Ever Day’s a Holiday
By the time I reached my school, Blacow Elementary, I had already put in a morning’s work.
The Argus newspaper route came first.
Five o’clock.
Fresh newsprint.
Two heavy canvas bags biting into my shoulders.
Every paper folded by hand. Every throw landed perfectly within two feet of the front door. If it rained, I hung the paper on the doorknob.
That was my standard.
Home came next.
Cold water from the kitchen faucet.
A wink of sleep.
A sip from Mama’s second cup of coffee.
Cream of Wheat with milk, brown sugar, and raisins.
Then my bike pointed toward school.
Some mornings I arrived with ink under my fingernails and paper dust clinging to my hands. I carried the pride of earning my own money and enough restless fire to keep several adults fully occupied.
Blacow knew what to do with boys carrying too much fire.
Mr. John Melendez carried authority through the building. His voice could cross the cafeteria, find one boy in a sea of kids, and stop foolishness before it became a full production.
He had a word for kids who got sideways.
“Honyock!”
The word hit hard.
The called out kid did an immediate course correction.
At lunch, the Honyock Table sat apart from the others. A place of shame, reflection, and the occasional hardened accused who had spoken out of turn while holding a carton of milk.
Mr. Melendez could send a kid there with one booming command.
“You! Honyock Table!” his voice thundered.
Every head turned.
Nobody needed further clarification.
Mr. Bob Berridge brought the United States Marine Corps into the school with him.
He carried himself with discipline. His expectations stood straight. His patience had limits, and boys discovered those limits through practical field research.
I knew where I stood around Mr. Berridge.
Usually straighter than I had been standing three seconds earlier.
If you drifted sideways in his classroom, recess disappeared into laps around the blacktop.
Lag behind and you repeated the walk next recess.
If your grammar wandered into a double negative, fifty sentences followed.
The second offense doubled the number.
If the lesson still failed to land, the number climbed to five hundred.
Claiming you were only playing did not earn a warning.
Mama trusted him completely.
She loved that a Marine was helping guide me. I am sure she believed the Almighty had arranged it personally.
She trusted Mr. Melendez too.
One day I was ordered to bring home a permission slip authorizing corporal punishment.
I presented it to Mama with the faint hope that she might read the whole thing, consider the consequences, and decide her son had suffered enough.
She reached the line that asked, “Do we have permission to paddle your son?”
Blue ink hit the page.
Permission granted.
That was unfortunate for me and entirely understandable to anyone who knew me.
I got out of line with impressive consistency.
Just like that, I needed fire insurance on my backside.
Fires lit back there almost daily.
Mrs. Norma Richey carried a different strength.
She was intelligent, observant, and deeply invested in the kids around her. She noticed effort. She noticed change. She knew when a child needed encouragement and when he needed to be challenged.
She did all of it with a beautiful, welcoming smile.
She epitomized what a great teacher should be.
Then came sixth grade.
Mrs. Flores.
I had a serious crush on her.
That belongs in the record.
She was intelligent, Hollywood gorgeous, genuine, warm, kind, and disciplined.
She knew her classroom.
Every desk.
Every student.
Every kind of energy a kid brought through the door.
My energy required her brilliance, charm, discipline, and the occasional reinforcement of Mr. Melendez.
She stayed three steps ahead of every scheme a room full of sixth-grade boys could invent.
Notes passed between desks rarely reached their destination.
Whispers died before they gathered momentum.
Trouble stood up and discovered Mrs. Flores already standing beside it.
She never embarrassed a boy.
She corrected him.
Quickly.
Firmly.
Then she moved on.
She expected more because she believed more lived inside us.
I wanted to impress her.
A right answer felt bigger when she heard it.
A completed assignment carried more weight when she stopped beside my desk, smiled, and told me I had done good work.
One encouraging word from Mrs. Flores could keep a sixth-grade boy walking taller for the rest of the week.
Teachers rarely know how far their words travel.
I carried plenty into her classroom.
Curiosity.
Mischief.
Ambition.
Anger.
Opinions about nearly everything.
Facts sometimes arrived later.
Mrs. Flores understood something important.
There is a difference between a bad kid and a good kid carrying more fire than he knows how to use.
She never tried to put my fire out.
She taught me how to aim it.
Then there was Campy.
Officially, he was the janitor.
Nobody at Blacow thought of him that way.
Campy kept the school running.
He swept floors.
Fixed broken things.
Moved chairs.
Emptied trash.
If your basketball lost air before recess, Campy stopped whatever he was doing.
He checked the valve.
Worked the pump.
Handed the ball back with a smile.
Twenty minutes of playground glory restored.
He understood that what mattered to a child mattered.
All day long he worked.
All day long he whistled.
All day long he sang the same line.
“Ever day’s a holiday... ever day’s a holiday...”
I heard it so often I stopped noticing I was learning it.
Then one afternoon everything changed.
A gang jumped me.
My lip was split.
Blood covered my hands.
I stood at a sink trying to wash away more than blood.
My father was gone.
The grief had been sitting inside me.
That day it found a crack.
I didn’t want anyone to see it.
Campy did.
He walked over without asking questions.
Without demanding explanations.
Without making a scene.
He slipped a candy bar into my hand.
Then he placed his hand gently between my shoulders.
“Good things are coming,” he said.
That was all.
No speech.
No lecture.
No attempt to fix everything a hurting boy carried.
Kindness.
Hope.
Just enough.
Then he went back to work.
Sweeping.
Repairing.
Helping another kid.
Whistling.
Singing.
“Ever day’s a holiday... ever day’s a holiday...”
More than forty years have passed.
I still sing it.
Our sons sing it.
Through good years.
Hard years.
Years filled with celebration.
Years that demanded faith.
Years that required sobriety one ordinary day at a time.
The song stayed.
So did the man.
I still see Campy walking those halls with a smile already waiting for the next kid who needed him.
I still feel his hand on my back.
I can still taste that candy bar.
Funny what stays with a boy.
A principal’s command.
A Marine’s discipline.
A teacher’s belief.
A janitor’s song.
Those people thought they were helping us through another school day.
They were building the men we would become.
Campy never asked anyone to remember him.
He kept showing up.
He kept serving.
He kept singing.
“Ever day’s a holiday.”
I have carried those words into businesses, studios, family rooms, hospital rooms, quiet mornings, and long nights when life demanded more courage than I thought remained.
Sometimes hope arrives wrapped in a candy bar.
Sometimes it arrives with a hand on your back.
Sometimes it whistles its way down the hallway of an elementary school until one hurting boy carries the tune for the rest of his life.
Proverbs says, “A merry heart does good, like medicine.”
I take that medicine ever day.
©2026 Bryan-David Scott. All rights reserved.
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