As the date for my 40 year high school reunion draws near
(39th actually, but whatever), I am reminded of one unmistakable
fact: I fucking LOVED high school. All
four years. There was lots of teenaged
angst and bullshit and boring teachers, bad grades and bad dates and bad
football games, but none of that mattered. I have some very strong memories and
emotional ties to experiences that occurred during my time at La Puente High
School, circa 1970-1974, memories that trigger visceral feelings, joyous visual
images, painful yet valuable lessons, but most of all, a sense that I was
experiencing a singular youthful period of import and consequence. Plus, I
MISSED THE DRAFT!!!!!
These vignettes are dedicated to the classmates I counted as
friends, those I never knew, anyone who avoided me like the plague, and
everyone who felt that same rush of pure unadulterated panic at not having
finished their homework.
Summer School Basic Math with Mr. Jenkins
Thanks to being in the MGM (Mentally Gifted Minor) program
in junior high, I was allowed to enroll in a couple of junior and senior-level
classes during my freshman year at LPHS.
However, I also sucked at math and was required to take a Basic Math
class in summer school prior to starting in September. This meant I was going to be exposed to the
Dreaded Overhead Projector and droning, flat, incessant monotone voice of a
teacher who would become the bane of my existence that entire summer, Mr.
Robert Jenkins. I would experience the sickening humiliation that could be
dumped on the head of any student whose name was called and couldn’t answer his
questions (like me), writ large on the projector screen for all to see.
I recall the place was packed with us low-math-achievers, a
hot and airless classroom with high ceilings and harsh lighting . Robert
Jenkins appeared to be a harmless, balding, bespectacled milquetoast of a man
with a faint smile, a wiry build and a stunning tan. And yet, his method of teaching us the
multiplication tables wreaked havoc among the class, causing us to shrink in
our seats trying to avoid his bland death gaze, hoping upon hope that he
wouldn’t call our name to give an answer. But he always did (his seating chart
took care of that), and we were all Frosh meat, ready to be slaughtered.
If you were there, you knew the dilly: a multiplication
table was projected onto a huge screen at the front of the class, showing only
the outside multipliers and blanks where the answers should be. The Very Evil Robert Jenkins sat at his
Overhead Projector of Death, facing the class, felt pen in hand, and would
calmly call out a student’s name and a multiplication question that had to be
answered within a second or it was a great big fat FAIL for YOU. Hemming and
hawing did not allow escape, he would simply say ‘Wrong’ and move on to the
next problem, the next victim, and a demerit for your dumb ass.
And he ALAWYS came back to you if you got it wrong the
first… second… third time. It was
excruciating to watch some hapless Fresher go down in flames, his or her name
getting demerit marks for incorrect or no answers, grades plummeting right
before our very eyes. Mr. Jenkins was tenacious and venal with his questions,
his faint smile making the brutality even more gory and terrible.
But guess what? WE LEARNED OUR MULTIPLICATION TABLES, and I
got hold of basic math skills that I use to this day. How could I have known his horrific teaching
M.O. would result in my ability to multiply and divide in my head, and pretty
damned fast, too! I reckon Robert Jenkins was the right kind of teacher for
those classrooms filled with math flunkies, and he most likely taught that way
for his entire career. Thanks, Mr.
Jenkins… I owe you.
They Call Him ‘The Streak’
Several of us knew it was gonna happen, so we were hanging
around the Senior Quad to be there when it did. I think it was somewhere near
the end of Senior year, Spring of ’74, when the streaking craze swept this land
of ours, naked asses and bouncing junk and (rarely) bouncing boobies on the
teevee and in the local paper. Hell, even the Oscars were streaked!It was between morning classes, the Quad was filled with the hoi polloi of LPHS, and there we were on the fringes, standing around, waiting… waiting… waiting… when we heard the first screams of laughter and knew it had begun. Here he came, running towards us, wearing a long-sleeved sweater, ski mask, hiking boots… and nothing else, junk flying to howls of laughter at the First Official LPHS Streaker. He ran with grace and strength, legs pumping easily, obviously an athlete, but his sweater was pretty ugly.
He entered the Quad which had already dissolved into total
chaos and laughter, ran up to a group of very important girls that were sitting
on the grass, stopped in front of them, turned around, bent over and gave them
a two-handed full cheek-spread browneye. The girls were choking, sputtering,
screaming at him… we were on the ground in hysterics, dying with laughter. He stood straight and tall, bowed to the
outraged girls, then ran out of the Quad to make his escape. Somewhere on the way out the mask was yanked
off his head, but by then it was too late, his escape was successful, his place
in the pantheon of awesome things at LPHS had been secured. We knew who he was, so did lots of others,
but as far as I know nothing bad ever happened to him as the result of his
public nudity.
