Bomb Threats – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART THE LAST

Mexico High School— Mexico, Maine… mid-1970’s

Author’s note: OK, dear reader, hang on— I’m going to tell you a true story which, when you read it, you’ll very likely doubt the veracity of it. It does read like fiction, I know. But it IS a true story. And since it happened in the late-70’s (pretty sure it happened right around 1977 or ‘78), that means that there are probably a couple hundred or so ex-students left out there who lived it, right along with me. Perhaps they will remember it with slight differences and from different points of view. But please, if you are one of them, please jump on board in the comments section to (a) verify it, and (b) make any corrections you find that need to be made. Thank you — Mr. L

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Catching Up— As a result of the latest bomb threat at the high school students had been told, via the intercom, that the gymnasium had been cleared and that each classroom would be called down to the gym, one at a time, in order to allow their particular classroom to be cleared. “Leave all coats, textbooks, and backpacks at your desks. Once your classroom has been cleared, you will be returned to your classroom, and then the next classroom will be called down.”

However, when I finally got to shepherd my homeroom kids to the gym’s entrance, my stewardship of them was abruptly commandeered from me by a handful of police officers who lined my kids up for a frisking, ostensibly looking for “bombs” but so much more likely looking for drugs. I was told to move on into the gymnasium by myself, and when I did that… there were three-quarters of our student body, sullen and nearly silent, all seated and languishing there in the bleachers. So… nobody but nobody had been returned to their classrooms after all!

And that statement that one of my boys had uttered back in the classroom, just after the first announcement had been made? “There ain’t been any bomb scare!” Well, he’d been right! This was something else entirely.

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You know what stung? The fact that I, a teacher who had been working hand in hand with the cops all along, hadn’t been told anything about the plan to use a bomb scare as an excuse to pull off a major drug bust. It rankled, to be honest. But my position in the whole scheme of things was nothing more than that of a little a cog in the machine, was it. So yeah, it wasn’t up to me. And of course the rationale of their whole plan was this: IF (while in the process of responding to a bomb threat, and searching for a bomb or bomb-making materials) we just happen to stumble onto some illicit contraband concealed on one person, then we have probable cause.

So guess what. The cops netted lots of pot that morning. Lots of it! And put a lot of kids in a world of hurt with their little sting op— you know, having to wait for their parents to be informed, and waiting to find out the legal consequences were going to end up being.

Actually though, they missed a ton of pot, too. I don’t know how, whether a lot of the kids on the walk-up toward the gym saw the little trap awaiting them and quickly stuffed their stashes into their underwear or shoes or whatever, but… the custodians who had to sweep the gym floor later that day claimed it must have been raining nickel bags under the bleachers, for all the weed they found after pushing the collapsible bleachers back in place.

Wonder if any of them pocketed a little of it for themselves…

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OK, let’s just take a minute and sum up what had happened here, and what had been happening. Let’s break it down. Here we had this high school which seemed… no, which had been, a sort of normal institution when the school year began. All classes going as normal. Activities like cheerleading, sports, school plays, band concerts and the like. All pretty normal. A typical school.

And then someone calls in a bomb threat as a prank, most likely one of the kids. A way to get out of school for a day, perhaps. It happens. Most schools experience them from time to time. More then, than now however, because back then they didn’t have a way to trace all phone calls in the entire world.

But then, just to wow his buddies and show what a daring smart ass he was, he pulls the same stunt again. The. Very. Next. Day. I mean, how cool was that, eh? Pretty ballsy cool! Only that second prank, unbeknownst to him, was actually a domino. A domino that got pushed and fell against another domino which, in turn, fell against the next domino like dominoes do, inadvertently triggering (what else?)… the “Domino Effect.” And then the metaphorical dominoes continued tumbling, one day by one day, one after the other, nickel and diming the days into four weeks, leaving the students and teachers of the school positioned in the middle of the whole thing like some ping-pong-table net in a tournament between the perp(s) and the administration.

Class time was missing big time. Homework was hard to take seriously anymore because the students’ minds, hell even the teachers’ minds, were now so firmly fixed on The Daily Question: ‘When will the bomb threat come today?’ And before you knew it, the Domino Effect had morphed into a virtual addiction. So the school had fallen ill. With a nightmare fever dream where everything had become way too chaotic and unmanageable for practically anything to get done. With everybody growing edgier and edgier, the edginess building and building until… eventually… something had to give!

And then something did!

BANG!

Everything was blown sky high in the volcanic eruption of a drug bust.

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The student body was left shell-shocked the rest of that morning. Like the walking wounded. We had just weathered a high-end Richter-scale “earthquake” and no one, except maybe the cops and the administration, had a reliable tally on the extent of the damages just yet. But rumors were flying. And the last thing the building felt like by the way, from my point of view at least, was a freakin’ school. It was Crazy Town, with the dust constantly settling all around us.

But on the other hand, the drug bust was cathartic at the same time. Because at least SOMETHING had finally happened! Painful as it was, it did sort of feel like somebody had just lanced a months-long-festering boil. Somehow it seemed possible that everything, the whole damn shootin’ match, might just finally be over, because how could anybody really muster up the will and the energy to call in another one, after all this?

Or was that just wishful thinking?

And then it turned out that yes, it was wishful thinking. Because it’ ain’t’s never over till it’s over. Not that somebody called in another bomb threat. No, but that madness had just taken a new and unexpected turn.

Once the reading-the-riot-act assembly in the gym had finally come to a close, we were all dismissed to go back to our homerooms to await the announcement for how the normal schedule for that day would turn out to be amended. (Normal? Did I actually use the word ‘normal?’) However, nobody really felt a pressing need to proceed in any real hurry. So the big lobby filled up with kids and teachers and a cop or two, all of us just milling around like zombies. Time and Schedule just didn’t seem to be real anymore. It was so weird. That point of the morning seemed to feel like the end of some movie where all of the action had finally wound up, but the final credits were continuing to roll on and on.

And one of the possible items in those credits might have included the following:

Score— Bomb Threatener: 300+. Administration: 1000

And then, as unlikely as it could possibly seem… believe it or not, something ELSE happened…

There was one young man in the student body who held the distinct reputation of being your basic high school drug dealer. Kind of a scary little outlaw, he was. And whenever it had come to all the Mickey Mouse school rules— one of which was, of course, always getting to school on time— this kid had managed to sneer his way around that one from seventh grade through senior year, because rules like those? They applied to the sheep, never to him. So everyone had, more or less, gotten used to him being perpetually tardy.

And this day was no exception.

After all the insanity of the last couple of hours, a car pulled up and parked outside next to the curb. It was visible to any of us who happened to be looking out through the lobby’s tall glass panels that fronted the entrance. But it’s not like we actually noticed it so much. It’s like a couple of the cops did. And didn’t they just go a-charging out through those entry doors to get at him!

His mom was just dropping him off per usual, and he’d barely managed to get one foot out the car door and onto the pavement before… they’d grabbed him! In mere moments he was frisked, divested of his illegal contraband (baggies of pot), and taken into custody.

Now, this was a biggie for the cops! They’d wanted him for a while , but they’d always had to wait. Because they needed to do it right if they were going to have an arrest that would stand up in court. With evidence. Now… thanks to their little bomb scare cum drug bust scheme, they had achieved “probable cause,” hadn’t they! So as far as they were concerned, it would be Celebration Time at the police station that night. Whoopee!

