Coach Johnson’s
interior lineman had seemed his only chance to practice his true calling. He had played ball himself back in his high
school days, but in truth he had never really cared too much for the game. The coaches always had him playing on the
line, and he never got to touch the ball.
When he worked with the interior linemen under Coach Stonewall, he
always told his earnest thick-necked boys that if they ever got their hands on
a fumble, they should run like hell as long as they could.
On September 2,
2002, the night before his debut as the new Spanish teacher, Big John went
across town to José’s Tavern, where he tossed back a couple dozen Coronas with
the Mexican migrant workers, won a hundred and twenty-five bucks shooting pool,
got into two fights, laughed heartily at stories he did not understand, bought
everybody rounds of Tequila, and picked up much useful information for his new
profession. By the end of the evening,
Big John was ready to teach some Spanish.
He even had a
new name. The amigos down at José’s had
christened him Señor Gordo!
