I still have some memories of my life in Indiana unrelated to school between January 1963 and late June 1963, during the time I spent part of each day earning money on my own for the first time, as an Indianapolis Times newspaper delivery carrier.
In 1963 the most influential newspaper in Indianapolis was the Indianapolis Star morning newspaper, which was then owned by a white right-wing anti-communist conservative publisher named Pulliam. Pulliam was a political supporter of the right-wing anti-communist "New Right" conservative and then-U.S. Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, who, the following year, was the 1964 GOP presidential nominee who ended up losing to then Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in a big way in the November 1964 election.
Pulliam's newspaper publishing firm also owned and published an afternoon newspaper in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis News (which competed with the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain's Indianapolis Times afternoon and Sunday morning newspaper that I delivered), that was distributed on every afternoon except Sunday afternoon. Not surprisingly, the editorial slant of both Pulliam's more influential Indianapolis Star and his less influential Indianapolis News generally reflected his right-wing anti-communist conservative politics. So the politically influential Indianapolis Star's version of the daily news it provided its Indianapolis readers in 1963 resembled the version of the daily news provided New York City readers in 1963 by newspapers like the then-right-wing anti-communist conservative Chicago Tribune--owned New York Daily News tabloid, rather than the version of the daily news provided by the more liberal anti-communist newspapers like the New York Times in 1963.
Consequently, when a local District Attorney in Bloomington, Indiana decided to apparently attempt to prosecute or jail some of the students involved in the Socialist Workers Party's Young Socialist Alliance [YSA] Trotskyist sect group at Indiana University around this time, front page coverage of the D.A.'s case against "the Reds" at Indiana University was provided by the Indianapolis Star, to encourage this kind of 1950's-type McCarthyite red-baiting in Indiana as late as the early 1960s.
But because I was still just an anti-communist liberal in 1963 and 1964 when I lived in Indianapolis, I have to confess that I didn't realize the degree to which the right-wing extremist-owned Indianapolis Star was unfairly characterizing in its headlines what the political goals and nature of the Socialist Workers Party/YSA activists' work in Bloomington was actually about.
Yet because my parents and I spent around one Sunday a month between January and June 1963 either driving my older sister, who was then a freshman at Indiana University, back down State Route 37 thru Martinsville and back to IU's Bloomington campus after a veekend visit or driving down to visit her on campus, I also realized that the Socialist Workers Party-supporting students, that the D.A. in Bloomington was attempting to prosecute, did not reflect the then-political mood of the vast majority of IU's student body or faculty in the early 1960s.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 37
With respect to my experiences inside Broad Ripple High School when outside of classrooms or study hall periods and outside my lunchtime period in the school cafeteria, during the Spring of 1963 in the second term of my sophomore year, pretty much the only thing I can recall are the pep rallies in the school's gymnasium. After the school's all-white basketball team won the Indianapolis High School Sectional tournament that was played in the Butler College sports arena (located within walking distance from where I lived in Indianapolis), it looked for awhile like Broad Ripple's basketball team actually had a chance to possibly win the Indiana State High School basketball state championship in 1963. And that's why special pep rallies were held to cheer on the school basketball team during the school day that semester.
In the early 1960's, basketball team competition between Indiana high school teams was a much bigger deal than it was between the New York City high school teams who then played against each other in the Public School Athletic League [PSAL] games in New York City. The high school athletes/jocks who were on Broad Ripple's basketball team, for example had a much higher status within that school, whether they won or lost, than the athletes who were on the high school basketball teams in New York City ever enjoyed. And the Indianapolis-based local television stations broadcast live many of the high school basketball games of Indiana's state high school basketball tournament in a way that none of the local New York City television stations ever did.
During my sophomore year at Broad Ripple, I--like most of the other students in the school--didn't think there was any cultural significance in the fact that the male students who were on the school's sports teams and the team's female cheerleaders had much higher status and popularity socially within the high school relative to the more intellectual students in the school than did their counterparts in New York City's public schools; where there wasn't as much encouragement of students to attend and cheer at their school's football team and basketball team games as in the Indiana public high schools.
After all, despite never having any interest in even ever trying out for any junior high school or high school sports team, prior to the second semester of my sophomore year in high school in Indianapolis, much of my time outside of school all-year-round in New York City was spent playing basketball, football, stick-ball and softball in school playgrounds, on basketball courts near parking lots, on parking lots used as stick-ball fields and in nearby city parks, with older neighborhood guys.
In retrospect, by the time I was in junior high school, I think I realized that unless I was willing to spend hours and hours of all my free daylight time outside of school during the week, and all day on weekends, by the basketball hoops in the parking lot field a few blocks from where I lived, practicing my jump shots, outside set shots and foul shots over and over again, until I would be able to automatically shoot the basketball through the hoop over 90 percent of the time during a game at school, making the junior high school or high school basketball team as a guard would always be unlikely. And by junior high school, spending some of my time practicing saxophone then seemed more interesting to me than spending all of my free time practicing shots alone on the basketball for long hours; until I got to the point where the basketballs from my shots always fell through the hoop during a game over 90 percent of the time.
But still, as a Broad Ripple H.S. sophomore in the Spring of 1963, I was as excited as everybody else at the school who may have watched Broad Ripple's basketball team play, in games that were televised by a local television station, and begin to come close to possibly winning the Indiana State high school basketball tournament in 1963.
