Harborfields: A Good Move

Not everything that follows sings Glory Hallelujah to Harborfields, but it has reminded me why my life was so much better there.

Before Harborfields I attended an overcrowded junior  high school in Levittown. When you moved between classes at Jonas Salk Junior High School, you merely merged with a tide of students that carried you where you hoped your next class would be. My seventh grade English teacher was young and cranky. One of the best things I wrote for her was a punishment essay she gave the entire class. I got a “D” on it. My eighth grade English teacher was uninspiring and suffered acute body odor.  I had one inspiring social studies teacher, Mr. Strebb, who took us on a field trip to  Teddy’s Roosevelt’s home.

Most of my elementary school friends had shuffled off to another junior high. I lived miles from most of the kids in my new classes, and I was a little backward socially.  None of these kids went to my church or bicycled on my streets.

I rode my bicycle to school because we were just inside the perimeter that busses went to. In the winter I frequently arrived at school wheezing with asthma. Usually I recovered by the time homeroom was over, but it did not enhance my morning experience.

At Harborfields I rode the bus, although it was not uncommon for me to miss it. Had a problem with mornings. I was delighted to find I was still in junior high, even though in ninth grade. We were top of the heap, instead of the bottom. You appreciate these things more when you are short and nerdy.

My classes were not large, and my teachers seemed to be glad to be there. Below I remember the good ones, but it may be enough to say I didn’t have any bad ones. Probably the worst hiccup was the year we had three Latin teachers, because they couldn’t keep one on the job.   Never went past Latin I.

But the real beauty of my life was living in a small town. You could walk from school to town in five minutes.  Right at the first corner was Hills supermarket where I had my first job.  The other side of the school was a potato field. Across the street from the school was the church I attended. It was the  Smalltown, America I had only dreamed of.

You take all this for granted when you are fourteen, but as I anticipate my 50th Reunion, I feel grateful for this move we made in 1962. You can’t know how your life would have been different, but I can’t imagine it would have been better in Levittown. Greenlawn turned my life around for reasons you can read below.

Tiger

            When I was fourteen I was a new kid in a new town and a new school. I was small and quiet, probably among the smallest boys in my class. But I was glad to be in Greenlawn, because it was a calm, rural community with a small junior high school, where the ninth graders were the oldest in the school.

The first essay tests were passed back on Looking Backward, one of the more boring novels we would read that year. I blinked when I saw a “97” at the top of mine. I was happy, but I wasn’t sure what I had written that was so good. Mr. Davis asked me to read mine. Then he explained what he liked about it. I still don’t remember what. Still , this gave me a new reputation in a class where everyone knew everyone except me.

One day Mr. Davis said, “I’m going to call you ‘Tiger,’ is that o.k.? You can really attack a story.” This was a very funny name to lay on a 4’ 6” kid with thick glasses, but it was a compliment, at least I took it that way. No one made fun of my nickname, since it was said with respect, but no one actually used it, unless accidentally.

“I agree with what Tiger, I mean Bill, said.” Kids grinned, but no one felt the need to use the name on purpose. Just Mr. Davis. He had a patrician way of speaking, a touch of the South in his voice, that never made you feel small.

I visited Mr. Davis every year after that, because he moved up to the high school soon after I did. He always called me “Tiger” until I was a senior, and it began to feel demeaning, but I think he wanted me to feel bigger and more confident than I was.

I wrote to Mr. Davis 32 years after leaving Harborfields to thank him for his strong influence on my literacy, as I had coached my own students, who themselves were English teachers. He had retired in 1992 and seemed to be enjoying his leisure. He wrote back, ” Of course I remember you vividly. You and that class were unforgettable. . .  The moment your name was mentioned to me on the phone, I saw you, wavy hair, glasses, wry smile glide into our classroom for the day’s fun.”  It was so typically thoughtful of him. He remembered. Isn’t that all we wish of our respected teachers? To remember us?

But he went the extra mile, when he said, “I am proud of your career, Bill. When you come East next give me a call.”  I hope that call will not be too late.

The Lunch Table

My lunch table called me “Termite,” because of my oral fixation on pencils. Actually I was prone to chew on whatever was available, when I was thinking or writing or even reading. It remains an unsanitary fixation to this day.  I think they also felt the “Tiger” that Mr. Davis assigned me was a little whimsical, and they not whimsical in that way.

