Police – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME: Oh, Danny Boy

Danny occupied a seat in one of my General English classes for a while, way back in the mid-70s.

A sawed-off freshman, standing at maybe four and a half feet, bright blue eyes, a thatch of blond hair, and a crooked little nose that very likely came from somebody’s knuckle sandwich (possibly his old man’s). A scrapper, like most short boys turn out to be, defying all odds in a series of I’ll-show-you-who’s-the short-one dust-ups. A hair-trigger, instantly-ignitable fuse, turning pit bull whenever confronted by aggressive, all-powerful, male authority figures.

But that’s why he liked me so much. I was decidedly not one of the faculty nazis.

I started out as a blank slate when my first signed contract landed me on my feet in a high school English classroom. A blank slate being coached by the administrative cabal to ‘Go in there and show’em who’s boss. Make’em fear you or they’ll eat you alive. Be a General George S. Patton, and give’em hell. They are not your friends. They are them, and you are you. Keep it that way!

And next thing I knew, I found myself trapped in a classroom with thirty ‘they’ll eat you alive!’ predators of all sizes and shapes, and all of’em staring at me at once! Right away I was feeling like Catch 22’s Major Major Major Major—me, desperately striving to fudge being just that All-Powerful Authority Figure… something I was finding out quickLY I wasn’t any good at. Because…

Turns out… I’m a bleedin’-heart empath.

Early on, I became horrified to realize that somehow I was finding myself beginning to (oh no) like them. Even though (and I’m swearin’ this is true on a stack of Bibles here) I was doing my best trying NOT to!

What could be wrong with me, I wondered, spinelessly letting down my defenses like that?

Before long I was becoming known as one of ‘those teachers,’ the patsy who found it nearly impossible to say no when one of’em would ask me for the bathroom pass during class, something that was harped against over and over during just about every faculty meeting I ever attended. And you know, I’ve gotta say I felt pretty damned sheepish and guilty about that. Like I was letting down not just my colleagues, but The American Way.

(But I mean, hell, if it was me and I had to go, I’d be making a bee-line for the men’s room… just like my fellow faculty would if it were them.

(But, REMEMBER, Mr. Tom… “They are them, and you are you.”)

I could barely look at myself in the men’s’ bathroom mirror. But… come on, what was I supposed to do? I mean, they were all little individuals, these kids, weren’t they. Little human beings (kind of like myself actually, what with all their questions, and fears, and joys, their flaws, their baggage, and their disarming and often hilarious senses of humor)! I mean, they all had such interesting little personalities!

Still, from early on I was feeling like the World War II stalag escapee, disguised in a stolen nazi uniform and hoping to pass for a member of the Third Reich.

So. Go ahead. Say it. I was a “teacher” who was never cut out to be a teacher. I’ve accepted that.

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

So: Danny hated authority figures. And Danny liked me. Even liked my English class.

Well, not the English parts of it so much, necessarily, but the me part. Which was cool. I’d be telling my students stories about my childhood as topics for writing prompts, and now and then read aloud to them parts of their literature reading assignments, to give’em a head start and to tickle his interests. But where Danny was concerned, I would honestly listen to him when he had something he wanted to say (which was often), whereas the majority of the faculty, the nazi contingent? Hell, they weren’t all that interested in him enough to do that. He honestly had interesting things to say though. Plus, he had a wicked sense of humor.

So I came to like him as well. A lot of it was that Danny was the classic underdog and, damnit, I’ve always had a soft spot for underdogs. Still do. Therefore, it was an adventure for me getting to know this angry little hothead over the few months I got to spend with him, getting to begin to know what made him tick. I really felt it a privilege to get to see and know the good-hearted little side of the guy. And I’ve gotta say, when he was in my class his attitude seemed so bright and cheery.

But there was also something about that very thing which saddened me too, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I mean, there were all these red flags hinting at some occasional violence so obviously woven into his past. I mean yeah, he was getting into fist fights at school, but this felt that more than that.

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

But then one day he disappeared, was just flat-out gone. And after five consecutive days of recording his seat empty while taking attendance, the kids informed me, “He’s gone, and he ain’t coming back.” They were hazy about the circumstances however and, me, I was figuring despite what the kids told me, he’d more than likely just been temporarily suspended again for something.

Anyway, I decided to drop by the assistant principal’s office to find out what was what. The kids were right— the administration had indeed given him the ol’ hit-the-road-Jack, that’s-all-she-wrote boot.

