Author: Kay Traille

Dr. Kay Traille is an associate professor of History Education and History at Kennesaw State University. She has been teaching and mentoring for several decades in the field. Originally from the United Kingdom, she moved to the USA in 2007. She continues writing and researching in the field of teaching controversial issues and issues concerning students of color and the teaching of history. You can reach her at kaytraille@hotmail.com. or etraille@kennesaw..edu Selected Publications: Traille, K. (2020). Teaching History to Black Students in the United Kingdom. New York: Peter Lang. Traille, K. (2019). Hearing their Voices: Teaching History to Students of Color. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Traille, K. (2018). Rice and Race: Teaching Controversial issues with Material Culture. Museumedu 6/ Spring 2018, pp. 103-121. Traille, K, & Roy, B. (2011). Cultural Competence in Transnational Settings and Quality Education for American Indians: Anatomy of Challenges. Journal of Emerging Knowledge on Emerging Markets. vol. 3 Article 12. Traille, K. (2011). Whose History is it Anyway?: Class, Culture, Ethnicity, Gender and Religion. Primary History vol. 57. p.17. The Historical Association. Traille, K. (2007). School History and Perspectives on the Past. The Black and Asian Studies Association Newsletter, 47, pp. 31-33. June 2007. Select Lectures: “Making a difference: Implicit Bias and History Education,” Keynote Speaker Euro Clio European Association of History Educators. The Hague, Netherlands, 30 April 2021. Online. “Historical Challenges of Education and Race,” Presenter at Kerkenootchap der Zevende Adventisten, Landelijik Kantoor Nederlande Unie. 15 March 2021. Online. “Teaching History to Students of Color/Colour” Institute of Education, University of London, UK. 27 January 2020. Online. “Clapback from the Crit: Sister Resisters Navigating Exclusionary Spaces and Invisible Identities.” World Educational Research Association 2019: Focal Meeting in Tokyo Future of Democracy and Education: Realizing Equity and Social Justice Worldwide. 5-8 August 2019.

Blue Paraffin

On By Kay TrailleIn Blog2 Comments

 “Girls you need to go and buy some paraffin after school,” Mum reminds my sisters Rose Marie and Patsy. They need to walk a long way twice a week to buy five gallons of blue paraffin (Mum says blue paraffin is better than pink paraffin).

Only Patsy and Mum have winter boots, so Rosie needs to wear Mum’s boots. Mum says, “come child I know the newspaper I’ve stuffed in the toe is uncomfortable, but what to do? Your feet will freeze in your ordinary shoes, there’s too much slush on the ground.”

It has snowed and the snow makes everything look pretty. It hides stuff like dog dudu, and when it begins to thaw all the dirtiness that’s been underneath mixes in with the snow and makes it grey, white, and brown. If a dog or cat or human pees on the snow, it becomes yellow.

Dog dudu is the worse, you don’t know when you’re treading in it until your shoe comes up with layers of slush and shit. Anyway, Rosie must wear Mum’s boots to walk the three miles to get the paraffin, her feet make swishing noises in them and slip out as she walks. I know her feet must hurt as she has corns on her toes where newspaper rubs the skin off as she slips and slides down the street.

 For me walking in Mum’s shoes is fun. They make a clip clop noise around the house when I wear them. Rosie can’t wear her shoes at the same time as Mum’s boots, so it’s not fun. Mum says the doctor has told her that if I wear tight shoes it will make my eyes worse.

I always tell Mum if my shoes are too tight, except for once when I get some nice shoes and they hurt my toes, but I tell Mum they don’t as I want to keep wearing them. Me limping makes Mum suspect that they hurt, and I need to confess the truth. In school we learn a poem about shoes,

“New shoes, new shoes,

Red and pink and blue shoes,

Tell me what would you choose

If they let you buy?”

It was true I’d buy the “Buckle shoes” and what I got were “Tuff shoes.” They were supposed to last forever, but they really were “wipe-them-on-the mat shoes.” And impossible to destroy.

When Patsy and Rosie come back home with the two plastic containers of paraffin, we pour it through a white funnel into our heater in the bedroom. Mum sometimes lights the gas oven and that heats up the dining room and kitchen. My father has bought a secondhand television.

Come to think of it we’ve never had a new television set. We like the adverts for paraffin. “Esso blue, dum,dum, dum Esso, blue, Esso Esso, Esso dum dum dum blue,” is the jingle that we sing along too each time the advertisement comes on television. The paraffin heater we’ve in the everything room is green with a long body it has a flat top and you can cook things on it.