Only guess what!

They. Didn’t. Have. Probable. Cause.

In their excitement and enthusiasm to nab their known dealer, the one they’d been wanting to pounce on for so long, they had inadvertently jumped the gun. If only they had waited until our young man had placed one foot inside our building, then their police-station-celebration wouldn’t have to be turned inside-out into a wake. Then their rationale would have passed muster, their rationale being ‘Hey, see, we got this bomb threat for the high school so we have to search everywhere and everyone inside said high school for said bomb. And if, and only if, in so doing, we just happen to find incidental contraband on one of said persons, well we then have legal “probable cause” to detain and charge said persons.’

But of course, they hadn’t realized that yet. And it would take some time to sink in. Basically right up until the moment the top brass at the station got contacted by the boy’s brand new lawyers, which didn’t take all that long at all. And guess who his new lawyers were. SURPRISE! The American Civil Liberties Union! Yes, those lawyers, those… nobody-expects-the-Spanish-Inquisition lawyers. Those guys.

And now the inevitable question was ‘So… why is it you felt you were within your legal rights to search an individual who (a) not only wasn’t in the building at the time of the search, but more so (b) hasn’t even managed to walk himself inside said building yet? So both the police and the school administration were finding themselves dancing lightly on eggshells and feeling a little vulnerable to becoming seriously entangled in the snarl of an unwanted legal court battle (i.e., can you say ‘law suit’?).

And then on top of that, finally someone had to go and bring up the issue of the veracity, the believability, of the ‘alleged’ phone threat that had started the whole morning— i.e., was there really a bomb threat called in this time, or was it just a some fabricated ploy to try to finally and conveiently squash all the bomb-scare madness?

Yes, once you’ve got the ACLU afoot, step lightly! Like the Incredible Hulk, you won’t like the ACLU when it’s angry…

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THE AFTERMATH

OK. It had to seem that our little epidemic must have run its course by then. Well, as far as anyone having the will or energy to phone in another bomb threat, yes, that certainly wasn’t going to happen again for a long, long while.

Yet a dark cloud of anger and exhaustion had settled over the school and, for that matter, the whole community. The academic kids weren’t happy with the toll the entire disaster had taken on their education and consequently, on their postgraduate ambitions. The stoners were definitely pissed off, of course. A lot of the parents of the stoners and, hey, even a lot of parents of the non-stoners, were pissed off as well. The community at large was none too pleased at the way the school up there on the hill had failed in handling the ‘pandemic.’ The administration was pissed off at the cops for botching the best laid plans of mice and men and bringing the ACLU down on their heads. The cops were pissed off at the ACLU.And both the administration and the cops were pissed off at the still unknown ‘Unaphoner’ who had started the whole the whole domino shipwreck and apparently had gotten away scot free.

So yeah, there was still a very bitter taste left in everyone’s mouth. And a day or two later everyone would find out what all this would lead to.

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Once again it was during that same damn early morning homeroom period before classes were to begin, the period that was apparently cursed that year. As I looked out over my homeroom, it was impossible not to notice something was wrong. Only five kids were seated before me. Five seemingly nervous kids.

“So… where is everybody?” I asked.

The kids exchanged nervous glances. Then one of them said, “In the cafeteria.” As if that response answered the question.

I waited a moment, and then said, “OK. I give up. Why?”

One of them said, “Because they’re not coming.”

I let that sink in. “OK. Let’s try that again. Does anyone want to try to tell me why they’re not coming? And, you know, like, feel free to include a few specific details so I can get it?”

It took a long moment. “Because they’re mad. They ain’t going to classes today.”

One of them added, “Go look for yourself.” Jeez. I really didn’t like the sound of that.

“Be right back,” I told them. As soon as I opened the door into the hallway, I immediately became aware of a low, faraway roar of voices. I walked down the hall past the few classroom doors, turned right at the ramp, stopped, and looked down it. It was much louder now. And Christ, I could see thirty kids just milling around in the lobby down there, which was located right between the principal’s office on the left and the cafeteria on the right. Not only were they milling, but what they weren’t doing was making any effort whatsoever to be quiet down there, which seemed pretty daring considering they were basically right in front of the main office.

They were all obviously very agitated. There was anger and belligerence down there. This was not good. As I watched, I saw some of these kids drifting out of sight off into the café, while others from the café were joining the crowd in the lobby. So that was it then. Practically the whole student body was down there, apparently a lot of them crammed into the café.

I returned to my classroom. The bell to go to first period was chiming as I stepped back in, for all the good that was going to do. I mean, it was obvious. There wasn’t gonna be any first period that day. But just what the hell would there be? That was the question.

The principal came on the intercom. “The first period bell just rang. We expect all students to report to their first period classes at this time.” Listen to him, trying to make it sound like it was just a normal day. Even with my door to the hallway only open just a crack, we could hear the roar down below reach a momentary crescendo as an answer! Yeah. Well… expect and be damned, Mister Principal.

Five minutes passed. Nothing, not a thing changed. And then the principal’s voice came back on the intercom. Only this time his voice wasn’t broadcasting from within the relative quietude of the main office. This time his voice was embedded in the over-riding din and angry clamor inside the cafeteria. He was carrying a hot mic, i imagine for the benefit of the entire school, i.e. to keep the cooks and custodians and office personnel and we teachers holed up with our little bastions of mousey goody-two-shoes in the know. It was actually a little difficult to pick out his words because they were being pretty much drowned out by the rowdy crowd noise. “Listen to me! Please! Hear me out. OK? It’s obvious we need to talk. So that’s what I’m here for, OK? Let’s talk. I’m here to listen…”

His plea was met by another crescendo, now up much closer and personal. Only this time, due to the mic, you could so much more easily make out the f-bombs popping like popcorn in that wall of noise. “No, I’m serious here! Let’s…” But he never got to finish what he had started to say.

After an indistinct shuffling noise of the mic being roughly handled, one loud male voice much louder and clearer than anyone else in the cafeteria had suddenly taken over, yammering about how it was too late to talk, and the roar of voices then amplified sharply in a frightening assent. It was like listening to a live-action news report from some banana republic being overthrown! That’s when I bolted out of the room once again and down the hall to the top of the ramp.

I got there just in time to witness our principal forcefully threading his way back through the lobby crowd, and then storming his way into the main office. At least physically he didn’t look any worse for the wear. Within twenty seconds he‘d turned off the power to the intercom, and the mic went dead.

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OK. This is the hard part for me. Bringing this story to a conclusion. Why? Because it’s easy, remembering all the wild and crazy outlandish things that happened. Those kinds of bizarre things are much more likely to engrave themselves indelibly in the mind. But I’m hard put to remember now how it all specifically came to an end. Because in my mind… it had all just petered out.

I do know the rest of that particular morning seemed long. It seems like for a couple of hours at least the students just continued to hang out, milling around angry and lost in the lobby and cafeteria. Probably not though. I know that I, and a lot of other teachers as well, joined them for a good part of the time, mostly to keep an eye on them. Funny, I can’t recall if lunch was served in the café, but it must have been, right? (I probably would’ve remembered if it hadn’t been.) And obviously the buses had to have run on time to take the kids home, since they would’ve had to pick up the junior high and primary school kids at the other locations. Although I have no memory of that either.

