Robert Drake is a Tennessean who writes stories about growing up in that part of the country a generation ago. He told a story about Miss Caroline Walker, who was a music teacher. She had been doing it for as long as anybody could remember. She was something of a legend in her county in Tennessee.

She had two goals in teaching. One was to teach her girls to be ladies. So she taught them manners as much as she taught them music. She also taught them to play one piece perfectly for the May recital. She rehearsed them and drilled them all year long to play that one piece perfectly, including instructions on how to sit on the piano bench, to spread your skirt as you sit down, and how to announce the song by standing straight and holding your hands together at your waist.

The night of the rec…