Kenneth Howard Smith - Vinyl Knights: Make Your Words Soft and Sweet

SDC PaperDreams Books - Vinyl Knights: 

Make Your Words Soft and Sweet, because you may never know which ones you may have to eat

By Kenneth Howard Smith 

The heat in Rosamond, California, in May of 1961 was not merely a weather condition; it was an atmospheric weight. It pressed down on the Mojave Desert, shimmering off the blacktop of the roads that led toward the gates of Edwards Air Force Base. To the world, Rosamond was the "gateway to the stars," a dusty vestibule where test pilots broke sound barriers in X-15s, their sonic booms rattling the windows of the local shops. But to thirteen-year-old Kenneth Howard Smith, known to everyone as Kenny, Rosamond was simply home—a town built on the legacy of Charles Graves Senior, the Black porter who had seen a future in the sagebrush when no one else did.

Kenny sat in his seventh-grade Physical Science classroom at the Southern Kern County School District, a school built on land Graves had donated decades earlier. While the desert outside was a monochromatic tan, Kenny’s mind was a kaleidoscope of formulas, reactions, and the cool logic of the natural world.

Miss Gretchen Garrett, a woman whose posture was as straight as a slide rule and whose eyes missed nothing, stood at the front of the room holding a stack of graded pop quizzes. The ceiling fans hummed, doing little more than moving the hot air around.

"Another week, another triumph for some," Miss Garrett said, her voice cutting through the sluggish afternoon. "And another disaster for the curve."

She handed the papers back. When she reached Kenny’s desk, she laid the paper face down. Kenny didn't need to flip it to know what was there. He already knew he had scored a perfect mark. What he also knew, with a slight pang of guilt that was quickly swallowed by pride, was that his score had effectively decimated the grading curve. The student with the second-highest grade—a boy named Miller—found his 85% suddenly recalculated into a 75% because of Kenny’s outlier performance.

In Physical Science, Kenny was a titan. In English, History, and Math, however, he was a ghost, barely haunting the "D-plus" line. Science was the only place where he felt the world actually made sense.

When the final bell rang, the exodus was swift. As the students crowded the doorway, Miller, still stinging from his recalculated grade, turned back. His face was flushed with the heat and frustration.

"You’re nothing but a walking encyclopedia, Smith," Miller spat. "Bet your brain’s so full of useless facts there’s no room for a personality. You’re just a freak in a lab coat."

Kenny didn't blink. He had a knack for observation, and he saw the opening. He didn't just laugh it off. He leaned against his desk, smoothed the collar of his shirt, and smiled with a clinical coldness.

"Actually, Miller, facts are only useless if you lack the intelligence to apply them. It’s not my fault your brain has the storage capacity of a thimble. Perhaps if you spent less time practicing your scowl and more time reading the textbook, you wouldn't be failing a curve meant for children."

The room went silent. It was a surgical strike—accurate, true, and devastatingly mean. Miller opened his mouth to retort, but Miss Garrett’s voice boomed from the back.

"Mister Miller, move along to your bus. Mister Smith... stay behind. We need to have a word."

Kenny watched his classmates disappear, feeling the sudden vacuum of the empty room. He walked slowly toward Miss Garrett’s desk. She was leaning against the edge of it, her arms crossed.

"You are one of my star pupils, Kenny," she began, her tone surprisingly soft. "And because of that, I expected more of you than what you just said. You were right and you were wrong at the same time. Disputes of character should be held in closed locations, not made into a public notation for the sake of humiliation."

Kenny looked at his shoes. "He started it, Miss Garrett."

"And you finished it with a poisoned tongue," she replied. She leaned in closer. "Mister Smith, one should always make their words soft and sweet, because you may never know which ones you may have to eat."

She reached into her middle desk drawer and pulled out a small, black, boxy object. It was a Kodak Brownie camera—the kind used by the Girl Scouts, simple but sturdy. Beside it, she placed a fresh roll of film: twenty-four shots.

"I have an extra assignment for you," she said, pushing the camera toward him. "You’ve mastered the textbook, but you’re failing at observation. I want you to go out and document the world. Take the next ten days. Surprise me."

Kenny looked at the camera, then back at his teacher. His mouth, usually his greatest weapon, betrayed him. "Surprise you with what? It's June in Rosamond. Everything is brown and dead."

He looked out the window at the parched earth. "I’ll shoot a story on grass," he said sarcastically. "That’ll be a short report."

Miss Garrett didn't flinch. She simply picked up her pen. "Yes. Why don't you do exactly that? A report on grass. Ten days. Dismissed."

