Around 55 years after the second term of my sophomore year in high school which I spent at Broad Ripple, I also now only barely remember much what else about what happened inside my Broad Ripple classes that term. Except for my memory of Mrs. Griggs reading aloud my character study about an African-American classmate in my World History class at Bayside H.S. during the fall 1962 school term, whose name was "Benny," during one of her English "G" class sessions of the more academically-oriented students, in which I was now assigned in the spring 1963 term at Broad Ripple.
Because, like I've mentioned a number of times already, in retrospect, it was likely Mrs. Griggs' Indiana-based recommendation which persuaded Columbia College to admit me, that's probably one reason why her reading aloud my "Benny" character study essay in class is what I remember.
Also, in retrospect, remembering Mrs. Griggs' reading of the "Benny" essay in class once again reminds me that it was pretty much what my writing produced that : 1. got me into the "G" English class that Mrs. Griggs taught at Broad Ripple H.S., because my previous English teacher, Miss Barker, had been impressed by "The Ideal President" story my writing had produced in response to one of her homework assignments; 2. got me into Columbia College in September 1965 because the "Benny" essay my writing had produced for an English "G" class assignment to write a character study had apparently impressed Mrs. Griggs so much that she remembered me favorably enough, even over a year after I had been one of her numerous students, to write a favorable letter of recommendation to Columbia College's admissions office that persuaded it to admit me there; and 3. got me elected to the Columbia SDS steering committee in the spring of 1967 because my writing had produced the "Columbia's IDA Connection" paper of "The Columbia SDS Research Committee" (of which I was the sole creator and sole member) that first revealed Columbia University's institutional membership in the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank to Columbia's students, faculty and student newspaper, during the 1960's Vietnam War Era.
In retrospect, what prompted Mrs. Griggs to read aloud my "Benny" character study essay in her class was for one or the other following reasons: 1. Although Broad Ripple High School's student body and teaching staff was about 99.5 percent white in 1963, Mrs. Griggs was an anti-racist white liberal in 1963. So the fact that I was likely the only one in her "G" English class who had produced an essay devoted to describing an African-American former classmate probably made the essay seem like a more interesting one to read than the essays others in the class had written; or 2. Since the essay also included a paragraph describing Benny's humorous reaction when I mentioned to him that my family was moving from New York City to Indianapolis in a few weeks, Mrs. Griggs might have felt that reading this "Benny" essay in her class would cause my new classmates to Broad Ripple to tend to relate to me in a welcoming way for the rest of that spring term of 1963.
But whatever Mrs. Griggs' reason was for reading the "Benny" essay in class, to the degree that the essay led Mrs. Griggs to recommend me for Columbia College admission, it turned out to be an historically significant document. Because, without a recommendation or knowing somebody who's a "tapper", an individual without any upper middle-class or upper-class family background, prep, private school or elite public high school background or some kind of referral from an individual with special influence, someone from my family's class background generally did not get admitted to an Ivy League school like Columbia College in the early 1960's.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 35
The last memory I still have of my first month of being a transfer student at Broad Ripple H.S. in January 1963, during the last month of my first term as a high school sophomore, is of feeling myself being unexpectedly pushed and shoved hard in an unfriendly way, from behind, by some white freshman or sophomore student guy, who was about my height and weight, as I was putting a textbook inside my assigned locker in the school hallway. And, when startled by feeling myself being pushed and shoved hard from the back without warning, I turned around suddenly to see who was pushing me and to find out why I was being suddenly shoved, my elbow accidentally hit the nose of the white bully, accidentally causing his nose to bleed. So with his nose bleeding, he quickly made his retreat from the space where my locker was located in the school hallway.
Although in my previous years as an elementary, junior high and first term high school student within New York City's public schools in Queens in the 1950's and early 1960's I had never been especially targeted in a school hallway in this way by either another student I was acquainted with or by some student, like this particular white bully, that I had never met before, I pretty much immediately forgot about the incident.
But about a week later in late January 1963, while I was in the middle of delivering that weekday afternoon's edition of the Indianapolis Times newspaper on my route and walking back from a subscriber's home to my parked bicycle near the street, on either Winthrop, Guilford or Carrolton Avenue, I suddenly noticed the same white bully who had shoved me inside Broad Ripple's school hallway, jumping out of a double-parked car on the street, that was driven by a teen-aged companion, and rushing toward me. And then he began to punch me until he apparently felt he'd proven to his teen-aged male companion in the car that he had gained revenge for the bloody nose my elbow had accidentally given him inside the Broad Rippel H.S. hallway.
The white bully then ran back to the double-parked car on the street that was driven by his teen-aged male companion and jumped back into the front passenger seat of the car, just before his male companion drove the car away quickly. And after the car disappeared, I finished delivering that day's issue of the Indianapolis Times to those subscribers that I still had not yet delivered newspapers to before being assaulted; and then rode on my bicycle back to my home.
In retrospect, I probably could have told my parents about being punched by the white bully, filed a complaint with the police, gone to Dean Jackson's office at Broad Ripple and told him about this out-of-school incident involving the Broad Ripple freshman or sophomore who had previously shoved me inside the school by my locker, or telephoned Mr. Evans at the Indianapolis Times office to notify him about this assault on an Indianapolis Times newspaper carrier.
But not having suffered any particular injuries from the white bully's flurry of out-of-school punches, and having previously been socialized to not be a "tattle tale," a "stool pigeon," an "informer," or someone who ran to adult authority figures like parents, teachers, deans or cops to resolve conflicts with fellow students or playmates, I ended up telling no one about this out-of-school bullying incident.. And since I never encountered or ever noticed this particular white guy either inside Broad Ripple H.S. (since it turned out he and I were never scheduled to be in the same classroom at any time) or on the street outside Broad Ripple again before my family moved back to New York City in June 1964 , and was also never bothered while delivering the Indianapolis Times on my newspaper route again, memory of this particular bullying incident quickly seemed to recede; and it seemed not to have impacted my life's direction in a significant way.
Ironically, it was only when watching James Dean in the Rebel Without A Cause movie again in the 21st century that I began to, retrospectively, recall and then reconsider why I had been particularly targeted in the Broad Ripple school hallway and, later on the street after school, by this white student, who didn't know me from Adam, only a week or two after I first began attending Broad Ripple as a transfer student in January 1963.
An individual high school student who has transferred from another high school in another neighborhood, another city or another state is less likely to know other students who might align with him or defend him in response to being picked on or targeted by a student or group of students who might neurotically get their kicks out of bullying others, than a student who is not a newly arrived transfer student at the high school; and who is, thus, more likely to be able to call on other students who have attended the same grade schools with him, in previous years, to align with him in response to any attempt by bullies to target him. So that might explain why, like the James Dean character in Rebel Without A Cause, I was immediately targeted by some freshman or sophomore Broad Ripple student misfit who was apparently looking for some student to bully, after he apparently had taken notice, unbeknownst to me, that I was a newly-arrived student at the school in the last month of the fall term in early 1963.
Although in my previous years as an elementary, junior high and first term high school student within New York City's public schools in Queens in the 1950's and early 1960's I had never been especially targeted in a school hallway in this way by either another student I was acquainted with or by some student, like this particular white bully, that I had never met before, I pretty much immediately forgot about the incident.
But about a week later in late January 1963, while I was in the middle of delivering that weekday afternoon's edition of the Indianapolis Times newspaper on my route and walking back from a subscriber's home to my parked bicycle near the street, on either Winthrop, Guilford or Carrolton Avenue, I suddenly noticed the same white bully who had shoved me inside Broad Ripple's school hallway, jumping out of a double-parked car on the street, that was driven by a teen-aged companion, and rushing toward me. And then he began to punch me until he apparently felt he'd proven to his teen-aged male companion in the car that he had gained revenge for the bloody nose my elbow had accidentally given him inside the Broad Rippel H.S. hallway.
The white bully then ran back to the double-parked car on the street that was driven by his teen-aged male companion and jumped back into the front passenger seat of the car, just before his male companion drove the car away quickly. And after the car disappeared, I finished delivering that day's issue of the Indianapolis Times to those subscribers that I still had not yet delivered newspapers to before being assaulted; and then rode on my bicycle back to my home.
In retrospect, I probably could have told my parents about being punched by the white bully, filed a complaint with the police, gone to Dean Jackson's office at Broad Ripple and told him about this out-of-school incident involving the Broad Ripple freshman or sophomore who had previously shoved me inside the school by my locker, or telephoned Mr. Evans at the Indianapolis Times office to notify him about this assault on an Indianapolis Times newspaper carrier.
But not having suffered any particular injuries from the white bully's flurry of out-of-school punches, and having previously been socialized to not be a "tattle tale," a "stool pigeon," an "informer," or someone who ran to adult authority figures like parents, teachers, deans or cops to resolve conflicts with fellow students or playmates, I ended up telling no one about this out-of-school bullying incident.. And since I never encountered or ever noticed this particular white guy either inside Broad Ripple H.S. (since it turned out he and I were never scheduled to be in the same classroom at any time) or on the street outside Broad Ripple again before my family moved back to New York City in June 1964 , and was also never bothered while delivering the Indianapolis Times on my newspaper route again, memory of this particular bullying incident quickly seemed to recede; and it seemed not to have impacted my life's direction in a significant way.
Ironically, it was only when watching James Dean in the Rebel Without A Cause movie again in the 21st century that I began to, retrospectively, recall and then reconsider why I had been particularly targeted in the Broad Ripple school hallway and, later on the street after school, by this white student, who didn't know me from Adam, only a week or two after I first began attending Broad Ripple as a transfer student in January 1963.
An individual high school student who has transferred from another high school in another neighborhood, another city or another state is less likely to know other students who might align with him or defend him in response to being picked on or targeted by a student or group of students who might neurotically get their kicks out of bullying others, than a student who is not a newly arrived transfer student at the high school; and who is, thus, more likely to be able to call on other students who have attended the same grade schools with him, in previous years, to align with him in response to any attempt by bullies to target him. So that might explain why, like the James Dean character in Rebel Without A Cause, I was immediately targeted by some freshman or sophomore Broad Ripple student misfit who was apparently looking for some student to bully, after he apparently had taken notice, unbeknownst to me, that I was a newly-arrived student at the school in the last month of the fall term in early 1963.
Monday, December 23, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 34
Over 55 years later, I don't remember much else about how my experience at Broad Ripple H.S. during the last month of my first semester as a sophomore in January 1963 differed from my first semester as a sophomore experience at Bayside H.S. in the fall of 1962.
The Biology I class I was assigned to attend at Broad Ripple was one in which the students were not that academic high-achievers, whereas the Biology I class I had been in while attending Bayside, in which I was scoring over 90 on all the multiple choice tests the teacher gave us, was an "honors" class of academic high-achievers. And all I really remember about my Biology classes at Broad Ripple during my sophomore year was that we dissected some frogs in my first semester class; and in the spring semester Biology II class I attended between February and June 1963, the biology teacher was a wrestling coach, who seemed to be more into being the wrestling coach than into devoting much time to trying to interest his class of non-academic high-achieving students into learning a lot about biology.
Eating lunch in the cafeteria at Broad Ripple seemed to be about as much of a drag between January 1963 and June 1964 as eating lunch in the cafeteria at Bayside H.S. had been in the fall of 1962; although the hot lunch food that Broad Ripple's cafeteria staff cooked allowed me to pretty much just eat a hamburger and fresh fries each day for lunch, instead of just eating some bag lunch sandwich that my mother gave me to bring to school, like I had done at Bayside.
At both Bayside and Broad Ripple during my sophomore and junior years in high school, I can't recall ever sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch at the same table with any of the students who were in any of my classes and talking with any students who were in any of my classes during lunch hour in the cafeteria. One reason was that, at least at Broad Ripple, once you found an empty space to sit at one of the cafeteria tables for lunch at the beginning of each semester, that seemed to become your regular, permanent lunch sitting spot for the whole semester.
The only student I can recall ever talking to at lunch hour when I attended Broad Ripple between January 1963 and June 1964, therefore, was the physically heavy white guy who generally sat across from me at the same cafeteria table, which had had an empty seat across from him in January 1963, that led me to sit at that same table during my three semesters at Broad Ripple. What this white high school student guy (who spoke in what sounded more like some kind of rural Kentucky southern accent rather than an urban Midwestern or Indiana accent) talked about most of the time, after we each finished eating our lunches and waited for the bell to ring that sent us to our next period class, were comparisons between cars and motorcycles and comparisons between the various Indianapolis 500 Speedway race car drivers and their racing cars. His big interest, when he wasn't in school, seemed to be fixing his car, driving around in his car, fixing his motorcycle and driving around in his motorcycle; or following what was going on at the pre-Indianapolis 500 Speedway Race qualifying trials and race that was held in April and May each spring at the Speedway race track, just west of Indianapolis, in great detail..
His interest in the Indianapolis 500 race was so intense that he not only certainly attended the race at the Speedway around Memorial Day each year, with hundreds of thousands of other spectators at the race track, but also seemed to go there to watch the Indianapolis trials, whenever that seemed possible for him. One result of sitting across from him each day in the lunchroom cafeteria for me, was that I pretty much was able to keep up on what was going on at the Speedway in April and May, without having to go to the Indianapolis 500 race myself and observe what was happening there, personally.
The Biology I class I was assigned to attend at Broad Ripple was one in which the students were not that academic high-achievers, whereas the Biology I class I had been in while attending Bayside, in which I was scoring over 90 on all the multiple choice tests the teacher gave us, was an "honors" class of academic high-achievers. And all I really remember about my Biology classes at Broad Ripple during my sophomore year was that we dissected some frogs in my first semester class; and in the spring semester Biology II class I attended between February and June 1963, the biology teacher was a wrestling coach, who seemed to be more into being the wrestling coach than into devoting much time to trying to interest his class of non-academic high-achieving students into learning a lot about biology.
Eating lunch in the cafeteria at Broad Ripple seemed to be about as much of a drag between January 1963 and June 1964 as eating lunch in the cafeteria at Bayside H.S. had been in the fall of 1962; although the hot lunch food that Broad Ripple's cafeteria staff cooked allowed me to pretty much just eat a hamburger and fresh fries each day for lunch, instead of just eating some bag lunch sandwich that my mother gave me to bring to school, like I had done at Bayside.
At both Bayside and Broad Ripple during my sophomore and junior years in high school, I can't recall ever sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch at the same table with any of the students who were in any of my classes and talking with any students who were in any of my classes during lunch hour in the cafeteria. One reason was that, at least at Broad Ripple, once you found an empty space to sit at one of the cafeteria tables for lunch at the beginning of each semester, that seemed to become your regular, permanent lunch sitting spot for the whole semester.
The only student I can recall ever talking to at lunch hour when I attended Broad Ripple between January 1963 and June 1964, therefore, was the physically heavy white guy who generally sat across from me at the same cafeteria table, which had had an empty seat across from him in January 1963, that led me to sit at that same table during my three semesters at Broad Ripple. What this white high school student guy (who spoke in what sounded more like some kind of rural Kentucky southern accent rather than an urban Midwestern or Indiana accent) talked about most of the time, after we each finished eating our lunches and waited for the bell to ring that sent us to our next period class, were comparisons between cars and motorcycles and comparisons between the various Indianapolis 500 Speedway race car drivers and their racing cars. His big interest, when he wasn't in school, seemed to be fixing his car, driving around in his car, fixing his motorcycle and driving around in his motorcycle; or following what was going on at the pre-Indianapolis 500 Speedway Race qualifying trials and race that was held in April and May each spring at the Speedway race track, just west of Indianapolis, in great detail..
