Hardage's English Class

  e-mail:

mrhardage@yahoo.com

  phone:

214/789-0359 (cell)

Five Sentences - Descriptive Writing

My favorite English assignment of all time came from

Mr. Milton Bransford’s classes at Arlington Heights High School

in Fort Worth, 1959-60 and 1960-61.  It’s simple, and it’s a cast-iron

lumbering Kodiak that morphs into a sleek cheetah the more you do it.

Maximum length:  5 sentences

Minimum length:   5 sentences

Maximum word count:  100 words

In these five sentences describe your life experience as an animal through not less than three nor more than four of the five physical senses (sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing).  Do not sneak the fifth one in there, even though you surely can.  Be merciful to us all (mostly unto me) and superscript the word/phrase(s) you are using; then tabulate your skills.

Catch 1:  You cannot directly tell the reader which animal you are.

Neither can you lap milk, have black and white fur, nor blend your stripes into the jungle foliage.

Catch 2: You cannot use conjugations of the senses. 

The hawk cannot smell the hot blood of the rabbit in his talons.  Or is it “pounces”?  It cannot hear the screaming as he carries the struggling weight into the air.  Nor can he delight in the taste of warm flesh as he rips it to pieces to feed his gawping chicks.  But the hawk doesn’t care because he’s back in the shadows of clouds, his flights dancing in the winds from the granite below.

However, you can  (1)savor the (2)hot blood running over your pounces.  The long-ears’ fur (3)ripples in the wind like the grasses in the (3)fields below you.  Your bobble-headed chicks (4)scream for the (1)sweet meat you tear for them into bloody chunks.  Sun and shadow change the (2)textures of the winds that (4)sing you to hunting heights.  And your eye and beak and talon revel in all the windy world.

1  taste

2  touch

3  sight

4  hearing

Omit smell

Do not get prolix.  Do not impress me with  your vocabulary.  Rather, slap me up-side the eyeballs with powerful images that conjure movement and emotion.  My stepdad used to get so frustrated when I used “pinions” instead of wings, or used a two-dollar word when a fifty-center would do just as well.  I’ve grown to appreciate his wisdom.  It’s difficult to acknowledge someone else might understand the language better than you do.

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Mr. Bransford died 17 October 2009 in Fort Worth, Texas, aged 76 years.  He was only twelve years older than we were.  I only found out in January of 2011.

That man had me salivating for English classes.  I was in his 9th grade classes at Monnig Jr. High. He and I moved to Arlington Heights HS in 1960, but I don't think either of us was aware of the other's doing so.   When I was assigned to his class at Heights, well, I knew there was, indeed, a God in his Heaven. I lived for ROTC and Mr. Bransford's English Class.

In ROTC I spun an M-1 rifle like a majorette's baton and strutted like a cockerel in spit-shined, box-laced paratrooper boots.  In Mr. Bransford's class I sat at my desk and revelled in the glories of the language as he poured out the word-    hoardes for us.  One fed my ego; the other, my soul.

I've had teachers before and since him.  But Mr. Bransford was my English Teacher.  Maybe he's the reason I'm a teacher today.  I don't think I'll ever be as good at it as he was.  On the other hand, I don't think he would stand for the stuff I put up with in my classroom, either.

We called him "Uncle Miltie," and we loved him.

He's probably got St. Peter diagramming sentences and reading four-pound 19th-Centure novels.  Sounds like Heaven.

Requiescat in Pace, Mr. Bransford.  And thank you for being my teacher.

Hits since 7 January 2011.

This page was last updated: January 10, 2011

Extra Credit Opportunity:  Why do I have a white boar on this page?  No; I didn't go to Arkansas, and he's not on my family coat of arms.