And so it Began

It's part of southern culture to be friendly toward strangers. And for those first few days at John Tyler High in January of 1970 I was a still a stranger so everyone was pretty nice to me...

When I showed up at the office that first morning they didn't know quite what to do with me. It was a couple of weeks before the end of the semester and they weren't accustomed to students showing up out of the blue... But the main problem was that they didn't offer French, Precalc (or Calculus), Economics or Astronomy (and PE wasn't required) so except for English and Drafting they had to figure out a whole new schedule.
They did the best they could and after a bit of shuffling I ended up with English, Government, Sociology, Debate and Physics... I did take Drafting for couple of weeks but it didn't work out - more on that later... But my schedule was a mess for those 2 weeks until the semester ended - I was stuck in study hall part of the time...

I was surprised to discover that John Tyler was "open campus" and during lunch one of the guys (Lonnie) in my English class asked if I wanted to run to a convenience store with him and his friends... Now - I've always avoided getting into a car with someone until I figure out if they are a raving lunatic or not - but for some reason I had my guard down that day... Big mistake :-)
I lost count of how many times my life flashed before my eyes during that short trip... There was an easy way to get where we were going but that's not how Lonnie rolled. He preferred tearing around on back roads at twice the speed limit... The first "eye opener" was when the car in front of us stopped to make a left turn. There was no place to go and Lonnie wasn't slowing down. At the last moment he drove his car up onto the grass embankment at about 45MPH - fishtailing and swerving before he finally wrestled it back on to the road in a shower of gravel... There were other "off-road excursions" and I lost count of how many stop signs and red lights he ran - after looking both ways, of course :-)
We were almost back to school when he ran a red light right in front of some Texas State Troopers and got pulled over. As the troopers walked up to the car Lonnie briefed me on proper etiquette when dealing with Texas law enforcement. Basically - no sudden movements, tell the truth and show as much respect as possible : -) The stop didn't last long. One trooper took Lonnie aside and ticketed him while the other one slid into the driver seat and questioned us a bit...
The troopers looked exactly like I expected - with smokey hats and mirror shades... The one who got in the car took one look at me and said "Where you from, boy??" I guess it was pretty obvious I wasn't from around there :-) I don't remember much else about the stop but I do recall that the troopers were wicked sharp - they didn't miss anything. I was quite impressed... They quickly concluded that there was nothing going on but stupid driving and let us get on our way back to school.

The main thing I remember from that afternoon is Drafting class. There were 2 reasons:
First - the instructor looked more like a pig than any human being I had ever seen and for some reason (probably because he was a stupid redneck) he took an instant dislike to me :-)
Second - there was another guy in the class with long hair... Now - I should point out that when I say long hair I don't mean long. I just mean over the ears and collar. That was all it took to cause "shock and awe" in Tyler back then... Anyway - his name was Wayne Fleming and he would become one of the best friends I've ever had... More on that later...

I also recall that upon discovering I was from Southern California the kid behind me in one of the classes said "They gotta lot of wetbacks there, don't they?" Now - I'd never heard that term before (there's no river separating Mexico from California) and when I asked for clarification he threw out enough other derogatory terms for me to get his drift... That's when I really started wondering what we'd gotten ourselves into :-)

Finally - I noticed that there were guys in blue FFA (Future Farmers of America) jackets everywhere. Little did I realize that they would become the bane of my existence...