Memories of lunch are a little hazy, but I remember the cast of characters: Bruce Bednarik, Bob Dietz, Bob Monat, and occasionally Andy Levy, Rick Clare and Ellen Frankel.  I have not seen Bruce or Bob or Andy or Ellen since Harborfields days, but I have met Rick several times for dinner, Bob Monat once, and Ellen over a string of e-mails.  These have been my tenuous connections with the Class of 1966.

You cannot recall Bednarik, Dietz, or Frankel without remembering Barry Goldwater and the Presidential election of 1964. They were passionate conservatives in a school where liberal thinking was rampant. They were readers of Ayn Rand, The National Review, and The Conscience of a Conservative (Goldwater). They supported States’ Rights, the domino theory, trickle-down economics, and most of the conservative agenda. I got in big trouble one day for paying tribute to Walter Reuther, the former AFL-CIO president, when I didn’t really know that much about him.

They would not appreciate the comparison, but can anyone remember such turmoil in the Republican Party since that 1964 election, when the conservatives steamrolled the moderate Republicans? Donald Trump is every bit as divisive as Goldwater in that he will not back down from anything said in a moment of campaign fervor. Neither one has the gift to appeal to a general electorate, which looks for someone who is ready to unite the country. “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue,” Goldwater famously said. Nicely said, if you don’t parse the political intentions too much.

That election propelled the country into a decade of civil rights reform and a demoralizing war that affected us all dramatically.  I believe at least one of our lunch table lost his life in that war. I became a conscientious objector, even though my lottery number was high. Rick was always a non-combative liberal, enjoying the irony and high comedy of politics.  I know Ellen continues in an academic career that sustains her conservative voice.  The others could all be libertarians, for all that I know.

One other political flare in the 1960’s was the organization of the New York City teachers into the United Federation of Teachers. I remember the labor organizing of teachers coming up once or twice in social studies, and teachers like Mr. Cruz and Mr. Smith striving to keep neutral. Teachers were not supposed to be political or to strike in those days. The National Education Association tried to project that balanced voice, quite different from their rhetoric today.

I can only say this: I have taught for forty-three years and been on strike at least three times. I never doubted the need for a strike, nor do I think teachers can afford to be apolitical outside the classroom, with their rights under fire daily.  My lunch table would be aghast.

Irrational Numbers

Tenth grade geometry turned out better than any math I had previously taken. For half of the year I struggled with proofs, mostly getting them after Mr. Coates or someone in class performed them the day after homework.  But somehow I turned the corner and started doing proofs on my own around January. To my astonishment, I ended up getting a “96” on the Regents Exam. A small, unforgettable victory.

Mr. Coates assigned us topics for oral reports, and I got “Irrational Numbers.”  Not very inspired, I procrastinated until it was too late. Because I was asthmatic I managed to fake respiratory illness more than once in my life, and the day I was supposed to report on irrational numbers was one of them. My mother steamed up the bathroom, and I began “to feel better” late in the morning.

Then my report fever broke out, and I started scanning books I owned to see if irrational numbers came up. This was a pretty hopeless strategy compared to Google, but the subject actually did turn up in a book called Realm of Numbers by Isaac Asimov.  In retrospect this was divine intervention way beyond my deserving. Asimov was more than a brilliant science fiction writer, and his account of Pythagoras and the right triangle laid out the origin of irrational numbers transparently.

When I showed up to give my report a day late, I remember Mr. Coates giving me the beady eyeball, because I had been conveniently sick. He mumbled something vaguely accusatory, but let me present anyway. I pretty much gave the Asimov version of “Irrational Numbers” and nailed it.  I remember some class mates congratulating me at the end of class, and someone said I should consider becoming a teacher.

I have written many stories about how I became a teacher, but they never go back to tenth grade. Now that I recall it, I think I understand why.

High School Musicals

As a student and later as a teacher, nothing delighted me more than high school musicals. I developed two of my major crushes on girls who played the leads in musicals at Harborfields, but you’ll have to get quite a few beers into me before I’ll divulge who they were.  God knows, I never told them.

Rogers and Hammerstein musicals made it look easy.  The girls always went for the unpretentious, sincere dreamers, who won their hearts against the brash, wealthy power-brokers. I was shy enough to appear unpretentious. In reality I was too repressed to attract girls in high school and mostly mixed with girls in the youth fellowship group at church. Even there I was a bit sanctimonious as a cover for sheer terror in their presence.