I can however remember one thing. And in telling it, it’s going to feel like I’m going off track and digressing, but have faith— I promise you, this story will dovetail right back into the saga of the of the Bummer Bomb Threat days’ demise.

So it just so happens that S.A.D. #43 was right in the midst of another, parallel, nightmare unfortunately coinciding with the bomb scare pandemic. Contract negotiations between the school board and the teachers’ union had long since broken down, and cosequently we’d been working without a contract for well over a year. It had become a nasty war, one which found us teachers, often with our families in tow, protesting en masse outside school board meetings and sometimes even downtown, waving our crudely made ‘UNFAIR!’ signs. The war (and yes, ‘war’ is an apt word) had been going on for far too long. The teachers and the board members had both employed various strategies of warfare.

(Sometime long after this particular day, the war would find us teachers actually going on strike, despite that fact that it was illegal for us to do so. But that’s a story for another day.)

One of the strategies used by the board ended up setting the bar at an unbelievably all-time low. Our previous superintendent had retired the year before. And when it came to hiring a replacement, we discovered that the selection committee had narrowed the open position down to three candidates. Two of the candidates were showing various strengths befitting a potential superintendent. One however stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. His name was Smith, and he came with the reputation as a one-year hired gun. One look at his credentials and you’d have to ask, Why is it that this Mr. Smith has a record of serving as superintendent in various districts for a single year only before moving on to the next? You couldn’t help but ask that question, you know?

So anyway, guess whom they’d hired.

Now it turned out I had a source of special inside knowledge as to what this Mr. Smith was like as a so-called “superintendent.” In a previous single year of employment mind you, he’d served (using the term’ served’ loosely here) as the super at S.A.D. #68, aka Dover-Foxcroft’s school district (D-F being my hometown). That year, when Smith left the #68 school district behind in his rearview mirror, he also left the schools in a shambles. So on recon missions, I was able to learn a lot from teachers I knew there.

However, the knowledge I was able to garner turned out to be superfluous. One week to the day after Smith had been hired at Mexico, a mysterious parcel in a plain brown wrapper arrived at our school addressed only “To the teachers of S.A.D. #43’s Teachers Union.” There was no return address.

When opened, we found written on a note at the top of what appeared to be a cornucopia of paperwork, “This is a HOW TO GET RID OF SUPERINTENDENT SMITH KIT.” We couldn’t believe our eyes!

This ‘kit’ was comprised of several newspaper clippings detailing unbelievably horrific things this man had been caught doing in SAD #68: (midnight harassing phone calls, blatant sexual harassment of female teachers, stalking, you name it) and lists of how-to suggestions to combat these behaviors, like “Work with the police (we did),” and “When you find out which teacher is getting the majority of late night/early morning harassment calls, have the police put a’ lock’ on that teacher’s phone line. (WE did that, too…)” and “Whenever Smith calls a female staff person into his office, that female staff person must insist on being accompanied by another staff person,” etc.

Funny thing: after leaving Mexico High a year or so later to sign on to S.A.D. #68, specifically at Foxcroft Academy, I was fortunate to be befriended by one Peter Caruso, one of the Academy teachers there who had actually participated in assembling the generous Get-Rid-Of kit sent to us when we needed it most. And I must say, the two of us have since enjoyed a few decades of chuckles and laughs at how cartoonish a villain Smith was, and how happy we both had been to escort him to the nearest exit of our respective schools.

Anyway, guess what. It uurned out that several of us teachers, most of us teachers actually (me included) had already been receiving such annoying anonymous phone calls for a week! So it had already begun, a week before we’d gotten the info. We hadn’t an inkling that the new ‘superintendent’ could ever be involved. Why would we?

And the very first time a female teacher was called into his office for a conference, and she arrived with an accompanying teacher, he angrily ordered the uninvited one out. And when that teacher said (and as a movie buff I like to think of it as reminiscent of the computer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey), “I’m sorry… I can’t do that…” he summarily kicked them both out, threatening to put a note detailing their disobedient behavior into their permanent records.

So, yeah, in good ol’ S.A.D. #43, all told, things were already going to hell in a handbasket long before the bomb scare weeks.

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So finally, back to the Infamous Day the Kids Took Over the School! (OK, they didn’t really take it over, exactly.)

So of course it’s protocol in all S.A.D.’s that when an emergency occurs at one of their schools, the superintendent must be informed. I know a lot of the teachers (and even the principal) would have preferred not to have him called but, alas, he was summoned. And… he came. I need to say that by then he’d lost the respect of the entire body of teachers and principals and even the students, whatever the piddling amount of respect he’d ever begun with, that is. And you might be doubting the truth of my claim that even the principals were happily in (and rowing) the same boat as we teachers were. But that’s because back in the late ‘70’s, the principals and vice principals were on the same side of the contract bargaining table as the teachers. Our salaries were tied together as one unit during salary negotiations.

Here’s an interesting little tidbit: our principal actually enjoyed entertaining us teachers with a hilarious little Charlie-Chaplin-with-cane routine that specifically made fun of “Snuffy” Smith behind his back.

Oh OK.Want another? When later, as the school year was nearing its end and the school board was getting antsy about not having been given even a glimpse yet of the superintendent’s next-year’s proposed budget, they laid down the law and demanded he present said budget at an open town meeting. So a little later in front of a gathering of the interested tax payer citizens of Mexico, they asked him to hand it over for their perusal. This he promptly did. So the board members hunched themselves down over the pages for a minute or two. And what followed was amazing. One of them looked up abruptly and with a perplexed frown exclaimed, “Wait just a minute here! This is last year’s budget!”

To which Superintendent Smith, feigning surprise, countered with, “Oh my! OK, I get it. You see I was comparing the two budgets together on my desk at home. Why, I must have mistakenly picked up the wrong one! OK, I’ll be sure to bring my proposed budget to the very next meeting.”

But that didn’t fly. They were onto him like flies on horse puckey, just as S.A.D. 68’s board had gotten onto him back in Dover-Foxcroft. So no, they wanted to see the proposal right away. A demand to which he readily agreed. Only problem was, when they tried to get in touch with Mr. Smith the following day, the best they could do was get in touch with his lawyer. He was nowhere around. Believe it or not.

So anyway there the kids were, still angrily milling and muttering all around the cafeteria and lobby under the watchful eye of a number of us teachers. One of the students suddenly called out, “Oh great. Look who’s here!” A lot of us looked. And here came old Charlie Chaplin, aka Superintendent “Snuffy” Smith huffing and puffing toward us on a mission, hobbling up the walk with his signature cane. I figured he’d just hobble right on in, only it turned out the front doors were locked. He peered in through the glass and caught the eye of two of the closest kids.

“You two!” he barked. “Open this door now!” But all they did was sneer at him for a moment, and then just blew him off’. Turned on their heels and let themselves get swallowed back up in the crowd. Oh was he ever pissed! I was so proud of them.

So then he began rapping his cane, really hard, against glass. And to any of the fifty kids he could make out before him, he started yelling, “I want this door opened! Open this door now!” Strangely there were no takers.