His interest in the Indianapolis 500 race was so intense that he not only certainly attended the race at the Speedway around Memorial Day each year, with hundreds of thousands of other spectators at the race track, but also seemed to go there to watch the Indianapolis trials, whenever that seemed possible for him. One result of sitting across from him each day in the lunchroom cafeteria for me, was that I pretty much was able to keep up on what was going on at the Speedway in April and May, without having to go to the Indianapolis 500 race myself and observe what was happening there, personally.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 33
One initial difference in my classroom experiences at Broad Ripple, compared to my previous classroom experiences in the New York City public school system, emerged between January and June 1963, when I was enrolled in Mr. Hougham's Geometry class.
In New York City, my Mathematics teachers in elementary school and junior high school were very good at explaining how to solve the mathematics problems that I was required to answer correctly on homework assignments, quizzes and various kinds of tests. So, as long as I continued to spend time doing the homework assignments they gave their classes to do each day, I always was able to obtain final grades in Mathematics on my report cards of "S.O."/Excellent/Outstanding" in elementary school and "90 or 95" in junior high school. And on the standardized I.Q. multiple choice "idiot tests" or Iowa multiple choice "idiot tests" we were given in elementary school and junior high school, I had pretty much always scored in the highest percentile or nearly aced the mathematics part of the tests.
I also was able to obtain final grades of either a "90 or 95" when I then took first-year Algebra, because my father , who had only graduated from an evening high school in New York City in the 1920's, still remembered enough of first-year Algebra to be able to help me determine the correct answers for an Algebra homework assignment problems that might still be giving me some difficulty.
During my first term of taking Geometry in an "honor" class at Bayside High School with a very skilled Geometry teacher who seemed to be in her late 40's, named Mrs. Rogoff, taught, I continued to always get "90," "95," or "100" on any Geomety tests; and I found it easy to learn the required Geometry academic work. A different Geometry textbook, however, than the textbook used in Bayside High School's eometry classes was used in Broad Ripple's Geometry classes. In addition, Mr. Hougham didn't seem to me to be able to explain as clearly or teach Geometry as skillfully each day's Geometry lesson as the Bayside teacher, Mrs. Rogoff, had been able to do.
Hence, the combination of having to adjust suddenly to a different Geometry textbook (that didn't primarily emphasize Euclidian geometry, as did the textbook that Bayside High School used) that introduced geometry topics in a different order and having a Geometry teacher who seemed less skillful than the one I had had at Bayside, seemed to suddenly turn me into a "C" student in mathematics for the rest of my high school sophomore year.
Yet the next year, taking Intermediate Algebra during my junior year at Broad Ripple with a mathematics teacher who seemed more skillful at teaching than Mr. Hougham had been, I once again usually was scoring "90" or "95" percent on the tests and was, once again, considered an "A" student in Mathematics. Which seemed to prove that there was some relationship between how well a student like me scored on mathematics course tests and how skillful his or her mathematics teacher was in explaining the mathematics topics a student like me was to be tested on.
By the end of my senior year in high school, of course, I felt that after public school students learn counting and calculating basic mathematics, it didn't make much sense for U.S. educational system to require students to take so many mathematics courses in high school, whether these courses are taught in the traditional way or taught in accordance with some kind of "new math" teaching concepts, in order to obtain academic high school diplomas. And by the end of my senior year in high school, I also felt, of course, that acquiring knowledge of a subject that interests you for its own sake was a more valid thing to get into than studying a subject that doesn't interest you; in order to just score high enough tests so that the teacher gives you an "A" or a "90" or "95" grade on your report card at the end of the school term.
In New York City, my Mathematics teachers in elementary school and junior high school were very good at explaining how to solve the mathematics problems that I was required to answer correctly on homework assignments, quizzes and various kinds of tests. So, as long as I continued to spend time doing the homework assignments they gave their classes to do each day, I always was able to obtain final grades in Mathematics on my report cards of "S.O."/Excellent/Outstanding" in elementary school and "90 or 95" in junior high school. And on the standardized I.Q. multiple choice "idiot tests" or Iowa multiple choice "idiot tests" we were given in elementary school and junior high school, I had pretty much always scored in the highest percentile or nearly aced the mathematics part of the tests.
I also was able to obtain final grades of either a "90 or 95" when I then took first-year Algebra, because my father , who had only graduated from an evening high school in New York City in the 1920's, still remembered enough of first-year Algebra to be able to help me determine the correct answers for an Algebra homework assignment problems that might still be giving me some difficulty.
During my first term of taking Geometry in an "honor" class at Bayside High School with a very skilled Geometry teacher who seemed to be in her late 40's, named Mrs. Rogoff, taught, I continued to always get "90," "95," or "100" on any Geomety tests; and I found it easy to learn the required Geometry academic work. A different Geometry textbook, however, than the textbook used in Bayside High School's eometry classes was used in Broad Ripple's Geometry classes. In addition, Mr. Hougham didn't seem to me to be able to explain as clearly or teach Geometry as skillfully each day's Geometry lesson as the Bayside teacher, Mrs. Rogoff, had been able to do.
Hence, the combination of having to adjust suddenly to a different Geometry textbook (that didn't primarily emphasize Euclidian geometry, as did the textbook that Bayside High School used) that introduced geometry topics in a different order and having a Geometry teacher who seemed less skillful than the one I had had at Bayside, seemed to suddenly turn me into a "C" student in mathematics for the rest of my high school sophomore year.
Yet the next year, taking Intermediate Algebra during my junior year at Broad Ripple with a mathematics teacher who seemed more skillful at teaching than Mr. Hougham had been, I once again usually was scoring "90" or "95" percent on the tests and was, once again, considered an "A" student in Mathematics. Which seemed to prove that there was some relationship between how well a student like me scored on mathematics course tests and how skillful his or her mathematics teacher was in explaining the mathematics topics a student like me was to be tested on.
By the end of my senior year in high school, of course, I felt that after public school students learn counting and calculating basic mathematics, it didn't make much sense for U.S. educational system to require students to take so many mathematics courses in high school, whether these courses are taught in the traditional way or taught in accordance with some kind of "new math" teaching concepts, in order to obtain academic high school diplomas. And by the end of my senior year in high school, I also felt, of course, that acquiring knowledge of a subject that interests you for its own sake was a more valid thing to get into than studying a subject that doesn't interest you; in order to just score high enough tests so that the teacher gives you an "A" or a "90" or "95" grade on your report card at the end of the school term.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 32
My classroom experience in my second year of Spanish class at Broad Ripple, during the last month of my first fall term and second spring term as a high school sophomore in Indianapolis in 1963, was different than what my experience in Spanish class as a 9th grader at a junior high school and, later, as a sophomore in Bayside High School in the fall of 1962, in New York City had been.
During my first year taking Spanish at Junior High School 67 in Little Neck, Queens, most of the other students in the class were grade-oriented students who, like myself at that time, were seeking to get the best final grades from Mrs. Lipton, the fairly skillful, experienced, half-friendly, half-authoritarian foreign language teacher (who, in her late 40's, was probably not considered as physically attractive by most of the teenage guys in her classes as was Mrs. Garfinkel, the other foreign language teacher in the junior high school who taught Spanish). Consequently, Mrs. Lipton was pretty much able to present her daily Spanish lessons to the class I attended in a business-like way, without having to interrupt her daily language lessons to respond to any student disruptions during the classroom period or having to deal with any "classroom management"issues.
The mostly grade-oriented 9th-graders in the class were not going to risk being penalized by Mrs. Lipton for fooling around in class; and they would also tend to immediately pressure any of their peers who looked like they might be trying to disrupt the Spanish language class to "shut up" and not block them from learning what they needed to know, in order to score high enough on Mrs. Lipton's multiple choice tests to maintain their 85-plus or 90-plus term grade averages.
And although during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside High School I was assigned to a second year, non-honor Spanish class, that met during the 10th period late afternoon last class of the day and which seemed to include only a few grade-oriented classmates or a student like me (who, by that time, was becoming less grades-oriented/less mark-happy and more intellectually/knowledge-accumulation-oriented, as well as less intellectually competitive), the low-keyed Spanish class teacher who seemed to be in his 50's, a white man named Mr. Durkin, was able to present his second year Spanish class lesson without being interrupted by any disruptive students. For at Bayside H.S. in the fall of 1962, even the sophomore, junior and senior students who were not grade-oriented, not in honors classes and not interested in studying a foreign language like Spanish would tend to just sit passively in class and daydream without paying much attention to what the teacher said.
These same students would generally not ask any questions, even if they still didn't understand the lesson the teacher was attempting to teach them, and would generally spend only a minimal amount of time doing homework or studying for tests. But they were generally not into disrupting the class in a way that might provoke the teacher to send them to the high school dean's office, from where their parents might then be telephoned, etc.
Bcause Mr. Durkin's second year Spanish language class lessons, however, were usually just a repeat version of the same Spanish language lesson concepts Mrs. Lipton had presented to my first year Spanish class the year before, and based on the same Spanish language El Camino Real textbook chapters that I had already studied in the 9th grade, even if the other students had been into disrupting his class lessons, it probably would not have affected the limited degree to which I was learning to read Spanish at that point, though.
I can't remember much more about the first semester of second-year Spanish class at Bayside H.S., except that (because I had previously learned what was being taught in this class in 9th grade), I scored 90 or 95 percent on the class mid-term exam and thus received either a 90 or 95 percent mark for the class on my mid-term report card at Bayside H.S.; and also a little bit about two of my classmates in this Spanish class, who sat nearest to me in the classroom.
Neither of the two sophomore classmates in this class that I remember seemed either very grade-oriented or very interested in the second-year Spanish language class that they were apparently being required to take in order to eventually obtain their high school diplomas from Bayside High School. One was a tall African-American working-class guy who, having apparently been the star of his junior high school's basketball team and, as a sophomore, already a starting member of Bayside's basketball team, seemed eager to see the class period end; so that he could join his basketball teammates in its daily after-school practice session on Bayside's gymnasium floor.
And because he apparently hadn't already had a first-year Spanish class in which the teacher covered the same lessons that Mr. Durkin was again presenting in class (like I had had), he seemed to find it more difficult to get a high mark on the Spanish class mid-term than did I. But because, as a sophomore, excelling on the basketball court on Bayside's basketball team seemed much more relevant to him at that time than getting a high mark in a Spanish language course (which he would never have probably taken if it hadn't been a class he was required to take), as long as Mr. Durkin gave him some kind of passing grade of over 65 at the end of the term for attending each class, so that he could earn the required academic credits he needed for a high school diploma, whether he actually learned much or not in the Spanish class probably didn't interest him too much.
The other classmate sitting nearest me in my Spanish class that I remember was a long brown-haired, white Italian-American working-class sophomore woman, about 5 feet 2 inches tall, who came to school each day wearing lipstick and make-up, as well as, tight, short skirts and dresses, and blouses, that showed off her figure in a flattering way. And most of the white Italian-American guys who attended Bayside H.S. at that time probably regarded her as physically attractive.
She didn't seem like someone who was planning to attend college or very interested in trying to get high marks in any of her academic classes--unlike nearly all the 9th-grade women in all my junior high school classes had been or nearly all the sophomore women classmates in the "honors" biology and "honors" geometry classes I was in during my time at Bayside in the fall of 1962. And I suspect that she didn't spend much time bothering to do the homework that the teachers of the classes she was required to take assigned.
One afternoon, after school was dismissed for a few minutes, I noticed her and another white woman student at Bayside High School, who was about her size, pulling each other's hair and fighting in the park across the street from the front of Bayside H.S., before a crowd of student onlookers. Apparently she or the other woman student felt that the other female student had "stolen her boyfriend." Fortunately a teacher or a dean rushed past the crowd of students to break up the fight before either of the women students had seriously hurt each other.
My impression was that the Spanish language class classmate who was involved in this after-school fight was mainly interested, as a sophomore, in dating (and eventually going steady and marrying soon after high school) whichever Italian-American working-class guy she found most sexually attractive and had fallen in love with at that time. So although we sat next to each other in second year Spanish class each day, neither she nor I seemed to feel there was any kind of basis for ever exchanging words with each other, either before or after each class period.
And, since in the social circles I had attended classes and sometimes gone to boring weekend parties with, when in junior high school, did not include the type of women classmates who would ever get into any kind of physical fight with another female classmate over some kind of "stealing my boyfriend" dispute, I think I became even more wary of exchanging any words with this particular Spanish language classmate at Bayside, before moving to Indianapolis for the last month of my first semester as a high school sophomore.
At Broad Ripple H.S., the second-year of Spanish class, that I was placed in for the remainder of my sophomore year between January and early June of 1963, was taught by an elderly white woman teacher, who seemed to be in her late 50's or early 60's, named Miss Dipple. The main difference between being in Mrs. Lipton's first-year Spanish class in 9th grade in Jr. H.S. 67 and being in Mr. Durkin's second year Spanish class during most of my first term as a sophomore in Fall 1962 at Bayside H.S. and being in Miss Dipple's second year Spanish class at Broad Ripple, was that in Miss Dipple's class a significant proportion of the students didn't let Miss Dipple present her class lessons without constantly interrupting her and openly ridiculing her. And the students who disrupted Miss Dipple's class were led by some of the sophomore, junior and senior Broad Ripple H.S. jocks and the sophomore, junior and senior women in the class whom they dated or who were eager to be asked out on dates by the jocks.
By disrupting Miss Dipple's class, the non-intellectual and non-academic-oriented jocks like Rick (who was on the high school golf team) and Tony (who was on the football team) were able to encourage most of the other students in Miss Dipple's class to act like the more academically-oriented students in my junior high school class in NYC used to act, if a substitute teacher was filling-in for our regular subject teacher on a particular day. And, as a result, most of the students in Miss Dipple's Spanish class didn't bother to spend much time either doing any of the homework she assigned or paying much attention to what she was trying to teach them, in-between all the times she was forced to spend responding to the students in the class who were into spending the Spanish class period immaturely fooling around.
Despite the fooling around that the other students in the class did, I was still able to learn enough of the additional second-year Spanish grammar Miss Dipple was attempting to teach us, by doing the assigned homework and reading from the Spanish language textbook chapters that she assigned each week, to be able to apparently answer more of the multiple-test Spanish class quiz, mid-term or final tests that she gave us between January and early June 1963, than did most of her other second year Spanish class students. And, in addition, I was one of the students in her class who sat quietly and took notes when she attempted to present her Spanish lessons each day; and was not one of the stueents in the class who either laughed with or encouraged the non-intellectual jocks and the jock women friends who were ridiculing her each period.
So, not surprisingly, Miss Dipple realized by the end of my second semester in her second-year Spanish language class that it made more sense for me to be, in the following academic year as a junior, in a third-year Spanish language "G" class, with Spanish language-class students who were more academically-oriented than were the ones I had been placed with, during my sophomore year, in Miss Dipple's second-year Spanish class between January and early June 1963.
I now remember very little else about the time I spent in Miss Dipple's 2nd-year Spanish class other than that my assigned seat in class was near two high school women, Mary Jo and Kay, who both seemed to be popular with the white male jock athletes in the class. Mary Jo was a buxom high school cheerleader, whom I actually only first saw leading cheers for a Broad Ripple team on the football field the following fall, when I no longer was in any same class with her.
Mary Jo had a pleasant, friendly personality and seemed to be regularly dating a steady boyfriend who was on one of the Broad Ripple sports teams. Most of the guys at Broad Ripple in the early 1960's likely felt that Mary Jo was very pretty and physically attractive, as also I did at that time.