But in the dark of the auditorium peering at the brightly lit world in front of me I dissolved in the music and costumes that made the female leads even more gorgeous than they were. I remember Carousel, Oklahoma, and Flower Drum Song  and forget another one in between. Part of the charm was the solitary longing that the male protagonist indulged in, usually with a soul-searching solo, until his love was  accidentally requited. The gods seemed to ordain it. Love seemed inevitable in this world, which made my own fantasies viable paths to romance. I lived off that fantasy almost until I met my wife. A lovely, but dysfunctional world.

When I taught high school I was inspired for a different reason. I saw my students perform in ways I could not imagine in English class. In my school the Spring Musical recruited about 30% of the student body and some of them could hardly read a lick in my class. On the stage they could dance, sing, and even repeat lines. And they were good!  I had a lump in my throat witnessing what they could do and even shed a few tears of joy. I envied the drama teacher who got to see them at their best, and I  loved to congratulate them after the show, because they knew they had exceeded my expectations. For two hours they were transformed. Again the fantasy, but a more life-giving dream.

And when I retire I am going to try out for some musical role that will renew that dream. I have never lost the fascination with the unreality of the musical. It is a place to go when reality is not good enough.

Untimely and Ill-considered

In our sophomore year, Linda Sager died.  She and her mother were swept away on the tracks of a railroad crossing not a mile from the high school. At least that is what I remember.

She was a sweet, cherubic girl, quiet, hard-working. She had been dating a friend of mine for just a few months, her life just starting to bloom. Not the person you would choose for a tragic end, if you were choosing.

I had a rather unconscious existence when I was sixteen, so I am not sure whether the school helped us deal with the death of a classmate. But I remember hardly speaking of it. My friend Bob never spoke of it to me, and I don’t recall what I might have said to him. I deeply regret that as much as I regret anything at Harborfields.

In those days I wanted to be known as spiritual. I read the Bible. I sang in the church choir. I went to Youth for Christ once a month. It wasn’t pretense, but it was shallow. I was a crappy friend who didn’t want to know what my friend was suffering.  I didn’t want to think about what Linda had suffered. I didn’t know what happened to Jewish people when they died, and I didn’t want to contemplate it.

I hate to bring it all up fifty years later, but I committed myself to talk about the worst of times as well as the best of times. This was one of the worst.

Jake and Brett

I’ve been an English teacher or English educator all my life, so naturally I remember my high school teachers. But there were only three I remember fondly: Davis, Jacobs and Brett. When I think of life-long literacy I think of these three. When I think of cultural inoculation, I think of the rest of them.

If you had a memorable thought about a book you had read in high school, but not just for another class, that was life-long literacy.  If you ever read a classic novel and then asked yourself, What was so great about that? that was cultural inoculation.

I stopped in Stratford, Ontario this past May to see Macbeth.  I was at a matinee and there were hundreds of teenagers attending on field trips. They were attentive, and they laughed in the right places (Macbeth  has a couple of funny scenes).  I was impressed. I’m not sure my tenth grade self would have appreciated it as well, but Macbeth is one example of Shakespeare at the right time for a high school reader.

I’m pretty sure Macbeth in tenth grade was my first dose of Shakespeare.  Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Brett taught humanities as a team, and it was the only time in my life I liked history. Along with Macbeth,  we read The Prince (Macchiavelli), The Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes),The Dwarf  (Par Lagertkvist), and Lord of the Flies (William Golding). I cannot name another class in high school, from which I can recall two books, let alone five. I remember them because they were all about freedom, power, ambition and their consequences. Jake and Brett did not ask us to write literary or historical essays, they asked us about the nature of freedom, control, and moral values.   I’m sure they are long gone, but if they were teaching today they would be at home in any high school that promoted life-long literacy.

Good teachers choose books that make the most sense to the age group they are teaching.  That was a gift of Jake and Brett. I’m pretty sure it was in this class I read Brave New World (that makes six books I remember). Later I taught the same book in high school more than once, and last year I guided a pre-service teacher through a unit plan on the same book. I read it at just the right time in my life, and high school students still read it at about the same time in their lives.  Two other Harborfields English teachers, who shall remain nameless, ruined me for Moby Dick  and King Lear, because they had to inoculate me with culture at a time they thought appropriate.

When friends ask me today what an ideal high school would look like, I always mention teachers collaborating, idea-driven curricula, writing about the big questions, talking about what you believe.  It is easy to trace these dreams back to tenth grade, a peak in the valley of my high school education.  Harborfields was a fine high school, but life-long literacy started in ninth and ended in tenth grade with the dauntless Davis, Jacobs and Brett.

[By the way, the best math teacher I ever had was a woman, Mrs. Kissam.  So, no, I am not sexist.]

