Wisconsin Agriculturist Logo

I’ve been lucky most of my life

Life is Simple: My streak of luck started in fourth grade.

Jerry Crownover

October 6, 2023

3 Min Read
silhouette of a farmer leaning against a fence post during sunset
ImagineGolf/gettyimages

My wife thinks I’m the luckiest man in the world — and not just because I married her. She often lists the dozens of examples in my life that are not a result of my being overly smart, irresistibly charming or even incredibly good-looking, but rather nothing more than plain old lucky.

Last week, after another incident of good fortune seemed to fall in my lap, Judy asked me if I remembered when my string of good luck started. After thinking long and hard, I finally pinpointed an event that happened in the fourth grade, that may have set the tone for the rest of my life.

When it all began

It was an unusual day at the rural one-room schoolhouse I attended in that we had a substitute teacher for the day. Rarely did the regular teacher miss a day, but for whatever reason, there was a fill-in and, unsurprisingly, students tried to get away with things that never would have been attempted with the real deal in place.

For the afternoon recess, the substitute teacher — probably frustrated to no end by our lack of attention to her — decided to make it an extra-long recess and conduct some footraces and other feats of skill. In retrospect, I’m sure she wanted us to burn up as much energy as we had, to make us more sedate for her classroom projects. The first contest was a footrace up the steep hill next to the schoolhouse, around the big oak tree at the top, and back down to the schoolhouse porch.

Being no more athletically gifted then than I am now, I took a hard fall on the way down the hill, cutting a huge gash in my left knee. In today’s world, the school nurse would have treated me with first aid before calling an ambulance to take me to the nearest hospital for stitches. In 1960, the temporary teacher simply had two schoolmates carry me home, about a quarter-mile away, through the woods.

Mom cleaned the wound, wrapped it with a cloth bandage, called it good, and sent my friends back to school. I got to stay home for the rest of the day.

Back to school

The next morning, I begged my mother to let me miss another day of school, but to no avail. Our regular teacher had returned, and she started the day with a disturbing lecture. It seemed that, after the races of the previous afternoon had concluded, all the boys in the school had taken turns boosting each other up, inside the boys’ side of the school’s outhouse, to peek across to the girls’ side. The substitute teacher had learned of this from a couple of girls but decided to let the real teacher deal with the punishment upon her return.

The wise old teacher asked the most honest boy of the bunch (not me) if this was true. With bowed head, he admitted that all the boys had participated.

“Every single one?” she asked.

Ashamedly, he answered, “Everyone but Jerry, cause we had to carry him home with a bad leg.”

Being in the days where corporal punishment was not only allowed, but encouraged, and long before self-esteem became politically correct, the educator lined up every boy in the school, except me, and administered three whacks with a hickory switch.

About the Author

Jerry Crownover

Jerry Crownover wrote a bimonthly column dealing with agriculture and life that appeared in many magazines and newspapers throughout the Midwest, including Wisconsin Agriculturist. He retired from writing in 2024 and now tells his stories via video on the Crown Cattle Company YouTube channel.

Crownover was raised on a diversified livestock farm deep in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks. For the first few years of his life, he did without the luxuries of electricity or running water, and received his early education in one of the many one-room schoolhouses of that time. After graduation from Gainesville High School, he enrolled at the University of Missouri in the College of Agriculture, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1974 and a master's of education degree in 1977.

After teaching high school vocational agriculture for five years, Crownoever enrolled at Mississippi State University, where he received a doctorate in agricultural and Extension education. He then served as a professor of ag education at Missouri State University for 17 years. In 1997, Crownover resigned his position at MSU to do what he originally intended to after he got out of high school: raise cattle.

He now works and lives on a beef cattle ranch in Lawrence County, Mo., with his wife, Judy. He has appeared many times on public television as an original Ozarks Storyteller, and travels throughout the U.S. presenting both humorous and motivational talks to farm and youth groups.

Subscribe to receive top agriculture news
Be informed daily with these free e-newsletters

You May Also Like