"Die Drasche Maschine"

This is a photo of a primary school class in my father’s (and, eventually, my own) village, taken the year he was born — 1939. It pretty much represents the situation he grew into. A small group of kids, shepherded by a lone woman.

He has stories of getting spanked as a first-grader by the woman principal. The first spankable offense was standing on a teeter-totter to get a better view of a couple of boys in a scrap. This struck him as terribly unfair, and he complained to his parents when he got home.

All he got was a knowing smirk, and “Nah, yo — die Drasche Maschine.” And possibly a comforting pat on the back.

I don’t know if the gal pictured is the legendary “Drasche (eng. ‘Thresher’) Maschine.” The woman who bore the nickname meted out many a strapping in her decades as principal, though. It’s a remarkable anecdote, to me.

Had either of my kids come back from school with stories of getting spanked by a teacher, that person would have committed a fireable offense — an action I’d be keen to see taken. In my father’s time it wasn’t just assumed teachers had every right to corporal punishment, it was a source of wry amusement when it occurred.

And my grandparents were not of the “If you ever get the strap at school, you’ll be getting it at home, too” mindset — also common at that time. Nevertheless, the thought of a relative stranger subjecting their child to corporate punishment with some frequency didn’t seem to phase them. Kids absorbed and grew up, was the thinking.