I was privileged to have opportunity to speak at the August 2024 meeting of the Union County Historical Society. I shared with them the following story about the legendary Union County educator Florence Chesney.
Ms. Chesney taught at Wood Dale School in the Black Fox area of Union County for a two-month term in 1940-41. She returned there in the fall of 1949. My brother J. C. Mincey was in her class. He remembered Ms. Chesney as being a big woman. This impressed him, but it was her opening the year speech that got his attention. “My name is Ms. Chesney. I’m here to teach, and you’re here to learn, and if you don’t learn it, I’ll beat it into you!”
J. C. had a proclivity to meanness his entire life. He said he determined that he needed to make himself Ms. Chesney’s “teacher’s pet”. To hear him tell it, he was successful.
Perhaps so, for he related to me a tale of being sent with his cousin John Henry Thomas to get a pail of water. Poor Ms. Chesney should have known better. J. C. said he and John Henry “peed” in the bucket. The first person to take a drink when they returned to school was Ms. Chesney herself!
Ms. Chesney returned to Wood Dale for the following school year. For this second year as teacher/principal, Ms. Chesney recorded in her register as the first of her instructional plans and objectives for the school year, “We plan to have a safer water supply installed.” As part of her summary of achievements for the school year, she listed in part, “A new well was dug.” Think of the money that could have been saved had Ms. Chesney known that all needed to ensure safer water was choosing different pupils to go fetch the water!
Strangely enough, my brother J. C. grew up and became, of all things, a well-digger!

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 29
What did the surgeon say to the patient who insisted on closing up his own incision? ANSWER: Suture self.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 30
How much did Long John Silver pay to get his ears pierced? (See next week’s article in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)

OTHER OOPS!!!
“I’ve dropped that phone in the commode four times,” she said. “You reckon that has anything to do with it not working?”
The old man said, “I'm at a place in my life where errands are starting to count as going out.”