So even if I wasn't then more into making money, from my newspaper delivery route, and still watching a lot of TV at home, than into dating somebody outside of school, during the second semester of my sophomore year in high school, I realized then that there was no possibility that Mary Jo would ever regard me as some classmate she might ever be interested in dating; if, by chance, she ever broke up with her steady boyfriend. If that happened, the guys on the school's various sports teams (who already knew how to drive, had their own cars and were the guys with the highest status in the out-of-school socializing scene at Broad Ripple) would all be asking Mary Jo for dates and they would be the kind of guys that Mary Jo would still be most interested in going out with in early 1963; not some classmate like me who hadn't yet taken drivers' ed, had no car and wasn't on any of the high school sports teams. And because Mary Jo apparently wasn't devoting as much time to her academic work as she did to her cheerleading activities in high school in the early 1960's, when I was mostly placed in "G"/honors classes, with students who were apparently more into spending time doing homework than was Mary Jo, I only saw her at a school-related activity, from a distance, as she helped lead cheers from the football field.
The other seemingly popular high school woman student near my assigned seat in Miss Dipple's Spanish class, Kay, was either a junior or senior, who apparently was more intoo her science courses than into studying Spanish; and who seemed to be planning to enroll at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, after graduating from Broad Ripple with her academic diploma. Like Mary Jo, Kay was likely considered to be physically attractive by most of the jocks at Broad Ripple who seemed to be asking her out for dates each weekend; although I thought her to be less physically attractive than either Mary Jo or Ginny.
Kay had apparently been either one of the football game "homecoming queen" finalist candidates or "homecoming queen" before the time I became a student Broad Ripple. But her personality seemed less good-natured, less easy-going and less friendly than Mary Jo's personality; and, unlike Mary Jo, Kay tended to join in with the male athletes in Miss Dipple's class, whose notion of what being "cool" in 1963 seemed to be to show that you could ridicule the elderly Miss Dipple and disrupt a required class you had no interest in studying for, with impunity. And I can't recall ever noticing Kay either inside the school or outside of school in Indianapolis, after June 1963.
The jocks seemed able to get away with disrupting Miss Dipple's class with impunity because the coaches of the high school teams they were members of were apparently able to get the high school dean's office to not hold the jocks accountable for disrupting her class; and because the number of students in the class who were actually interested in studying Spanish was too small for any non-jock students in the class to bother to question how "cool" it actually was to disrupt Miss Dipple's Spanish class in 1963.
During my first year taking Spanish at Junior High School 67 in Little Neck, Queens, most of the other students in the class were grade-oriented students who, like myself at that time, were seeking to get the best final grades from Mrs. Lipton, the fairly skillful, experienced, half-friendly, half-authoritarian foreign language teacher (who, in her late 40's, was probably not considered as physically attractive by most of the teenage guys in her classes as was Mrs. Garfinkel, the other foreign language teacher in the junior high school who taught Spanish). Consequently, Mrs. Lipton was pretty much able to present her daily Spanish lessons to the class I attended in a business-like way, without having to interrupt her daily language lessons to respond to any student disruptions during the classroom period or having to deal with any "classroom management"issues.
The mostly grade-oriented 9th-graders in the class were not going to risk being penalized by Mrs. Lipton for fooling around in class; and they would also tend to immediately pressure any of their peers who looked like they might be trying to disrupt the Spanish language class to "shut up" and not block them from learning what they needed to know, in order to score high enough on Mrs. Lipton's multiple choice tests to maintain their 85-plus or 90-plus term grade averages.
And although during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside High School I was assigned to a second year, non-honor Spanish class, that met during the 10th period late afternoon last class of the day and which seemed to include only a few grade-oriented classmates or a student like me (who, by that time, was becoming less grades-oriented/less mark-happy and more intellectually/knowledge-accumulation-oriented, as well as less intellectually competitive), the low-keyed Spanish class teacher who seemed to be in his 50's, a white man named Mr. Durkin, was able to present his second year Spanish class lesson without being interrupted by any disruptive students. For at Bayside H.S. in the fall of 1962, even the sophomore, junior and senior students who were not grade-oriented, not in honors classes and not interested in studying a foreign language like Spanish would tend to just sit passively in class and daydream without paying much attention to what the teacher said.
These same students would generally not ask any questions, even if they still didn't understand the lesson the teacher was attempting to teach them, and would generally spend only a minimal amount of time doing homework or studying for tests. But they were generally not into disrupting the class in a way that might provoke the teacher to send them to the high school dean's office, from where their parents might then be telephoned, etc.
Bcause Mr. Durkin's second year Spanish language class lessons, however, were usually just a repeat version of the same Spanish language lesson concepts Mrs. Lipton had presented to my first year Spanish class the year before, and based on the same Spanish language El Camino Real textbook chapters that I had already studied in the 9th grade, even if the other students had been into disrupting his class lessons, it probably would not have affected the limited degree to which I was learning to read Spanish at that point, though.
I can't remember much more about the first semester of second-year Spanish class at Bayside H.S., except that (because I had previously learned what was being taught in this class in 9th grade), I scored 90 or 95 percent on the class mid-term exam and thus received either a 90 or 95 percent mark for the class on my mid-term report card at Bayside H.S.; and also a little bit about two of my classmates in this Spanish class, who sat nearest to me in the classroom.
Neither of the two sophomore classmates in this class that I remember seemed either very grade-oriented or very interested in the second-year Spanish language class that they were apparently being required to take in order to eventually obtain their high school diplomas from Bayside High School. One was a tall African-American working-class guy who, having apparently been the star of his junior high school's basketball team and, as a sophomore, already a starting member of Bayside's basketball team, seemed eager to see the class period end; so that he could join his basketball teammates in its daily after-school practice session on Bayside's gymnasium floor.
And because he apparently hadn't already had a first-year Spanish class in which the teacher covered the same lessons that Mr. Durkin was again presenting in class (like I had had), he seemed to find it more difficult to get a high mark on the Spanish class mid-term than did I. But because, as a sophomore, excelling on the basketball court on Bayside's basketball team seemed much more relevant to him at that time than getting a high mark in a Spanish language course (which he would never have probably taken if it hadn't been a class he was required to take), as long as Mr. Durkin gave him some kind of passing grade of over 65 at the end of the term for attending each class, so that he could earn the required academic credits he needed for a high school diploma, whether he actually learned much or not in the Spanish class probably didn't interest him too much.
The other classmate sitting nearest me in my Spanish class that I remember was a long brown-haired, white Italian-American working-class sophomore woman, about 5 feet 2 inches tall, who came to school each day wearing lipstick and make-up, as well as, tight, short skirts and dresses, and blouses, that showed off her figure in a flattering way. And most of the white Italian-American guys who attended Bayside H.S. at that time probably regarded her as physically attractive.
She didn't seem like someone who was planning to attend college or very interested in trying to get high marks in any of her academic classes--unlike nearly all the 9th-grade women in all my junior high school classes had been or nearly all the sophomore women classmates in the "honors" biology and "honors" geometry classes I was in during my time at Bayside in the fall of 1962. And I suspect that she didn't spend much time bothering to do the homework that the teachers of the classes she was required to take assigned.
One afternoon, after school was dismissed for a few minutes, I noticed her and another white woman student at Bayside High School, who was about her size, pulling each other's hair and fighting in the park across the street from the front of Bayside H.S., before a crowd of student onlookers. Apparently she or the other woman student felt that the other female student had "stolen her boyfriend." Fortunately a teacher or a dean rushed past the crowd of students to break up the fight before either of the women students had seriously hurt each other.
My impression was that the Spanish language class classmate who was involved in this after-school fight was mainly interested, as a sophomore, in dating (and eventually going steady and marrying soon after high school) whichever Italian-American working-class guy she found most sexually attractive and had fallen in love with at that time. So although we sat next to each other in second year Spanish class each day, neither she nor I seemed to feel there was any kind of basis for ever exchanging words with each other, either before or after each class period.
And, since in the social circles I had attended classes and sometimes gone to boring weekend parties with, when in junior high school, did not include the type of women classmates who would ever get into any kind of physical fight with another female classmate over some kind of "stealing my boyfriend" dispute, I think I became even more wary of exchanging any words with this particular Spanish language classmate at Bayside, before moving to Indianapolis for the last month of my first semester as a high school sophomore.
At Broad Ripple H.S., the second-year of Spanish class, that I was placed in for the remainder of my sophomore year between January and early June of 1963, was taught by an elderly white woman teacher, who seemed to be in her late 50's or early 60's, named Miss Dipple. The main difference between being in Mrs. Lipton's first-year Spanish class in 9th grade in Jr. H.S. 67 and being in Mr. Durkin's second year Spanish class during most of my first term as a sophomore in Fall 1962 at Bayside H.S. and being in Miss Dipple's second year Spanish class at Broad Ripple, was that in Miss Dipple's class a significant proportion of the students didn't let Miss Dipple present her class lessons without constantly interrupting her and openly ridiculing her. And the students who disrupted Miss Dipple's class were led by some of the sophomore, junior and senior Broad Ripple H.S. jocks and the sophomore, junior and senior women in the class whom they dated or who were eager to be asked out on dates by the jocks.
By disrupting Miss Dipple's class, the non-intellectual and non-academic-oriented jocks like Rick (who was on the high school golf team) and Tony (who was on the football team) were able to encourage most of the other students in Miss Dipple's class to act like the more academically-oriented students in my junior high school class in NYC used to act, if a substitute teacher was filling-in for our regular subject teacher on a particular day. And, as a result, most of the students in Miss Dipple's Spanish class didn't bother to spend much time either doing any of the homework she assigned or paying much attention to what she was trying to teach them, in-between all the times she was forced to spend responding to the students in the class who were into spending the Spanish class period immaturely fooling around.
Despite the fooling around that the other students in the class did, I was still able to learn enough of the additional second-year Spanish grammar Miss Dipple was attempting to teach us, by doing the assigned homework and reading from the Spanish language textbook chapters that she assigned each week, to be able to apparently answer more of the multiple-test Spanish class quiz, mid-term or final tests that she gave us between January and early June 1963, than did most of her other second year Spanish class students. And, in addition, I was one of the students in her class who sat quietly and took notes when she attempted to present her Spanish lessons each day; and was not one of the stueents in the class who either laughed with or encouraged the non-intellectual jocks and the jock women friends who were ridiculing her each period.
So, not surprisingly, Miss Dipple realized by the end of my second semester in her second-year Spanish language class that it made more sense for me to be, in the following academic year as a junior, in a third-year Spanish language "G" class, with Spanish language-class students who were more academically-oriented than were the ones I had been placed with, during my sophomore year, in Miss Dipple's second-year Spanish class between January and early June 1963.
I now remember very little else about the time I spent in Miss Dipple's 2nd-year Spanish class other than that my assigned seat in class was near two high school women, Mary Jo and Kay, who both seemed to be popular with the white male jock athletes in the class. Mary Jo was a buxom high school cheerleader, whom I actually only first saw leading cheers for a Broad Ripple team on the football field the following fall, when I no longer was in any same class with her.
Mary Jo had a pleasant, friendly personality and seemed to be regularly dating a steady boyfriend who was on one of the Broad Ripple sports teams. Most of the guys at Broad Ripple in the early 1960's likely felt that Mary Jo was very pretty and physically attractive, as also I did at that time.
So even if I wasn't then more into making money, from my newspaper delivery route, and still watching a lot of TV at home, than into dating somebody outside of school, during the second semester of my sophomore year in high school, I realized then that there was no possibility that Mary Jo would ever regard me as some classmate she might ever be interested in dating; if, by chance, she ever broke up with her steady boyfriend. If that happened, the guys on the school's various sports teams (who already knew how to drive, had their own cars and were the guys with the highest status in the out-of-school socializing scene at Broad Ripple) would all be asking Mary Jo for dates and they would be the kind of guys that Mary Jo would still be most interested in going out with in early 1963; not some classmate like me who hadn't yet taken drivers' ed, had no car and wasn't on any of the high school sports teams. And because Mary Jo apparently wasn't devoting as much time to her academic work as she did to her cheerleading activities in high school in the early 1960's, when I was mostly placed in "G"/honors classes, with students who were apparently more into spending time doing homework than was Mary Jo, I only saw her at a school-related activity, from a distance, as she helped lead cheers from the football field.
The other seemingly popular high school woman student near my assigned seat in Miss Dipple's Spanish class, Kay, was either a junior or senior, who apparently was more intoo her science courses than into studying Spanish; and who seemed to be planning to enroll at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, after graduating from Broad Ripple with her academic diploma. Like Mary Jo, Kay was likely considered to be physically attractive by most of the jocks at Broad Ripple who seemed to be asking her out for dates each weekend; although I thought her to be less physically attractive than either Mary Jo or Ginny.
Kay had apparently been either one of the football game "homecoming queen" finalist candidates or "homecoming queen" before the time I became a student Broad Ripple. But her personality seemed less good-natured, less easy-going and less friendly than Mary Jo's personality; and, unlike Mary Jo, Kay tended to join in with the male athletes in Miss Dipple's class, whose notion of what being "cool" in 1963 seemed to be to show that you could ridicule the elderly Miss Dipple and disrupt a required class you had no interest in studying for, with impunity. And I can't recall ever noticing Kay either inside the school or outside of school in Indianapolis, after June 1963.
The jocks seemed able to get away with disrupting Miss Dipple's class with impunity because the coaches of the high school teams they were members of were apparently able to get the high school dean's office to not hold the jocks accountable for disrupting her class; and because the number of students in the class who were actually interested in studying Spanish was too small for any non-jock students in the class to bother to question how "cool" it actually was to disrupt Miss Dipple's Spanish class in 1963.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 31
The final memory I have of the month I spent in Miss Barker's English class at Broad Ripple H.S. in January 1963 was that of being surprised when one of the high school sophomore women in the class (whose seat was on the side of me in class that the seat of the guy who seemed unusually focused on the "Jew money lender" in Ivanhoe was not on), named Deborah, put her arm around me at the end of the class session, near the end of the semester.
Since I had never exchanged words with her before, during, or after the English class, she wasn't in any of my other classes at Broad Ripple during that semester and I had never ever bumped into her either in the school halls, in the cafeteria during my lunch period, on the way to and from school, or in my neighborhood, I didn't understand on what Deborah's apparent interest in getting to know me was based on, at that time?
Although I didn't feel Deborah was as beautiful as was someone like Ginny, the clarinetist in my band class, I didn't consider Deborah to be a physically unattractive classmate. But since I couldn't recall hearing Deborah say anything in Miss Barker's English class that made me feel that she was as intellectually interesting as the women students who had been my classmates when I had lived in New York City, I felt there really was not any actual basis for me to respond to Deborah's apparent interest in getting to know me better, by attempting to flirt with her, asking for her phone number or asking her if she wanted to go out a date with me. In addition, because I was much more into my newspaper delivery boy job and earning my own money for the first time in January 1963 than into immediately seeking someone to date in Indianapolis outside of school at that time, I was pretty emotionally closed in January 1963 to seeking to get to know Deborah better outside of school.
During the second semester of my sophomore year and the two semesters of my junior year at Broad Ripple, I never bumped into Deborah again inside the high school; since she was not in any of my classes, was not in the high school band and wasn't on the staff of the Riparian school newspaper, for which I wrote an article and briefly did some copy editing during my junior year at Broad Ripple.
But I did bump into Deborah one afternoon outside of school, at the Jewish Community Center pool/gymnasium on Indianapolis's north side during the summer of 1963. And although we said "hello" to each other and exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, by that time she also seemed to realize there was no basis for us getting to know each other and not longer seemed interested in having me ask for her phone number or ask her for a date.
