by Steve Timmons
For a guy growing up in the rural south of the USA in the 60's and 70's, life was far different than what it is today and, for that matter, than what it was in the more 'civilized' parts of the country even then. Communities were close-knit, people were neighborly and children were imbued with a sense of family values, if you'll pardon the use of the much-maligned term; that included honesty, respect for others and the importance of education and hard work. Divorce was rare and the family was the bedrock of your life.
I was the youngest of five and the only boy. My father was a successful business man, owning both a feed and grain store and the local International Harvester dealership. Not bad for a guy with only a high school education. He and Mom had married right out of high school, which was pretty common in their time, and had worked hard for all they had. They were determined, however, that all of their children would do better... and that meant college.
You might think from all of that that they also believed in the 'spare the rod and spoil the child' approach to raising their children, but neither my sisters nor I were ever spanked at home. Many of our friends were spanked and we knew about it because some of them would talk about it and that would sometimes arouse some curiosity in me, particularly if it involved a girl.
My first experience with spanking didn't happen until I was 16 and it was all because of my plan to buy my own car.
Social life for us revolved around the high school. The sports games, the dances, and many other social events were connected in one way or another with the school. Early on, I learned that if you were going to have a shot at the best girls, you needed to be an athlete and reasonably good looking, you needed to have a decent amount of pocket money and you needed your own car. I saw that with my own sisters, all of whom were very pretty girls. The boys they rode to school with and dated (all carefully vetted by our parents, of course) met all of those criteria and if there was need for a tie breaker it was usually the car.
From the first, my parents had made it clear, however, that they were not going to just give us cars. If anyone wanted a car, you had to earn enough money to pay for it, including gas, maintenance and insurance and if you wanted to use it on a regular basis your grades had better pass muster as well.
I started saving with my first paper route. As I grew older, I took various odd jobs and then part time work at places like the hardware store, the service station and the grocery store. By the time I was half way through my sophomore year, things were looking pretty good. My father had made a deal with me that had helped a lot. Each month I would show him my savings account passbook and he would match, dollar for dollar, the amount I had put in since the previous month. Being an only son had its advantages. My grades had me on the honor roll and I was signed up for Driver's Ed for the coming summer.
I just need one last push to hit my financial goal and that's when I met Susan. I was working one Wednesday afternoon at the hardware store when she came in. I had never seen her before. Believe me, I would have remembered her if I had. She was young, blonde and drop-dead gorgeous. Picture Julie Bowen who played the role of the high school English teacher named Carol Vessey in the TV show Ed that ran a while back and you would have a good idea of how beautiful Susan was.
I watched her have a conversation with Mr. Stark, the owner, after which she came over to me and introduced herself. Turns out that she was, in fact, a high school English teacher in the school district next to ours. She was living on the edge of town in a very nice farm house that she had inherited from her late aunt. She was single and had just moved from a small house she had been renting in a neighboring town. She was looking for someone to do odd jobs around her place. Mr. Stark had recommended me and she asked me to come by the house Saturday morning to talk about it. I quickly agreed and, without a doubt, the next two days were the longest of my life.
Saturday dawned bright, sunny and warm. Summer, it seemed, would come early this year. Susan had said to be there at 9am so I was out the door and on my bike by 8:30. Though I was not familiar with the area, I had no trouble finding the place. It was a big old farm house on a fair size piece of land that was set back a hundred yards or so from the main road out on the edge of town. I suppose when it was originally built it must have been surrounded by acres of farm land but by now the town had sort of grown out toward it. It was still pretty isolated and surrounded by a lot of big shade trees, however.
Susan greeted me at the door in cut-offs that if they weren't exactly 'Daisy Dukes' were the next thing to it. She wore a blouse that was tied off around her midriff and she had her long blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail. Needless to say, her outfit showed off her fabulous figure to the maximum and she looked like no school teacher I had ever seen.
She invited me in and led the way through to the kitchen. Following her, I had the opportunity to take in the view from behind: her slender waist, lovely long legs and a spectacular bottom perfectly packaged in those cutoffs.