Turned out our gorilla of a numb-nuts football coach…

(sorry, I just didn’t like him and, yes, he was that very same simian from one of my previous posts, titled “Behind Closed Doors,” who’d provoked the teacher’s little mess-hall-riot with after blowing a cigarette smoke-ring into our science teacher’s face and saying, with all the humanity of Shane’s Jack Palance, “Hey, I know what. How ‘bout I stub this butt out right in that ugly kike face of yours?!”) (yeah— that guy…)

…decided to teach our little boy some proper manners (irony intended) by pinning Danny up against the gymnasium wall during a phys. ed. class and showing him, up close and personal, his big hairy iron fist.

However… unbeknownst to our self-proclaimed, staff Charles Atlas, the little soul he had chosen to manhandle was The Son of Dr. Bruce Banner— that’s right, a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk, Jr. So yes, Coach was taken a little by surprise finding out he had a rabid little Tasmanian Devil going berserk in all directions down at the other end of his arm! And according to the other kids in the gym class, Danny managed to get in quite a few good ones (BIFF! POW! THOK!), before he eventually got sat on and pinned down.

(Oh, what I would’ve given to have seen the look on Coaches’ face when it was HIS nose that took a punch. Go, Danny!)

But… nonetheless Danny was gone. M.I.A. And that hurt. Because it left me with that always unexpected empty-desk-syndrome that all career teachers have to contend with from time to time, often for circumstances much worse than a mere expulsion. But I missed him.

And what stung the most was knowing that his expulsion was so unnecessary. There are so many different ways to handle a potential disciplinary problem other than brute force, you know? Coach, however, didn’t think that way. No, his motto? Always out-muscle your problem (especially if they’re smaller than you) as a first resort.

Actually, it was pretty obvious that Coach and Danny had something in common: an acute need for anger management training. I suspected both of them suffered from secret feelings of being seen and judged as less than down deep inside.

But, oh well. It was what it was. What could I do about it? Nothing apparently.

A week passed.

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

Then…

STRANGE THING #1 happened.

I was sitting at my desk after school one afternoon when the office secretary buzzed me over the intercom.

“Hey there, Mr. Lyford?”

“Yeah?”

“The principal wants to see you in his office.”

Oh shit! “What…? Right now?”

“You got it.”

“Uhmmm… be right there.” What started going on in my gut right then could have been the perfect inspiration for the Jaws’ theme. I mean, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Had I?

His door was open.

“Close the door,” he said. So I did that and plopped down in the hot seat in front his desk.

“What’s up?” I asked, feeling cautious.

“Any chance you might be looking for a job, Tom?”

What the hell…? That was just me doing my little internal little double-take. But he was smiling a friendly smile.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Looking for work?”

“Not right at this moment I’m not, no.” I put on a matching smile and hoped for the best, asking playfully, “Why? This where I’m about to get my pink slip so that I’d very well better start looking for a job? Or what? I mean…?”

“Oh no no no. It’s just… I’ve got this job for you, if you’re interested.”

Well, I hafta say I never saw that coming. “What’re you talking about? A job? I’ve got two jobs already. Here, and the Phillips 66 part-time. But you know that.”

“I do. But I’ve got an offer to make anyway. You don’t have to take it, of course. But I figure you might. It involves our Danny.”

Double-take #2. “Danny?!”

“Yeah. His mom and a couple of counselors are feeling he got a raw deal. And they want us to do something to try to remedy that, to find a better way for the kid, to whatever extent we can.”

“You wanna know what: he did get a raw deal far as I’m concerned, considering who the other guy was in the confrontation.”

“Water under the bridge.”

“Sure, sure. He wins football games for you. I get that. So we’ll just go with water under the bridge. Yeah.”

“Tom, we’re here to discuss looking forward. Not...”

“I was just sayin’. But… yeah. Sure. OK. Whatever.”

“And point taken, alright? However, moving right along… turns out you seem to be just about the only teacher Danny seems to’ve been able to get along with.”

“Well, yeah. There’s this: I do treat him like he’s a human being, surprise surprise. And on top of that, I’ve never felt the need to try to ‘break’ him, like he was some wild mustang fenced up in a corral.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Plus… he’s an interesting kid. Down deep inside. He really is. And the way I see it anyway, he’s been through a lot. At home. And everywhere else.”

“I hear you.”