 Hills Days

John Updike wrote a story called “A&P” in which the protagonist heroically walks out on his job, because of the rude behavior of the manager toward two high school girls. My time at Hills was nothing like that.

I spent the last fifteen months of high school as a check-out clerk at Hills. I struggled to make my drawer balance out for a couple of weeks, but eventually I learned to keep track of all those coin rolls, coupons, and checks. I got a raise after twelve months. I was on the gravy train at $1.45 an hour.

Most of the clerks were girls, most with boyfriends or husbands. They were friendly, but they mostly hung together or went outside to smoke on their breaks. I was more likely to spend my break reading or strolling into town.

One day three of the girls were cracking up at one end of the registers, so I asked what was so funny as I passed by.

“Shelly’s register came up $69.69,” gasped one them above the hysteria.

“Really? What’s the big deal about 69?” I asked, all innocence.

There was dead silence. They looked at each other, almost holding their breaths.

“You don’t know what 69 is?”

“Not really,” racking my mathematical brain.

That was all I could get out them, because they were trying very hard not to burst out laughing. They knew I was serious, but they were not going to be the ones to tell me.

About a half hour later the assistant manager, Richie, called me to his office.

 “The girls are embarrassed because you keep saying ‘What’s the big deal about 69?’Do you know what it means?”

“No idea.”

“69 is when a man eats a woman, and a woman eats a man,” he summarized.

At this point I knew we weren’t speaking of mathematics, and that the subject was horribly embarrassing for anyone who had to explain it to me, but truthfully I still wasn’t sure what acts were being tersely described by Richie.  I had a glimmer, but my sexual experience was pretty limited at this point.

“Oh, thanks for explaining it,” I said.

“So let’s not be talking about ’69’ out there, o.k.?”

“Oh sure, Richie, sorry.” And back I went with my head down all the way to my register.

I’m pretty sure the girls felt sorry for me, but it was hard to express that in any way but giggling or amazement.  I was actually relieved when two of them had to leave to have their babies.  There was no recovering from such humiliation at 16. At least not for me.

Homeroom

It’s funny that, by the quirk of the alphabet, you start the day with the same classmates for four years. There was not too much mobility at the lower end of the alphabet, so we pretty much shared all four years in the same line-up: Bill Titus, Bill Tucker, Anne-Marie Vacarro, Roy Vollmer, Wendy Zukas. Probably forgot someone there. Sorry about that.

Bill was one of the most curious people I knew. He talked about science like most guys talked about sports: weather, biology, engineering, a lot of it over my head.  He could have been a Mr. Wizard on TV for all his fascinations. I remember how tall he was; slouching, his feet stretched out in front of his chair. He was a good student, but nothing interested him more than the trumpet, so I thought of him as a band nerd. He must have had band early in the morning, because his trumpet case was almost always with him.  I liked him and wished I knew him better.

Ann-Marie was one of the kindest and sweetest people I knew, and one of the few I ran into later in life. She showed up halfway through freshmen year, dark, smiling, round in an appealing Italian way. We were both new to the school. She could not stop talking about Half Hollow Hills High School, so I guess she was homesick.  She loved the cello, and I recall she played well. She invited me to her sweet-sixteen party; it was one of the few I attended, I was so shy. I remember the big song of that summer was “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” It played over and over and over.

I ran into her fifteen years later at a religious community on Cape Cod. She was a resident member, and my wife and I were non-resident members. Although we were each happy with our lives at that time, the Community did not work out for any of us. It had cultish tendencies that drove us out in the later 1980’s. After she returned to Long Island I had brief e-mail contact with her, and she was recovering well. I’m sorry we lost contact after that.

I did not know Roy at all, except that he occasionally attended our church, First Presbyterian of Greenlawn. He was short and short-haired like me, usually a bit of a scowl on his face. We had no classes together or any friends in common. Neither one of us were very gregarious. I remember guys from other homerooms used to stop by to talk with him.

Wendy was tall, fair and dark-haired, looking as Greek as her name. There was no one smarter in every subject- math, science,social studies, English- she aced them all. She was so quiet about it, though, not one for display of knowledge. I admired that. I think she intimidated a lot of boys with her intelligence and her height. I know she did me. I seem to recall she and Jim Blair were an item for a short time.  That would figure. Both very smart, independent thinkers.  I would really like to know how she turned out.