A moment of complete and total awesomeness, cast like stone
in my mind’s eye, which is also brown.
On the first day of class in that Frosh year, meek little me
finds Mr. Eggleston’s classroom, walks in and sees… a bunch of students
standing around along the walls and a large pile of desks in the middle of the
room, heaped on top of each other. The
bell rang for class to start, but there was no teacher in sight and we all
looked at the pile of desks without saying a word.
After a few minutes, some of the girls started sitting on
the floor, looking bored and pissed off. Me and another guy had the same idea
to start pulling desks off the pile and setting them upright, so once we
started several other guys pitched in and in about five minutes we had all the
desks upright and, without even realizing it, formed rough lines of desks all
facing the blank chalkboard. Once that was done, we all sat down… and waited.He must have been watching us, because seconds after we were all seated in our ad hoc configuration, in bounds Alan Eggleston, with his Buddy Holly glasses and shock of wavy black hair and thick black beard and gigantic toothy grin. He proceeds to cheerily inform us that we are all pre-programmed drones based upon our decision to accept well-worn roles as students and take our places in the educational hierarchy, our self-imposed desk layout an example of how brainwashed we were. As a fresh Frosh, this was mind-boggling experiential teaching, and I loved it.
Mr. Eggleston’s class was tremendously eye-opening to me for
more reasons that I can say here, but his expansive ideas on race and
civilization, society and the human condition, all the things that affect our
unnaturally aware selves, it changed me completely in just two short semesters.
From his slideshows of trips to the pyramids on the Yucatan peninsula to the weirdo made-up
societies and artifacts the class cobbled together… and then buried in the Ag unit for
one another to dig up and try to figger out the following semester, it was a
formative, foundational class that I was lucky enough to grasp and absorb.
The capper? It was in that class that one of the guys handed
me my very first copy of NATIONAL LAMPOON Magazine, and it was all downhill
from there for this former MAD Magazine reader. I mean… political satire,
college-level humor AND boobs in the same mag?
This Frosh mind reeled.
Getting Jumped
I was a Junior and had finally ginned up the courage to ask
her to go to the Prom with me, and she agreed.
One problem: she had just broken
up with her long-time boyfriend, who was mightily pissed off about getting
dumped AND he was a Senior AND was still in love with her AND was gonna do
something about it. I knew all of this,
but my 16-year-old ego was chuffed at having a cute date for the Prom and not
really worried about some dude who she’d dumped.
I was taking a night class in Drama, having discovered a new
outlet for my weirdness, and had just come out of class and walked to my car
parked in a darkened lot near the edge of campus. I was unlocking the door when I heard someone
behind me say “HEY, ASSHOLE!” I spun around only to be met with a flying fist
that barely caught my jaw but was enough to knock me off balance and onto the
ground. It was really dark and I couldn’t
see who was pounding me, but he wailed with fists and kicks for about 10
seconds while I sprawled on the ground, stuck between two cars and trying to
cover my face from his fists, rolling into a ball to protect my nuts.
He stopped, towered over me and said “That’ll teach you to
ask MY GIRL to the Prom, ASSHOLE!”, then one more kick and he was gone, slipping into
the night. I staggered up, took stock of myself to see how bad off I was.
Slightly dirty clothes, one side a little sore, minor bloody nose, no black eye
or facial damage to speak of… actually, not too bad. His last comment gave away
his identity, and although I had considered filing a report, I decided not to
for many large and small reasons. When she found out what had happened, I was
smothered in gracious high school loving, but it was only a temporary reprieve
before I was subjected to…
My First Prom
A few weeks before the 1973 Junior-Senior Prom in that very
hot month of May, she informed me that she had been grounded by her parents and
forbidden to attend the Prom, but was gonna go anyway whether her folks liked
it or not. She would hide her gown at a friend’s house, lie about what she was
doing that evening and I would pick her up from there.
I was not amused.
The day of the Big Prom, our family had just arrived back
home from a sweltering week of ‘vacation’ at the nasty Salton Sea, so I was
badly sunburned with a huge and painful blister on my shoulder. I didn’t feel
like washing my car, but Mom insisted she would help so together we bathed my ’57
Chevy and she crawled inside and wiped down the interior while I stood in the
driveway, sunburned, moody and uninspired. Thanks, Mom.
I drove to El Monte to pick up my blue-and-white brocade tuxedo (ew)
and naturally had a flat tire on the freeway. I pulled over to the shoulder and
changed out the spare in the hot sun, my shoulder blister screaming ‘I’M GONNA
POP!’ as I wrestled with the jack and the nasty spare while cars whizzed by
behind me. I grabbed my tux and was able to get the tire repaired so my sled
would have all four shiny Cragars in place for the night’s festivities because
a spare simply wouldn’t do.