My fellow teacher and I suddenly realizing that we were close enough to the glass doors that he could easily spot us, casually slipped our hands in our pockets, turned toward each other (leaving only our cold shoulders facing the doors), and launched into a make-believe ‘conversation’ meant to appear so all-consuming that it was small wonder we were failing to hear his outbursts, so out of sight and out of mind was he. Man, he went mad as a hornet. It’s a wonder his cane didn’t break the glass, while our faux conversation went on unabated.Finally the clatter ended.

We looked over our shoulders and there he went, his back to us now, hobbling off around a corner to circle the gymnasium. It would be a mighty long hobble to limp all the way around that building to come in through the one of the back doors, poor fella. But about fifteen minutes later he did show up in the midst of the cafeteria hubbub, barking orders.

I didn’t know to whom he was speaking at first (as I was purposely looking askance), but I heard him saying, “Well, I’ll tell YOU what! I’m in charge here and I’m going to end this mess right now! Iwant you, you, you, you, and… you! You five! You’re coming with me! And in the next hour, we’re going to get to the bottom of this and solve the whole damn fiasco right now! Come on. Let’s go!”

I watched the six of them lurching away toward the conference room, The Shanghaied Five looking oh-so-absolutely-mortified! By picking his negotiations panel straight from the hip, all willy-nilly like that? From an entire cafeteria bursting at the seams with Mexico High’s angry little Abbie Hoffmans and Patty Hearsts, he had just managed to form an ad hoc posse of… the Dungeons and Dragons dorks! All personally hand-picked to be the spokespersons for the stoners. Poor kids. Just innocent bystanders. Wrong place, wrong time. Tourists, really.

*But we don’t DO drugs, Superintendend Smith…*

But like I said. See, that’s really the last specific thing I remember. Or remember clearly. Like I suggested earlier, it’s mostly the really bizarre events that burn themselves permanently into the memory. So how things finally ended, the winding-down details of MHS’s gradual return to normal, or whatever passed for that year’s ‘normal’? It all seems like a fuzzy dream-ending now. I guess I just probably stopped paying attention after all the rigmarole that had been going on for so long. I think that’s when I started putting my focus on updating my resumé, and losing myself in researching any English teaching positions opening up across the state.

One job opening was in my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft.

But I am pretty sure that our infamous little high school drug-dealer was eventually able to wiggle off the hook with the help of the ACLU. And as part of the blow-back from that, I think the other kids who had also been compromised in that drug bust ended up making out fine as well. I believe everything was just dropped in the end. It was the adults who ended up with the proverbial egg on their collective face.

Oh yeah. And come to think of it, I don’t remember our ‘Una-phoner’ ever getting identified either.

So… the end of the story? The whole thing just seemed to fizzle, and then just dissolve dissolve away with time. And the school year limped on, following the school calendar to the end.

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“This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper“

—from “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot

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DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART TWO “The Cold War”

(Third story) (the really interesting one)

Mexico High School— Mexico, Maine, mid-1970’s

The very first time it happens, you’re caught off guard. You might be knee-deep in a discussion of the Biblical allusions in The Grapes of Wrath or demonstrating the difference between phrases and clauses.Then, suddenly, the intercom crackles to life; you’re being informed that the main office has just received its first bomb threat of the year and all students and staff are being instructed to exit their classrooms in an orderly manner and prepare to board the buses that will be awaiting them.

You glance out your classroom window and yes, here they come, the long, yellow line of school buses snaking up the hill to cocoon your high schoolers in safety at a safe distance. And you think to yourself, Oh well. It happens. It’s a pain in the ass, but it happens. So… let’s get it over with and get back on with our lives.

And that’s what you do. Sure. An hour, maybe two, is lost. The class schedule for the remainder of the day is re-adjusted to compensate for the glitch. Eventually the bell rings in normalcy once again. A different class files into your classroom all a-buzz about the ‘adventure,’ The Grapes of Wrath just a fading memory until tomorrow.

And surprise, surprise—there was no bomb. So it goes.

But when the very next day, amid your demonstration of The Dynamic Elements of Good Character Sketches, gets interrupted by a second bomb threat in a row… you’re a little more than just a little irritated this time. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” or a bomb scare two days in a row. But damn it, I swear it happened. On the other hand, OK… admit it— you’re also a bit impressed by just how ballsy the little bastard(s) must be, chancing another one right on the heels of yesterday’s. I mean, don’t they realize they’re just asking for it. That the cops’ll track’em down and that’ll be the end of it. Just a matter of time.

OK, after that rare ordeal was over with and everybody was safely ensconced back in their little classroom desks once again, the principal, needing to rip someone a new one, if he only knew whom, came over the intercom with, “This stupidity will stop right here and NOW! Once was bad enough but it’s become a serious crime now, costing the taxpayers unexpected, untold money—compensating the bus drivers, the town having to compensate the police department—money that your parents, your very own families, will have to dish out because of this reckless and senseless act. What some airhead among you thinks is a game. But I can promise you that when the perpetrator or perpetrators are caught (and mark my words they will be caught), we are prepared to press charges to the fullest extent of the law!”

There. He had appealed to their common sense, common logic. So it was over and done with. And thank God for that.

But it wasn’t. There was another one. And believe it or not, another one after that! Quite a slap in the face to the principal.

Something had to be done. But what? OK. A plan emerged. It was kind of a desperate plan, and could even be seen as possibly irresponsible. But it went like this: From this point forward, whenever the office secretary answers the office phone and hears the beginnings of a bomb threat, she will hang up immediately. That plan was put into action. And it worked. Yes, the phone did ring, and of course the voice on the other end began, “There’s a bomb in the…”

Hah! Take that, Mister! Touché! And oh, I’m sure the office staff did some gloating and high-fiving after that, especially after the second follow-up call came in and was likewise thwarted. Can you imagine how pissed off the bomb-scare caller must have been? But the school administration’s plan had worked. Just like Nancy Reagan saying, “Just say NO to drugs.” Simple as that. Case closed. We could get on with… education, believe it or not.

But the flaw in the ointment was… see, Ms. Reagan didn’t know diddly. And this is where my (true story, I swear!!) anecdote here gets really surreal. Because in the afternoon of the day after the two squelched phone calls, out my window I suddenly happened to spy the long ghostly line of yellow school buses doggedly crawling back up over the hill to MHS once again!

And I thought, What the hell are they doing? They can’t be heading here. I mean, we don’t answer the frickin’ phone anymore! But sure enough, twenty minutes later, the evacuation orders were being given once again over the intercom.

What in the world had happened? Well, according to the cops, a bomb threat (for the school, mind you) had been phoned in to the little convenience store down at the bottom of the hill. The store owner had no knowledge of the trusted just-say-NO-and-hang-up strategy, so of course like any good citizen, he’d taken the call, had taken it seriously, and had reported it to the police immediately.

OK then— Bomb Threatener: 5 or 6, Administration: 0

So you can see what was happening here, right? A duel, of sorts. Like a game of chess. Unfortunately, personal pride had gotten into the mix, each side feeling the need for upping the ante. But… one side had the advantage: that of knowing exactly who its opponent was. But at this point the school’s administration had no clue who it was they were locking horns with. Interesting conflict.