If there’s a theme here, it is regret of not befriending my homeroom neighbors. I was so introverted I missed out on knowing some fascinating people. Another example was Charlie Thomas, one of the few black kids in the school. We actually lived about a half mile apart and rode the bus together, but no friendship ever came of it. We lived at the outskirts of the district, separated by a small wooded area. Our two neighborhoods were as segregated as any in the deep south.  I had actual dreams about crossing that divide later in life, so it must have been on my mind.  I wonder if I would have tried harder if he had been white.

With my fiftieth class reunion coming up, I think of that homeroom cohort. Of the group, only Bill has appeared on Facebook. In fact he was responsible for a web site that brought our class together, quite an accomplishment, considering the lack of class activity. The rest remain scattered, and maybe I won’t ever see them again. That would be a shame.

Maybe if I add their names to my tags . . . they’ll turn up.

A Pair of Long Islanders: Gatsby and Me

A few years ago when they were re-making the movie The Great Gatsby I read the novel again to see what I had missed. Some were saying this was the greatest American novel. It was set in Long Island maybe twenty miles from where I lived as a high school student.  There was the familiar commute between East Egg (fictional) and New York City (real). There was Gatsby’s longing gaze across a bay of Long Island Sound. I could picture that.

But no, I still felt like Gatsby was a jerk who thought he could buy Daisy’s affections. He wasted huge sums of money just to throw parties she might attend. He was the poster child for “Money can’t buy you happiness,” and I felt no compassion for him whatsoever. I taught the novel a few times as a high school teacher, but without enthusiasm.

I had an submerged resentment of the wealthy. Another Long Islander, Teddy Roosevelt (Sagamore Hill), was one of my favorite presidents. He was an economic reformer, who curbed the growth of trusts and introduced the graduated income tax. He cultivated friendships with muckraking writers like Samuel McClure and Ida Tarbell (The History of the Standard Oil Company). They wrote about the corruption of the wealthy, books like The Jungle  and The Octopus.  I loved the muckrakers and wrote a report on them in eleventh grade, the only lasting academic memory I have of that year.  I wanted to rake muck when I  grew up.

I doubt we would have been considered poor, although my parents had to sell their home in South Huntington for financial reasons, when I went to college. Once my friends were talking about scholarships, and Bruce said,” Don’t bother to apply for the Lions Club. You have to be dirt poor to win that.” A month later I was a Lions’ Club scholar.  I always qualified for need-based scholarships, for which I am grateful. Today I teach many first-generation-in-college students, and I identify with them strongly.

When I was in junior high some of my best clothes were hand-me-downs from my cousin George in Denver. He had good stuff in good condition, and I was proud to wear it until I heard disparaging comments about hand-me-downs. Something I overheard, not about me. Casual remarks sometimes put you in your place.

Probably because we were living beyond our means my father would deny many things we wanted for lack of money. In one of my favorite stories from ninth grade “The Rocking Horse Winner,” it seemed to the young son that the house itself was chanting “There must be more money.” I got that. That was my house. Even though it was set in England, that was a real American story, in my opinion. Not The Great Gatsby.

I never shed tears for the tragic figures who were kings or princes. Hamlet-spoiled teen-ager; Macbeth-greedy power-grubber; Oedipus-had a complex; Faust-made a bad bargain. The only tragedy I ever felt was Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. That was American tragedy. That play could stand a revival in 2016.

We never spoke much about social class at Harborfields, and I never felt condescension. But it permeates your education, even if  you’re not aware of it. Some people had to work part-time, some didn’t. Some people dressed with class, some more off-the-rack from Korvette. Some had their own cars; some bummed rides. My parents never denied me the use of their car, so I am not playing the poor card about that.

And I don’t want to play the poor card, but I know wealth colors my opinions more than I admit. I loved to live in Greenlawn, but I always felt distance from Centerport. Visiting friends there sometimes felt like visiting the Vanderbilts, whose summer residence actually was in the neighborhood. Some friends had boats; I couldn’t fathom it. (Although Rick Clare was kind enough take me on the family boat to the World’s Fair one weekend.) Some spoke of attending private out-of-state colleges. I kept in the neighborhood of the N.Y. Regents Scholarship.

Really I have nothing to complain about. I’m teaching English teachers at a working class university. I have great medical benefits.  My condo is almost paid up.  I’m in pretty good health. Class warfare has not scarred me much.

Except I don’t like Donald Trump or George Will or Mark Cuban or Jerry Jones or filthy rich athletes, or any foundation that turns down my grant applications.  Or Jay Gatsby. Gatsby, you probably brought more fame to Long Island than Billy Joel, but you’re a whimpering patrician, who would never have time for plebeians like me.  I’ll take Walt Whitman any day.

