being walkers with
the sun and morning not afraid
days of gloom, darkness

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness—
Being walkers with the sun and morning.

Walkers With The Dawn By Langston Hughes as printed in The collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes (Knopf: New York, 1994).

When I was kid going to Grand Rapids Crestview Elementary School, every classroom had a model of the solar system sitting on the shelves that ran along the inside wall of every classroom.

The outside wall was all windows covered in venetian blinds.

The front wall was all chalkboards.

The back wall was all bulletin boards.

Seems like every room at Crestview had the same layout except that the lower elementary rooms had a restroom in the classroom.

The kindergarten room had a restroom in the classroom and for reason unknown, the light switch was on the outside. The switch had a red light under it and if the door was closed and the red light was on you knew someone was inside with the light on. Which proved too much temptation for some kids and by some kids I mean me. Sure we got in trouble but to hear someone yell when all you had to do was hit that switch … well, like I said too much temptation and I, early on started down the path of class cut up. The cost of a talking-to and maybe even a trip to hall was small price for the moment of notoriety I could achieve with that simple act. But I digress.

As I said, each room had this model of the solar system.

It wasn’t much.

It had a large yellow sun in the center and a small earth that went around the sun and on an extended arm, it had another model of the earth with a little moon that went around the earth.

There was a knob on the arm and you grabbed the knob and spun the arm around the sun and the earth went around the sun and the moon went around the earth.

It took about 25 seconds to get the gist of it and that nothing else was going to happen.

I found this photo of something that looks a lot like what we had, but the one pictured is a little more elaborate that what we had in school and I am pretty sure that the chain drive and gears where all enclosed but this gives you the idea.

But there was this one time.

I want to say it was in 5th grade with Miss Critchell that she really tried to use the model and explain the solar system.

This would have been at the height of the Apollo space program and there was a lot of interest in space and the solar system.

When there was a space launch, Miss Critchell would bring in her personal portable black and white TV and we would have a quiet day to work at our desks while she left the TV on.

I remember sitting at my desk with the lights off so we could see the fuzzy TV picture waiting through one of those ‘MISSION IS ON HOLD’ moments while NASA worked out some problem and I was so bored I asked Miss Critchell if I could go to the library.

“But this IS history,” said Miss Critchell, shaking her head, but she let me go anyway.

Before this space launch, Miss Critchell did her best to explain the solar system and the moon missions.

She had done her home work so that when she got out the model of the solar system and made the earth go around the sun and moon go around the earth she said something that fell through the cracks in my brain and stayed there forever.

“This is just a model,” she said.

“In real life,” she said, “if the Sun was this big, (pointing at the grapefruit sized yellow model of the sun), the earth would really be … somewhere out on the playground.”

I don’t know if the rest of the class heard like I did but it hit me that in the grand scheme of things, earth was pretty insignificant.

Maybe Horton Hears a Who came to mind and I realized that we, the people on earth, could be the that dust speck of boil that dust speck fame.

And what came to me was that, boy howdy, but we were lucky God was in charge of the whole thing as it was all too much for pure chance for me.

As everyone knows who reads these, as I drive to work, I drive out onto a barrier island on the east coast.

Each day that crank is turning and the earth is spinning and everything is going around the Sun.

It did this yesterday.

It will do this today.

It will do this tomorrow.

I still think, BOY HOWDY, but we were lucky God was in charge of the whole thing as it was all too much for pure chance for me.

And I think of the verse from the Bible, Romans 8:31: What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness—
Being walkers with the sun and morning.