So, it being the school’s turn raise the stakes: “From this point on, until the perpetrator ceases this senseless attack, school will be held in session on Saturdays. Every Saturday until it stops. We very much need to recoup the lost time we’ve been experiencing. And attendance will be taken!”

Hah! Take that! So you see? We were basically a precursor to the later 1985 film, The Breakfast Club!

How the administration imagined Saturday make-up days…

But just try, for a moment, try to imagine how well this ploy worked out: (a) half the student body simply opted to skip school that first Saturday. (And what a Breakfast Club detention list that would have made, had anybody complied. But they hadn’t.) Plus, with such a very large percentage of your students missing from the mandatory Saturday classes, making up for lost time and progress proved impossible. And it just felt so spooky-weird, looking out over your classroom desk and finding only six kids in a class of twenty, dutifully sitting there and staring back at you. Plus (b) for those who did show up, a bomb threat was called in that Saturday morning anyway. Seriously. And like, who didn’t see that coming?

Score— Bomb Threatener: 50 Administration: 0

Strange days indeed! So the ball was back in our court once again. And us no closer to discovering the identity of our nemesis. And by now, actually the conflict was beginning to lean just a tad toward something that smacked a bit of myth or legend. I mean, who was this guy? Or guys? Or even gals? Some kind of… Unabomber-Caller?

Of course after that loss, our principal called an emergency meeting in the library, which was then being referred to as ‘The War Room.’ Instead of just admitting defeat and cancelling school for the rest of the year (my prayer), he really wanted to play hard ball now. So we had to brainstorm. And we brainstormed! Brainstormed our brains out! And would you believe it? We finally came up with something! A plan so devious and dark, it boggled the mind.

Here it is: First we department heads were instructed to delve into the musty old book depository and dig up sets of twenty-five or so old retired texts within our disciplines: i.e., Math, English, Science, etc. That we did. And hah! There were a ton of Warriner’s English Language and Compositions in there collecting dust.

Secondly, each department’s teachers were instructed to design and produce one ad hoc general lesson plan that would rely on the use of these old books. Then the printed out lesson plans were placed in a temporary file for later use. They were allegedly ones that any teacher could just glance at, quickly get the gist of, and know what to do— pass out the books to kids, and have at it.

Thirdly, these book sets were then covertly loaded into the back of somebody’s pickup truck and then transported across town to… (you’ll never believe this!)… The Maine State Army National Guard Armory! Yes, I know!

See, somehow, we’d got the Maine Army National Guard Armory’s commanding officers to allow us to use their facility on any week day that we received a bomb threat. The armory was always a secure and locked facility. If by chance our bomb caller decided to try to call in a threat to the armory, they could just be told to buzz-off and go pound sand. The armory would provide just the very safe and secure haven for the students we needed, and… (here’s the kicker) …for the remainder of the entire school day! It would be like they’d be drafted for the day!

So, of course it didn’t take long for the next awaited phone call to come in. And then the plan went off without a hitch. The buses pulled into the school parking lot. The smirking kids boarded the safety buses as per usual. But this time a number of teacher volunteers boarded the buses with them as well, which raised some eyebrows of some of the kids.

I wasn’t one of those volunteers. No, for the very first time in my life I joined the cops as a bomb squad volunteer. But I made sure I was still out there in the parking when the bus doors slammed shut on those kids and the buses started to roll. In the past bomb scares, the kids would just remain seated on the buses— safe, warm, and dry, and usually with the bus door left leisurely open, just waiting until the cops had cleared the building. However, this time they were suddenly on the move. And the surprise of that, and the fact that they didn’t know where the hell TO, was written all over the bug-eyed, precious expressions on the faces pressed up against the windows as they were being hauled off and away.

And what a nice day that was for me! Virtually a holiday. It took a couple hours to comb the building, but that wasn’t hard. Plus, I got to socialize with the police officers, some of whom I already knew. And then, back to my empty classroom for the entire day. Unbelievable. Luxurious. A big change from my usual workday. I remember frivolously imagining that hey, maybe I should change careers from teaching to professional ‘bomb-squadding.’ But all good things must come to an end. “Nothing gold can stay.” —Robert Frost and Ponyboy Curtis

Around 2:20, the yellow bus-caravan finally rolled back into the parking lot. Again, I was standing out there in the lot, eagerly awaiting the reports on how well our anti-bomb-threat plan had worked . And as soon as the bus doors flopped open… Something didn’t feel right. Something was very wrong.

As they stepped down off the bus, everybody looked… so… disheveled. So… under a strain. Especially the teachers, who appeared weak to the point of just having to allow gravity to do the job of dropping them back down onto terra firma. Even the kids. Honestly, all the passengers had the look of the survivors of a plane hijacking, where the hijackers had kept their hostages sweating in their passenger seats out on the tarmac for twenty-four hours. Everybody was beat. When my English teacher colleague, Burt, got off I said to him, “Really? It was really that bad?” he just looked at me with an irritable, prickly glower and hissed, “Fuck you!” Comments from other departing staff included “Never again!” and “Just lemme at the bastard who came up with this plan!”

Later that afternoon, it all came out in ‘The War Room.’ By the way, I was curious to see that a couple of officers from law enforcement were sitting in on the debriefing. “Do you have any idea how many rabbit holes there are in that armory for 300-plus kids to hide-out!?” “One or more of our little shits broke the lock to the supply room! Fortunately the firearms weren’t stored there, or I’d hate to think…!” “These kids got on the buses with no idea they were going anywhere, so naturally they didn’t come prepared with anything! And yes, I know you sent us off with a big supply of pencils, but somehow they went missing!” “Lemme tell you something! That supply room had practically a friggin’ library of Field Manuals in there, at least two of which were labled Explosives and Demolitions!” “Jeez, those stupid so-called lesson plans weren’t realistic at all! Not that it really mattered since the kids wouldn’t stay put for more than five minutes!” “Try finding some kid hiding out down there in the motor pool!” “Such a zoo, and it’s pretty likely somebody got pregnant on our watch, from what I hear.” “You know what? Just… please! Don’t ever do something like that to us ever again, OK?”

Score— Bomb Threatener: 300+, Administration: 0

We, the foot soldiers in this war, were now more than a little discouraged and felt ready to throw in the towel and just hand the school over to the terrorists. But our principal? No. He seemed oddly very pensive and calm while listening to the rants of his underlings, but somehow not discouraged. And as badly as we felt, I’m sure none of us would’ve wanted to trade places with him and be in his shoes. Anyway, he adjourned the meeting fairly pleasantly, thanking the volunteers for their valiant efforts and saying we’d be revisiting the issue soon.

I left feeling guilty about having enjoyed what my volunteer-colleagues might have seen as a siesta in the shade compared to what they’d gone through. Well… let’s say a little guilty. And a whole lot more lucky, than guilty.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was odd. Nothing happened over the next few days. And lemme tell ya, nobody saw that coming. It was nice, yeah. However, I know we were all waiting on pins and needles for the next shoe to drop, me even fixed on continually scouting out the road outside my classroom window every chance I got. The waiting was like we were in a Cold War.