In retrospect, I now have the feeling that the main reason Deborah had seemed interested in getting to know me in January 1963 was that like her, I was of Jewish religious background and that I had a recognizable Jewish last name; although, when I lived in Indianapolis, explaining Deborah's initial interest in me, in that way, wasn't part of my consciousness.
Like most people of Jewish religious background who grew up in the United States after World War II in the 1950's and early 1960's, Deborah likely was just socialized, by her teens, to look for teenage friends of the opposite sex who were also of Jewish religious background (like I had also been socialized to do, prior to entering Broad Ripple High School). The basis for socializing people of Jewish religious background in the USA to avoid developing love relationships with people who weren't of Jewish background may have been the general assumption among their parents that developing such relationships would eventually lead to an increase of marriages between white people of Jewish religious background and white people of Protestant or Catholic religious background in the USA (whom they assumed were still generally anti-Semitic in the ways they viewed people of Jewish background). And that once people of Jewish religious background in the USA began inter-marrying white "Gentiles" in the USA in large numbers, the number of people who identified themselves as "Jewish" in the USA would begin to decline in a major way; and this would make Jews even more of a religious minority group in the 21st-century USA than they were in the mid-20th century and, thus, more vulnerable to being targeted by anti-Semitism in the USA.
Also, the parents of teenagers of Jewish religious background in the 1950's and 1960's also seemed to generally assume, in perhaps an ethnic chauvinist way, that because of their common historical, religious and cultural backgrounds, it was more likely that people of Jewish religious background who formed love relationships with other people of Jewish religious background would find happiness in their love relationships than would people of Jewish religious background who formed love relationships with white Protestants or white Catholics in the USA.
If you were a white teenager of Jewish religious background who had been socialized in this way and grew up in New York City, locating classmates of the opposite sex who also were of Jewish religious background didn't present much of a problem. Because over 2 million people of Jewish religious background lived in New York City in the early 1960's and, in some public schools, over 50 percent of your teenage classmates in many classes might be of Jewish religious background in the early 1960's.
Less than 10,000 people of Jewish religious background, however, lived in Indianapolis in the early 1960's. So the percentage of the population that wasn't either Protestant or Catholic was so small that there were few kosher butchers and few bakeries that sold bagels; and not many classmates in a public high school like Broad Ripple were of Jewish background.
So if, like Deborah likely was, you were a teenager who had been socialized by your parents to primarily look for teenage friends of the opposite sex who were also of Jewish religious background, living in Indianapolis and attending Broad Ripple might present you with a problem in locating classmates of the opposite sex who were of Jewish religious background. In addition, in the early 1960's local country clubs or beach clubs in Indianapolis, like the Riviera club, apparently still didn't then allow people of Jewish religious background to become members; and this possibly increased the degree to which parents of teenagers of Jewish background like Deborah (who apparently grew up in "Naptown") encouraged their teenage children to just socialize with other teenagers of Jewish religious background in Indiana.
Hence, as I've indicated, in retrospect, the primary basis why, unexpectedly, someone like Deborah initially seemed interested in getting to know me in January 1963 was probably only because I was likely one of the few high school guys in any of her classes at that time who had a last name that was identifiable as "Jewish."
Since I had never exchanged words with her before, during, or after the English class, she wasn't in any of my other classes at Broad Ripple during that semester and I had never ever bumped into her either in the school halls, in the cafeteria during my lunch period, on the way to and from school, or in my neighborhood, I didn't understand on what Deborah's apparent interest in getting to know me was based on, at that time?
Although I didn't feel Deborah was as beautiful as was someone like Ginny, the clarinetist in my band class, I didn't consider Deborah to be a physically unattractive classmate. But since I couldn't recall hearing Deborah say anything in Miss Barker's English class that made me feel that she was as intellectually interesting as the women students who had been my classmates when I had lived in New York City, I felt there really was not any actual basis for me to respond to Deborah's apparent interest in getting to know me better, by attempting to flirt with her, asking for her phone number or asking her if she wanted to go out a date with me. In addition, because I was much more into my newspaper delivery boy job and earning my own money for the first time in January 1963 than into immediately seeking someone to date in Indianapolis outside of school at that time, I was pretty emotionally closed in January 1963 to seeking to get to know Deborah better outside of school.
During the second semester of my sophomore year and the two semesters of my junior year at Broad Ripple, I never bumped into Deborah again inside the high school; since she was not in any of my classes, was not in the high school band and wasn't on the staff of the Riparian school newspaper, for which I wrote an article and briefly did some copy editing during my junior year at Broad Ripple.
But I did bump into Deborah one afternoon outside of school, at the Jewish Community Center pool/gymnasium on Indianapolis's north side during the summer of 1963. And although we said "hello" to each other and exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, by that time she also seemed to realize there was no basis for us getting to know each other and not longer seemed interested in having me ask for her phone number or ask her for a date.
In retrospect, I now have the feeling that the main reason Deborah had seemed interested in getting to know me in January 1963 was that like her, I was of Jewish religious background and that I had a recognizable Jewish last name; although, when I lived in Indianapolis, explaining Deborah's initial interest in me, in that way, wasn't part of my consciousness.
Like most people of Jewish religious background who grew up in the United States after World War II in the 1950's and early 1960's, Deborah likely was just socialized, by her teens, to look for teenage friends of the opposite sex who were also of Jewish religious background (like I had also been socialized to do, prior to entering Broad Ripple High School). The basis for socializing people of Jewish religious background in the USA to avoid developing love relationships with people who weren't of Jewish background may have been the general assumption among their parents that developing such relationships would eventually lead to an increase of marriages between white people of Jewish religious background and white people of Protestant or Catholic religious background in the USA (whom they assumed were still generally anti-Semitic in the ways they viewed people of Jewish background). And that once people of Jewish religious background in the USA began inter-marrying white "Gentiles" in the USA in large numbers, the number of people who identified themselves as "Jewish" in the USA would begin to decline in a major way; and this would make Jews even more of a religious minority group in the 21st-century USA than they were in the mid-20th century and, thus, more vulnerable to being targeted by anti-Semitism in the USA.
Also, the parents of teenagers of Jewish religious background in the 1950's and 1960's also seemed to generally assume, in perhaps an ethnic chauvinist way, that because of their common historical, religious and cultural backgrounds, it was more likely that people of Jewish religious background who formed love relationships with other people of Jewish religious background would find happiness in their love relationships than would people of Jewish religious background who formed love relationships with white Protestants or white Catholics in the USA.
If you were a white teenager of Jewish religious background who had been socialized in this way and grew up in New York City, locating classmates of the opposite sex who also were of Jewish religious background didn't present much of a problem. Because over 2 million people of Jewish religious background lived in New York City in the early 1960's and, in some public schools, over 50 percent of your teenage classmates in many classes might be of Jewish religious background in the early 1960's.
Less than 10,000 people of Jewish religious background, however, lived in Indianapolis in the early 1960's. So the percentage of the population that wasn't either Protestant or Catholic was so small that there were few kosher butchers and few bakeries that sold bagels; and not many classmates in a public high school like Broad Ripple were of Jewish background.
So if, like Deborah likely was, you were a teenager who had been socialized by your parents to primarily look for teenage friends of the opposite sex who were also of Jewish religious background, living in Indianapolis and attending Broad Ripple might present you with a problem in locating classmates of the opposite sex who were of Jewish religious background. In addition, in the early 1960's local country clubs or beach clubs in Indianapolis, like the Riviera club, apparently still didn't then allow people of Jewish religious background to become members; and this possibly increased the degree to which parents of teenagers of Jewish background like Deborah (who apparently grew up in "Naptown") encouraged their teenage children to just socialize with other teenagers of Jewish religious background in Indiana.
Hence, as I've indicated, in retrospect, the primary basis why, unexpectedly, someone like Deborah initially seemed interested in getting to know me in January 1963 was probably only because I was likely one of the few high school guys in any of her classes at that time who had a last name that was identifiable as "Jewish."
Saturday, October 19, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 30
I hadn't been in an English honors student class for the sophomore students at Bayside H.S. whose 9th grade junior high school English teachers had felt were their highest-achieving students. So for the last month of my first term as a sophomore, that I spent at Broad Ripple H.S. in January 1963, I was in a morning English class, taught by Miss Barker (in the early 1960's the women teachers were either called "Miss" or "Mrs." and the term "Ms." was not yet being used in the USA), which wasn't a "G students" class. At Broad Ripple, the "G students" classes were like the "honors students" classes at Bayside H.S.: composed of the students whose previous teachers in the same subject had felt them to be the academically best students in their classes.
I don't remember much now about what was being taught in Miss Barker's English class, except that during my month in her class we were assigned (after we finished reading Silas Marner) to read parts of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe book as homework; which Miss Barker would then discuss with us on the following morning.
Most of the students in the class seemed to find Ivanhoe as boring to read as I did at that time (although when I had seen the movie with Elizabeth Taylor as a child and read the Classics Illustrated comic book version of "Ivanhoe" in New York City before I was even 9 years old, I had found the Ivanhoe story interesting and entertaining). So most of the talking about Ivanhoe each period was just done by Miss Barker, in front of a class of students who rarely raised their hands to volunteer to make any comments about the novel.
Unlike my memory of the Classics Illustrated comic book version of Ivanhoe, the text of the original novel that we were assigned to read in this first term sophomore English class seemed to place more emphasis on Rebecca's father being a "Jewish money lender." And the white guy sitting next to me in class who, like nearly all the students at Broad Ripple H.S., wasn't of Jewish religious background like I was, seemed to feel that the "Jew money lender" character in Ivanhoe was the obvious "villain" of Sir Walter Scott's novel and was the character in the novel that he seemed to mention the most during the few occasions he spoke in class, after Miss Barker called on him to make some comment related to what he felt the novel was about.
A second thing I remember about my one month in Miss Barker's English class was that it was in that class that I wrote a fictional short story, titled "The Ideal President," after Miss Barker assigned members of this class to write some kind of fictional short story; following a lesson she gave explaining the difference between a novel like Ivanhoe and the short stories that were contained in the 10th-grade English literature textbook we were using in this class.
Apparently Miss Barker, who wore glasses and was probably not considered that physically attractive by most men around her age or most of her English class students, felt that "The Ideal President' short story I wrote was more grammatically correctly written, more imaginative and reflected a greater writing ability and willingness to put in time creating a short story than the short stories the other students in the class had handed in to her (especially since the length of "The Ideal President" short story I handed in was much longer than the length of the short stories the other members of the class had written).
So after reading "The Ideal President" story herself at home, Miss Barker summarized what the story was about to the other students in the English class and cited the story as an example of the kind of well-written short story she felt was one of the better ones that a member of the class had produced. And apparently it was because I wrote "The Ideal President" story, which she was impressed by, that Miss Barker decided that I belonged in the "G" English class with the more higher academic-achieving and more intellectual Broad Ripple H.S. sophomores who generally received "A", "A minus" and "B plus" grades; rather than in the English classes with the "average" students, who generally only attained grades of "C" and, at most "B", in the classes they took, during the second term of my sophomore year in high school.
In retrospect, of course, if Miss Barker hadn't recommended me for the "G" English sophomore class that Mrs. Griggs taught in the spring term of 1963, I likely wouldn't have ever been admitted into Columbia College in the fall of 1965. Since, as I've previously indicated, it was probably only because Mrs. Griggs, an Indiana-based "tapper"/scout for Columbia's admissions office, had written a favorable letter of recommendation for me that was part of my application to Columbia, that Columbia's admissions office decided to let me attend Columbia College. And, of course, if, historically, I had not been on Columbia's campus between 1965 and 1968, Columbia University's institutional membership in the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank might not have ever been discovered and proven before the 1970's.
"The Ideal President" story, itself, was a long fictional short story about an idealistic male teenage high school student who, worried about the terrible state of the world, the risk of a nuclear war, the denial of civil rights in the South, and the lack of world peace, places his hope for saving the world from nuclear war and changing U.S. society in a more democratic way on electing as U.S. president a white elderly person who--not being a corrupt politician or a personally ambitious political office-seeker of personal political power--would be "The Ideal President." And of how this teenage male high school student persuades a reluctant, non-politician-type elderly white man to "save the world," create world peace and personally transform U.S. society in a more democratic way, by announcing his presidential candidacy, campaigning and winning the 1964 election as a political independent.
I still saw myself as an anti-communist liberal supporter of 1952 and 1956 Democratic Party presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in early 1963, had wanted the Democratic Party to nominate Stevenson again as its 1960 presidential candidate rather than the less historically politically liberal and less intellectual son of multi-millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK, and (despite then still believing that JFK hadn't needlessly risked provoking a nuclear war by imposing a naval blockade of Cuba and pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba during October 1962 "Cuban Missile Crisis"), felt that JFK hadn't been the liberal savior, "ideal president" I then felt the USA required. So the fictional character of the elderly white man in my January 1963 story, whom the teenager viewed as the person who could be "the ideal president" was probably based, somewhat, on the favorable view I still had of Adlai Stevenson, at that time.
Because of Miss Barker's praise of "The Ideal President" story, I, naively, thought it might provide a good plot for a musical (and a few months later I even wrote my own chorus for an uncompleted a cappela song, "The Ideal President," with the following lyric: "And that's our President. The Ideal President. When will he come? When will he appear? We need our Ideal President."). So I naively looked up the business address of Richard Rodgers in the most recent edition of Who's Who In America and naively mailed a copy of "The Ideal President" story (in a manila envelope that contained inside another folded up stamped manila envelope with my return address on it) to his office, with a letter saying that I thought he might be interested in adapting the story into a musical. But, naturally, the copy of my text was soon returned to me in the stamped manila envelope with my address on it, along with a polite form letter from one of Rodgers' office secretaries, indicating that Richard Rodgers' office had probably not bothered to check out the story, before mailing it back to me.
I don't remember much now about what was being taught in Miss Barker's English class, except that during my month in her class we were assigned (after we finished reading Silas Marner) to read parts of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe book as homework; which Miss Barker would then discuss with us on the following morning.
Most of the students in the class seemed to find Ivanhoe as boring to read as I did at that time (although when I had seen the movie with Elizabeth Taylor as a child and read the Classics Illustrated comic book version of "Ivanhoe" in New York City before I was even 9 years old, I had found the Ivanhoe story interesting and entertaining). So most of the talking about Ivanhoe each period was just done by Miss Barker, in front of a class of students who rarely raised their hands to volunteer to make any comments about the novel.
Unlike my memory of the Classics Illustrated comic book version of Ivanhoe, the text of the original novel that we were assigned to read in this first term sophomore English class seemed to place more emphasis on Rebecca's father being a "Jewish money lender." And the white guy sitting next to me in class who, like nearly all the students at Broad Ripple H.S., wasn't of Jewish religious background like I was, seemed to feel that the "Jew money lender" character in Ivanhoe was the obvious "villain" of Sir Walter Scott's novel and was the character in the novel that he seemed to mention the most during the few occasions he spoke in class, after Miss Barker called on him to make some comment related to what he felt the novel was about.
A second thing I remember about my one month in Miss Barker's English class was that it was in that class that I wrote a fictional short story, titled "The Ideal President," after Miss Barker assigned members of this class to write some kind of fictional short story; following a lesson she gave explaining the difference between a novel like Ivanhoe and the short stories that were contained in the 10th-grade English literature textbook we were using in this class.
Apparently Miss Barker, who wore glasses and was probably not considered that physically attractive by most men around her age or most of her English class students, felt that "The Ideal President' short story I wrote was more grammatically correctly written, more imaginative and reflected a greater writing ability and willingness to put in time creating a short story than the short stories the other students in the class had handed in to her (especially since the length of "The Ideal President" short story I handed in was much longer than the length of the short stories the other members of the class had written).
