Remembering Mr. Garner

IN the old days, before there was Intermediate School and Middle School, there was Junior High. In Jacksonville, Texas junior high school was grades 7 through 9.

The junior high building was a hand-me-down; in the days before my peers and I arrived, it was the high school building, grades 10 through 12. It was an old, un-air conditioned two-story red brick building with ancient restrooms. Seventh grade classes were on the second floor. (My school friend Margo hated wearing a back brace and once threw hers out a second-story window; it landed on the ground floor roof above the principal’s office. Someone retrieved it, but it wasn’t Margo.)

As an older building, it surely took a lot of time and energy to keep it clean and functional. The janitor — there may have been another but, if so, I didn’t know him/her — was Mr. Garner. His first name may or may not have been Fred… memory sometimes fails… but we really only knew him as Mr.

Mr. Garner was always there; a fixture just as much as the fixtures and floors he tended. His daughter, Jane Ann, was in our class so when our class moved to JHS, Mr. Garner moved over with us. He was completely unobtrusive but always around, cleaning floors, windows, bathrooms. I regret that I took him for granted, that he became part of the scenery, that I never thanked him for wiping down the urinals.

After graduation, I lost track of both Mr. Garner and Jane Ann but I think of him (Jane Ann is in there automatically) often these days. The photo above is of the mop and bucket I use several times a week to clean the showers (Pine Sol!) at this summer’s campground. For some campers, I’m merely this season’s Mr. Garner, part of the scenery. Quite a number, though, thank us for clean restrooms and tidy grounds; I wonder if they were more appreciative, back in the day, of their Mr. Garner than I was.

Fifty-six years too late, from one janitor to another: Thank you, Mr. Garner. And give my best to Jane Ann.