***Entering North-September, 1960-With The Atlantic Junior High School (Yeah, Yeah I Know Middle School) Class Of 1960 In Mind 

Now that we have earlier this month safely passed the 50^th anniversary of our graduation from old North and we have now flown with the winds wherever they have taken us since then I think it is appropriate to step back to that starry-eyed first day of high school on September 7, 1960. [Thanks, Google Calendar] The faint-hearted or those who have not taken their medication should pass on this one. And, yes, I know that those classmates from Central Junior High (okay, okay Middle School) did not enter North until September, 1961 but you can find your own chronicler to tell your story. We will all link up to form the big baby-boomer Class of 1964 then. By the way I have used a certain amount of literary license here. Do you think a guy who half the time can’t remember where he put his eye glasses these days can remember all this stuff from 50 years ago? Christ, no.

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This story started out as my response to a story that Frankie Riley, my old junior high school buddy, told me one afternoon a while  back at his office in downtown Boston about an adventure he had going to Norfolk Downs for his grandmother on a summer day a few weeks before school started in 1960. That story triggered something in me and got me thinking back to the start of school in 1960. This is the way I told Frankie the story one evening sitting in a bar in Boston so although it is my story around the edges it could have been Frankie’s story, or your story for that matter:

Funny, there I was, finally, finally after what seemed like an endless heat-waved, eternal August dog day’d, book-devoured summer, standing, nervously standing, waiting with one foot on the sturdy granite-chiseled steps, ready at a moment’s notice from any teacher’s beck and call, to climb up to the second floor main entrance of old North, an entrance flanked by huge concrete spheres on each side, that were made to order for me to think that I too had the weight of the world on my shoulders that sunny day. And those doors, by the way, as if the spheres were not portentous enough, were also flanked by two scroll-worked concrete columns, or maybe they were gargoyle-faced, my eyes were a little bleary just then, who gave the place a more fearsome look than was really necessary but that day, that day of all days, every little omen had its evil meaning, evil for me.

There I was anyway, pensive (giving myself the best of it, okay, nice wrap-around-your soul word too, okay), head hanging down, deep in thought, deep in scared, get the nurse fast, if necessary, nausea-provoking thought, standing around, a little impatiently surly as was my “style” (that “style” I had picked up a few years before in elementary school down in the Germantown “projects” after seeing James Dean or someone like that strike the pose, and it stuck). Anyway it was then about 7:00 AM, maybe a little after, and like I said my eyes had been playing tricks on me all morning and I could not seem to focus, as I waited for the first school bell to sound on that first Wednesday after Labor Day in the year of our lord, 1960.

First day of school should have been no big deal, right? We all had done it many times before by then so it should have been easy. Year after year, old August dog days turned into shorter, cooler September come hither young wanna-be learner days. Nothing to get nervous about, nothing to it. (Did I say that already?) Especially the first day, a half day, a “gimme” day, really, one of the few out of one hundred and eighty, count ‘em, and mainly used for filling out the one thousand and one pieces of paper about who you were, where you lived, and who you lived with. Yeah, and who to call in case you took some nasty fall in gym trying to do a double twist-something on the gym mat, trying to impress in the process some girl over on the other side of the gym with your prowess, hoping she had not been looking just then if you faltered. Or a wrestled double-hammer lock grip on some poor, equally benighted fellow student that went awry like actually had happened to Frankie the previous year in eighth grade when he got flipped against the gym wall trying to break the hold. Hey, they were still talking about that one in the Atlantic Junior High locker rooms at the end of the year, I heard.

More ominously, they wanted that information so that if you crossed-up one, or more, of your mean-spirited, ill-disposed, never-could-have-been-young-and-troubled, ancient, Plato or Socrates ancient from the look of some of them, teachers and your parents (meaning embarrassed, steaming, vengeful Ma really, not hard-working-could-not-take-the-time-off Pa in our neighborhoods) needed to be called in to confer about “your problem,” your problem that you would grow out of with a few days of after school “help.” Please.

That “gimme” day (let’s just call it that okay) would furthermore be spent reading off, battered, monotone homeroom teacher-reading off, the one thousand and one rules; no tardiness to school under penalty of being placed in the stocks, Pilgrim-style; no illness absences short of the plague, if you had it, not a family member, and then only if you had a (presumably sanitized) doctor’s note; no cutting classes to explore the great American day streets at some nearby corner variety store, or mercy, the Downs, one-horse Norfolk Downs also under severe penalty; no (unauthorized) talking in class (but you could bet your last dollar they would mark it down if you did not  “authorize talk,” Jesus); no giving guff (yeah no guff, right) to your teachers, fellow students, staff, the resident mouse or your kid brother, if you had a kid brother; and, no writing on walls, in books, and only on occasion on an (authorized) writing pad.