So after reading "The Ideal President" story herself at home, Miss Barker summarized what the story was about to the other students in the English class and cited the story as an example of the kind of well-written short story she felt was one of the better ones that a member of the class had produced. And apparently it was because I wrote "The Ideal President" story, which she was impressed by, that Miss Barker decided that I belonged in the "G" English class with the more higher academic-achieving and more intellectual Broad Ripple H.S. sophomores who generally received "A", "A minus" and "B plus" grades; rather than in the English classes with the "average" students, who generally only attained grades of "C" and, at most "B", in the classes they took, during the second term of my sophomore year in high school.
In retrospect, of course, if Miss Barker hadn't recommended me for the "G" English sophomore class that Mrs. Griggs taught in the spring term of 1963, I likely wouldn't have ever been admitted into Columbia College in the fall of 1965. Since, as I've previously indicated, it was probably only because Mrs. Griggs, an Indiana-based "tapper"/scout for Columbia's admissions office, had written a favorable letter of recommendation for me that was part of my application to Columbia, that Columbia's admissions office decided to let me attend Columbia College. And, of course, if, historically, I had not been on Columbia's campus between 1965 and 1968, Columbia University's institutional membership in the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank might not have ever been discovered and proven before the 1970's.
"The Ideal President" story, itself, was a long fictional short story about an idealistic male teenage high school student who, worried about the terrible state of the world, the risk of a nuclear war, the denial of civil rights in the South, and the lack of world peace, places his hope for saving the world from nuclear war and changing U.S. society in a more democratic way on electing as U.S. president a white elderly person who--not being a corrupt politician or a personally ambitious political office-seeker of personal political power--would be "The Ideal President." And of how this teenage male high school student persuades a reluctant, non-politician-type elderly white man to "save the world," create world peace and personally transform U.S. society in a more democratic way, by announcing his presidential candidacy, campaigning and winning the 1964 election as a political independent.
I still saw myself as an anti-communist liberal supporter of 1952 and 1956 Democratic Party presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in early 1963, had wanted the Democratic Party to nominate Stevenson again as its 1960 presidential candidate rather than the less historically politically liberal and less intellectual son of multi-millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK, and (despite then still believing that JFK hadn't needlessly risked provoking a nuclear war by imposing a naval blockade of Cuba and pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba during October 1962 "Cuban Missile Crisis"), felt that JFK hadn't been the liberal savior, "ideal president" I then felt the USA required. So the fictional character of the elderly white man in my January 1963 story, whom the teenager viewed as the person who could be "the ideal president" was probably based, somewhat, on the favorable view I still had of Adlai Stevenson, at that time.
Because of Miss Barker's praise of "The Ideal President" story, I, naively, thought it might provide a good plot for a musical (and a few months later I even wrote my own chorus for an uncompleted a cappela song, "The Ideal President," with the following lyric: "And that's our President. The Ideal President. When will he come? When will he appear? We need our Ideal President."). So I naively looked up the business address of Richard Rodgers in the most recent edition of Who's Who In America and naively mailed a copy of "The Ideal President" story (in a manila envelope that contained inside another folded up stamped manila envelope with my return address on it) to his office, with a letter saying that I thought he might be interested in adapting the story into a musical. But, naturally, the copy of my text was soon returned to me in the stamped manila envelope with my address on it, along with a polite form letter from one of Rodgers' office secretaries, indicating that Richard Rodgers' office had probably not bothered to check out the story, before mailing it back to me.
Monday, October 14, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 29
Another difference between going to school at Bayside High and going to school at Broad Ripple High was that at Bayside High School sophomores, juniors and seniors all had to include a period of physical education/gym in their scheduled program each term. At Broad Ripple, however, after a student's freshman year, no student was required to take any period of physical education/gym in their sophomore, junior and senior years.
In the fall of 1962 at Bayside High School, most days of the week your individualized program required you to spend one period during the school day going into the school gymnasium's locker room to change into your gym suit, prior to being led by some authoritarian gym instructor in exercises, running around within the school's football stadium's track, a few blocks away from the school, or spending a portion of the gym period involved in some sports game with the other male students who were taking gym class in the same period with you. And since Bayside High School, besides having a gymnasium and small football stadium with a track, also, inside its school building, had its own pool, gym period also sometimes meant a period showering in school and, if you were a male student, then swimming during most of the period in the nude in its high school pool.
Both Broad Ripple High School's gymnasium and its football stadium with a track, however, were larger than Bayside's gymnasium and football stadium; and, unlike Bayside's small football stadium, Broad Ripple's football stadium included a lighting system that enabled its high school football team to play opposing high school football teams under the lights on Friday night games, whereas Bayside's football stadium lacked a similar lighting system. So Bayside's football team generally only played their high school opponents in afternoon games after school at 3 p.m. or, perhaps, on Saturdays sometimes. In addition, the spectators' seating capacity of Broad Ripple's gymnasium and stadium was much greater than was the spectators' seating capacity of Bayside's gym or small stadium's spectators' stands.
One reason Broad Ripple (and other Indiana public high schools) may not have required their sophomores, juniors or seniors to take gym/physical education classes after their freshman year is that a greater percentage of the male students at Broad Ripple H.S. seemed to be members of one of its school sports teams than the percentage was at most New York City public high schools in the early 1960's. So school administrators in Indiana may have felt that most male students at their schools were already getting enough physical exercise by being part of their school's teams; and school administrators could, therefore, save some money by substituting a period of "study hall" for a required gym period for those male high school students who had no interest in being some kind of high school team "jock", after their freshman year was over.
Another reason why physical ed or gym was not required after the freshman year of high school in Indiana may have been that in Indiana, unlike in New York City where most high school students only could get their licenses at 18 years of age and usually only started driving in their own cars after high school, most Indiana high school students usually got their driver licenses at 16 years of age and began driving their own car (or their parents' cars) by their junior year of high school. So, by their sophomore year, most Broad Ripple High School sophomores were also both more in need of and more interested in taking driver's education courses in their sophomore, junior or senior years than in continuing to take physical ed/gym during their last three years of high school.
Another advantage of not having to include a period of gym in your daily individual program at Broad Ripple in your sophomore, junior and senior years was that it also enabled students who felt like joining schools clubs or getting part-time jobs at 16 years of age in stores after school to have some more free time from having to be in a class than Bayside H.S. students had.
In the fall of 1962 at Bayside High School, most days of the week your individualized program required you to spend one period during the school day going into the school gymnasium's locker room to change into your gym suit, prior to being led by some authoritarian gym instructor in exercises, running around within the school's football stadium's track, a few blocks away from the school, or spending a portion of the gym period involved in some sports game with the other male students who were taking gym class in the same period with you. And since Bayside High School, besides having a gymnasium and small football stadium with a track, also, inside its school building, had its own pool, gym period also sometimes meant a period showering in school and, if you were a male student, then swimming during most of the period in the nude in its high school pool.
Both Broad Ripple High School's gymnasium and its football stadium with a track, however, were larger than Bayside's gymnasium and football stadium; and, unlike Bayside's small football stadium, Broad Ripple's football stadium included a lighting system that enabled its high school football team to play opposing high school football teams under the lights on Friday night games, whereas Bayside's football stadium lacked a similar lighting system. So Bayside's football team generally only played their high school opponents in afternoon games after school at 3 p.m. or, perhaps, on Saturdays sometimes. In addition, the spectators' seating capacity of Broad Ripple's gymnasium and stadium was much greater than was the spectators' seating capacity of Bayside's gym or small stadium's spectators' stands.
One reason Broad Ripple (and other Indiana public high schools) may not have required their sophomores, juniors or seniors to take gym/physical education classes after their freshman year is that a greater percentage of the male students at Broad Ripple H.S. seemed to be members of one of its school sports teams than the percentage was at most New York City public high schools in the early 1960's. So school administrators in Indiana may have felt that most male students at their schools were already getting enough physical exercise by being part of their school's teams; and school administrators could, therefore, save some money by substituting a period of "study hall" for a required gym period for those male high school students who had no interest in being some kind of high school team "jock", after their freshman year was over.
Another reason why physical ed or gym was not required after the freshman year of high school in Indiana may have been that in Indiana, unlike in New York City where most high school students only could get their licenses at 18 years of age and usually only started driving in their own cars after high school, most Indiana high school students usually got their driver licenses at 16 years of age and began driving their own car (or their parents' cars) by their junior year of high school. So, by their sophomore year, most Broad Ripple High School sophomores were also both more in need of and more interested in taking driver's education courses in their sophomore, junior or senior years than in continuing to take physical ed/gym during their last three years of high school.
Another advantage of not having to include a period of gym in your daily individual program at Broad Ripple in your sophomore, junior and senior years was that it also enabled students who felt like joining schools clubs or getting part-time jobs at 16 years of age in stores after school to have some more free time from having to be in a class than Bayside H.S. students had.
Friday, October 11, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 28
In early 1963 Broad Ripple High School's band director was a white music teacher named Mr. Decker, who seemed to be in his early 40's. Mr. Decker was a short and stocky guy, who was also a much friendlier guy inter-personally, in relation to his students and the concert band members he conducted, than the teacher who directed and conducted the school band at Bayside High School had been. When they made fun of him behind his back in a good-natured way, in and out of class, some of the band members usually referred to him as "Wally."
Mr. Decker had apparently been teaching band classes and directing Broad Ripple's band for nearly 20 years by 1963, but he still seemed to lead his classes and conduct the school concert band in an enthusiastic way. In addition, he seemed to possess the ability to play a variety of band instruments himself, like most other high school band class teachers did in the 1960's.
Yet despite his friendly Midwestern personality, I suspect that Mr. Decker was just a moderate Eisenhower-type Republican who had automatically accepted as true, without much thought, most of the Cold War Era myths about how democratic and moral U.S. society, the U.S. military and the U.S. government's foreign policy were during the McCarthy Era; which both the national corporate liberal mass media and the local Indianapolis newspapers still propagated in early 1963.
But since I, myself, was still just an anti-communist liberal Stevensonian Democrat in early 1963, even if I had then realized that Mr. Decker might have been an Eisenhower Republican, at that time it wouldn't really had mattered to me what Mr. Decker's personal political beliefs might be; especially since he was such a friendly and good-natured teacher, on a personal level.
On the first day I entered the Broad Ripple band classroom, for my last period of the day band class, Mr. Decker greeted me with a smile; and, before we began rehearsing a band march-piece, welcomed me and briefly introduced me to the rest of the band class members and band members, mentioning that I was from New York City. As a result, one of the clarinet players in the band, a tall guy named Fred (who also acted in the musical that Broad Ripple's music department staged with students during my junior year at Broad Ripple), nicknamed me, in a good-natured way, "Bronx." Especially after he realized that my Eastern accent differed from the Hoosier regional accent that most of the other students at Broad Ripple High School then still had.
What I remember most about my first few days of being in Mr. Decker's last period band instruction class that played jointly with the school band that played alone each day in the next-to-last period, is meeting the two white students, Bill and Steve, who played alto saxophones and sat next to me in my band classes for the next year and a half; and also noticing a white woman student named Ginny, who played clarinet, while she sat in the clarinet section of the band on the opposite side of the band rehearsal classroom.
Because of the way I had been socialized growing up in 1950's anti-feminist U.S. society, in high school I was generally more attracted by how the high school women who put noticeable lipstick and makeup on their faces before going to classes looked, than by how the high school women who didn't noticeably use lipstick and makeup looked. And it really wasn't until I became a big fan of Joan Baez in college and also began being attracted to Movement women (who mostly didn't noticeable use much makeup and lipstick) later in the 1960's, that I tended to start associating women around my age who still used lipstick and makeup in a very noticeable way as being "plastic" and physically unappealing to me.
In addition, in high school in the early 1960's, high school women whose facial features appeared most "pretty" to me were generally the ones whom I regarded as most desirable. Thus, during the first term of my sophomore year, when I was at Bayside High School, a classmate in both my first term biology class and my first term geometry class, named Ellen, was the high school woman whom I felt most like getting to know eventually at that time. Because she seemed to me to have the "prettiest" face of the women who were in all my high school classes at that time.
The clarinetist named Ginny that I noticed on my first day in my Broad Ripple High School band class, had both a "pretty" face, in my view, and used make-up and lipstick. But although Ginny also seemed to me to be a friendly, gentle and non-snobbish person, despite possessing a physical beauty that attracted men easily, I can't recall ever conversing with her individually; because she wasn't in any of the other classes I ever attended while I was a Broad Ripple student and she didn't live in the same Indianapolis neighborhood that I lived in.
In the early 1960's it wasn't unusual for high school women like Ginny to be more interested in possibly just getting some kind of office secretarial or receptionist job, or just finding a man she loved to get married to after finishing high school; rather than being interested in having to spend yet another 4 years as an unpaid student in a classroom at some college. So it could be that, despite both being in the band together at Broad Ripple High School, even if we had conversed, it would have been unlikely that she would have felt that there was any real basis for getting to know each other better outside of school; especially if her post-high school life aspirations were too different than what mine were in the early 1960's.
Mr. Decker had apparently been teaching band classes and directing Broad Ripple's band for nearly 20 years by 1963, but he still seemed to lead his classes and conduct the school concert band in an enthusiastic way. In addition, he seemed to possess the ability to play a variety of band instruments himself, like most other high school band class teachers did in the 1960's.
Yet despite his friendly Midwestern personality, I suspect that Mr. Decker was just a moderate Eisenhower-type Republican who had automatically accepted as true, without much thought, most of the Cold War Era myths about how democratic and moral U.S. society, the U.S. military and the U.S. government's foreign policy were during the McCarthy Era; which both the national corporate liberal mass media and the local Indianapolis newspapers still propagated in early 1963.
But since I, myself, was still just an anti-communist liberal Stevensonian Democrat in early 1963, even if I had then realized that Mr. Decker might have been an Eisenhower Republican, at that time it wouldn't really had mattered to me what Mr. Decker's personal political beliefs might be; especially since he was such a friendly and good-natured teacher, on a personal level.
On the first day I entered the Broad Ripple band classroom, for my last period of the day band class, Mr. Decker greeted me with a smile; and, before we began rehearsing a band march-piece, welcomed me and briefly introduced me to the rest of the band class members and band members, mentioning that I was from New York City. As a result, one of the clarinet players in the band, a tall guy named Fred (who also acted in the musical that Broad Ripple's music department staged with students during my junior year at Broad Ripple), nicknamed me, in a good-natured way, "Bronx." Especially after he realized that my Eastern accent differed from the Hoosier regional accent that most of the other students at Broad Ripple High School then still had.
What I remember most about my first few days of being in Mr. Decker's last period band instruction class that played jointly with the school band that played alone each day in the next-to-last period, is meeting the two white students, Bill and Steve, who played alto saxophones and sat next to me in my band classes for the next year and a half; and also noticing a white woman student named Ginny, who played clarinet, while she sat in the clarinet section of the band on the opposite side of the band rehearsal classroom.
Because of the way I had been socialized growing up in 1950's anti-feminist U.S. society, in high school I was generally more attracted by how the high school women who put noticeable lipstick and makeup on their faces before going to classes looked, than by how the high school women who didn't noticeably use lipstick and makeup looked. And it really wasn't until I became a big fan of Joan Baez in college and also began being attracted to Movement women (who mostly didn't noticeable use much makeup and lipstick) later in the 1960's, that I tended to start associating women around my age who still used lipstick and makeup in a very noticeable way as being "plastic" and physically unappealing to me.
