Homeroom - part 2

One thing that kind of took me by surprise in Tyler, Texas back in 1970 was what a huge deal cheerleading was... Yeah - the whole "Texas cheerleader" thing didn't really get much national attention until 1991 when a junior high cheerleader's mother tried to hire a hitman to kill one of her daughter's rivals. Yes - they take cheerleading pretty seriously down there :-)

But it was an especially big deal in Tyler because of the Tyler Junior College "Apache Belles". They were nationally known, having performed during halftime at a number of college bowl games and professional sporting events, including the 1967 NFL championship game (and later Superbowl VI.) So it should come as no surprise that the lifelong ambition of a number of my (female) classmates was to be an Apache Belle... I really don't know what my point is - other than I thought it was all a bit weird... But at least they had ambitions :-)

And back to homeroom:

My English teacher was in her late 30's with short wavy black hair, a big nose and what I call "clown makeup" - too colorful and too much of it :-)
She had been "up north" once (where the yankees live) and she frequently told tales about what a strange and mysterious place it was. Very few of my fellow classmates had ever been north of the Mason-Dixon line so they were always spellbound:
"Ah went inta a restarahnt and ordered a haimburger and it tweren't nothin but a tahny paice a meat on a bun. No pickles or tahmaitah or lettuce or nothin! I couldn't bahlieve it!!!"
As usual, I was secretly amused :-)

I remember that she made us memorize bible verses... I had to do 1 Corinthians 13 - the "faith, hope and charity (love)" bit. I thought about complaining (separation of church and state) but it was actually a rather interesting passage so I didn't really mind...

There were (of course) times when I just couldn't resist showing off. One day the teacher had some paperwork to catch up on so she handed out a Shakespeare themed crossword puzzle to keep us busy... It took me about 10 minutes to finish it and I sat there for another 5 or so trying to decide what to do next - I finally decided to go up to her desk and ask. Her initial annoyance at being interrupted changed to stunned disbelief when I showed her the completed puzzled. She sat there for a few seconds regaining her composure before handing me a second (harder) puzzle. That one took me about 20 minutes. I turned that one in and she didn't have any more puzzles so she told me to just act busy for the rest of the period... BTW: The teacher's pet / class genius finished the first puzzle about the same time I turned in the second one. Only about 5 or so other students managed to complete it before the end of class...

Aside: I did keep very close tabs on my grades. I knew exactly what the grading formula was for each class and kept track of my progress in my notebook. John Tyler High was a bit tough because "citizenship" was worth a full grade point in each class. So - due to my bad attitude and lack of class participation I had to maintain almost a B average on my academic work to get an overall C... I didn't think that was very fair...
But I managed to maintain my low grades through a combination of not turning in homework and refusing to make up tests from the days I was absent...

For some reason that seemed to aggravate most of my teachers. But it was worth the effort:
The last week of school they posted the final rankings and I was the median student out of a graduating class of ~570. I have to admit that there was a certain amount of luck involved but still - I was overjoyed at having absolutely nailed my objective :-)
Yeah - I almost told the other kids gathered around the billboard why I was so excited but then it occurred to me that most of them didn't know what a median was anyway... I could just imagine them saying "Y'all mean a hahway divahder?" :-)

I suppose I should give the English teacher credit for caring (not many teachers did)... She was constantly inquiring about the "health problems" that caused me to miss so much school (mom always wrote me a sick note when I skipped)... And she frequently lectured me about wasting my God given talents - but that was only because (like most teacher) she thought "hard work" was the same thing as "accomplishment"... Seriously - if you can ace the test without cracking a book what exactly is the point of doing the homework?