“See, in the weekly journals I have the kids writing, he’s honestly revealed a lot. His life hasn’t been any picnic, you know. And because I let him write about whatever he wants, whatever he needs to express, freely… and because I, you know, actually read and discuss his journal entries with him, he’s pretty much happy to be there.

“So… we getting him back, or what?”

“No. He’s not coming back. At least this year anyway. So, here it is: the powers that be have prompted me to ask you to consider being his special tutor. Outside the classroom. Outside the school.”

“What? Really? Huh! Wow, I dunno. I guess I’ll hafta think about that one.”

“We need your answer right away.”

“Well, I mean… how much time is this gonna take? Like, what kind of schedule might we be looking at here?”

“That would totally be up to you.”

“What… totally?”

“Totally. You’d be in charge of it. Your schedule. And here’s the rest of the details… in what I hope you’ll see as an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Alright, I guess. Lay it on me.”

“First of all, you can meet with him wherever you like. Well, any place except here. He can’t be at the school. But… you know, your place. A café, over a cup of coffee. A park bench. Whatever. Totally up to you. His mom’s OK with that.”

“Wow.”

“Secondly, you’re a professional. And your pay would be commensurate with your professional status. I can guarantee you won’t be unhappy with the financial arrangement.”

“Ah. Money. The universal carrot.”

“But here’s the frosting on the cake. When it’s all said and done, what you’d honestly be getting paid for is… and you’ll find this hard to believe, I’m guessing… I did— is to be his friend.”

“Whoa. ‘Paid to be his friend, you say?’ Hold on. Did I just hear you correctly?”

“You did. And I know, right? But that’s the way the board put it to me. Verbatim.”

“Wow. That’s… really something.”

“It is.“

“I mean, I’d feel kinda creepy. You know, money for friendship and everything…”

“Well see, the board really just wants this whole rat’s nest out of their hair. Get this whole thing behind them.”

“Well, that figures.”

“You would, however, be responsible for covering four generic subjects with him. History. English. Math. And Science. And we would ask, of course, that you keep tabs on his progress. You’d, you know, do your record-keeping. Work out some way, your own way, of calculating and recording a grade for each of the four… but in the end, it’ll be strictly on a pass/fail basis only.”

“Wow. Curiouser and curiouser. I’d say somebody’s really greasing the skids here. I’m feeling all like…what’s his name, Mister Phelps of Mission Impossible? Only that guy was never baited with such positive inducements to ‘accept his missions,”

“On the contrary, considering the young man we’re discussing here, I can hand you a baker’s dozen of faculty names who would beg to differ with you on that, and wouldn’t want to touch this deal with a ten-foot pole.”

“Yeah. I get that, I do. But if you, or they, could ever have seen him in my class on most days, you’d witness that little… often funny human being that I’ve come to know.”

“OK. So, can we get right down to it then? Whatta you think? You in? Or are you out?”

“Well, I think the damn kid needs a break. That’s for sure. He’s been through so much, and always getting the sharp end of the stick. And I mean, honestly? I’ve been pissed off, if you want to know the truth, about the whole way he was just tossed aside. Well, that’s the way it seems to me anyway. But more than that, this whole fiasco has left me feeling… I gotta say, sad.”

“So… you in?”

“So… this does sound like kind of an adventure. Sounds like something I ought to do.”

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

“Well…I could be wrong.”

“Yeah?”

“But… I guess that’s a ‘yes,’ apparently.”

And so it was.

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

Despite the uncomfortable, guilty weirdness of being paid for ‘being somebody’s friend’ (I mean, never in a million years could I have been led to believe that such an arrangement might even be an allowable possibility under any circumstances), that change in my job description immediately swept away that dark heaviness of my ‘Danny’s empty desk syndrome.’ More than that, it brought the proverbial ‘ray of sunshine’ into my routine life.

I mean, try to imagine this. On a Monday after school, say, you pick the kid up and swing over to Freddy’s Restaurant… and there, along with the coffee and apple pie on the table, you’ve got your pair of history books cracked open. And you’re both into it, the assignment I mean. Or on a Saturday morning, over at the Chicken Coop perhaps, the coffee and breakfast (which is on you, of course since, with what you’re unnecessarily being paid for friendship, you can afford it) are providing the backdrop for you and him to discuss his latest journal pages.

And always, on the opposite side of booth you have a student who is both (A) delighted to be rid of the school he just was never fitting in with, (B) honestly happy to see, and be, with you, and (C) on top of that, has honestly read or written his assignment and is ready to talk about it.