Just in my mailbox this morning . . .

When I Read the Book

Walt Whitman

When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

Senior Follies

Someone wrote in my yearbook, ” I understand your car is good for watermelon running.”  That is probably the most incriminating record of my extra-curricular activities at Harborfields. I avoided risky behavior as a policy; it was only the arrogance of senior status that let me cross the line now and then.

The watermelon business originated from the Senior Lounge, that bastion of subversive activity. If you had study hall at the end of the day Senior Lounge was your get-out-of-school-free card. Spontaneous field trips were common, so my volunteering my car for a run to Hills Supermarket did not make headlines. I can remember someone stealing to the cafeteria for paper plates and the sweet taste of watermelon cut up in the Senior Lounge. It was 1966 in small-town America, and no one in charge would consider it risky behavior.  Just senior follies.

And Senior Follies gave vent to wild satire in the auditorium. Boys dressed in drag and show-kicked to “Wish You All Could Be Better-Lookin’ Girls” with homage to the Beach Boys. Teachers were lampooned by familiar classroom scenarios. Someone talked me into posing as Mr. Rice, our senior English teacher.  In tribute to our dabbling in Chinese literature, we sat robed in a circle, while our sage “Confuse-us” lectured us on the meaning of life. I mainly remember exhausting the first 30-seconds of the “class” with a wretched smoker’s cough. It was an authentic, if a somewhat cruel portrayal. Later  I felt some recrimination about exaggerating (only slightly) a teacher’s disabling illness, but I never heard from Mr. Rice or anyone else about our questionable taste.

When later I became a teacher, I think the faculty were mostly honored by satirical portrayals of their behavior, although a couple once took umbrage to an allusion to their intra-faculty romance. I’m not sure how it came up, because we didn’t have Senior Follies at my high school. I always thought it was a shame.

At some point I dreaded teaching seniors, because they were so useless in the second semester. The studious college applicants of the first semester became the reluctant, sometimes idiotic, college-secure vagrants of the second semester. We would threaten to report their indolence to their colleges, possibly compromising their acceptance, but I don’t think anyone actually did.

Seniors clearly outgrew high school before it was over. One of the shrewdest innovations of this millenium was the joint enrollment of high school students on college campuses. Seniors need to know they have not reached their ceiling in twelfth grade, and many high schools do not have their own programs to accommodate this growth. So swing wide the gates of college!

Senior Follies were great, as long as they were follies and not normal senior behavior. That’s why they were called “follies.”

Blu-u-e Card . . .You Saw Me Standing Alone

On the first day of road classes Mr.Penharlow was backing out of a parking space in the HHS parking lot. As he turned the steering wheel left starting to angle out, he suddenly stopped and said, “Am I going to hit that car? Who thinks I will?” I thought, Definitely, he’s going to cream it. Someone else made a non-committal remark, but Jim Pucci, who was sitting next to me in the back seat said, “No way. You’re clear!” Penharlow finished backing without a scrape. “You’re going to have to know how to do that,” he warned us. And I knew I was going to suck at Driver Ed.  And Jim Pucci was going to be awesome.

I didn’t have any accidents, but I was a nervous wreck most of my time behind the wheel. And Pucci was as cool as a NASCAR driver the whole time. This is all I remember about Jim, but I remember it well.

A couple of days we worked a driving simulator in the classroom. It was a seat with a steering wheel and a brake pedal. It was supposed to record braking times. Mr. P narrated each student’s leisurely drive until he thought we weren’t paying attention and then would shout, “Brake!” When I mounted the simulator, he was very casual, but soon he said,”There’s a pretty girl on the sidewalk, Tucker. . .  Brake! Oh, look at that, 0.5 seconds, Tucker. You just wiped out a pedestrian in the crosswalk. See what happens when you’re not paying attention?”

We thought the simulator was pretty hokey, but it was good enough to embarrass me. About twenty years later I had a light front-end collision with a car in front of me, because, guess why? I had glanced at a girl going down the sidewalk to my right. I fudged the explanation of the paint damage to my wife later, but I was painfully aware of the irony. I had failed the simulator twenty years earlier, had not learned my lesson, and karma had come for me.