But… who knew? Maybe when our nemesis had seen and personally experienced the level of retribution the administration had been willing to go to last time (namely, the Armory fiasco), he or she or they (like ourselves) were seriously a little scarred by how badly things had already gotten out of hand. Maybe the ‘bad guys’ were actually a little gun-shy too, wondering just how far the administration might be willing to go at upping the ante next time.

But Time marched on. Until the other shoe did drop. And when it did, it came in the form of a very strange announcement over the intercom. The school was still in early homeroom period, just waiting on the passing bell for the first class of the day. “We have just recently received a bomb threat.” You could actually hear the school inhale its collective gasp up and down the hallways. Here we go again! And how far will it go THIS time? “The threat indicated that the explosive device is located in the gymnasium. So since the gym wasn’t being used this morning, and is located far at the other end of the school, far from our closest classrooms, the police and firefighters went right to work there and have cleared that area. However, to be on the safe side, now we are going to clear the entire building one classroom at a time.”

Now me, at that early stage of my career, I was a naïve little male English-teacher-Pollyanna. Yes, I realized that what we’d just heard was a little odd… but hey, I still had faith in the in the wisdom of the police in situations involving our safety. If that is what they were saying needed to be done then OK, that’s what needed to be done. I’m good. My only concern was wow, one classroom at a time? Man, that was going to take a long time.

“So, at this time, all students in room 103 will please report to the gym, accompanied by your teacher. Please leave all coats, textbooks, and backpacks at your desks. Once your classroom has been cleared, you will be returned to your classroom, and then the next classroom will be called down.”

So I was all OK, if that’s what we’re being told to do then hey, let’s do it and get back on with our lives. At least we weren’t being asked to board the school buses on another hell-ride headed for the Armory this time, right? But… I was totally surprised at the reaction of three of my boys to the announcement. They looked totally pissed off. One of them just blurted out, “There ain’t been any bomb scare!”

I answered, “What? How can you say that. I mean, come on—look how many bomb scares we’ve had over the past month! How can you be surprised we’re getting one more?” This kid wasn’t even bothering to look at me, let alone answer me. He was too busy just glaring along with his buddies, all three of whom were all shaking their heads seemingly in disbelief and anger. I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on in their heads, not that it mattered much to me. I just put it down as some kind of extreme conspiracy theory they must have bought into. I was like… Whatever!

Anyway, the time we spent waiting for our room to be called to the gym was really awkward. If it had been an English class, at least I’d have some class work to keep the kids busy with, something to keep their minds somewhat off what was going down. But no. I just declared a ‘study hall,’ without really expecting anybody to study anything, such was the tension in the room.

It was just a really long wait and it was getting on everyone’s nerves, including mine. But finally our classroom was called down.

My room, if I remember correctly, was 206… or maybe 201. Anyway, the ‘2’ in 206 simply meant, of course, that we were located on the second “floor.” Although… there really was no second floor, per se. See, our school was built on a fairly steep slope of land. And what I just referred to as the second floor was actually just a single-story wing of classrooms built up on the higher end of the sloping grounds. And there was no stairway to reach the 200-numbered classrooms, only an ascending, low-pitched, walk-up/ walk-down ramp. The classrooms’ hallway up there was built at a right angle to this ramp, so the hallway forked in the shape of a T. When we got called down to the gym, we made our way down the hall and took a right-angle turn at the top of the ramp. And so… as you’d start to head down the ramp, ahead of you you’d have a view straight down to the lobby with the principal’s office situated off to the left and the cafeteria off to the right. To get to the gymnasium’s entrance, you’d pass straight through that lobby and eventually come to a very small ramp, at the top of which were the gym’s doors. (By the way, the reason I’m giving you this description at this point is not only you can better picture the lay-out now, but more importantly because the lay-out will be an important factor in the exciting, DON’T-MISS-IT! conclusion to this ‘Cold War’ in Part III.)

OK. So… a ‘funny’ thing happened at the end of our little ‘journey.’ Odd– funny, not funny-funny. Lost in my own little air-head thoughts, mostly about how glad I’d be when we’d get this whole rigmarole over and done with, I’d led my class down the ramp and, as the point-man, and was just about to lead us up the…

“OK, that’s it. Stop right there!”

I stopped. And looked up to see who was there. What the hell? I found a uniformed cop standing there in front of me blocking my way. “Who… me?”

“Actually, you can keep going. Just go on right up into the gym.”

“Oh. OK.” I turned to look over my shoulder for my kids. “Let’s go…”

“No. Just you, Mr. Lyford.”

“Excuse me?” I looked around. Amazingly, there were four police officers. At least. That I could see. One of whom was a female. I looked back at my kids. They were being formed into a single line by one of the cops.

“Just you. Now, go on up to the gym, and you can help out.” This just didn’t feel right. Had I missed a memo? Or what?

One of my girls was at the head of the line. The female officer positioned over to the right addressed her. “Let’s go. You’re coming with me.”

“What? Whtta you mean? Where to?”

“Just around the corner. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Well, suppose I don’t want to come with you? What then?”

“Then I doubt you’re going to be very happy with the alternative.”

That was a threat. I was stunned. A cop who had just positioned himself onto the left side of the ramp said pretty much the same thing to the boy who was next in line. Apparently this was a two-officer gauntlet. Male and female. What were they planning to do? A strip search?

“Go ahead now, Mr. Lyford,” I was once again prompted.

Confused, shaking my head, trying to take it all in, I plodded up the ramp as I was told to, pulled open one of the four heavy doors, and stepped inside.

Jesus! There was three-quarters of our student body, sullenly and nearly silent seated up there in the bleachers.

So… nobody but nobody had been returned to their classrooms at all! What the hell was going on?!

I recalled that statement one of my boys back in the classroom had uttered, just after the announcement had been made: “There ain’t been any bomb scare!”

He’d been right! This was something else entirely.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so there will be a Part III that will take you the The Hot War and The Final Retaliation. So… STAY TUNED FOR THE FINAL ROUND….

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DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART ONE

As I pointed out at the beginning of my 44^th blog post, “Just Say No to Streaking,” a teacher’s professional life is comprised of so much more than just the academic subjects she/he teaches. The other fifty per cent of the teacher’s actual classroom existence is spent frittering away on such Mickey Mouse nuts and bolts as the following: lunch duty, hall duty, lobby duty, bus duty, detention duty, prom duty, bullying duty, graduation duty, bomb scare duty, steaking duty, school dance chaperoning, winter carnival chaperoning, study hall monitoring, being a class advisor, being a student club and activity advisor, being a coach of what-have-you, being a vandalism detective, not to mention the breaker-upper of the fights and the smoking in the boys’/girls’ room, and a warrior in the war on drugs in general, etc. And see… I strongly feel that the general population needs to be reminded of this fact from time to time.

So no, I didn’t spend my career only wallowing in adverbial clauses, split infinitives, and Romeo and Juliet. The following three anecdotes, arranged in ascending order from least to most complicated ( i.e., least to the most unbelievable and entertaining), illustrate my experiences with Bomb Scare Duty…

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(First Story) (the least complicated and least entertaining one)

Of the many, the very last time I worked a “bomb squad” detail (please notice the quotation marks, and accept my assurance that I choose the term with a metaphorical tongue in cheek), I was moving left to right, locker by locker, down the third floor hallway of Foxcroft Academy. This was approximately sometime between 1999 and 2001. There had been a one of those ‘bomb in the building’ phone calls to the main office, which was a little odd because it was the day before the very last day of the school year. I mean, what was the point? The seniors had graduated and vacated the premises days before, and the only thing left on the school calendar were the last few of the Final Exams.