In addition, in high school in the early 1960's, high school women whose facial features appeared most "pretty" to me were generally the ones whom I regarded as most desirable. Thus, during the first term of my sophomore year, when I was at Bayside High School, a classmate in both my first term biology class and my first term geometry class, named Ellen, was the high school woman whom I felt most like getting to know eventually at that time. Because she seemed to me to have the "prettiest" face of the women who were in all my high school classes at that time.
The clarinetist named Ginny that I noticed on my first day in my Broad Ripple High School band class, had both a "pretty" face, in my view, and used make-up and lipstick. But although Ginny also seemed to me to be a friendly, gentle and non-snobbish person, despite possessing a physical beauty that attracted men easily, I can't recall ever conversing with her individually; because she wasn't in any of the other classes I ever attended while I was a Broad Ripple student and she didn't live in the same Indianapolis neighborhood that I lived in.
In the early 1960's it wasn't unusual for high school women like Ginny to be more interested in possibly just getting some kind of office secretarial or receptionist job, or just finding a man she loved to get married to after finishing high school; rather than being interested in having to spend yet another 4 years as an unpaid student in a classroom at some college. So it could be that, despite both being in the band together at Broad Ripple High School, even if we had conversed, it would have been unlikely that she would have felt that there was any real basis for getting to know each other better outside of school; especially if her post-high school life aspirations were too different than what mine were in the early 1960's.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 27
Another difference between Broad Ripple High School and overcrowded Bayside High School was that at Broad Ripple every student was assigned their own individual hallway locker. So they all didn't have to carry all their textbooks at once when shifting from classroom to classroom during the school day.
At Bayside, you were assigned a locker in the band room in which you could store your musical instrument during the week, like the locker in which I kept the saxophone I individually practiced on during my daily Band class periods each day, as a first-term sophomore. But students at Bayside did not have individual hallway lockers assigned to them like the Broad Ripple students did in the early 1960's.
The number of students who had previously played in their previous lower schools' bands before entering Bayside High School or who were newly interested in being in Bayside's school band was greater than the number of students who wished to be in Broad Ripple's band in early 1963. So there was a much greater need for a student who could play tenor saxophone in Broad Ripple's band than there had been in Bayside's band in the fall of 1962. And since I had shifted from taking weekly alto saxophone private lessons to taking tenor saxophone private lessons out of school during my 9th grade in Queens, one gain for me from transferring to Broad Ripple was that I was able to become part of my high school band more quickly than I would have been able to have done if I had continued to attend Bayside in 1963, 1964 and 1965.
Between the last month of my first term as a sophomore and the end of my second term as a sophomore at Broad Ripple, I was able to spend the last 45 minute period of the day playing tenor saxophone with the band; prior to finally officially becoming a full member of both Broad Ripple's marching band and its concert band between August 1963 and June 1964, during my junior year of high school.
Had I not been in Broad Ripple's high school band and, during my senior year, in Flushing High School's band, there's a good possibility that, even with Mrs. Griggs's letter of recommendation, Coulumbia College's admissions office would not have accepted me into its Class of 1969. I probably would not have then seemed "well-rounded enough;" and would probably not have been seen then as a Columbia College student who would probably be able to eventually fill one of the tenor saxophone player positions in Columbia College's undergraduate marching band and concert band.
Because the person who interviewed me on Columbia's campus, prior to Columbia's decision to admit me, was both from Indiana and some kind of a music department instructor (whom I never bumped into again afterwards while attending Columbia), my impression is that the Columbia admissions office just expected me to mainly spend my time outside of class on Columbia's campus playing tenor saxophone in its band for four years. And, after graduating in 1969, just enrolling at Columbia Teachers College for a year, so that I could then teach high school social studies in the inner city public schools to support myself, at the same time I tried to "make it" as a playwright or writer (which is what I indicated on my admissions application were then my post-B.A. career plan).
Instead, of course, once I was on Columbia's campus as a freshman, I had no interest in being in Columbia College's marching band or concert band; and, also instead, in the second term of my sophomore year at Columbia College just discovered that Columbia University had secretly become an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank in 1960.
At Bayside, you were assigned a locker in the band room in which you could store your musical instrument during the week, like the locker in which I kept the saxophone I individually practiced on during my daily Band class periods each day, as a first-term sophomore. But students at Bayside did not have individual hallway lockers assigned to them like the Broad Ripple students did in the early 1960's.
The number of students who had previously played in their previous lower schools' bands before entering Bayside High School or who were newly interested in being in Bayside's school band was greater than the number of students who wished to be in Broad Ripple's band in early 1963. So there was a much greater need for a student who could play tenor saxophone in Broad Ripple's band than there had been in Bayside's band in the fall of 1962. And since I had shifted from taking weekly alto saxophone private lessons to taking tenor saxophone private lessons out of school during my 9th grade in Queens, one gain for me from transferring to Broad Ripple was that I was able to become part of my high school band more quickly than I would have been able to have done if I had continued to attend Bayside in 1963, 1964 and 1965.
Between the last month of my first term as a sophomore and the end of my second term as a sophomore at Broad Ripple, I was able to spend the last 45 minute period of the day playing tenor saxophone with the band; prior to finally officially becoming a full member of both Broad Ripple's marching band and its concert band between August 1963 and June 1964, during my junior year of high school.
Had I not been in Broad Ripple's high school band and, during my senior year, in Flushing High School's band, there's a good possibility that, even with Mrs. Griggs's letter of recommendation, Coulumbia College's admissions office would not have accepted me into its Class of 1969. I probably would not have then seemed "well-rounded enough;" and would probably not have been seen then as a Columbia College student who would probably be able to eventually fill one of the tenor saxophone player positions in Columbia College's undergraduate marching band and concert band.
Because the person who interviewed me on Columbia's campus, prior to Columbia's decision to admit me, was both from Indiana and some kind of a music department instructor (whom I never bumped into again afterwards while attending Columbia), my impression is that the Columbia admissions office just expected me to mainly spend my time outside of class on Columbia's campus playing tenor saxophone in its band for four years. And, after graduating in 1969, just enrolling at Columbia Teachers College for a year, so that I could then teach high school social studies in the inner city public schools to support myself, at the same time I tried to "make it" as a playwright or writer (which is what I indicated on my admissions application were then my post-B.A. career plan).
Instead, of course, once I was on Columbia's campus as a freshman, I had no interest in being in Columbia College's marching band or concert band; and, also instead, in the second term of my sophomore year at Columbia College just discovered that Columbia University had secretly become an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank in 1960.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 26
Besides not at least being somewhat racially integrated like Bayside High School had been in the Fall of 1962, Broad Ripple High School differed from Bayside H.S. in other ways. So the experience of attending Broad Ripple, as a high school student in 1963 and the Spring of 1964, differed from the experience of attending Bayside in the Fall of 1962.
Compared to Bayside, Broad Ripple was much less crowded with students, despite it being a 4-year high school of 9th-grade freshmen, 10th-grade sophomores, 11th-grade juniors and 12th-grade seniors. Within the Indianapolis public school system in the early 1960's, students attended a grammar school until the end of the 8th-grade and then began attending high school in the 9th-grade as freshmen. In New York City's public school system in the early 1960's, however, you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader and just spent only three years as a public high school student.
Unless you maybe went to one of the specialized elite public high schools (like Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, Hunter High School or Music and Art), a Catholic parochial high school or a public vocational high school in New York City, you first attended an elementary school until the end of the sixth grade and a junior high school until the end of the ninth grade. So if you were seeking either an academic high school diploma (that you needed to get if you planned to apply to college), a commercial high school diploma (if you just planned to enter the 9-to-5 skyscraper business office work world without looking to go to college) or a general high school diploma (if you just planned to get some kind of blue-collar factory job or join the U.S. military if you were a man, or just get married and have children rapidly if you were a woman), you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader.
Yet even though Broad Ripple H.S. included a freshman class of about 400 students, as well as sophomore, junior and senior classes of about 400 students each and Bayside H.S. only included sophomores, juniors and seniors, because Bayside was located in a much more heavily populated area of the United States--New York City's borough of Queens--than Indianapolis, in the early 1960's it had so many students attending the school that it was a "triple session" school.
What Bayside H.S. being a high school on "triple session" meant in the early 1960's was that some of Bayside's students began their school day at 8 a.m. or 8:15 a.m. in the morning in what was called "zero period," a second group of Bayside students began their school day at 9 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. in what was called "first period" and a third group of Bayside students began their school dat at 10:30 or 10:45 a.m. in what was called "third period." As a consequence, if you began your school day at zero period, your school day would end after 7th period at around 2:15 p.m., If you began your school day at first period, your school day would end at the end of the 8th period, at around 3 p.m. And if you began your school day at 3rd period, your school day wouldn't end until after the "10th period" at around 4:30 p.m..
In contrast, at Broad Ripple H.S., all students just reported at the same time to their first period class at 8:15 a.m. each day; and at Broad Ripple all the students were released from classes at the end of the 8th or 9th period by 3 p.m., at the same time.
Another difference between Bayside H.S. and Broad Ripple H.S. was that Bayside was so overcrowded with students in the early 1960's that a portion of each year's entering 10th-grade sophomore class at Bayside was assigned to attend classes as a group not inside the Bayside H.S. building, but in a different, separate building a few blocks away, that was called "The Annex."
Were it not for the fact that the Bayside H.S. administration clerks assumed that, since I had been enrolled in a group music class as a 9th-grader at Jr. H.S. 67 learning to play the cello, I also was going to want to be in a group music class at Bayside H.S. as a sophomore learning to play the cello well enough to become a member of the high school orchesta by my junior or senior year, I would have ended up spending my first term as a high school sophomore in Bayside's annex, and not in Bayside's main building.
So even though, by the time I entered Bayside H.S. as a sophomore in September 1962, I was now into the saxophone and not the cello, I felt happy that the assumption by the school administration clerk that I wanted to be still studying a string instrument in high school had enabled me to avoid being assigned to attend "the annex;" which I felt would just provide a sophomore year high school experience too much like still being in junior high school. And which would deny me the opportunity of having an individual program of classes, where I would have a greater chance of having different classmates each period than I would, if I just mostly moved from classroom to classroom each period with the same group of 30 classmates in "the annex."
Of course, as soon as I received my program card on the first day of high school, I got my program changed, in a way I no longer can recall. So, instead of being in a morning music group class studying cello, I was in a group band class practicing saxophone.
Yet, unluckily, during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside I was still one of the 10th-graders who began school at the 10:30 or 10:45 hour third period class and whose last 10th period class didn't end until around 4:30 p.m.. So starting to attend Broad Ripple in early 1963, where I reported for class at 8:00 or 8:15 a.m. each day and got freed from school by 3 p.m. each was was what I liked more; although the 10:30 or 10:45 start of my Bayside High school day did allow me to sleep an hour longer in the morning. Since I didn't have to catch one of the crowded NY Transit Authority city buses that picked up the Bayside H.S. sophomores, who lived in the Beech Hills and Deepdale garden apartment developments in my Douglaston-Little Neck neighborhood, for the 30 minute bus ride to Bayside H.S., until around 9:30 or 9:40 a.m..
At Bayside H.S., daily attendance was marked for each student during their 15-minute homeroom period; and when I attended Bayside the 15-minute sophomore homeroom period for all the sophomores who began classes in the third period, was located in the school's auditorium, rather than in a classroom. Each "homeroom teacher" was assigned to take the attendance of 4 or 5 rooms in which their "homeroom class" of around 30 students sat.
While I no longer can recall whether or not students had to report to a "homeroom" for attendance taking each day at Broad Ripple, I recall having to attend homeroom at Bayside for a reason other than it was in the school auditorium and not in a classroom: A white guy of Italian-American background named Alfred, whose assigned auditorium seat was next to mine because his last name also began with "F", who ad apparently attended Catholic parochial school for 8 years before entering Bayside H.S., apparently tried to ridicule me and another guy sitting in our row, who was also of Jewish religious background, by repeating our names aloud in an imitation stereotyped Yiddish accent a number of times. In a way that made me feel he was somewhat anti-Semitic on an inter-personal level.
Prior to sitting next to Alfred in my 10th-grade homeroom class at Bayside, I had never personally experienced even any hint of inter-personal anti- semitism during a day in the local public schools. Maybe because, until I entered the 10th grade, about 90 to 95 percent of the students in the public schools I had attended were also of Jewish religious background.
Compared to Bayside, Broad Ripple was much less crowded with students, despite it being a 4-year high school of 9th-grade freshmen, 10th-grade sophomores, 11th-grade juniors and 12th-grade seniors. Within the Indianapolis public school system in the early 1960's, students attended a grammar school until the end of the 8th-grade and then began attending high school in the 9th-grade as freshmen. In New York City's public school system in the early 1960's, however, you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader and just spent only three years as a public high school student.
Unless you maybe went to one of the specialized elite public high schools (like Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, Hunter High School or Music and Art), a Catholic parochial high school or a public vocational high school in New York City, you first attended an elementary school until the end of the sixth grade and a junior high school until the end of the ninth grade. So if you were seeking either an academic high school diploma (that you needed to get if you planned to apply to college), a commercial high school diploma (if you just planned to enter the 9-to-5 skyscraper business office work world without looking to go to college) or a general high school diploma (if you just planned to get some kind of blue-collar factory job or join the U.S. military if you were a man, or just get married and have children rapidly if you were a woman), you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader.
Yet even though Broad Ripple H.S. included a freshman class of about 400 students, as well as sophomore, junior and senior classes of about 400 students each and Bayside H.S. only included sophomores, juniors and seniors, because Bayside was located in a much more heavily populated area of the United States--New York City's borough of Queens--than Indianapolis, in the early 1960's it had so many students attending the school that it was a "triple session" school.
What Bayside H.S. being a high school on "triple session" meant in the early 1960's was that some of Bayside's students began their school day at 8 a.m. or 8:15 a.m. in the morning in what was called "zero period," a second group of Bayside students began their school day at 9 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. in what was called "first period" and a third group of Bayside students began their school dat at 10:30 or 10:45 a.m. in what was called "third period." As a consequence, if you began your school day at zero period, your school day would end after 7th period at around 2:15 p.m., If you began your school day at first period, your school day would end at the end of the 8th period, at around 3 p.m. And if you began your school day at 3rd period, your school day wouldn't end until after the "10th period" at around 4:30 p.m..
In contrast, at Broad Ripple H.S., all students just reported at the same time to their first period class at 8:15 a.m. each day; and at Broad Ripple all the students were released from classes at the end of the 8th or 9th period by 3 p.m., at the same time.
Another difference between Bayside H.S. and Broad Ripple H.S. was that Bayside was so overcrowded with students in the early 1960's that a portion of each year's entering 10th-grade sophomore class at Bayside was assigned to attend classes as a group not inside the Bayside H.S. building, but in a different, separate building a few blocks away, that was called "The Annex."
Were it not for the fact that the Bayside H.S. administration clerks assumed that, since I had been enrolled in a group music class as a 9th-grader at Jr. H.S. 67 learning to play the cello, I also was going to want to be in a group music class at Bayside H.S. as a sophomore learning to play the cello well enough to become a member of the high school orchesta by my junior or senior year, I would have ended up spending my first term as a high school sophomore in Bayside's annex, and not in Bayside's main building.
So even though, by the time I entered Bayside H.S. as a sophomore in September 1962, I was now into the saxophone and not the cello, I felt happy that the assumption by the school administration clerk that I wanted to be still studying a string instrument in high school had enabled me to avoid being assigned to attend "the annex;" which I felt would just provide a sophomore year high school experience too much like still being in junior high school. And which would deny me the opportunity of having an individual program of classes, where I would have a greater chance of having different classmates each period than I would, if I just mostly moved from classroom to classroom each period with the same group of 30 classmates in "the annex."