Like everyone else I wanted that Blue Card, so I stuck out Driver’s Ed. The Blue Card verified we had passed a certified driver training course and were eligible for an insurance discount.  The Holy Grail of Driver’s Ed, it was best captured by the Senior Follies rendition of “Blue Moon.”  I remember only one poignant line about the other Driver Ed teacher.  “Dollllll-beer. You fill us all with such fear.”

The final exam was some kind of project, and one of the choices was writing a short story about driving. This I knew I could do. But, of course, I couldn’t do it on time, and the course ended before I finished writing it. So I slipped it under Mr. P’s door a couple of days late. He had pity on me and gave me a “C.”

I can’t even remember if that qualified me for the Blue Card or not. Then I failed my first road test for my license. But that’s another pathetic chapter.

September – December, 1962

I lived in Wantagh on the South Shore before we moved to Huntington. We were having a house built the summer before my freshman year, and it went on and on, as summer turned into winter. My parents didn’t want me to start at General Douglas A. MacArthur High School in Levittown and then have to change in short order, so my mother drove me to Harborfields JHS, about twenty-five miles each way, for three months. My parents were like that. They didn’t know they would be driving me for three months, but they took it all in stride.

My mother hated two things: mornings and driving. This commute combined it all for her. She had to drag me and my kid sister out of bed at 6 a.m., both of us comatose, and drive a chugging 1948 Ford  (“Creampuff”) up Old Country Road through Dix Hills and northward toward Pulaski Road and deposit me at HJHS in time for homeroom. In the afternoon I took the Long Island Railroad from Greenlawn to New Hyde Park, where my Dad worked, and back to Wantagh with him.

When I wanted to join the newspaper club, my mother would drive back to Greenlawn twice a month to pick me up at 4 p.m.

It was worth it to me. I loved my new school, carved out of a potato field, about a third of the size of my old one, with small classes and kind teachers.

Mr. Davis announced he would have a “Literary Club” that would meet in his home in Centerport on Monday night from 7:00 -8:30. I have never heard of a teacher volunteering for such duty before or since then, but it sounded wonderful to me. When I told my parents about it, they hardly flinched. After an early dinner, my father drove me to Centerport, parked outside Mr. Davis’s house, and waited the hour and a half, probably listening to the ball game on his transistor radio. I think I would go to sleep on the car ride back, happy for the night’s discussion, thinking that this was what parents were expected to do for their kid.

It was only when I recounted this story to my future wife that I began to appreciate what had been done for me.  I was the guy who never had all the things he wanted, but had two parents who turned their lives upside down, just so their son didn’t have to change schools in mid-year.  After that I never let them forget what that meant to me. Parents never get enough credit.

 November 22, 1962 – Where Were You?

My shadowy recollections of the day John F. Kennedy was shot are a little like 9/11, except in the first case I was a high school freshman and in the second case a college teacher. In both cases the news drifted into the schoolroom like a rumor, something that probably was not really happening. In both cases the media suddenly dominated our lives, even the limited coverage we could snatch back in 1962. In both cases it happened in agonizing slow motion, as news of president being taken to the hospital and the news of one plane attacking the Pentagon and another getting diverted to a Pennsylvania field kept us on edge the rest of the day. In both cases we feared for the future of the country, not sure how mortal our wounds were.

I was in last period study hall, when the news blurted over the P.A. system, followed by a radio report of the ongoing events. I remember us in stunned silence fixed on the box front and center up on the wall of the room. We knew the President had been hit by multiple gun shots; he had been taken from the limo bleeding, but alive.  I don’t think the news of his death reached us until we had left school, although the newspaper says he was pronounced dead at 1 p.m.

I also remember the whole drama unfolding over the weekend, including the murder of the shooter Oswald by the petty criminal Jack Ruby.  By the time we were back in school on Monday, the swearing in of Vice-President Johnson and all the major events, except for the funeral, had transpired. And it looked like the country would survive, though scarred with grief.

I wish I could remember what our teachers said that Monday to reassure us and give us historical perspective, but memory fails. The tragedy seemed more personal than political, because the images of Jacqueline and Caroline and John-John Kennedy dominated the media. One picture of Johnson getting sworn in, and the assumption was it would be business as usual.  And it was.

The political reverberations of the bombing of the World Trade Center were much more staggering. The dominating images were of two buildings falling and the President and the Mayor of New York stepping up to reassure us we could and would defend ourselves. Shock waves of that day continue to roll over us today.

The investigation of the Warren Commission kept the Kennedy assassination in high profile for another two years, but it was all about imagined conspiracies and alleged cover-ups.  The momentary terror dissipated much more quickly and mostly we wanted to know “Where were you when it happened?”  So where were you?

