seymoure

Dr. Thursday stood at the head of the classroom and, other than her striking beauty, could have been any other teacher in any other school.

Mickey was one of the first to arrive, walking tentatively towards the desks as the Doctor wrote in a notebook on her desk.

“Any particular . . .” He began, while inflecting the sentence to mean “desk I ought to sit in?”

“No, dear,” She smiled back at him, “Whatever you want.”

He took a seat almost exactly in the middle of the room. He looked at the front of the room and still could find nothing that set this apart from other places he had been taught. He was sure, however, that the subjects would be quite different.

“Doctor?’ He asked.

“Yes, Mickey?”

“Who was Mr. Harvey? He had something to do with railroads and restaurants.”

There was a clearly quizzical look on the face of the responder, not about the information, but more about the source of the question.

“Why do you ask?” She probed.

“My father mentioned working for Mr. Harvey this morning while he was making breakfast.” Mickey answered, a little embarrassed at his lack of knowledge.

“Did you ever see a movie called ‘The Harvey Girls?’”

“The one with the giant rabbit?” Came from the boy’s tilted face.

“No,” She laughed, “That’s just 'Harvey.' ’The Harvey Girls’ has Judy
Garland playing a girl who goes to work out in the old west at a restaurant. The song ‘The Aitcheson, Topeka & the Santa Fe’ is from the movie.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that,” Mickey said, then got it and asked, “It was that Harvey restaurants and those trains?”

“Those were considered the cafés that settled the west. Entire towns sprang up around them. Being head Chef for a Harvey House in those days was quite an important position.”

“But,” He stammered, “That was back in the old west. How could my dad have been a cook back then?”

“Well,” Dr. Thursday stood and sat on the edge of her desk as other students began to arrive and take their seats, “The chain of restaurants live well into the 20^th century,
but, yes, your father could well have been in what you call ‘the old west.’

“Luckily, that is one of the subjects were are going to cover in this class.

“Hidden History of Extraordinary Individuals is about people like your father. And your mother. They are among the more amazing humans on the planet.”

All Mickey could think was, “Mom & Dad?”

At that moment a bell rang and students rushed to fill seats.

“We’ll get started in a second,” Dr. Thursday said to Mickey, and then turned her attention to the rest of the class.

“Today,” The Doctor said in a tone that was a little less personal that how she had spoken a second before, “We are going to look at the piece of history that few outside this outpost will
ever know.”

Mickey couldn’t stop thinking to himself, “Mom & Dad?”