It's not like I was incapable of working hard... I just didn't give a darn :-)

Homeroom - part 1

English was my first class of the morning at John Tyler High in the spring of 1970. It was also my "homeroom" - although I was never quite sure what that meant :-)

I spent most of my formative years attending private schools, so when I was thrust into the public school system in southern California in 1968 it seemed like a big "step down" academically... But by comparison John Tyler High was like falling off a cliff...
I guess that kind of makes sense: Tyler was a very conservative, fundamentalist town and the north side was decidedly blue collar... Still - when I first heard my fellow students complaining about how hard the classes were I thought they were kidding. It turns out they weren't... My next impression was that they were freaking idiots - but I don't really think that's true either... I think the schools just did a stellar job of reflecting the community's "values" - which apparently didn't include critical thinking :-)

So when the English teacher wrote "revue" on the board instead of "review", or "heros" instead of "heroes" nobody else seemed to notice and I didn't speak up... I just enjoyed being secretly amused...

Aside: Those last 2 years of high school were a very puzzling time... I'd always believed I was pretty smart, but if that were true why couldn't I function? Everywhere I looked I saw nothing but boundless ambiguity. I couldn't figure out how to get a grip on anything... Yet all my classmates moved effortlessly through the day - always knowing what was going on and what needed to be done... How was it that they could figure out what I couldn't??? It began to seem that everyone else was a lot smarter than I in the ways that really mattered (like doing well in school - or tying shoelaces)...
So by the second semester of my senior year the thought of going to college seemed downright laughable... But that was OK because I didn't want to become part of the corporate "greed machine" anyway... Yes - I was going to become one of the "workers of the world" - that is if I could ever figure out how to do anything useful. :-)
I aspired to just making it through each day without anything particularly unpleasant happening :-) But I digress... Back to homeroom:

Marsha Chaney sat to my left. She was unfailingly nice - genuinely so. (I can usually tell the difference between "fake" and "real" nice...) Here's her yearbook pic:

And behind Marsha was a cheerleader named Pam Stanley. A lot of guys considered her to be the prettiest girl in school but I didn't really see it. You be the judge:

I unintentionally embarrassed Pam one day:
The teacher had given us a quiz and rather than grading the papers herself she had us swap with another student and grade each other's... Pam ended up with mine and after the teacher went over the answers she told us to pass the papers to the front of the room. For some reason Pam tried to hand mine back me and I said "Aren't you supposed to pass it forward?" and she said "I just wanted you to see what grade you got". If I'd had a lick of sense at all I would have smiled and thanked her - but instead I said "I know what grade I got" (Duh - I aced it...) Yeah - I guess I've always had a knack for (unintentionally) making people feel stupid... Just ask anyone who knows me :-)

OK - I've already devoted far too much time to this post... There's more to tell but I'll just label this "part 1" (there - I did it), publish it and continue the story another day :-)

Home and Other Characters

I'm going to take a break from my adventures at John Tyler High School and say a bit about some of the other inhabitants of Hollandale Terrace. But first - I've had a few more Kindergarten flashbacks:

- I remember taking my Silly Putty for show and tell. I demonstrated how it lifted newsprint... And that's about all it could do...
- The teacher had us plant seeds and watch them grow. I guess we were supposed to be amazed or something. But - believe it or not - I had already noticed that plants grow - so I was like "Duh!" :-)
- Then there was the big paper wasp nest under our eaves. We hired an exterminator to spray it and after he got it down mom put it in a big (uncapped) jar for me to take to school. During show and tell a live wasp crawled out of it. For some reason the teacher didn't think that was cool...

And back to Hollandale Terrace:
I guess the first person I should mention is the landlady's daughter Joann. She was immortalized in one of my very first blog posts when she and my sister Karina were going for a walk with their boyfriends and I was tagging along and Joann seemed to sense how alone I was and reached out to take my hand...

Aside: After I wrote that initial post I realized that it wasn't very clear why that simple gesture made such an impression on me. I hope it now makes more sense now... Yeah - for the 5th time in my life I had been torn away from everything familiar and transported to yet another circle of hell :-)
Mom and Karina were fine, of course. You could drop them anywhere and within a couple of days they'd have a circle of friends and be totally comfortable. But I wasn't wired that way and I don't think I'd ever felt more alone... But I digress...