And then who knows, maybe even on a Sunday the two of you might walk the sidewalks a mile or two of all over town, talking about Life and where it’s taking you… him telling you stories about his life and you telling him stories about yours.

Considering that all during my career, to that point, I’d been off and on somewhat successfully juggling classes of between twenty and thirty kids at once, this one-on-one thing was such a luxury.

He seemed to be loving my English assignments by the way (mostly because he liked me); really liking the history stuff (we were reading Howard Fast’s gripping historical novel, April Morning, about the battles of Concord and Lexington); wasn’t caring much for general science; and really wasn’t feeling any love whatsoever for math (a kid after my own heart, there). So, science and math were, yeah, more of a challenge for us.

But on the whole, this arrangement was great for him, I was sure of that, and good for me as well. Looking back on the set-up we had, the expression ‘happy days’ springs to mind.

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

After about three weeks or so of the arrangement running like a well-oiled machine, the weather had started turning colder. And the only sweatshirt Danny had was still hanging in his locker back at school, along with a few other things he wanted to retrieve. So, on a Friday, about an hour or so after the final bell of the day had released all or most of the kids back into the world, he and I pulled up in the school parking lot. We got out of the car and slipped into the building through a side door.

He worked the combination on his locked locker, popped the door open, and gathered up his stuff. My classroom was only a few doors down, and so we also dropped in there for me to grab some things as well.

That done, and with me fishing my classroom key back out of my pocket, we had just started to step back out into the hallway when some deep, thunderous voice bellowed, “God damn it! Just what the hell you think you’re doing in here!”

And there he was! The neanderthal that had really started this whole fiasco in the first place! Marching double-time and charging straight for us!

“Get you sorry ass outta here before I…”

“Hey!” I yelled, stepping in front of Danny, who was half in and half out of my classroom. “Stop right there, Coach! He’s with me!”

“Well he’s gonna be with ME in a second! So get outta my way!”

“No! I said stop! He’s legit! And we’re just leaving anyway!”

“Damn straight you’re leavin!”

Coach and I, scrawny little English teacher me, were now standing nose-to-nose in a near Mexican stand-off!

“He’s not supposed to be here anyway, damnit! He’s expelled!”

“Think I don’t know that!? Look! We’re just getting some things from his locker! He’s not bothering you!”

“Oh, he’s bothering me! You just better believe he’s bothering me!”

My mouth’s open, ready to yell a response, but a bellow from behind me cuts me off!

“You want me to LEAVE, you fat fucker?! OK then! I’m leavin’!”

And before either of us can manage to say anything to that… B A N G! ..what sounds like an echoing gunshot jumps me, and I’m pretty sure jumps the fat fucker in front of me as well, half out of our shoes! Then I’m suddenly aware that Danny’s sprinting for the door we came in through, and that the loud bang that jarred my teeth was actually my classroom door having been whipped shut at Mach 5!

“DANNY!” I yell.

“Let’im go, the little asshole. What the hell’re are you even doing with him anyway?”

Apparently, and unfortunately, Coach hadn’t gotten the memo about Danny’s and my arrangement. Why, I’ll never know.

“ME? How about what the hell’re YOU doing here at all, masquerading as a teacher?! DANNY!” I yelled, taking after him.

But he’d already zipped out of sight through the exit! And by the time I stumbled outside, he’d disappeared! He was nowhere to be seen!

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

Turned out I hadn’t fully grasped just how disappeared he’d actually become.

Turned out he’d run away from home.

Turned out this wasn’t the first time he’d run away from home either…

I was devastated.

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

A couple months crawled by.

And so, out of sight, out of mind, the loss of M.I.A. Danny was gradually fading with acceptance.

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

OK. One evening, right after dinner, I was sitting in my stuffed chair, reading some book or other, when I heard the phone ringing. I heard my wife picking up the phone in the next room and saying “Hello?” Then I could hear her murmuring something quietly.

Next thing I knew, she was standing next to my chair and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got a phone call,” she said tentatively, looking perplexed.

“Who is it?”

“The County Sheriff.”

“The who?! The… County sheriff?! Jeez... what the hell?”

I got up, walked out to the kitchen, and took the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi. So… is this Mr. Lyford? Mr. Thomas Lyford?”

“It is. Why?”

“Tell me. Are you familiar with a Danny Brown, Mr. Lyford…?

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

End of Part I. Stay tuned for Part II.