Of course, as soon as I received my program card on the first day of high school, I got my program changed, in a way I no longer can recall. So, instead of being in a morning music group class studying cello, I was in a group band class practicing saxophone.
Yet, unluckily, during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside I was still one of the 10th-graders who began school at the 10:30 or 10:45 hour third period class and whose last 10th period class didn't end until around 4:30 p.m.. So starting to attend Broad Ripple in early 1963, where I reported for class at 8:00 or 8:15 a.m. each day and got freed from school by 3 p.m. each was was what I liked more; although the 10:30 or 10:45 start of my Bayside High school day did allow me to sleep an hour longer in the morning. Since I didn't have to catch one of the crowded NY Transit Authority city buses that picked up the Bayside H.S. sophomores, who lived in the Beech Hills and Deepdale garden apartment developments in my Douglaston-Little Neck neighborhood, for the 30 minute bus ride to Bayside H.S., until around 9:30 or 9:40 a.m..
At Bayside H.S., daily attendance was marked for each student during their 15-minute homeroom period; and when I attended Bayside the 15-minute sophomore homeroom period for all the sophomores who began classes in the third period, was located in the school's auditorium, rather than in a classroom. Each "homeroom teacher" was assigned to take the attendance of 4 or 5 rooms in which their "homeroom class" of around 30 students sat.
While I no longer can recall whether or not students had to report to a "homeroom" for attendance taking each day at Broad Ripple, I recall having to attend homeroom at Bayside for a reason other than it was in the school auditorium and not in a classroom: A white guy of Italian-American background named Alfred, whose assigned auditorium seat was next to mine because his last name also began with "F", who ad apparently attended Catholic parochial school for 8 years before entering Bayside H.S., apparently tried to ridicule me and another guy sitting in our row, who was also of Jewish religious background, by repeating our names aloud in an imitation stereotyped Yiddish accent a number of times. In a way that made me feel he was somewhat anti-Semitic on an inter-personal level.
Prior to sitting next to Alfred in my 10th-grade homeroom class at Bayside, I had never personally experienced even any hint of inter-personal anti- semitism during a day in the local public schools. Maybe because, until I entered the 10th grade, about 90 to 95 percent of the students in the public schools I had attended were also of Jewish religious background.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 25
After the new year of 1963 began, my parents also brought me to first the Broad Ripple High School principal's office and then to the high school dean's office, on the first morning that school term continued; and, after about 15 minutes of conversing with Dean Jackson, they left the school.
Dean Jackson then quickly figured out which classes I would be put into during the last month of Broad Ripple's fall term, based on what subjects my mid-term report card from Bayside High School indicated that I had been taking in New York City. After next handing me a program card which indicated the particular class and room numbers that I was assigned to attend for each different day of the week, Dean Jackson then sent for his tall, well-dressed son, Keith.
Keith, who was both a member of the school's "Key Club" service organization (whose members were apparently selected in an undemocratic way, similar to how most fraternities and sororities selected their members, in that you couldn't become a member of the "Key Club" if the majority of members of the group didn't want you in their exclusive club for some reason) and a sophomore like I was. Shortly after he arrived in his father's office, Keith then gave me a guided orientation tour of the school's layout and showed me where my school locker would be, in a friendly way for about a half-hour; and then I began reporting to my assigned classes for the remainder of the day, after about the 3rd period of the school day.
In January 1963, along with the Indianapolis real estate industry and real estate agents' racially discriminatory unofficial policy of not allowing African-American families or individuals to rent or buy homes north of East 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side, there seemed to be a policy of de facto segregation with regard to which students could attend Broad Ripple High School.
Being part of a family that was white and not African-American, I was both able to live north of 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side in early 1963 and able to attend Broad Ripple, whose student body and teaching staff was then nearly 100 percent lily-white in early 1963. But, if my parents had not been apparently advised by the local white real estate agent, who rented them their half of the duplex private home where we lived near East 52nd Street and College Avenue, that Broad Ripple (which was located on Broad Ripple Avenue, northeast of where we then lived) was a better school academically than was Shortridge High School (which was located near 34th Street and North Meridian Street, southwest of where we lived), it's possible I would have ended up attending the more racially integrated Shortridge Hill during my sophomore and junior years of high school in Indiana in 1963 and 1964. Since high school students living on my particular block had the option of attending either Broad Ripple or Shortridge, based, officially, on the neighborhood's geographic location.
I had lived in a Northeast Queens neighborhood in the 1950's and first two years of the 1960's that had apparently been made racially segregated in an unofficial way by local real estate agents and real estate developers, whose residents (about 90 percent of whom were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background) were nearly all racially white, during my elementary and junior high school years. So it was only after graduating from 9th-grade at the then-nearly all white Louis Pasteur Jr. H.S. neighborhood school in June 1962, and then entering Bayside High School as a sophomore in September 1962, that I first attended a school with a more racially integrated student body, that wasn't also composed of such a high percentage of students who were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background.
But if my parents hadn't previously made the decision to enroll me in Broad Ripple H.S. rather than Shortridge H.S. when they first went out to Indianapolis to rent their half of the duplex house we ended up moving into in late 1962, I probably would have ended up, myself, choosing to attend the more racially integrated Shortridge High School. Especially if I had been told in advance that, unlike Bayside High School, Broad Ripple High School was still a lily-white high school in 1963.
Of course, since a major reason for me gaining admittance into Columbia College as part of its Class of 1969 was that the former Broad Ripple English teacher of mine to whom I wrote, in the first semester of my senior year at Flushing H.S. (after my family had moved back to New York City), asking her if she'd be kind enough to submit a teacher's letter of recommendation that Columbia College required all its applicants to get mailed to its admissions office, was apparently one of the Indiana "scouts" that Columbia relied on to recommend which Indiana applicants it would admit to Columbia College. Although I did not realize at this time that this English class teacher apparently then had a kind of special relationship to Columbia College's admissions office, when I asked her to submit the letter of recommendation that probably was what got me admitted to Columbia College.
So if I had attended Shortridge High School rather than Broad Ripple High School, when living in Indianapolis, the letter of recommendation that likely persuaded Columbia College to admit me to the Class of 1969 would never have been written; since I then would never have ever met Mrs. Griggs, the Broad Ripple H.S. English teacher, whose class I was in for one term during my sophomore year, who wrote the letter of recommendation. And since it turned out that I was the Columbia Class of 1969 member of Columbia SDS who first discovered in March 1967 that Columbia had secretly been an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank since 1960, it's possible that, if I had attended Shortridge instead of Broad Ripple in 1963 and 1964, the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt might not have happened; and late 1960's New Left Movement and SDS history might have developed in a different way, perhaps?
Yet a writer named Kurt Vonnegut had apparently attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis years before the early 1960's. But in the early 1960's I had no awareness that, if I ever developed any literary aspirations in future years, it perhaps would have been better to attend the racially integrated Shortridge high school rather than Broad Ripple for an additional reason; since attending Shortridge might have provided me with the future possibility that I'd be able to establish some kind of networking alumni connection with a published writer like Vonnegut, at some point.
Dean Jackson then quickly figured out which classes I would be put into during the last month of Broad Ripple's fall term, based on what subjects my mid-term report card from Bayside High School indicated that I had been taking in New York City. After next handing me a program card which indicated the particular class and room numbers that I was assigned to attend for each different day of the week, Dean Jackson then sent for his tall, well-dressed son, Keith.
Keith, who was both a member of the school's "Key Club" service organization (whose members were apparently selected in an undemocratic way, similar to how most fraternities and sororities selected their members, in that you couldn't become a member of the "Key Club" if the majority of members of the group didn't want you in their exclusive club for some reason) and a sophomore like I was. Shortly after he arrived in his father's office, Keith then gave me a guided orientation tour of the school's layout and showed me where my school locker would be, in a friendly way for about a half-hour; and then I began reporting to my assigned classes for the remainder of the day, after about the 3rd period of the school day.
In January 1963, along with the Indianapolis real estate industry and real estate agents' racially discriminatory unofficial policy of not allowing African-American families or individuals to rent or buy homes north of East 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side, there seemed to be a policy of de facto segregation with regard to which students could attend Broad Ripple High School.
Being part of a family that was white and not African-American, I was both able to live north of 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side in early 1963 and able to attend Broad Ripple, whose student body and teaching staff was then nearly 100 percent lily-white in early 1963. But, if my parents had not been apparently advised by the local white real estate agent, who rented them their half of the duplex private home where we lived near East 52nd Street and College Avenue, that Broad Ripple (which was located on Broad Ripple Avenue, northeast of where we then lived) was a better school academically than was Shortridge High School (which was located near 34th Street and North Meridian Street, southwest of where we lived), it's possible I would have ended up attending the more racially integrated Shortridge Hill during my sophomore and junior years of high school in Indiana in 1963 and 1964. Since high school students living on my particular block had the option of attending either Broad Ripple or Shortridge, based, officially, on the neighborhood's geographic location.
I had lived in a Northeast Queens neighborhood in the 1950's and first two years of the 1960's that had apparently been made racially segregated in an unofficial way by local real estate agents and real estate developers, whose residents (about 90 percent of whom were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background) were nearly all racially white, during my elementary and junior high school years. So it was only after graduating from 9th-grade at the then-nearly all white Louis Pasteur Jr. H.S. neighborhood school in June 1962, and then entering Bayside High School as a sophomore in September 1962, that I first attended a school with a more racially integrated student body, that wasn't also composed of such a high percentage of students who were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background.
But if my parents hadn't previously made the decision to enroll me in Broad Ripple H.S. rather than Shortridge H.S. when they first went out to Indianapolis to rent their half of the duplex house we ended up moving into in late 1962, I probably would have ended up, myself, choosing to attend the more racially integrated Shortridge High School. Especially if I had been told in advance that, unlike Bayside High School, Broad Ripple High School was still a lily-white high school in 1963.
Of course, since a major reason for me gaining admittance into Columbia College as part of its Class of 1969 was that the former Broad Ripple English teacher of mine to whom I wrote, in the first semester of my senior year at Flushing H.S. (after my family had moved back to New York City), asking her if she'd be kind enough to submit a teacher's letter of recommendation that Columbia College required all its applicants to get mailed to its admissions office, was apparently one of the Indiana "scouts" that Columbia relied on to recommend which Indiana applicants it would admit to Columbia College. Although I did not realize at this time that this English class teacher apparently then had a kind of special relationship to Columbia College's admissions office, when I asked her to submit the letter of recommendation that probably was what got me admitted to Columbia College.
So if I had attended Shortridge High School rather than Broad Ripple High School, when living in Indianapolis, the letter of recommendation that likely persuaded Columbia College to admit me to the Class of 1969 would never have been written; since I then would never have ever met Mrs. Griggs, the Broad Ripple H.S. English teacher, whose class I was in for one term during my sophomore year, who wrote the letter of recommendation. And since it turned out that I was the Columbia Class of 1969 member of Columbia SDS who first discovered in March 1967 that Columbia had secretly been an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank since 1960, it's possible that, if I had attended Shortridge instead of Broad Ripple in 1963 and 1964, the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt might not have happened; and late 1960's New Left Movement and SDS history might have developed in a different way, perhaps?
Yet a writer named Kurt Vonnegut had apparently attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis years before the early 1960's. But in the early 1960's I had no awareness that, if I ever developed any literary aspirations in future years, it perhaps would have been better to attend the racially integrated Shortridge high school rather than Broad Ripple for an additional reason; since attending Shortridge might have provided me with the future possibility that I'd be able to establish some kind of networking alumni connection with a published writer like Vonnegut, at some point.
Monday, June 17, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 24
A day or two after I telephoned the now-defunct Indianapolis Times' office, Mr. Evans, a very friendly white fellow in his mid-twenties, who was responsible for training and supervising the teenagers who delivered the newspaper to homes in my neighborhood each day, arrived at my family's rented portion of the duplex house in the afternoon, after 3:30. Only a few years after graduating from the all-male student-bodied (and still all-male student-bodied in 21st-century) Wabash College in Charlottesville, Indiana, Mr. Evans had gotten married in his early 20's; and in early 1963 was now responsible for supporting both his wife and their newly-born child.
Mr. Evans's friendly and warm Midwestern-accented personality seemed much more genuinely friendly than the personalities you'd tend to find in most New York City white men of his age with similar jobs on the East Coast, who tended to relate in a more gruff and impatient way to people they worked with in the 1950's and early 1960's. And besides relating to me in a very and friendly way, Mr. Evans also seemed to enjoy conversing for awhile in a non-sexist but warm and friendly way with my mother; before he, afterwards, led me outside and into his car, to show me how I should go about picking up my bundle of Indianapolis Times newspapers that the firm's newspaper delivery truck dropped off at the corner of College Avenue and North 52nd Street each afternoon and before dawn on Sunday mornings.
In her early 40's at this time, still considered very pretty and physically attractive by most men she encountered and, having grown up in Chicago, also possessing both a Midwestern accent and a friendly personality, my mother was probably someone whom Mr. Evans found both pleasant and interesting to converse with for awhile during his workday; and my mother seemed to also enjoy conversing for awhile with the younger man, since he was the type of man in his 20's who was able to converse with an older married woman he found attractive without making her feel uncomfortable and sexually harassed, or that he was flirting with her in an inappropriate way.
Besides driving me, on the first weekday afternoon we met, up and down College Avenue, Carrollton Avenue, Guilford Avenue and Winthrop Avenue, between North 49th Street and North 52nd Street (and across 49th, 50th, 51st and 52nd streets between these four avenues), and pointing out the houses on whose front porches I was to deliver the Indianapolis Times newspapers to each afternoon, Mr. Evans also drove me around on my newspaper route two other times.
The second time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was when he showed me how to collect the weekly newspaper subscription payments from the folks to whom I delivered the newspapers on my route. And the third time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was, before dawn, on the first early Sunday morning that I delivered the Sunday morning edition of the Indianapolis Times.
Many decades later, my most vivid memory of being driven around by Mr. Evans during my time as a newspaper delivery boy is of that initial Sunday morning time in Mr. Evans's car. For most of the hour that it took to deliver the Sunday newspapers to the homes of the 60 or so customers on my route, Mr. Evans's car was the only vehicle that was being driven on the completely deserted streets; and I was the only person walking on the street in the neighborhood during that whole hour I took copies of the newspaper in and out of Mr. Evans's car and dropped the newspapers in front of the subscribers' homes.
In the car during the hour, Mr. Evans kept the car radio on to make the time for him go by faster, while I went in and out of the car or while he drove me near the next house delivery destination on my newspaper route. And I can recall that the two pop hit songs that were played most during that morning in early 1963 were Steve Lawrence's 45 rpm vinyl recording of "Go Away Little Girl" and Peter Paul and Mary's recording of "Puff The Magic Dragon," in which Peter Yarrow's voice sung the lead on the song he had written.
But if anyone had said to me in early 1963 that, by the end of the decade, I would be writing the kind of protest folk songs, topical folk songs and love songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were recording and singing in the early 1960's, I would have looked at that person in disbelief. Although I played the tenor saxophone in early 1963, I had not yet developed any interest in learning how play the guitar. Nor had I yet discovered that I possessed any ability to create original folk song melodies and original protest folk song, topical folk song and love song lyrics similar to the kind of folk songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were then singing.
In early 1963, I still assumed that I would likely just spend my life just working as either a non-academic historian, a high school history teacher, some kind of newspaper journalist or some kind of writer of fictional novels someday; and the notion that I would end up spending so much of my leisure time during my life writing original folk songs, myself, had never ever crossed my mind.
