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descended, creating the noise that was intended. My teacher was waiting at the bottom and yelled, “Freddie!” I immediately replied, “I wasn’t stomping the steps.”
    I had a wonderful fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Jackson. She actually laughed at some of the funny things I would say.(Even then, this was the way I judged a woman.) However, unbeknownst to her, she totally screwed up my sense of direction forever. She had this huge map of the United States hung on the wall. Of course, we were taught that “up” on the map was north. The problem was that the map was hung on the south wall of the classroom, the direction of Ma and Pa Bradley’s home in Tuscumbia, Alabama. So for years when I visualized the location of a state, I did it by thinking of the map in the classroom. When I related it to the real world, like on a trip to my grandparents’ house, in my mind north was actually south. I don’t have to tell you what that did to east and west. Of course, the lesson I took away from this at the time was that stuff you learned in the classroom didn’t really apply to the real world.
    Perhaps of interest to educators the world over is the fact that the only thing I remember from the fifth grade is that, once a day, Mrs. Newton would read to us from a Nancy Drew mystery. I became absorbed in these stories even to the extent of checking some additional ones out of the library. It was probably the first time I had actually read anything in order to get information. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I had to smile years later when I heard Supreme Court Justice O’Connor and Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor talk about how, as young girls, this smart, courageous young Nancy Drew inspired them with an example of a girl capable of doing great things. So it seems thatNancy Drew inspired Freddie Thompson and many young girls everywhere. Young Fred would have been mighty chagrined to know that. He didn’t think about the boy-girl stuff. He just wanted to know what was in the “old clock.”
    While I was still in grade school I decided I needed to have my own “walking-around money.” I figured that a fellow never knows when he will run across a business deal that he can’t afford to pass up. Besides, I thought it was past time for me to be able to flash a roll of bills like they do in the movies. So I found a job as a carhop at the local Dairy Dip, the main (and only) drive-in hot spot in town. Although I was basically working for tips, the Dairy Dip, with its heavy traffic, could make me a killing, I figured. The only problem was that the Dip, as advertised, had wonderful hot dogs and shakes, and employees did not get a discount. You can see where this is going. So, although I made a few bucks every night in tips, I was eating more in hot dogs, shakes, and other stuff than I was bringing in. I had become not only an employee of the Dairy Dip but one of its best customers, and I was losing money on the deal.
    Actually, that wasn’t the only problem. I worked the last shift at night, which meant that I had to pick up and sweep the entire lot clean every night after we closed—a job the early-shift carhops got to skip. After several weeks of this, I began to question my negotiating and business acumen. I believe that’s the first time the phrase “Surely there’s abetter way” occurred to me. I left that job older and wiser (and fatter), with a bad taste in my mouth for hot dogs that lasted for about five years.
    During my last years in grade school I may not have been raking in the dough, but I was racking up significant time in the principal’s office for an array of minor offenses. The principal’s outpost was manned by a middle-aged gentleman who always seemed to be remarkably cheerful. My daddy had always said that a man who walks around with a smile on his face all the time can’t possibly know what’s going on. Nevertheless, he was funny and I liked him. Besides, I didn’t want him to know