I love comments. If you wish, feel free to leave one in the field below and click on “POST COMMENT. “I usually respond…

THE AMERICA THAT MADE AMERICA FAMOUS

“We were the kids that made America famous, the kind of kids that long since drove our parents to despair.

We were lazy long hairs dropping out,lost confused, and copping out, convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care…

We all lived the life that made America famous. Our cops would make a point to shadow us around our town…”

— from Harry Chapin’s “What Made America Famous”

If you taught high school English in public schools for at least as long as I did and (for the most part) enjoyed it, you’ve likely found your mind traveling back from time to time to a parade of remembered faces you once ended up reacting with every weekday (for nine months at a pop). And then… well, just imagine the range of expressions that must have drifted across your face at one time or another. I mean, English being a required subject and all meant that every single kid in the school had to populate those English department classrooms, from the infamous Welcome Back Kotter “sweat hogs” to la crème de la crème. So yeah, that’s a lot of faces.

But if by chance you didn’t (for the most part) enjoy it, if you perhaps felt compelled to erect some ironclad emotional barrier between yourself and, say, those really challenging Kotter kids you felt you had nothing in common with, the ones for whom a college-they-could-never-afford-anyway loomed as the last possible thing on earth they could expect in their seemingly, already-cement-hardened futures, then I believe you may really have missed out on something. Something big perhaps.

Sure, it’s a common thing: teachers vying and hoping for the “best classes.” And I admit it, that’s the way I started out. I mean, being handed the list of the English classes you’re being assigned to teach each year is like Draft Day in the NFL. Of course you want the winners. Because they’ll be the ones most like you, won’t they. The ones you’ll feel the most comfortable with, the ones you’ll better understand and can more easily identify with and who, in turn, will most likely understand and more easily identify with you. The ones more likely to put up with your English Grammar and Composition, your Shakespeare, and your Poetry.

But… what the hell are you ever supposed to do with all those hands-on kids? Those shop-boys-with-the-grease-under-their-fingernail ‘English classes (well, besides wheedling them into grease-and-oil-changing your car over in the shop for cheap)? And those desperate and unhappy girls for whom the only seeming path out of the continuing hell of their blue-collar parents’ captivity is to get themselves pregnant and married as fast as they can? Or with all those future blue-collar hamburger-flippers and lifetime-convenience-store-clerk boys and girls, those future fathers and child-bearing mothers who will continue re-populating the town by making even more hamburger-flippers and lifetime-convenience-store-clerk boys and girls?

I’m talkin’ all the probable poetry-and-classic-literature-haters here. What do you have that they’ll ever need or find useful? But especially, whatever the hell do you have to offer to that one particular, rogue, all-boy class of junior members of the local biker gang, the Exiles, that I had to deal with?

You see what I mean? You feeling me?

Well, turns out the answer to that is… only yourself. You as the real person you are. That’s what you have to offer. Because that’s all you really have to work with, isn’t it. I mean it. And that begins by first having to sort of surrender to them right at the beginning. Surrendering and just embracing the fact that… well, of course they’re poetry-and-classic-literature-haters. Why wouldn’t they be? You’d be too, if you were in their shoes. And you and them? You’re stuck with each other.

Remember this? “In order to begin working out a solution to any problem, first you have to clearly identify and state exactly what the problem is.”

My advice to would-be public high school English teachers? Rather than beginning by going all-out NAZI on these more-experienced-than-you little ‘soldiers’ in the cold war against teachers (and oh I pity you if that’s gonna be your style) (which wouldn’t work anyway unless, that is, they were in the Army Basic Training and you just happened to be their Drill Instructor), you’re gonna be much better off beginning by actually listening to their bitching about the school. And about English classes in general.

And let that be your starting point, your springboard. Surprise’em by letting’em know you enjoy hearing about how much they despise school and your subject. That’ll throw’em off-guard. And besides, their honest, unvarnished opinions on the subject really can be… entertaining sometimes. Especially if you encourage them to be really honest at it. And you know what?

You’ll likely end up discovering that you honestly do harbor some common ground with them, despite what you’d perhaps prefer to think. Because all human beings do have common denominators. So yeah, in the long run I found it best to get to get right to work, digging down, and finding out just what those are. Tell them stories (talkin’ honest stories here) about your life and the bitching you did in school about your teachers and your crappy classes. Get’em to tell you some of their stories, assuring them that what they have to tell you… well, you know … “whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” (with the very big exception always being, of course, that by law, if it turns out that anything that’s divulged happens to include information indicative of some possible harm to themselves or others, etc. that has to be reported— yeah, you have to make that perfectly clearly to them right up front). But…really listen. Their stories are bound to be crazy-interesting. Probably a lot more interesting than yours. At least, that was my experience.

