evangeline

Throughout the ages, for every kid in town, for all seventeen of my brothers and sisters, the steady progression of Junior High English plodded along exactly the same:
Seventh grade: Johnny Tremain, Great Expectations
Eighth grade: Alice in Wonderland, Silas Marner
Ninth grade: The Red Badge of Courage, Evangeline

Every year, each ninth grader would bring home an aged musty green tome. Inside the front cover was a list of all the prior ninth graders who lugged that heavy book home. You usually knew the last one or two kids who had written their names in that list, but the other went back in time to dark mysterious times long ago, perhaps before you were even born.

About half way through this heavy book was always a dogeared page that marked the first page of Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Mr. Quinn, the ninth grade english teacher (we called him "Pinhead") would assign this poem as our reading just after we got back from Christmas break.

My mother, Mrs. Dorothea Phillips, could set that book on it's spine and flop the pages open to Evangeline every time.

For seventeen consecutive years, with seventeen consecutive Phillips ninth graders, my mom would sit down on the couch with an afghan over her shoulders and read that thing aloud for long as the fourteen-year old could take it.

She read with great seriousness, pausing to look sternly over the top of her reading glasses to say, "Part the First"

Each year, all sixteen of us who were not in ninth grade would stop what we were doing and intone the first line in unison:

"This is the forest primeval..."

Then all but one would go on about their business. The last would be left to listen to the unending verse until boredom took over and storm out of the room in rage and frustration.

"'Stand like harpers hoar????' what does THAT mean?"

This followed by the slam of a bedroom door.

(It was a long, long poem, and there wasn't a lot of action)

My mother, undaunted, perhaps even relieved, would continue on reading silently to herself.

Being fourteen, and knowing how way leads onto way (we learned that in eighth grade), we'd always be surprised when, hours (and hours) later, there would be mom, still sitting on the couch.

Her reading glasses would be hanging from their chain around her neck and the book would be closed on her lap. Tears would be streaming down her face.

I guess Evangeline is a sad poem.

I wouldn't know though. I never got all the way through it.