Joann's Italian heritage was obvious from her features. She was very pretty - but she was a few years older than me and (for some reason) I wasn't much attracted to her. (Not a redhead?) But I have to admit that I can't recall ever seeing anyone who did a better job of filling out a bikini :-) More on that later...
Joann and Karina were friends for a while, but Joann was a nice girl in every sense of the word and Karina was - well - Karina. I think their friendship started going south over drug use and ended when Karina became involved with Joann's boyfriend Hans. That didn't go over too well...

Next:
There was a young Texas state trooper and his wife living in the complex. He had recently transferred to Tyler in an upward career move... Unfortunately his wife couldn't adapt to life in the big city... Yes - they were from such a small town that living in a town of 50,000 was traumatic for her... I seem to recall that she ended up going back home - no idea how it all turned out.
I do recall that the trooper was a really nice guy. One day I was walking home from the laundromat (five blocks away from the apartments) when his patrol car pulled up beside me. Now - at the time I had a tendency to cringe at the mere sight of law enforcement and he scared the heck out of me until I realized who it was. He just wanted to offer me a ride back to the complex... And that's the only time I've ever ridden in a police car - it was a short trip but he drove really fast :-)

Another aside: When we were living in Tyler we were always at least 5 blocks away from the nearest laundry facilities and until that summer we even didn't have car. Therefore it should come as no surprise that my clothes rarely got washed and - just like in Escondido - I got "counseled" at school about my hygiene. Now - I did shower every day. But you can only wear the same clothes so often before they get kind of funky - especially when you don't own any underwear... Still - being offensive was pretty far down on my list of concerns :-)

The only other resident of Hollandale Terrace that I recall was this guy in his mid 20's who lived upstairs. I vaguely recall that he worked at a music store repairing instruments, had a black belt in Karate and was an amateur photographer. He used to hire Joann to pose for him out by the pool - hence my comment about how good she looked in a bikini... I don't know how much he paid her but it was definitely worth every penny :-)
He had an "on and off" relationship with Karina for a good part of the time we were in Tyler and I drank a lot of beer at his place... Drinking beer was one of my favorite pastimes back then... (Made me a jolly good fellow.)

You know - there were so many "interesting" aspects to our time in Tyler that it's going to be really hard to figure out how to explain it all... I guess I'll just cover it a bit at a time and hope I don't leave out anything important :-)

How I Didn't Become a Draftsman

I started taking Drafting classes at the start of my junior year of high school. (That was at Mission Bay High in the fall of 1968.) It required great attention to detail which jibed nicely with my (mild) OCD. At the time skilled draftsmen were highly regarded and well paid and I was seriously considering it as a future profession.

That changed when I arrived at John Tyler High School in January of 1970...
I got there just a couple of weeks before the end of the semester and that posed a bit of a problem when it came to determining grades. Luckily - all my teachers but one exempted me from taking the final exams. After all - I'd only been there for 2 weeks so testing me on material I hadn't covered didn't make a whole lot of sense. Right?

The only exception was the drafting teacher. That idiot redneck had disliked me from the second I walked into his classroom and he really didn't want me there. I even brought in some of my prior work to show him and he refused to look at it... To make matters worse he had spent the first semester covering architectural drafting while my Orange Glen teacher had deferred that topic to the second semester. That meant I knew nothing about the subject matter on the exam...

So - not only did he make me take the final exam, but when we went over the results he openly ridiculed my answers in front of the entire class.

