A School Incident
About 1930
I was not always the shy person I had been when I started school, but developed into a real "bratty kid" as I grew older. One day Dale and I took advantage of the teacher we had, who was not a good disciplinarian. At least so we thought.
We discovered that if we chewed up paper to make spit-balls and put them on the end of a ruler, we could shoot them up on the ceiling and they would stay there. Being a tin ceiling, it made a clinking noise every time a spit-ball hit. This made it all the more exciting. We worked at this all day, whenever we had a chance. We had quite a wad up there by the end of the day. Were we surprised when at dismissal time our teacher asked us to stay after school to clean the spit-balls off the ceiling! We spent a good long time with a broom getting this job done. Here we thought that we had gotten by! That put an end to that trick.
It's no wonder the teacher had written these comments in her register about me at the end of the year: "There's mischief in those brown eyes", and "Smart, but mischievous." I was shown these comments by the teacher who taught there later, and who was a friend of the family.
About My Name
About 1942
In all my years of teaching, 38 in all, I never had a "Martha" in any of my classes. I always felt rather good about that. However, in one of my second-grade reading books there was a story about two geese who didn't fly South in the winter. Their names were Andrew and Martha. They stayed at a farm called Blue Barns. The story told about their experiences in the snow, and how Martha never wanted to venture out for her daily walk. So through the winter she had grown pretty fat. Later in the story she was referred to as Fat Martha! I guess it was because of this that I was always a little embarrassed to teach this story.
I was named Martha after my mother's little sister, who had gotten badly burned while playing near a brush fire. She later died as a result of this accident. My grandmother very much wanted Mother to name one of her girls after her, and I was the one chosen. Our middle names were always the same as our sponsors' names. So mine was Mathilda Marie. With my maiden name being Maaser, I ended up with a full name that read Martha Mathilda Marie (Maaser) Mikkelson. I get mail today from Bob (my stepson), addressed to Mrs. M. M. M. M. Mikkelson. Scott (my grandson), gets a real kick out of this!
According to a placard I have on my refrigerator, Martha means "resigned". A bookmark I have says Martha means "Esteemed Lady". Either meaning is alright with me. I think my name is O.K.