As we sat talking at her kitchen table, I learned that she was 24. She had grown up in Atlanta. She had a Masters in English Literature from Duke. She had also studied Shakespeare in England. She had been offered a position at UNC but she had spent summers with her aunt and uncle at this very house while growing up and when her aunt had died the previous year, leaving the place to her, (along with a sizable amount of money) she changed her plans and took the high school job so she could live here.
The things she wanted me to do (lawn care, painting and minor repairs, etc.) were well within my capabilities. She had already checked me out with the school and with a couple of people in town for whom I had done odd jobs. The money she offered was generous but that would not have mattered much as there was no way I was going to turn down this job. I was smitten!
Susan gave me a quick tour of the place. I was surprised to see a swimming pool hidden from view in the back of the house. In the barn was a complete array of household tools and lawn care equipment, including a very nice lawn tractor with all of the accessories. We shook hands on the deal and I went right to work. Susan had big plans for putting in shrubs and flower beds and I could see that there was plenty of work to keep me busy, so I decided to give up my job at the grocery store so I could concentrate on Susan. Did I mention that I was smitten?
Things went along very well. Susan was great to work for. On Saturdays she would usually fix me lunch and she always made sure that I had cool drinks on hot days. We quickly became friends and I learned a lot about her family (which will become important later.) Susan was very outgoing and spontaneous, often giving me a hug or even a little kiss on the cheek if she was especially pleased with some project that I had finished.
Then came that fateful Friday afternoon!
I had just started work at the house (by now, she had entrusted me with my own key) when she arrived home. I stopped to help her carry in the groceries and right away I could tell that she was not in the best of moods. This had happened several times in the past and she had always kind of put me off when I asked her what was wrong. This time, with a little coaxing, she opened up. It seems that there were a handful of the seniors, big shot jocks in a couple of her classes, who thought it would be great fun to act out and disrupt the class. More often than not, this would happen on a Friday afternoon.
After venting her frustration with the lack of support from her principal, she concluded with the statement, "All I can do is send them to detention from which their coach promptly gets them excused. But what these young clowns need is a taste of the wood!"
I must have had a blank expression on my face so she said, "You know, a paddling... corporal punishment."
I laughed and replied, "Come on Susan, it's the mid seventies, schools don't paddle any more."
"Well, they should."
"Even if they did, it might work for grade school, or even junior high, but high school seniors?"
"Does it work for you?" she asked.
I told her my folks didn't employ corporal punishment and that our school system had dropped it in the sixties.
"Well don't under rate it just because you haven't experienced it. Believe me, if it's done right, it works. And I know just how to do it."
I laughed again. "Even if they still had corporal punishment, it would be the principal's responsibility, not the teachers' and those big jocks aren't going to be afraid of a girl like you. They'd just laugh at you."
"What do you mean 'a girl like me'?" she replied with her voice rising just a bit. "Don't let my English lit degree fool you. I've played tennis all my life and I have a very strong right arm. I was spanked as a girl growing up and I've done my share of spanking as a baby sitter. Believe me when I tell you that I know how to get results and I would be more than happy to give you a demonstration any time you want!"
For a moment, I was stunned by this little outburst and I could feel my face starting to turn red which I'm sure she couldn't help but notice.
"Okay now, I didn't mean to insult you I'm just saying that your typical high school seniors, especially some of these big athletes, are not going to be impressed by a little paddy whacking."
"And I'm saying that since you have no experience, you shouldn't make that assumption. And my offer still stands... unless you're too chicken to find out!"
In the silence that followed, she stood there looking at me with a kind of challenging look on her face. My mind was going a mile a minute. Could she possibly be serious? I was still trying to think of a come-back when she said, "Just as I thought, when push comes to shove, you guys are all talk. When it comes to putting your butt on the line though, you back off in a hurry. That's why I know it would work with those class clowns!"
"It's not that, it's, well, you just kind of took me by surprise.
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