Then it got even weirder... The teacher offered to raise any student's grade by a full point (e.g. 'C' to 'B') if he could give them 4 swats with a 3 foot long wooden paddle... He tried really hard to talk the blond girl in the class into going for the deal but she wouldn't do it... (As I've mentioned before - there was always one girl in every drafting class - always with straight blond hair and no makeup - I think it was a federal law or something...) A couple of guys did take him him up on it... Like I said - it was just plain weird :-)

Anyway - after the final exam he strongly encouraged me to drop the class - so I did. I was somewhat despondent about it - I didn't feel like I had much else going for me at the time. But it turned out to be a huge favor. More on that later...

BTW: Some of you may be wondering why the teacher kept Wayne in his class. As it turns out he was an old family friend. He'd known Wayne forever and really liked him (despite the hair). After high school Wayne took drafting at the local junior college and the guy even helped him get his first job. So Wayne considered him to be a pretty nice guy... I respectfully disagreed :-)

Now - as to why I am thankful for getting booted out of drafting class:
By the late 1970's computer aided drawing had become commonplace and the demand (and pay) for experienced draftsmen collapsed. Anyone who could use CAD software could generate a perfect drawing by pushing a button. Wayne ended up having to go back to school to acquire the necessary computer skills and even then was he was in constant danger of being replaced by a new grad... The upshot is that the teacher had unintentionally saved me from entering a dying profession...

There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that if I had managed to acquire any useful skills as a teenager I wouldn't have been desperate enough to join the military, which is what got me on the path to where I am now... Like U2 says: "Spirit moves in mysterious ways" :-)

Learning to Survive

In January of 1970 there were only two other male students at John Tyler High (out of ~1700) whose hair significantly deviated from the school dress code. One of them was about 6'6" and I don't recall his name - he never talked to anyone and nobody messed with him... The other one was Wayne Fleming, who I met in Drafting class on that first day...

Now - given my background it's not hard to understand how I ended up "unconventional"... But Wayne's case was something of a mystery... He was Tyler born and bred. Everyone else in his family was conservative and country and so were all his long time friends. He had even worked at a feed store since he was 13 years old. There was no apparent reason for it - he just liked his hair long and preferred rock music to country... His parents seemed pretty confused by it too :-)
Even though he'd lived his whole life in Tyler he still caught a lot of grief over his hair... His car (a '65 Mustang) was a frequent target. The damage was typically caused by a pipe or tire iron but I recall one incident where a guy jumped on the hood and dented it pretty good. But I'm getting a bit off track...

Wayne and I started hanging out a lot (birds of a feather) and he taught me the rules of survival at John Tyler:
He explained the difference between real cowboys and posers (aka "goat ropers" or "Rexall Rangers"). There weren't many real cowboys at John Tyler and it was the goat ropers who posed the most serious threat. Wayne further explained that they were highly susceptible to peer pressure and therefore only dangerous in groups... It didn't take me long to confirm that he was absolutely right. Unless they outnumbered you at least 5 to 1 they wouldn't even look at you :-) Of course - there were a few rednecks who just liked to fight - like the one I encountered in my prior post. But after Wayne clued me in as to where (and when) they congregated it wasn't that hard to avoid unpleasant encounters.
That's not to say I wasn't still constantly taunted and threatened - but most of it was comically juvenile... And every once in a while somebody would pull a knife and threaten to shave my head with it - but they were basically just showing off for their buddies... When it came right down to it they were so insecure you almost had to feel sorry for them :-)

Aside: This was exactly the time when the song "Okie From Muskogee" by Merle Haggard hit the country charts. It was an anthem celebrating narrow minded ignorance - a rallying cry for the intolerant... Definitely didn't help my plight much :-) ... I just couldn't freaking believe that the length of someone's hair was that big of a deal to so many people! ... I swear I'm still suffering from post-traumatic stress over it... But I digress :-)

When you were in town - just like at school - you didn't want to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time... I still got a spit-can dumped on me out of a passing pickup truck once though. There were idiots everywhere, I guess.