When I got home and tried on the tux, I discovered they gave
me the wrong pants so I had to race back to El Monte for the right ones, just
barely making it before they closed shop.
I drove to her friend’s house where she was dressed and
lovely, ready to Prom it. The corsage I bought matched her summery halter gown
perfectly, but her friend’s parents were obviously aware of our subterfuge and
made it exceedingly clear they didn’t approve.
“Great”, I thought to myself, “they’re gonna fink us out.”
We drove to the (now demolished) Ambassador Hotel in
downtown Los Angeles with Al Green crooning ‘Let’s Stay Together’ on my
cassette deck (no 8-track for me, bucko), getting lost in the maze of streets
but finally finding our way into the main ballroom for the festivities. She
looked beautiful, I looked semi-respectable.
We found our table, sat down and started the evening.
She didn’t want to dance. Not even once. WTF?!?!
I spent the whole evening terrified that her Dad would find
out that we’d gone to the Prom and tear over to the hotel, walk in to find us
and then punch me out right there in front of everyone and drag her out. The
fact she didn’t want to dance should have been a clue that she wasn’t enjoying
herself. Guilt? No-fun-having? Something
else? How the hell did I know?
We left Prom without having danced even once, drove home and
I got a simple kiss on the cheek and thanks for the date. The following week, she got back together
with her ex and I never spoke to her again. Not even once.
I won’t detail them here, but the rest of my Proms and
Winter Formals, even one I was invited to after I graduated, were crazy and fun
and weird. I reckon that made up for the
off-kilter and underwhelming first time.
Cruising Hacienda Boulevard
Of course, everyone cruised Whittier Blvd. in those heady
days because it was the thing to do.
However, he and I had a little thing we loved to do on Hacienda
Boulevard in the evenings that left us in stitches, but probably left other
motorists pissed off. Luckily, we never
got caught doing it.
It started with a trip to McDonald’s on Hacienda, just North
of Francisquito. Natch, we would scarf down an unholy amount of food, although
he could eat more at one sitting than any normal human being I ever knew,
mostly because he had an enormous mouth filled with giant teeth (but he had a
brilliant smile, right girls?).
Remember, this was when you could get a burger, fries and small coke for
ninety-nine cents.
We would stuff our pie holes, then order at least three Big
Macs to go. Not to eat… to FLY. Think
about it: a Big Mac is
bun-meat-bun-meat-bun, five Frisbee-shaped layers o’ goodness. We’d pull out of
the lot and onto Hacienda and just motor along, me driving and him in the
passenger seat. He’d open one Big Mac, grab the top bun with his right hand,
hold it out the window and then FLING it straight up into the air, the
trajectory and direction totally unknown but it would come down somewhere
behind us and, if the traffic was just right, would land SPLAT on the
windshield of an unsuspecting motorist. We watched for the landings in the
rear-view mirrors.
Much hyena-like laughter would ensue. Now you understand the
reason Big Macs were the perfect flying food… FIVE FOOD FRISBEES IN EACH ONE.
Yes, it was wasteful.
Yes, it was mildly dangerous. And yes, it was hilarious. We usually waited until just past sunset but
before it got totally dark because we wanted to see the landings. Speed,
distance and stealth were all at play, so it was important for the driver to
pay attention. Good thing cell phones didn’t exist.
We only did this on Hacienda for reasons that are still a
mystery to me. Mebbe it was such a wide
and busy street that we knew we could fly food without getting caught, but I
doubt we gave it much thought. You know,
like almost everything else teens did/do.
Now that I’m an official Mudge, every time I have a Big Mac,
all I can think of is flying food on Hacienda Boulevard.
Meeting Kurt Vonnegut
Thanks to Mr. Kumar’s Literature class, I was able to sign
up to attend a Science Fiction convention at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles late in
my senior year. I had hoped to get the chance to attend IHC as a student in the
Fall, but the GPA and tuition requirements were both out of my league, so being
there for the convention would have to be sloppy seconds.
The list of meetings, speeches and events was long and
weird, but I took in a speech by Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura from ‘Star Trek’)
and a roundtable discussion on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ that was waaaay over my
head. However, the crown jewel of my
adventure would be the Q&A session with Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite
authors and philosophers. I felt lucky to have a chance to ask this great man a
question or three, or at the very least listen to him expound on his writing
and views on life and science.
The session was held in an auditorium-style classroom that
held perhaps 100 people, all seated on a series of risers that surrounded the
dais. By the time I got there, the room was almost full, so I grabbed a chair
and waited for the Great Man to appear.
