15 in Kresges

In 1969, when it was time to go onto high school, my best friend was Jack O'Connor.  We had both just had a death in the family.  His dad at age 43 and my older brother at 21.  So every morning, we'd get up when it was still dark and escape our grieving homes and run to meet up at Dunkin' Donuts.  There I'd meet Jack and he would say, "Wils....I don't think I'm going to school today."  And then I'd say, "Come ON....Let's just walk."  And I'd get him as far as White Castles and that was as far as he would go.  He would ditch school and sit in White Castles all day smoking cigarettes, drinking endless cups of coffee and talking to the girls behind the counter.  He dropped out that freshman year.  I don't remember much of that first year except for one day, the Principal had decided to have any student dressed in black to be sent down to the Administration office.  Suddenly a mob of over a hundred kids started to fill up the front lobby area.  All of us dressed in black.   From Freshmen to Seniors, male and female, we  found ourselves corralled by the front door just because we had fit the dressed in all black profile.  Once they had us all down there, the school officials couldn't quite figure out what to do with us. Yes we were all dressed in black but what might that mean?  None of the Administration had any idea so after about fifteen minutes, without any explanation we were all just sent  back to class.

It was a weird time, 1969.  The TV was airing All in the Family, Sonny & Cher & Maude.  The music was everything from Simon & Garfunkel to Blood Sweat & Tears to Led Zeppelin.  There seemed to be just two main groups of polarized kids.  The Greasers, kids w/black leather jackets, guys dressed in peg legged pants, Italian knits, slicked back pompodour hair and walking in pointy toed cuban heeled shoes out to their  fast purple muscle cars like Mustangs, Camaros and GTO's.  The Greasers definitely had the best cars.  The greaser Girls wore their hair ratted sky high, had heavy black eyeliner, chewed gum with frosted lips, wore tight sweaters, short skirts, black nylons and swung huge leather purses and strutted in black suede shoes.  And the collegiates were more or less the sports and activity kids dressed in button down shirts, plaids, vests, guys with penny loafers and girls in saddle shoes and knee socks, both with kind of All American kid next door hair, the basic look was like the predecessors to the GAP.  Within the next few years, both goups would kind of morph into a flower power 70's look but you could still see the origins of whether they were collegiate or greaser.  The whole area was predominately Irish, Italian or Polish blue collar.  Alot of our parents were cops, firemen or city workers and many of them had lived through WW11.  So we were 'the boomers'.  

It went by like a blur.  Freshman angst had been replaced by Drivers Ed and then once you got your drivers license and car, you were being asked what college you were going to or who was going with who and if you were going to Rainbow Beach in the summer to drink beer and Boone's Farm.

There were a few highlights.  Someone had spiked a particularly strict and uptight teacher named Ratcovic's punch with acid and they took her out hysterical to a waiting ambulance.   Janice Bedalow, a gorgeous girl with long beautiful blonde hair had jumped onto the trunk of a friend's exiting car one day after school and she had been thrown off and died right there in Ralph's parkinglot.  And I remember one student mass Walk-Out but funnily enough I can't remember what our grievance even was.  For the most part, we were just trying to get through it.  There was no bullying, very few fights, no cell phones, no internet, no VCR.  It was basically, your friends, your clothes, your job and your car.  And you thought  you would be  that age forever.

Now I tell people about us HAVING to swim nude at 7 in the morning in January and eating at Ralphs across the street, experimenting with drugs in my senior year and going to concerts like Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones for five dollars and it sounds like a movie made for television.

Two funny memories.  I was a smart ass and basically 35 years later I still am.  I remember being in Senora Palermos Spanish Class.  Palermo looked like the Taco Bell chiuahua with an Ann Landers hairdo and she came in and said, "Hola Classe', Como esta'?  To be honest with you, my car is in the shop and I don't know HOW I am going to get there today."    Without looking up, I heard myself say, "Why don't you take your broom."   Dead Silence.....followed by the class falling out.  "Take my broom, huh Senor Wilson?  Ok Senor, you are going down to Mr. Kittridge's office and tell him that you're calling me a Witch!"  I was suspended for 2 days.    Another time in American History, my teacher who was strung out on cigarettes and Caffeine, screamed at me and said, "Wilson!  WHY do you turn your head away EVERYTIME I ADDRESS YOU?  What IS it?"

"It's your breath.  It stinks."  Suspended for another 2 days and not allowed to return to class until I wrote a paper on 'How I would teach American History.'  I returned with a 20 page manifesto equating his class with the Colonists original King George argument citing 'Cruel and Unusual Punnishment'.  Upon reading the paper, Kittridge told my marine father that the teacher wanted to quit teaching school.  

There were really no creative outlets at Bogan.  It was basically a business prep school.  I would've done better in maybe a writing or photography class but after butting heads with every teacher except for my English Instructors, I ended up with the other kids who held jobs after school.  We were marginalized and exiled to a trailer in the school parkinglot under the umbrella title of 'Distributive Education'.  We were basically kids who had to contribute to our family income and held jobs after school, jobs like working as tellers at United Savings & Loan or garage mechanics or selling bell bottoms at Pants a Plenty or bongs in Peacock Alley.  My job: selling shoes to old women at Goldblatts.  Somehow we received academic credit fo these jobs.  It might as well have been called 'Taking a Pie in the Face-101'.  Hardly a preparation for anything let alone College.  It was basically, 'stick the losers in a trailer and send them home at 11 am.  We're done.'   I wonder who was the Board of Education genius behind that program?

In four years, I think I had ONE teacher who actually seemed to care,  Miss Zekios.  I worked like a fiend for her, sat up in front following her rapid fire approach to Algebra and Trig.  I loved her.  I received her only A and would've married her if I could.   She hated that I had a job after school and left early to go to work.  A couple years later, when my father died at age 55 from working three jobs, Miss Zekios actually came to the wake.  She wanted me to progress and make something of myself.   I guess your lucky to ever have one of those teachers.  Well Miss Zekios, thank you wherever you are.  I never did find a use for the Pythagorean Theorem but I know you, Miss Zekios actually DID care.