I heard some disconcerting rumors too. Things like:
- The bullet-riddled body of a long haired drifter was found in a ditch outside of town and the police didn't bother to investigate (justifiable homicide)...
- A teacher at R.E. Lee High saw a chopper go past with an American flag pointed on the tank and ran out during class, got in his pickup, chased the guy down and ran him off the road.
I don't know if that stuff was true but it certainly seemed plausible at the time...

But I also (eventually) discovered that there was indeed a sizable population of unconventional people in Tyler. They just kept a very low profile :-)

Reality Sets In

About a week into January of 1970 most of the other students at John Tyler High School started regarding me as more of a threat than a curiosity... It's kind of hard to explain if you weren't around at the time:

You see - back then "true" patriots knew that everyone with long hair was out to destroy America... Yes - hippies were all morally corrupt what with the sex and drugs and protesting the war and blowing up ROTC buildings and all that satanic music. (Just look at Charles Manson)... There was absolutely no doubt that it was all a communist plot... And needless to say - Tyler was full of patriots :-)

Yeah - I guess I could have gotten a haircut and some Levis and everything would have been cool - but I just didn't feel like I should have to... It's not like I was much of a threat... OK - I was not an evangelical Christian like everyone else in town but I wasn't a two-faced hypocrite either :-) But the main issue is that I just didn't have the slightest urge to look and act like everyone else.

You know - I'm trying hard not to be overly judgmental here. After all - I'd had the benefit of spending my entire life surrounded by conflicts and dichotomies, different philosophies, religions, languages and cultures. Critical thought was second nature to me - it was essential for my survival... But that was not the case for most people who grew up in Tyler... It'd be convenient to dismiss them as stupid but I don't think that's fair. They just didn't know any different...

Reality set in during my second week at John Tyler High:
It was before my first class of the day (English) and I was leaning up against the wall at the corner of the indoor "quad" just minding my own business. I happened to be standing right below the outer edge of an upstairs walkway and after a minute some kids at the railing above me started dropping things on my head.
I tried to just ignore it. That had worked at other schools ... but it didn't at John Tyler.
I finally remember asking them "Why am I not allowed to stand here?" And they said "Because we said so!" Well - I didn't move and that's when they started asking every guy who walked past to "beat the sh*t" out of me. I totally thought they were kidding. They weren't...
Finally - one of them pegged me on top the head with a penny. It hit edge first and gave me that sensation of blood in my mouth when there wasn't any... That's when I stepped out into the quad and asked them (in rather choice words) exactly what their malfunction was.
By then a crown had gathered (lots of FFA jackets) and one of them attacked me. He was about 6'4" and at least 50 lbs heavier than me. I didn't stand a chance... He caught me in the face with a solid right and I went down... That's when he proceeded to kick the ever-loving snot out of me with his pointy toed cowboy boots... Luckily, I covered my face (his initial target) with my arm but that left my rib cage exposed so he shifted his attention there...

When the kicking finally stopped I hopped up, said "It's over..." and walked away... You should have seen the look on the guy's face - he was clearly shocked that I wasn't badly hurt.
But I was... The left side of my face was a swollen mess. I couldn't see out of that eye. My upper left arm and mid-section were a solid mass of bruises... Nothing was broken (I don't break easy) but I'd had yet another concussion...
I do recall that a couple of girls in my home room who witnessed the whole thing were incredibly sympathetic and apologetic... It was nice to know that not everyone there was a total a$$hole - even though it felt that way sometimes :-) And here's the punchline:
When I got to class the teacher gave me a lecture about not fighting and threatened to send me to the office... I remember standing there thinking "OMG - are you freaking serious??" :-)

I went through the entire school day all banged up and when I got home mom was ready to go ballistic. I convinced her not to to go to the school - it really wouldn't have accomplished anything.
I skipped the next 3 days and fantasized about getting hold of a rifle and going "hunting"... I wasn't really serious - at least I don't think I was :-) But I came really close to dropping out completely... Going back was one of the hardest things I've ever done.