Kenny walked home with the Brownie camera thumping against his chest. He felt ridiculous. He lived in the high desert; "grass" was something people had in magazines or in the lush yards of the officers' quarters at Edwards. In the civilian parts of Rosamond, you had dirt, you had sagebrush, and you had tumbleweeds.

For the first three days, Kenny did nothing but mope. But on the fourth day, the scientific itch began to tickle the back of his brain. He started walking the perimeter of his neighborhood, the Kodak hung around his neck. He looked at the cracked earth, the Joshua trees standing like twisted sentinels, and the dry beds where water hadn't flowed in months.

He wandered toward the natural carved drainage ditch behind his house. It was a jagged scar in the landscape, meant to funnel the rare, violent flash floods of the winter. He climbed down into the semi-sandy soil, expecting nothing but dust.

Then, he saw it.

In a small, shaded bend of the ditch, protected by a high bank, was a cluster of green. It wasn't the dusty olive of a shrub; it was a vibrant, emerald shock of actual grass.

"How?" he whispered.

He took his first photo. Click. The Brownie’s shutter was a satisfying sound.

He didn't stop there. He became obsessed. He returned every morning at dawn to see if the dew touched it. It was bone dry everywhere else, yet this small patch thrived. Kenny decided to investigate the "why"—the hallmark of a true scientist.

He brought a small hand trowel from his father’s shed. He began to dig carefully around the perimeter of the grass. A few inches down, the soil changed. It wasn't the fine, silty sand of the surface; it was dark and cool. As he dug deeper, he hit something solid and porous.

He unearthed several large, heavy pieces of decaying wood buried deep beneath the silt. They were saturated, acting like a giant, underground sponge. He realized that during the last rains, these logs had been buried and had trapped the moisture, holding a hidden reservoir that fed the grass through the brutal June heat.

Kenny took photos of the wood, the soil transition, and the blades of grass reaching for the sliver of sunlight that hit the ditch at noon.

His curiosity led him to the local library, a small building that smelled of old paper and floor wax. He began to look up types of grasses and their survival mechanisms. He spent hours poring over botanical encyclopedias. It was during one of these visits that he stumbled upon a section on Poaceae—the grass family.

His eyes widened as he read a passage on bamboo.

"Bamboo is a grass," he whispered to the empty library. He read further, learning that certain species of bamboo could grow up to thirty-six inches in a single twenty-four-hour period. It was the fastest-growing plant on Earth, a grass that could reach the height of a house in weeks.

The realization hit him like a sonic boom from the base. A "story on grass" wasn't a joke; it was a saga of resilience, hidden depth, and explosive potential.

Ten days later, Kenny stood before Miss Garrett’s desk. He laid down a neatly typed report and a stack of black-and-white photographs. The photos were crisp: the hidden oasis in the ditch, the cross-section of the moist, decaying wood, and a final shot of the library’s encyclopedia page on bamboo.

Miss Garrett looked through the photos slowly. She read his conclusion, where Kenny tied the survival of the desert grass to the hidden support of the decaying wood beneath it. He wrote about how things that appear simple on the surface often have complex, hidden systems of survival.

She looked up at him, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "And what did you learn about the bamboo, Mister Smith?"

"I learned that grass isn't just something you mow or walk on," Kenny said, his voice lacks the sharpness it had ten days prior. "I learned that even in the middle of a desert, if there’s something substantial buried underneath to hold the moisture, something beautiful can grow. And I learned that some grasses grow so fast you can almost see it happening, but they need the right environment."

Miss Garrett nodded. She leaned back, tapping the photo of the desert grass. "And your words, Kenny? Are they still tasting bitter?"

Kenny looked at the photo of the grass growing out of the sand. He thought about Miller, and he thought about himself—the boy who was a genius in one room and a failure in three others. He thought about how he had used his "science" to bury someone else instead of helping them see the world.

"I think," Kenny said carefully, "that I’d rather my words be like that wood in the ditch. Something that helps things grow, even if nobody sees it from the surface."

Miss Garrett handed the camera back to him. "Keep it. There are twenty-four more shots in the drawer. I think you’ve only just started looking."

Kenny Smith walked out of the classroom and into the brilliant, blinding light of the Rosamond sun. He looked toward the horizon, where the silver glint of a jet was climbing toward the edge of the atmosphere. He wasn't just a seventh grader anymore; he was an observer, a scientist, and a boy who finally understood that the most powerful things in the world—whether they be words or bamboo—start from the ground up.

Smith credits Miss Garrett for his direction in songwriting years later as he focused the majority of his songs to peace, love and happiness.  Smith went on to be a recording artist for RCA and Motown Records in the years to come.