MISS EBERT WAS WHAT SOME MIGHT HAVE CALLED an "old-maid school teacher." She probably would have taken the moniker as a compliment, saying it was true because she had gray hair and had never married, but knowing all the while that such a title was conferred with respect on that special kind of teacher who had raised more children than any mother.
Miss Ebert was also in charge of the annual Christmas program—a grand affair, complete with shepherds, wise men, and a chorus of angels appearing "on high" from the second-floor balcony of the school rotunda. It was a different time then, before the age of multiculturalism. So every holiday season, all of the elementary school came together to reenact the nativity srory.
Only three boys could play the kings in that timeless, regal pageant, and this particular year, I was one of them. Wearing crowns and dressed in oriental finery, we three kings were to march with great dignity toward the manger as the younger students looked on in awe and the bolder ones sought to touch the hems of our resplendent robes. This was only after we had each delivered our lines about following the star and the gifts we were carrying and had made our proper inquiries as to the whereabouts of the babe.