Yet, despite my still avid interest in whether or not Broad Ripple's basketball team was going to be able to go on to win the Indiana state basketball tournament that year, I did not even consider attending in person any of the basketball games at Butler University's sports arena in which Broad Ripple's team was playing.
In retrospect, I think the reason I only watched the Spring 1963 Broad Ripple H.S. basketball team's tournament games on television that year was that--since in New York City prior to 1963 I had always attended a basketball game as a spectator along with a friend, a group of friends, classmates or my father--as a high school sophomore I was not used to ever attending a sporting event in which, alone, I sat in the stands as a spectator. And because, having just moved to Indianapolis in the Spring term of 1963, I had no friend or friends with whom I could go with to watch the school basketball games in person, that meant I still felt uncomfortable about sitting alone at a high school game, when all the other students there seemed to be attending the event with a friend, friends, or dates.
Ironically, by the time I completed my first play, "A Ball In A Basket," during the first term of my freshman year at Columbia in the Fall of 1965, I had ended up utilizing some of my memories of how the basketball coach at Broad Ripple and the Broad Ripple principal addressed the students in the school's gymnasium and led them in a "Yes, you bet! We want another net!" chant in the Spring of 1963; to create a dramatic play that criticized social and mass conformity and the over-emphasis on "sports" in an "all-American" U.S. high school and city in the Midwest. Despite the fact that only two years before I, myself, had still been as much into enjoying the over-emphasis of sports and jock culture as everybody else at Broad Ripple H.S. in the Spring of 1963. And that pretty much ends what I now recall of my experience attending Broad Ripple H.S. during the second term of my sophomore year that ended in early June 1963.
In the early 1960's, basketball team competition between Indiana high school teams was a much bigger deal than it was between the New York City high school teams who then played against each other in the Public School Athletic League [PSAL] games in New York City. The high school athletes/jocks who were on Broad Ripple's basketball team, for example had a much higher status within that school, whether they won or lost, than the athletes who were on the high school basketball teams in New York City ever enjoyed. And the Indianapolis-based local television stations broadcast live many of the high school basketball games of Indiana's state high school basketball tournament in a way that none of the local New York City television stations ever did.
During my sophomore year at Broad Ripple, I--like most of the other students in the school--didn't think there was any cultural significance in the fact that the male students who were on the school's sports teams and the team's female cheerleaders had much higher status and popularity socially within the high school relative to the more intellectual students in the school than did their counterparts in New York City's public schools; where there wasn't as much encouragement of students to attend and cheer at their school's football team and basketball team games as in the Indiana public high schools.
After all, despite never having any interest in even ever trying out for any junior high school or high school sports team, prior to the second semester of my sophomore year in high school in Indianapolis, much of my time outside of school all-year-round in New York City was spent playing basketball, football, stick-ball and softball in school playgrounds, on basketball courts near parking lots, on parking lots used as stick-ball fields and in nearby city parks, with older neighborhood guys.
In retrospect, by the time I was in junior high school, I think I realized that unless I was willing to spend hours and hours of all my free daylight time outside of school during the week, and all day on weekends, by the basketball hoops in the parking lot field a few blocks from where I lived, practicing my jump shots, outside set shots and foul shots over and over again, until I would be able to automatically shoot the basketball through the hoop over 90 percent of the time during a game at school, making the junior high school or high school basketball team as a guard would always be unlikely. And by junior high school, spending some of my time practicing saxophone then seemed more interesting to me than spending all of my free time practicing shots alone on the basketball for long hours; until I got to the point where the basketballs from my shots always fell through the hoop during a game over 90 percent of the time.
But still, as a Broad Ripple H.S. sophomore in the Spring of 1963, I was as excited as everybody else at the school who may have watched Broad Ripple's basketball team play, in games that were televised by a local television station, and begin to come close to possibly winning the Indiana State high school basketball tournament in 1963.
Yet, despite my still avid interest in whether or not Broad Ripple's basketball team was going to be able to go on to win the Indiana state basketball tournament that year, I did not even consider attending in person any of the basketball games at Butler University's sports arena in which Broad Ripple's team was playing.
In retrospect, I think the reason I only watched the Spring 1963 Broad Ripple H.S. basketball team's tournament games on television that year was that--since in New York City prior to 1963 I had always attended a basketball game as a spectator along with a friend, a group of friends, classmates or my father--as a high school sophomore I was not used to ever attending a sporting event in which, alone, I sat in the stands as a spectator. And because, having just moved to Indianapolis in the Spring term of 1963, I had no friend or friends with whom I could go with to watch the school basketball games in person, that meant I still felt uncomfortable about sitting alone at a high school game, when all the other students there seemed to be attending the event with a friend, friends, or dates.
Ironically, by the time I completed my first play, "A Ball In A Basket," during the first term of my freshman year at Columbia in the Fall of 1965, I had ended up utilizing some of my memories of how the basketball coach at Broad Ripple and the Broad Ripple principal addressed the students in the school's gymnasium and led them in a "Yes, you bet! We want another net!" chant in the Spring of 1963; to create a dramatic play that criticized social and mass conformity and the over-emphasis on "sports" in an "all-American" U.S. high school and city in the Midwest. Despite the fact that only two years before I, myself, had still been as much into enjoying the over-emphasis of sports and jock culture as everybody else at Broad Ripple H.S. in the Spring of 1963. And that pretty much ends what I now recall of my experience attending Broad Ripple H.S. during the second term of my sophomore year that ended in early June 1963.
Friday, December 27, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 36
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.
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.
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.
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