Teachers, you see them everyday. They seem like they have been here forever. They haven’t though. The teachers and staff of LNE had jobs before this one. Some of those jobs were strange or odd in some way.
Some were normal with weird stories to them. Like Mr. Jacobs’s story, he worked at B-Dalton book store as a senior sales clerk. He was shelving books one day when he caught a wiff of something that smelled like a hog farm. He kept smelling it in different parts of the store until he finally found the source – A guy wearing coveralls that were covered with manure.
Some of the stories were sad, like this story from a teacher who wants to remain anonymous. He/She was working as a plumber, and while working, he/she found a fellow plumber dead of a heart attack.
One story I’m sure most people want to hear is Mrs. Skorupa’s story. She shared two. She was a waitress at The Steak House and sang part of a song with a drunk man who tipped her very well. The second story is at the same occupation when she had an older guy hit on her. He bought her earrings in Branson, and she turned him down saying, “thanks but no thanks.”
Mrs. Russell worked at a daycare. She had to sweep fake grass, and she sideswiped a car with the daycare van.
Mrs. Thompson had two jobs, she was a magician’s assistant at the State Fair when she was a college freshman and she was Electra with electric powers. As Electra she reached out into the audience and shocked them by touching them. She also started things on fire by simply touching them. Kids would run away from her though because they thought she would touch and shock them.
Mr. Cornwell was with the LPS paint crew during the summer months. He once painted a guys shoes bright, shiny silver. He’s been on every public school roof in Lincoln built before 1993.
Another anonymous teacher had a job in agriculture. He/She had to pull dead animals out of imgatim pipes, so the water could flow freely. One day a propane tank in the bed of his/her pickup truck blew 50 ft into the air, while he/she stood 20 ft away. He/She said it was “cool.”
Yet another anonymous teacher said that she worked as a journalist and assignment editor for CNN in college, KHAS in Hastings and KOLN in Lincoln. She said once she had to dress as a cowgirl to cover a rodeo story. Another time she had to deal with a Civil War re-enactor that kept calling her a yankee and refused to break character.
Teachers are around us everyday. It may seem like they’ve been here forever, but they did have other jobs and experiences. They have stories if you have the time to listen to them. These are only some of the many stories our LNE teachers have experienced.