Olympics: 1964

Watching the Parade of Nations for the 2016 Olympics and wondering what were the highlights of the Summer Olympics 52 years ago.  Apparently it was in Tokyo and apparently in October if you want to call that the “Summer” Olympics.

This was the first Olympics for judo, volleyball, and fiberglass poles for vaulting.  Remember the gold medal winner in the pole vault? The immortal Fred Hansen for the United States. How soon we forget.

Remember the fleet Dallas Cowboys running back Bob Hayes? 1964 was his victory in the 100 meter sprint, conferring on him the title of “The World’s Fastest Human.”  In those days, turning pro football player automatically disqualified you for future Olympics.

Another highlight was the first runner to win the marathon twice: Abebe Bikila the barefoot Ethiopian. I remember his first gold in Rome in 1960, because no one had heard of him. He was the first of the Ethiopian juggernaut in the marathon.

But his more remarkable achievement was his Gold-winning performance in Tokyo six weeks after an emergency appendectomy. No one had expected him to be competitive, but he was well ahead by the time they entered the Olympic Stadium:

His lead got ever bigger and by the time he entered the Olympic Stadium, the crowd applauded Bikila across the line, stunned by both his margin of victory and by the lack of exhaustion. By the time Basil Heatley, of Great Britain, arrived to claim silver, Bikila was calmly doing stretching exercises, having recovered from his exertions. https://www.olympic.org/news/abebe-bikila

Another surprise medalist was the U.S boxer Joe Fraser, an unknown at that time, who was only an alternate on the team and competing due to another boxer’s injury. He slugged his way to the semi-finals where he knocked out a Russian six inches taller than he was, but in the process broke his thumb.

He was determined to fight for gold, though. He told nobody about the injury and stepped into the ring the next day to face the German Hans Huber, a bus mechanic who had really wanted to qualify as a wrestler, in the final. The normally devastating left hook was, predictably, not as powerful, but Frazier fought cleverly, favored his right much more than normal, and dug into his reserves of strength. He was rewarded with a 3-2 judges’ decision. The gold was his – greatness lay ahead. Six years later, he was world champion.  https://www.olympic.org/news/joe-frazier

If you remember Fraser, you probably remember how Muhammed Ali knocked him out in “The Thriller in Manila.” Surprising to find him a U.S. Olympic hero.

Apparently the Summer Olympics is returning to Tokyo in 2020, coming full circle four years after the Class of 1966 does.

Kathy

I met my wife Kathy eight years after graduating, and she died seven months before the Harborfields 50th Reunion, so connections are tenuous. But we spent 42 of our best years together, so she bears remembering.

We often wondered if we would have hit it off in high school. I know I am still in love with her high school portrait, short, dark curly hair, crystal blue eyes, and a smile that wouldn’t quit. For all the poor health she experienced, she preserved her sunlit smile until the end. I wrote a eulogy around that smile.

I’m afraid I would have been too awkward to have asked her out when I was sixteen, but then I was pretty awkward when I was 26, just more motivated.  By all accounts she was pretty popular, played guitar and banjo in a folk group and made some good friends at New Rochelle High School. The problems began when she moved to Winchester, Massachusetts in her senior year.

Winchester High School was a small school without the same AP programs New Rochelle had, so Kathy was treading water in her senior year. And there was some resentment about her screwing up the class ranks by bringing a high average from her former school.  You never lose that outsider label when you arrive late in the high school journey.

I recall some similar resentment in the halls of HF when a few transfers came in with high averages, displacing someone who expected to be valedictorian.  I won’t mention names, but I recall a lot of murmuring about class rankings in our senior year. Grades at Harborfields were celebrated in the A- range, while transferring students brought soaring A+ averages on their transcripts.

Here’s the point. How much do class rankings matter today? Or SAT scores? I hope they don’t matter at all, and I wish they mattered less in high school. They are decent achievements, but they make pretty poor status symbols.  Some things get blown out of perspective when you are seventeen, and I think class rank and College Board scores are two of them.

Kathy had the rank and the test scores to back them up, but none of that was mentioned at her funeral. What  we mentioned was her kindness, her enthusiasms for music and dogs and poetry, her love of teaching, and her delightful smile.

“You only have to smile,”

She told me. “People like your smile.”

I know they liked hers,

Even when she was weak and failing

She gave another one away.

But for every smile she lavished

She had another one for me

What strangers had for a moment

I had every day

That’s what I’ll miss most often

From my sweet special K.