So why was I on the so-called bomb squad? Boredom. I had a choice. I could allow myself to get stuck standing outside there in the hot and humid school parking lot chaperoning a good 300 rowdy juniors, sophomores, and freshmen (and oh they were wild and wound up) OR… I could simply raise my hand and shout “Pick me, pick me!” when the police asked for a couple of volunteers. I’d volunteered.

OK, you GOT me. This is not really me. It’s George Santos.

But don’t get me wrong— no hero, me. Everybody (me, the cops, the teachers, and the kids included) knew there was no bomb. So basically it was just a matter of me getting myself in out of the sun and humidity to enjoy some leisurely peace and quiet. And it was quiet up there on the third floor.

I was working the senior locker area. Most of them had been emptied out. A few had still had a few textbook sand some homework papers left in them, stuff some seniors had been too lazy to turn in; and those, we were just tossing out onto the hallway floor to be sorted through later.

But anyway, there I am, looking down at two or three textbooks piled at the bottom of some kid’s locker, and when I pick them up and toss them out onto the floor, I spy something else down there. A bomb? No. There are no bombs. What it is… is actually just a little sandwich baggie stuffed fat with green stuff inside. No surprise to me. (Well, surprised that any kid would leave such an expensive little stash behind.) So I call out, “Got something over here, guys. Not a bomb. Just something… that you might smoke in a bong maybe.”

“Oh yeah…” one of the two officers I’m accompanying says, bending down to retrieve it. On closer inspection, it’s immediately obvious that the Ziploc bag is swollen, as if with some kind of what… gas? The officer unzips it and, pffft! air escapes from it like from a poked balloon. “Jesus!” says the cop, with a wrinkled nose.

“That smell!” exclaims the other.

I smell it too. “What the hell! What kind of pot is that?”

“GAH!” The officer turns and tosses the baggie across the hall, plunk, right into one of the large trash cans on wheels we’ve been using for the paper junk. “Oh, just the very moldy, many-months-old , PB&J sandwich kind,” he says. “Phew!”

So yes, there you have it. My very last “bomb squad” experience turned out to be… a green, moldy, old nothing burger. So it goes. And I warned you not to expect much.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(Second Story) (a ‘You can’t make this stuff up! kind of story)

So my very first bomb scare experience occurred in Belfast, Maine back in the winter of 1969, the craziest year of my entire professional life. I was a first-year English teacher at the high school and as a first year teacher, I was finding that whole Ohmigod-I’m-a-freakin’-TEACHER-now! experience quite terrifying. I already expressed this in an earlier blog episode titled “Poet…? Peacenik…? Pugilist…? Part Three.” But for those of you who missed out by not reading this great story yet, here is a little excerpt:

“I was terrified. All my life I’d been suffering from stage fright and, now, suddenly having to face classes of thirty human beings six times a day (too many of whom looked a lot more adult than I did) just sitting there staring at me? Waiting for me to begin doing whatever it was I was getting (omigod!) professionally paid to do? Human beings all suddenly required to address me as none other than “Mister Lyford”? I mean… hell, I was no “Mister Lyford,” not the last time I looked!

“On top of that, they’d given me classes for which there weren’t enough books! They’d forced me to take the Dramatics Coach job when I’d never even been in a play in my LIFE! They’d dumped most of the worst classes on me (a common dirty trick school districts play on the unsuspecting new hires). And one of my two Speech classes was filled with “students,” not a single one of whom was willing to even stand up and tell me his/her name.”

So anyway, during a faculty meeting shortly after New Year’s Day, 1969, our superintendent (who, by the way, I’d learned on day-one was considered a buffoon by the teachers and department heads alike) brought up the unexpected topic of bomb scares. He shared with us that a number of other area schools were recently having to deal with bomb threats, so it was likely it was only a matter of time before we experienced one as well. Then he proudly let us know that he had hatched just the plan to catch the miscreants whenever it happened to us. I didn’t find out till later that Superintendent King was known for his cockamamie ‘just-the-plan’ plans. You wouldn’t believe it.

EXcellent. I’ve hatched just the plan to catch the miscreants…

The plan was this: “Whenever a bomb threat is phoned in to one of our schools, I’ve instructed all the respective principals go to the intercom microphone and simply say (all calm, cool, and collected, mind you) ‘Cole Alert.’ Now, when you hear ‘Cole Alert,’ you will know that a bomb threat has been received. But the kids? Hah! They won’t have a clue as to what that expression means. How could they? So, while they’re left in the dark— you, with your advantage over them, will be watching your classroom students like a hawk in that two- or three-minutes interim leading up to the actual School Evacuation Order. And in so doing, one of you will be in the position to witness, say, one student possibly winking at one of his buddies, or maybe grinning knowingly or, you know, perhaps elbowing somebody else meaningfully. So you will record their names, and see that I receive them at once! Then later we’ll have the police call them in for questioning, and together they and I will sweat them down into a confession.”

One of my colleagues whispered in my ear, “His favorite show is Hawaii Five-O. He sees himself as a Jack Lord. You know, Detective McGarrett.

A week went by. And then it happened!

Moments before the bell for the first class of the day was about to ring, I was monitoring my early homeroom period. Suddenly the distraught voice of the principal started barking over the intercom, “COLE ALERT! COLE ALERT! COLE ALERT!” with the same urgency of a World War II B-17 tail gunner yelling, “BANDIT AT THREE O’CLOCK!” Think Major Burns. From M*A*S*H.

I immediately (but surreptitiously, of course) began surveying my students, watching for, anticipating the telltale wink, the elbow, or the knowing grin. Ready to pounce. But all thirty-plus kids erupted simultaneously, every one of them asking similar versions of the same question to one another. “What the hell is this? A bomb scare?” “And who the hell is Cole?” But there were just so many of them, and it was all happening so fast, I just couldn’t see how I was supposed to be watching all of them at once! And I never caught a single wink, grin, or an elbow! I was a failure.

And then, of course, they all turned on me, their wise all-knowing ‘educator’ at the front of the room. “Is that what this is, Mr. Lyford? A bomb scare?” And loser me, wanting to be the ultimate professional, I quickly pasted on my best poker face and feigned ignorance. “Well, gosh… I have… no idea what this is all about…” at which point the entire classroom busted out in a volley of laughter at the flagrant silliness of my attempted white lie. And before the laughter had time to totally die down, the intercom crackled to life once again and began issuing the evacuation instructions.

Now… that was only the beginning of what was about to turn into the longest, most drawn-out days.

First of all, it was still early morning, around 8:00, far too early for a school building to suddenly flush its entire student body and faculty, ready or not, right out of the building and into a winter wonderland with its air temperature down around zero degrees. But suddenly there we all were, populating the sidewalk like a colony of National Geographic penguins on an ice floe. And secondly, our “super intelligent” superintendent had apparently planned his crafty Here’s-How-We’ll-Thwart-the-Malicious-Bomb-Scarer-Plot not one stinking millimeter further than just coming up with the cool-sounding, 007-ish code name, “COLE ALERT!” And that meant we were all left out there freezing on the sidewalk with nobody having any idea what to do with us!