Continuing rule-ward; get this one, neither Frankie nor I could believe this one over at Atlantic, no cutting in line for the school lunch. The school lunch, Christ, as poor as our families were we at least had the dignity not to pine for, much less cut in line for, those beauties: the American chop suey done several different ways to cover the week, including a stint as baloney and cheese sandwiches, I swear. Moving along; no off-hand rough-necking (or just plain, ordinary necking, either); no excessive use of the “lav” (you know what that is, enough said), and certainly no smoking, drinking or using any other illegal (for kids) substances.

Oh, yeah, and don’t forget to follow, unquestioningly, those mean-spirited, ill-disposed teachers that I spoke of before, if there was a fire emergency. And here’s a better one, in case of an off-hand atomic bomb attack go, quickly and quietly, to the nearest fall-out shelter down in the bowels of the old school. That’s what we had practiced over at Atlantic. Frankie told me he hoped that they would not try that old gag at North and have all of us practice getting under our desks in such an emergency like in elementary school. Christ, Frankie thought (and me too when we talked about it) he would rather take his chances, above desk, thank you. And… need I go on, you can listen to the rest of the rules when you get to homeroom I am just giving you the highlights, the year after year, memory highlights.

And if that wasn’t enough, the reading of the rules and the gathering of more intelligence about you than the FBI or the CIA would need we then proceeded to our shortened classes for the ritualistic passing out of the books, large and small (placing book covers on each, naturally, name, year, subject and book number safety placed in insert). All of them covered against the elements, your own sloth, and the battlefield school lunch room. Remember that humongous science book that has every known idea from the ancient four furies of the air to nuclear fission, that math book that has some Pythagorean properties of its own, the social studies books to chart out human progress (and back-sliding) from stone age-cave times on up, and the precious, precious English book (Frankie  hoped that he would get to do Shakespeare that year, he had  heard that we would, we both agreed that guy knew how to write a good story, same with that Salinger book that I told Frankie about that I had read during the summer and that he would read later that year). Still easy stuff though, for the first day.

 

 

Yeah, but this will put a different spin on it for you, well, a little different spin anyway. That day I started in the “bigs”, at least the bigs of the handful-countable big events of my short, sweet life. That day unlike all the others before I was starting my freshman year at hallowed old North and I was nervous as a kitten. Don’t tell me you weren’t just a little, little, tiny bit scared when you went from the cocoon-like warmth (or so it seemed compared to the “bigs”) of junior high over to the high school, whatever high school it was. Come on now, I’m going to call you out on it. Particularly those Atlantics who, after all, had been there before at the beginning of seventh grade , unlike me who came out of the Germantown "projects" and moved back to North Quincy after the "long march" move over to Atlantic in that Valley Forge winter of 1959 so I didn’t know the ropes at North at all. They, especially those sweet girl Atlantics, including a certain she that I was severely "crushed up" on, in their cashmere sweaters and jumpers or whatever you call them, were nevertheless standing on those same steps, as we exchanged nods of recognition, and they were there just as early as I was, fretting their own frets, fighting their own inner demons, and just hoping and praying or whatever kids do when they are “on the ropes” to survive the day, or just to not get rolled over on day one.

And see, here is what you also don’t know, know yet anyway. I had caught Frankie’s disease. You have never heard of it, probably, and don’t bother to go look it up in some medical dictionary at the Thomas Crane Public Library, or some other library, it’s not there. What it amounted to was the old time high school, any high school, version of the anxiety-driven cold sweats. Now I know some of you knew Frankie, and some of you didn’t, I told his story to you before, the story about his big, hot, “dog day” August mission to get picnic fixings, including special stuff, like Kennedy’s potato salad, for his grandmother. That’s the Frankie I’m talking about, my best junior high friend, Frankie.

Part of that story, for those who don’t know it, mentioned what Frank was thinking about when he got near battle-worn North on his journey to Norfolk Downs back in that August. I’m repeating; repeating at least the important parts here, for those who are clueless:

“Frankie had, just a couple of months before, graduated from Atlantic Junior High School and so along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit of anxiety was starting to form in Frankie’s head about being a “little fish in a big pond” freshman come September as he passed by. Especially, a proto-beatnik “little fish.” See, he had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it “style” over there at Atlantic. That "style" involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long chino-panted, plaid flannel-shirted, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to mankind. Like that really was the way to impress teenage girls. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading…”

And that is why, when the deal went down and I knew I was going to the “bigs” I had spent the summer that year, reading, big time booked-devoured reading. Hey, I'll say I did. The Communist Manifesto, that one just because old Willie Westhaver over at Atlantic called me a Bolshevik when I answered one of his foolish math questions in a surly manner. I told you that was my pose, what do you want. I just wanted to see what he was talking about. In any case, I wasn’t no commie, although I don’t know what the big deal was, and I wasn’t about to turn anybody in about it, and the stuff was hard reading anyway. How about Democracy in America (by a French guy), The Age of Jackson (by a Harvard professor who knew our soon to be President Jack Kennedy, and was crazy for old-time guys like Jackson), and Catcher In The Rye (Holden was me, me to a tee). Okay, okay I won’t keep going on but that was just the reading on the hot days when I didn’t want to go out, anybody could have tested me on the books, I was that ready.