Paraffin heaters are great except for the smell and the fact that they could start fires, or you or someone else could get burned. Once baby brother Paul topples a saucepan of milk off the paraffin stove where it’s being heated and it burns his feet. He has to go to the hospital, and each day Mum changes his bandages and puts funny smelling cream on his pink blistered skin. He still carries the faint scars on the creases of his ankles. 

Hospital Memories

On By Kay TrailleIn BlogLeave a comment

It’s probably a few days later that for one of many times pneumonia comes calling and I end up in an oxygen tent at the Paddington Green Children’s hospital. But because memories are never secure, I may have conflated these events in my head. One thing I do remember is that l like the waiting area in Paddington Green Children’s hospital. They had rocking horses there, some large and some small. They were magical. If I was well enough Mum would allow me to ride one of them. I wished that I could take one home, and for years I prayed for a pony. At church they said if you prayed and really believed then your prayers would be answered. This is why I prayed and believed that one day when I returned home there would be a rocking horse, and as I grew older the rocking horse prayer turned into a pony with a white star like Black Beauty and then into a Palomino golden horse. None of my prayers were answered. I recall being in a hospital bed saying,

“Mum I feel as if someone is sitting on my chest and they won’t get off me.” I complain to my mother. I didn’t like the plastic canopy that covered me. I’m overjoyed when they take the oxygen tent off. As I recover in the crisp white cold sheets of my hospital bed, a little boy with flax like hair and blue stripped pajamas chats to me none stop. His name is Tommy and he teaches me a song,

 “Yum- yum, chewing gum stick it up a lady’s bum, when it’s brown pull it down, yum, yum chewing gum.” It makes me feel so proud when I’ve learnt all the words and I feel excited to sing it to my mother when she visits. My mother is the only person that visits me and to tell the truth I don’t want anyone else to visit. I wished she would stay.

My Mum is not amused with my new song. “Who taught you that?”  I point to the little boy in the bed opposite and say “that kid over there. “Don’t point it’s rude,” my mother says and scowls her disapproval. Thinking back, I’m not sure if the disapproval was of my pointing finger or Tommy. My mother continues,

“Well, I never, the children of today.” She never says or calls us “kids” she always tells us not to use that “American word.” “A kid is the offspring of a goat and I’m not a goat!” “I don’t want to hear that from you again. You understand me?”

“Yes Mum,” I reply committing the rhyme to memory.

The nurses in their white aprons and funny hats perched on their heads try to get me to eat,

“Come on luv, you must have something,” they extoll. 

I make excuses, the truth is I just don’t feel hungry.

“I don’t like porridge.” I lie. At home I live mainly on a diet of ‘Cheeselet Crackers’ tiny square cheesy crackers and my bottle of milk. I drink out of a bottle until a little after the age of five and start school. I probably would have taken my bottle to school if it was allowed, but I can still drink out of it when I get home.

“Would you like cornflakes then?” A nurse asks with a smile in her voice. Finding it difficult to breathe, I croak out an answer.  “Yes.” I really don’t want to speak it hurts my chest to speak. I want to just nod my head. But my mother has cautioned me with “it is rude to just nod your head,” and it sounds like an alarm in my brain. The truth is I hate the cold milk they pour on my cornflakes. At home if we’ve cornflakes as a treat, my Mum uses warm milk, and it must be “gold top” with the yellow cream at the top of the bottle. In the summer we keep our milk bottle in cold water on the window sill so that it doesn’t curdle. Sometimes my Mum lets Paul and me put the cream from the top of the milk bottle into a jar and we take turns in shaking it. Eventually the cream turns into globs of soft butter. So, lying in the metal framed bed I stir the cornflakes around in the bowl until it’s a mushy mess and leave it uneaten.

 Each day my Mum visits and as she’s leaving says to me,

“Ann Ann.”  “Ann Ann” is what my baby brother Paul calls me. “Ann, Ann, do you want me to bring you anything from home?’ My answer is always the same,

 “May I have a corned beef sandwich?” I have to say “may” as my Mum reminds us all frequently of the difference between “can” and “may” and so I make sure to phrase my question correctly. (Canned “bully beef” is a treat we’ve every Saturday one can of corned beef serves five to seven people and visitors too). I’m too weak to eat anything, but I still ask and my mother brings them, little triangles of homemade crusty white bread with a dark red filling which find a home in the dustbin when the nurses spot them.