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."
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
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.
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