Here's why. I intended, and I swear I intended to even on that first nothing (what did I call it before?-"gimme," yah) day of that new school year in that new school in that new decade to beat old Frankie, old book-toting, girl-chasing Frankie, who knew every arcane fact that mankind had produced and had told it to every girl who would listen for two minutes (maybe less) in that eternal struggle, boy meets girl struggle, at his own game. Frankie, my buddy of buddies, mad monk, prince among men (well, boys, anyway) who navigated me through the tough, murderous parts of junior high, mercifully concluded, finished and done with, praise be, and didn’t think twice about it. He, you see, despite, everything I said a minute ago was “in”; that arcane knowledge stuff worked with the “ins” who counted, worked, at least a little, and I got dragged in his wake. Now I wanted to try out my new “style”

See that was why on that Wednesday after Labor Day in the year of our lord, 1960, that 7:00 AM, or a little after, Wednesday after Labor Day, I had Frankie’s disease. He had harped on it so much before the opening of school that I woke up about 5:00 AM that morning, maybe earlier, but I know it was still dark, with the cold sweats. I tossed and turned for a while about what my “style”, what my place in the sun was going to be, and I just had to get up. I’ll tell you about the opening day getting up ritual stuff later, some other time, but right then I was worried, worried as hell, about my “style”, or should I have said my lack of style over at Atlantic. That will tell you a lot about why I woke up that morning before the birds.

...Suddenly, a bell rang, a real bell, students, like lemmings to the sea, were on the move, especially those Atlantics that I had nodded to before as I took those steps, two at a time. Then it was too late to worry about style, or anything else. We were off to the wars; I would have to make my place in the sun as I went along, on the fly.

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[Frankie, who for once listened patiently as I finished my story,  then let out with a “Who are you kidding Jackman that is not the way you told me the story back then.” The he went on. I remember very well what you were nervous about. What that cold night sweats, that all-night toss and turn teen angst, boy version, had been about and it wasn’t first day of school jitters. It was nothing but thinking about her. That certain "she" that you had kind of sneaked around mentioning as you had been talking, talking your his head off just to keep the jitters down. The way you told it then was while on those pre-school steps you had just seen her, seen her with the other Atlantic girls on the other side of the steps, and so you are going to have to say a little something about it. And if you don’t I will. 

See, I know the previous school year, late in the eighth grade at Atlantic, toward the end you had started talking to that Lydia Stevenson, yes, that Lydia who on her mother’s side from was from some branch of the Adams family who had run the jagged old granite quarries town there in North Quincy for eons and who had employed my father and a million other fathers around there and then just headed south, or someplace for the cheaper labor I heard later. She was one of the granddaughters or some such relation I never did get it all down. And that part was not all that important anyway because what mattered, what mattered to you, was that faint scent, that just barely perceivable scent, some nectar scent, that came from Lydia when you sat next to her in art class and you two talked, talked your heads off.

But you never did anything about it, not then anyway although you said when we talked later about it you had this feeling, maybe just a feeling because you wanted things to be that way but a feeling anyway, that she had expected you to ask her out. Asking out for junior high school students then, and for freshmen in high school too because we didn’t have licenses to drive cars, being the obligatory "first date" at Jimmy Jack's Shack (no, not the one off Wollaston Boulevard, that's for the tourists and old people, the one on Hancock up toward the Square is the one I am talking about). You said you were just too shy and uncertain to do it.

Why? Well you said it was because you came from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the old town, over by the old abandoned Old Colony tracks and she, well like I said came from a branch of the Adams family that lived over on Elm in one of those Victorian houses that the swells are crazy for now, and I guess were back then too. That is when you figured that if you studied up on a bunch of stuff, stuff that you liked to study anyway, then come freshman year you just might be able to get up the nerve to ask her to go over to Jimmy Jack's for something to eat and to listen to the jukebox after school some day like every other Tom, Dick and Harry did then.

.... So don’t tell me suddenly, a bell rang, a real bell, students, like lemmings to the sea, were on the move, especially those Atlantics that you had nodded to before as you took those steps, two at a time. And don’t tell me it was too late then to worry about style, or anything else. Or make your place in the sun as you went along, on the fly. No it was about who kind of brushed against you as you rushed up the stairs and who gave you one of her biggest faintly-scented smiles as you both raced up those funky granite steps. Yeah, a place in the sun, sure.]

 

A YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his teen tear-jerker, Teen Angel to set an "appropriate" mood for this sketch. Did we really listen to such lyrics then and not wince, maybe think that they were cool or worse think that the poor girl who was silly enough to go back into harm’s way to get that damn class ring which her guy probably got from a cracker-jack box deserved sainthood. Jesus.   

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