After Mr. Evans quickly saw that I was a rapid learner, who could be relied on to both deliver the Indianapolis Times each day in a timely fashion and collect the money from the newspaper subscribers on my route with no problems, I did not have much more personal contact with him during the first 6 months of 1963, when I was a newspaper delivery boy in the second term of my sophomore year in high school. I no longer recall what the procedure was for me to transfer the portion of money each week that I collected which was due the Indianapolis Times to Mr. Evans; or how I informed Mr. Evans whether or not I needed more or less newspapers to be dropped of in the following week for my newspaper route.
It could be that he came by in his car while I was delivering the newspapers at an arranged regular late afternoon time on Thursday or Friday to quickly pick up the money I collected and find out if there were any changes in the number of newspapers I required for the following week. Or it could be that I just telephoned him at the Indianapolis Times office each week and mailed him a check equal to the percentage of what I had collected which the Indianapolis Times took, after I deducted my weekly salary and tips from the money I had collected.
During the six months I worked as a newspaper delivery boy in my neighborhood, 7 days a week, I used my bicycle while making deliveries by myself, rather than just delivering the newspapers while on foot. Filling up a newspaper delivery sac that draped over the rear of my bicycle and being able to get the newspapers onto the front porch and/or front doors of some houses by just heaving the folded-up newspapers, while still on my bicycle, was a much quicker way of getting done with my day's delivery task than delivering the newspapers by foot.
Over 50 years later, I can only recall the faces of just a few of the newspaper subscribers I collected from, because collecting money from newspaper subscribers on my route each week was like going around to houses or apartments in your neighborhood as a child on Halloween and saying "Trick or treat." You usually just spoke to the person who answered the door that you collected subcription money from for only a minute; and in some cases, if the subscriber paid you by the month for 4 weeks of deliveries, you might only see that subscriber for 6 minutes during the whole 6 months you delivered newspapers to that subscriber.
What I do recall is speaking to a white housewife, by the front door of a house on Carrollton Avenue, who seemed to be in her late 40's, who found it interesting that I had just moved to the neighborhood from New York City; since she, her husband and he daughter, who was in high school like I was, had just recently moved into the neighborhood from Cleveland, Ohio. In retrospect, I think she also spent some time conversing with me because she wanted to determine whether or not I might be the type of neighborhood high school guy her daughter might be interested in getting to know. But since I can't recall ever bumping into her daughter in school or in the neighborhood when I lived in Indianapolis, I don't know what was her final determination about me in early 1963.
I also recall a brief chat I had through the front doorway of a house on College Avenue, while making a collection, with an elderly white woman, who seemed to be in her late 60's, named Mrs. Schmidt, as well as collecting from a young married white woman, who seemed to be in her 20's, who was breastfeeding her newly arrived baby; and who lived with her husband and child in a small cottage in the backyard of the house that was adjacent to Winthrop Avenue. But that's all I can now remember of which people I delivered the Indianapolis Times to during the first 6 months of 1963. (end of part 24)
Mr. Evans's friendly and warm Midwestern-accented personality seemed much more genuinely friendly than the personalities you'd tend to find in most New York City white men of his age with similar jobs on the East Coast, who tended to relate in a more gruff and impatient way to people they worked with in the 1950's and early 1960's. And besides relating to me in a very and friendly way, Mr. Evans also seemed to enjoy conversing for awhile in a non-sexist but warm and friendly way with my mother; before he, afterwards, led me outside and into his car, to show me how I should go about picking up my bundle of Indianapolis Times newspapers that the firm's newspaper delivery truck dropped off at the corner of College Avenue and North 52nd Street each afternoon and before dawn on Sunday mornings.
In her early 40's at this time, still considered very pretty and physically attractive by most men she encountered and, having grown up in Chicago, also possessing both a Midwestern accent and a friendly personality, my mother was probably someone whom Mr. Evans found both pleasant and interesting to converse with for awhile during his workday; and my mother seemed to also enjoy conversing for awhile with the younger man, since he was the type of man in his 20's who was able to converse with an older married woman he found attractive without making her feel uncomfortable and sexually harassed, or that he was flirting with her in an inappropriate way.
Besides driving me, on the first weekday afternoon we met, up and down College Avenue, Carrollton Avenue, Guilford Avenue and Winthrop Avenue, between North 49th Street and North 52nd Street (and across 49th, 50th, 51st and 52nd streets between these four avenues), and pointing out the houses on whose front porches I was to deliver the Indianapolis Times newspapers to each afternoon, Mr. Evans also drove me around on my newspaper route two other times.
The second time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was when he showed me how to collect the weekly newspaper subscription payments from the folks to whom I delivered the newspapers on my route. And the third time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was, before dawn, on the first early Sunday morning that I delivered the Sunday morning edition of the Indianapolis Times.
Many decades later, my most vivid memory of being driven around by Mr. Evans during my time as a newspaper delivery boy is of that initial Sunday morning time in Mr. Evans's car. For most of the hour that it took to deliver the Sunday newspapers to the homes of the 60 or so customers on my route, Mr. Evans's car was the only vehicle that was being driven on the completely deserted streets; and I was the only person walking on the street in the neighborhood during that whole hour I took copies of the newspaper in and out of Mr. Evans's car and dropped the newspapers in front of the subscribers' homes.
In the car during the hour, Mr. Evans kept the car radio on to make the time for him go by faster, while I went in and out of the car or while he drove me near the next house delivery destination on my newspaper route. And I can recall that the two pop hit songs that were played most during that morning in early 1963 were Steve Lawrence's 45 rpm vinyl recording of "Go Away Little Girl" and Peter Paul and Mary's recording of "Puff The Magic Dragon," in which Peter Yarrow's voice sung the lead on the song he had written.
But if anyone had said to me in early 1963 that, by the end of the decade, I would be writing the kind of protest folk songs, topical folk songs and love songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were recording and singing in the early 1960's, I would have looked at that person in disbelief. Although I played the tenor saxophone in early 1963, I had not yet developed any interest in learning how play the guitar. Nor had I yet discovered that I possessed any ability to create original folk song melodies and original protest folk song, topical folk song and love song lyrics similar to the kind of folk songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were then singing.
In early 1963, I still assumed that I would likely just spend my life just working as either a non-academic historian, a high school history teacher, some kind of newspaper journalist or some kind of writer of fictional novels someday; and the notion that I would end up spending so much of my leisure time during my life writing original folk songs, myself, had never ever crossed my mind.
After Mr. Evans quickly saw that I was a rapid learner, who could be relied on to both deliver the Indianapolis Times each day in a timely fashion and collect the money from the newspaper subscribers on my route with no problems, I did not have much more personal contact with him during the first 6 months of 1963, when I was a newspaper delivery boy in the second term of my sophomore year in high school. I no longer recall what the procedure was for me to transfer the portion of money each week that I collected which was due the Indianapolis Times to Mr. Evans; or how I informed Mr. Evans whether or not I needed more or less newspapers to be dropped of in the following week for my newspaper route.
It could be that he came by in his car while I was delivering the newspapers at an arranged regular late afternoon time on Thursday or Friday to quickly pick up the money I collected and find out if there were any changes in the number of newspapers I required for the following week. Or it could be that I just telephoned him at the Indianapolis Times office each week and mailed him a check equal to the percentage of what I had collected which the Indianapolis Times took, after I deducted my weekly salary and tips from the money I had collected.
During the six months I worked as a newspaper delivery boy in my neighborhood, 7 days a week, I used my bicycle while making deliveries by myself, rather than just delivering the newspapers while on foot. Filling up a newspaper delivery sac that draped over the rear of my bicycle and being able to get the newspapers onto the front porch and/or front doors of some houses by just heaving the folded-up newspapers, while still on my bicycle, was a much quicker way of getting done with my day's delivery task than delivering the newspapers by foot.
Over 50 years later, I can only recall the faces of just a few of the newspaper subscribers I collected from, because collecting money from newspaper subscribers on my route each week was like going around to houses or apartments in your neighborhood as a child on Halloween and saying "Trick or treat." You usually just spoke to the person who answered the door that you collected subcription money from for only a minute; and in some cases, if the subscriber paid you by the month for 4 weeks of deliveries, you might only see that subscriber for 6 minutes during the whole 6 months you delivered newspapers to that subscriber.
What I do recall is speaking to a white housewife, by the front door of a house on Carrollton Avenue, who seemed to be in her late 40's, who found it interesting that I had just moved to the neighborhood from New York City; since she, her husband and he daughter, who was in high school like I was, had just recently moved into the neighborhood from Cleveland, Ohio. In retrospect, I think she also spent some time conversing with me because she wanted to determine whether or not I might be the type of neighborhood high school guy her daughter might be interested in getting to know. But since I can't recall ever bumping into her daughter in school or in the neighborhood when I lived in Indianapolis, I don't know what was her final determination about me in early 1963.
I also recall a brief chat I had through the front doorway of a house on College Avenue, while making a collection, with an elderly white woman, who seemed to be in her late 60's, named Mrs. Schmidt, as well as collecting from a young married white woman, who seemed to be in her 20's, who was breastfeeding her newly arrived baby; and who lived with her husband and child in a small cottage in the backyard of the house that was adjacent to Winthrop Avenue. But that's all I can now remember of which people I delivered the Indianapolis Times to during the first 6 months of 1963. (end of part 24)
Friday, May 31, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 23
Within a few days after I moved into the rented house with my family on Indianapolis's north side, I eagerly telephoned the office of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain's now-defunct local afternoon Indianapolis Times newspaper; and I expressed my interest in working for them as a newspaper delivery boy.
Given the fact that I pretty much lost any interest in devoting much of my life to the goal of individual money-making--rather than devoting most of my life to the goal of just helping humanity, artistic and creative expression, working for peace, justice and equality and giving to and sharing love with other people--by my junior year in high school, it's surprising, in retrospect, to recall how eager I was to begin working as an Indianapolis Times newspaper boy as a high school sophomore after I arrived in Indianapolis in late December 1962.
In my sixth grade class at P.S. 221 in the Little Neck-Douglaston neighborhood in Queens, south of the Long Island Expressway on Marathon Parkway, my non-authoritarian and lenient teacher, Mr. Smith, had appointed me to be the student in charge of of ordering by telephone each week's bundle of discounted, Monday-to Friday daily New York Times newspapers that were to be delivered to the school each morning.
So I was also the 6th-grader who was responsible for going around to each 5th and 6th grade class teacher every week, to record the number of daily New York Times newspapers they and their 5th or 6th grade class students had ordered for the next week, collecting the money from these teachers each week for the number of newspapers ordered and walking to P.S. 221 forty-five minutes before class started at 9 o'clock; in order to bring the bundle of New York Times newspapers, that the Times' delivery truck had dropped off in front of the school, into P.S. 221 and place the appropriate number of daily newspapers ordered on the floor in front of each 5th and 6th grade classroom door.
Mr. Smith was responsible for mailing the money I collected as payment for the delivery of each week's daily bundle of discounted New York Times newspapers by the New York Times Company's school distribution department. But I was the 6th-grade individual who briefly spoke personally by phone each week to the New York Times male employee responsible for making sure, in a serious businesslike way, that P.S. 221 would receive the right number of copies of newspapers in the following week.
Because, in 6th grade, I found it interesting being P.S. 221's "New York Times monitor," the thought never even crossed my mind (or even my parents' mind) that maybe I should have also been given some kind of monetary compensation by either Mr. Smith or the New York Times Company for doing this kind of newspaper distribution, order-taking and collection work for them in the 6th grade. But by the time I was a sophomore in Indianapolis, I had previously observed that the teenage newspaper delivery boys who brought my mother her copies of the Long Island Star-Journal and Newsday daily newspapers to read each day were earning some extra spending money each from this activity.
So I now realized that working as a newspaper delivery boy, besides being an activity that I still expected to be inherently interesting to me, was also a job from which I could earn some extra personal spending money for myself, in addition to the small amount of personal spending money that the weekly allowance I received from my father, as a teenager, then provided me with.
Even as a then-high school sophomore, I had no interest in spending money on clothes; and I didn't then yet need money to pay for an early 1960's date with a high school female classmate, because I wasn't dating anyone during my sophomore year in Indianapolis. So as it turned out, I ended up using most of the extra money I earned from being an Indianapolis Times afternoon edition and Sunday morning edition newspaper delivery boy to buy a Bell & Howell 8 mm home movie projector, to buy a cheap tape recorder (that quickly stopped working well after I purchased it) and to buy a lot of long-playing 33 1/3 rpm vinyl record albums of both Broadway hit musicals and Broadway flop musicals (since I still was more into Broadway musicals than into rock'n'roll or folk music during the first 6 months of 1963).
Given the fact that I pretty much lost any interest in devoting much of my life to the goal of individual money-making--rather than devoting most of my life to the goal of just helping humanity, artistic and creative expression, working for peace, justice and equality and giving to and sharing love with other people--by my junior year in high school, it's surprising, in retrospect, to recall how eager I was to begin working as an Indianapolis Times newspaper boy as a high school sophomore after I arrived in Indianapolis in late December 1962.
In my sixth grade class at P.S. 221 in the Little Neck-Douglaston neighborhood in Queens, south of the Long Island Expressway on Marathon Parkway, my non-authoritarian and lenient teacher, Mr. Smith, had appointed me to be the student in charge of of ordering by telephone each week's bundle of discounted, Monday-to Friday daily New York Times newspapers that were to be delivered to the school each morning.
So I was also the 6th-grader who was responsible for going around to each 5th and 6th grade class teacher every week, to record the number of daily New York Times newspapers they and their 5th or 6th grade class students had ordered for the next week, collecting the money from these teachers each week for the number of newspapers ordered and walking to P.S. 221 forty-five minutes before class started at 9 o'clock; in order to bring the bundle of New York Times newspapers, that the Times' delivery truck had dropped off in front of the school, into P.S. 221 and place the appropriate number of daily newspapers ordered on the floor in front of each 5th and 6th grade classroom door.
Mr. Smith was responsible for mailing the money I collected as payment for the delivery of each week's daily bundle of discounted New York Times newspapers by the New York Times Company's school distribution department. But I was the 6th-grade individual who briefly spoke personally by phone each week to the New York Times male employee responsible for making sure, in a serious businesslike way, that P.S. 221 would receive the right number of copies of newspapers in the following week.
Because, in 6th grade, I found it interesting being P.S. 221's "New York Times monitor," the thought never even crossed my mind (or even my parents' mind) that maybe I should have also been given some kind of monetary compensation by either Mr. Smith or the New York Times Company for doing this kind of newspaper distribution, order-taking and collection work for them in the 6th grade. But by the time I was a sophomore in Indianapolis, I had previously observed that the teenage newspaper delivery boys who brought my mother her copies of the Long Island Star-Journal and Newsday daily newspapers to read each day were earning some extra spending money each from this activity.
So I now realized that working as a newspaper delivery boy, besides being an activity that I still expected to be inherently interesting to me, was also a job from which I could earn some extra personal spending money for myself, in addition to the small amount of personal spending money that the weekly allowance I received from my father, as a teenager, then provided me with.
Even as a then-high school sophomore, I had no interest in spending money on clothes; and I didn't then yet need money to pay for an early 1960's date with a high school female classmate, because I wasn't dating anyone during my sophomore year in Indianapolis. So as it turned out, I ended up using most of the extra money I earned from being an Indianapolis Times afternoon edition and Sunday morning edition newspaper delivery boy to buy a Bell & Howell 8 mm home movie projector, to buy a cheap tape recorder (that quickly stopped working well after I purchased it) and to buy a lot of long-playing 33 1/3 rpm vinyl record albums of both Broadway hit musicals and Broadway flop musicals (since I still was more into Broadway musicals than into rock'n'roll or folk music during the first 6 months of 1963).
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