Katherine Barlow was the town‘s only schoolteacher. She was a wonderful teacher, full of knowledge and full of life. The children loved her. She taught classes in the evening for adults, and many of adults loved her as well. She was very pretty. Moreover she was also famous for her fabulous spiced peaches.

Katherine Barlow had many admirers. One was Trout Walker. His real name was Charles Walker, but everyone called him Trout because his two feet smelled like a couple of dead fish. Most everyone in the town of Green Lake expected Miss Katherine to marry Trout Walker. He was the son of the richest man in the county.

Trout had always gotten everything he ever wanted. He found it hard to believe that Miss Katherine had turned him down.

Sam was not much older than twenty. He had onion field somewhere on the other side of the lake. He and his donkey, Mary Lou, would walk up and down the dirt roads of Green Lake selling onions. He told people in town that onions were good for the digestion, the liver, the stomach, the lungs, the heart, and the brain. Whenever Katherine Barlow bought onions, she always bought an extra one or two and would let Mary Lou eat them out of her hand. Because the school roof leaked, Katherine and Sam made a deal. He agreed to fix the leaky roof in exchanged for six jars of spiced peaches. Sam wasn’t allowed to attend classes because he was a Negro, but they let him fix the building.

Miss Katherine usually stayed in the schoolhouse, grading papers and such, while Sam worked on the roof. She enjoyed what little conversation they were able to have. She was surprised by his interest in poetry. After he finished fixing the roof, he helped her mend the windows and doors. By the end of the first semester, Onion Sam had turned the old run-down schoolhouse into a well-crafted, freshly painted jewel of a building that the whole town was proud of. People passing by would stop and admire it. “That’s our schoolhouse. It shows how much we value education here in Green Lake.”

如果你覺得我的podcast對你的英文學習有幫助就請到Apple podcast 幫我按五顆星訂閱和分享。也可到李老師陪你探索英文世界的臉書和IG粉絲專頁按贊追縱或留言。那我們就下集見了

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