The bell rang and, a few seconds later, in walks Kurt Vonnegut, dressed
in a rumpled corduroy coat and slacks, smoking a cigarette. The room was silent
as he walked to the front of the room, sat down in a chair facing the lot of us
and… smoked and said nothing.
Now remember, the room was filled to capacity with antsy,
anxious students waiting to be bathed in great words of wisdom from a famous
author, but there wasn’t a sound to be heard from anywhere inside that
room. All 200 eyeballs were targeted on
Kurt down there in front, where he sat and smoked, finished one cigarette and
then lighting another. Some of us looked at each other with a “WTH?” look,
shrugged shoulders and then more silence.
No one moderated, no one took charge, no one spoke up.
It went on like that for the whole hour.
After the most uncomfortable hour of my life to that point,
the bell rang again to signal the end of the session, so students slowly got up
and began to file out of the room, their heads filled with questions about what
had just happened… or rather, what DIDN’T just happen. Kurt still sat there,
smoking away, so when I finally got down to the floor I walked up to him and
said “Mr. Vonnegut, I’m a big fan of your writing, especially
‘Slaughterhouse-5’ and ‘Breakfast of Champions.” He smiled big, shook my hand
and thanked me for taking the time to read his books and attend the day’s
activities. A few more stragglers walked up to him and he thanked each one of
them too, but we were all mystified about the previous hour. No one knew what
to say, and then he stood up and walked out and was gone.
Was he waiting for someone to ask him a question? Was it some sort of weird performance art
piece? Why wasn’t there an event moderator to help start things? Did he wonder
about the silence like the rest of us, or was it part of the plan? I’ll never know. But at least I shook his hand
and we traded thanks.
And for the record, Nichelle Nichols was SMOKING HOT.
Carlos Magallanes, Sociology Monster
A teacher among teachers, a spiritual mentor to those of us who chose to listen and learn from his bearded bad self. The fact that so many years later he is now my Facebook friend gives me much, much pleasure. He still RULES.
Carlos Magallanes, Sociology Monster
A teacher among teachers, a spiritual mentor to those of us who chose to listen and learn from his bearded bad self. The fact that so many years later he is now my Facebook friend gives me much, much pleasure. He still RULES.
Becoming a Letterman
Being in Drama during my Junior and Senior years made all the difference for my youthful self-esteem, and not just because the girls in Drama class were quite a bit different than all the rest. Teacher Jim Ellis (R.I.P., Big Guy) was a tremendous mentor and supporter of us all, a motley group of high achievers, weirdos and geeks. He helped us to transform into a confident band of thespians (or thesbians, as some critics would shout out across the room) that made a name for ourselves on campus.
Mr. Ellis figured out a way to have us perform scenes from whatever play we were rehearsing for the English, Sociology and Literature classes during regular school hours, so we'd get to spend a whole day in the Little Theater performing for a packed house while practicing lines at the same time. This had the unexpected consequence of making us all better-known in school that we'd otherwise have been, which was almost startling. I'd be walking through school between classes and someone would shout 'HEY BOB!' and I'd spin around and wave, unaware of who'd just shouted at me.
As the end of my Senior year drew near, Mr. Ellis asked me to stop by his classroom after school for a few minutes to discuss something. I was worried about I-don't-know-what when I sat down and asked what was up.
Him: "Bob, I have something important to tell you."
Me: "Ummm... OK, what is it?"
Him: " Well, you've been in quite a few plays the last two years, and your grades in my classes have been really good, so I've submitted your name as having qualified to earn your LPHS Letter in Drama. That means you'll be a Letterman at graduation."
Me: "Wait wait wait... are you telling me that I'm a Letterman, same as the football players?"
Him: "That's right, it's all about your achievements, no matter the discipline."
Me: "Areyoukiddingme?!?! Do I get the jacket too?"
Him: No, you'll have to buy that, but the Letter is gonna be all yours."
Me: "!?!?!?!?!?!"
So I got my LPHS Letter, complete with an embroidered comedy/tragedy icon to indicate it was for Drama. I never bought the jacket, and I gave the letter to my Mom. She dug it, and so did I.
Epilogue:
I can't wait for the reunion to meet and greet so many of my classmates from high school, junior high and even grade school. I suspect there will be missed connections, some tears and lots of laughter and drinking (no drinky for me) and, with any luck, not a single fight will break out and cause chaos and wind up in the parking lot with the City of Industry Sherriff's swinging batons. That would both suck AND rule.
Stay tuned...
Blue Swede 'Hooked On A Feeling' video (Billboard Top 100, 1974), muchismas gracias de youtube.com; lead image of the author in his first Boy Scout indian dance costume, circa 1970, muchismas gracias Papa!