A half-hour passed, while we watched the police cars and fire trucks pull up and park in the big school parking lot. Some kids hadn’t had time to grab their coats. I ended up lending my coat to one of them. Meanwhile, my toes were so numb it felt like they had disappeared.

Then down the line came our assistant principal with news of the superintendent’s emergency ad hoc Plan B (actually Plan A, if you think about it). Having phoned around town for some/any place to temporarily house our little army, a deal had been struck with the owner of the local movie theater. Suddenly we had a destination. We could go there. They would have room for all of us. A place to sit and warm up. So. We got our marching orders and off we marched. The theater was about three quarters of a mile away.

When we finally arrived en masse at the theater, it turned out the doors of the theater were still locked! Once again we had to assume the portrayal of a penguin colony, while the assistant principal went across the street to a pastry shop to use their telephone. Yeah. 1969. No cell phones back then.

After the proprietor finally showed up, in we went. And guess what. Now it turned out that the thermostat was still set at 55 degrees! And we were told that it would take a very long while to warm the place up. So we sat, watching our exhaled breath forming little mini-clouds before our faces with every breath we took. But hey, at least 55 degrees was like… plus yardage, metaphorically. Better than 5 degrees above zero anyway.

It was also very dark in that dingy theater. And I’m sure that you can understand that the kids were getting more restless and obstreperous by the minute from utter boredom, and who could blame them? Some were racing up and down the aisles, some singing songs, some just whooping it up, and a couple of the kids managed to get into a fight and had to be forcefully separated. Meanwhile, we teachers had formed ourselves in a line blocking the exits, so kids wouldn’t escape.

Man, we were there for such a long time.

But by the way, it just so happened that Belfast Area High School had earlier arranged for a school assembly that very morning. The assembly was to feature classical music performed by a visiting string quartet— two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. So our stable genius of a superintendent came up with the great idea of having that quartet appear and perform on the frigid movie theater stage to entertain us! Because you know, “Musick hath charms to soothe a savage breast.”

Somebody found and dragged four chairs up onto the stage. And then, voila! The musicians were trotted out onto the stage witho no introduction whatsoever. Or perhaps someone did introduce them but it was just too loud and chaotic there, that I simply missed it. I dunno. But watching the absurdity of the members of that doomed quartet sitting out there all swaddled up in overcoats and scarves and boots, diligently sawing their bows back and forth on the strings, their frozen breaths forming little empty cartoon balloons above their heads, and starting with their dainty sonata and hoping in vain to work their way toward the minuet…? Let’s just say… it didn’t go well. A loud boom-box blasting Bob Dylan or The Stones might’ve worked.

Ironically, the ill-timed concerto only exacerbated the savagery in the beasts’ breasts. Hoots and hollers and catcalls and loud boos! The stamping of feet! Everything was getting out of control fast, though we tried to shush them and weed out the worst of our little villains, but the anonymity in the darkness made thjat difficult!

Our musicians had found themselves playing with all the distractions of the band on the deck of the sinking Titanic.

What stopped it all dead in its tracks was the sudden, militaristic arrival of the superintendent and his henchmen! Yes, it seems that whenever and wherever he arrived, our ‘commandant’ always showed up with between four and six of his trench-coated tough guys (school board members no doubt, but definite mafia wannabes). They took the stage. The quintet-ers were summarily dismissed and immediately scampered off and away with their strings and bows and music stands in tow. Someone turned up the house lights way up while Superintendent King dramatically faced down the rabble with His terrible-swift-sword wrath… “WE’LL HAVE IT QUIET!”

And lo, suddenly it was quiet. And verily He saw the silence. And He saw that it was good!

He took the few steps from center stage to downstage, all the better to confront His adversaries with His odd mixture of disgust and pity. And He stood there with his feet shoulder-width apart during nearly a full minute of dramatic silence, just daring anyone to make a peep… and then, finally, He spaketh.

“This morning… somebody with a very sick and demented mind, phoned the high school principal’s office and informed them that forty sticks of dynamite were planted up in one of our classroom ceilings. Yes, that’s right. Can you imagine that, ladies and gentlemen? Can you imagine how diseased and twisted the pea-sized brain of this… this Neanderthal has to be? To do something as insane as that? No, you can’t. Because it goes beyond imagination, doesn’t it.

And we have reason to believe… and I’m sorry to have to inform you of this… that it was one of you… one of your classmates, perhaps the one sitting right next to you at this very moment, who made that that deranged call. As hard as that is to believe. Yes. I know. You see, a psycho did this. A sadly sick psycho made that call… and as a result, the rest is history. You were his victims. You are the ones that this psychopath sent out into the freezing cold and left you out there for more than an hour! This… mental patient…”

[Now of course I obviously can’t remember the exact words that Commandant King spaketh to us, because this was back in 1969, some 55 years ago. But I assure you this is very much approximately the speech he made, marked by the vitriol and political incorrectness that citizens of this decade would be shocked to have heard. But… it was just this vitriolic speech that led to the even more unbelievable… next thing.]

I swear, as I was standing there at the back of the theater listening to his words… (and you’re going to find this practically impossible to believe because… hey, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been there) I heard, and a bunch of us teachers heard, a ‘noise,’ a low muttering, an ongoing muttering voice that was basically just a bare buzz under the thunder of the superintendent’s diatribe. Now we, the teachers, had no idea where the voice was coming from so, instinctively, like good soldiers, we all spread out, stealthily moving around the seats in order to home in on whatever the source of it was, because by now you could make out some of the words. And the words I was hearing? I‘d begun to find them more than a little disturbing.

But then suddenly, we no longer had to search for the source. Because a few kids in the middle section all at once just jack-in-the-boxed right up out of their seats and began jockeying themselves frantically, both to the left and right, away from a single, still-seated young man they’d been sitting near to. And what this fellow was saying was essentially this, only in lots more words: “And what, he’s calling ME sick? Hah! HE’S the PSYCHO!”

Of course the boy was quickly apprehended by a trio of phys ed. teachers (no, not by the likes of little ol’ me). The police were called to the lobby where, just before he was transferred into their custody, this young man (an obviously disturbed, solid, heavyweight of a Korean boy) managed for the first time ever to zip the lip of our officious, yammering, Superintendent King (of the Five-O) by delivering an iron-fisted gut-punch to his breadbasket, leaving him entirely at a loss for words as well as the ability to breathe temporarily.

The two immediate outcomes of that little altercation were (a) by the next day, our boy the ‘bomb-scarer’ seems to have been quietly… ‘disappeared,’ never to be seen or heard from again (as far as I know anyway), and (b) as a result, many of the faculty felt compelled to gather that night (as was their wont every night anyway) at Jed’s Tavern, to happily raise their mugs of grog in a toast to… (well, nobody really knew the Korean boy or his name, as it turned out, so…) to the young “Unknown Bombadier” who’d made, for their morning’s amusement, the utimate sacrifice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now dear reader, if you found this I-swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles- it’s-all-true remembrance of mine hard to believe (as I did myself while it was all unfolding around me as an innocent and unsuspecting first-year teacher) I can only warn you to fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, for… DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART TWO (coming soon)

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