And you know what then? You’ll be on your way to respecting their points of view. And once you begin showing them your respect, you’ll already have begun garnering some of theirs. And then voila: I promise you that walking in through that damn classroom door each and every morning won’t feel nearly as much like such a real chore any more. Because you just might’ve started to (drum roll, please!) like them. It’s amazing.

And something else: I accidentally discovered that my particular kids (talkin’ my junior Exiles who, by the way, are featured exclusively back in one of my earlier posts titled “Bummer”– you should go back and read it) had a lot to teach me with their eventual honesty. Plus, I found those kids all pretty damned humorous and entertaining as well, if you want to know the truth.

Now yeah, yeah, yeah— sure, I know I’m coming across like some Yoda here, some wise old owl blowing his own horn and purporting to have all the answers. Truth is… it took me some years and many failures to wind up with the amount of the answers I finally did learn. I was pretty mistake-prone in all of the above in my first years. But way back, some very wise and passionate home economics teacher/colleague taught me this wise, old adage that really helped to set me on the path to sanity as a public school teacher: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Yeah. Sounds corny. But think about it.

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

BRAT PACKS

Cafeteria Duty with its Breakfast Club diversity

was always so much more vibrant than the

funereal dining doldrums of the faculty lounge,

what with the geek squad, the cheering squad,

the Romeos and Juliets, the Bettys and Veronicas,

the Dungeons and Dragons die-hards, a Ferris Bueller

or two thrown in, and possibly even a

future Stephen King seated at those tables

All those God’s-little-gifts-to-teachers whose

youthful honesty and sit-down-stand-up comedy

kept me in stitches and my aging soul decades

younger over the long career years

me, with half my life already slipped behind,

but them still with the Big Promise of Everything,

the whole damn shootin’ match, still looming

like some mirage in the desert up ahead–

yes, all of us unique salt-of-the-earth

stereotypes… breaking bread together

around the salt and pepper shakers,

spicing up each other’s lives…

from TO DIVERSITY AND DEMOCRACY: A TOAST!

Here’s to those too few and far-between bastions of diversity we’ve occasionally stumbled

upon over time… those vibrant, spice-of-life oases of heterogeneity in our deserts of

conformity: our talk-like-us flocks, our act-like-us herds, our pre-fab, chameleon-career lives—

And here’s to the public schools
of years gone by where slide-ruled, pocket-protectored

eggheads communed in cafeterias across the tables from Streetcar-Named-Desire Stellas

in the Archie-and-Jughead-hijinks melting pot, all waiting together in the lunch line of life

for the big segregation crapshoot of becoming somebody… some day…

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

But for now, back again to these particular song lyrics (which you’ll be invited to listen to shortly) from my featured singer/songwriter’s song, “What Made America Famous”:

“We were the kids that made America famous, the kind of kids that long since drove our parents to despair.

We were lazy long hairs dropping out,lost confused, and copping out,
convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care…

We all lived the life that made America famous. Our cops would make a point to shadow us around our town…”

Listening to these lines has always sent a crooked, sardonic smile crawling across my face. Because they’ve always reminded me of some of the more challenging little Kotters I had at Mexico (ME) High School throughout the 70’s. Me, watching from a distance the little on-going cold war between the boys in blue and a number of my rebel-without-a-cause ‘students.’ Yeah. No love lost there.

See, weekends and after school my boys insisted on hanging out on downtown street corners, the most popular being the one right out in front of a pastry shop. Which of course was where the cops habitually roosted. And which consequently was where said cops were kept their busiest, busting up and dispersing just such “unlicensed assemblies,” mostly on the grounds that, well, it just didn’t look good for the town. And OK, truth be told those boys did make some shoppers nervous, of course.

Actually I have to admit they made my wife a little nervous. You know, we’d be strolling down the sidewalk on a sunny afternoon and up ahead we’d spy between eight and a dozen toughs leaning up against a store front like something straight out of Marlon Brando’s The Wild One (well, with the exception of that one biker-dude who usually had his cute, 12-inch-tall, curly-tailed pug-on-a-leash (rather than the pit bull guard dog you might expect to see accompanying a badass like him ).

“UH-oh,” she’d whisper in my ear, “think maybe we oughtta turn back around? Or cross the road?”

“Nah,” I’d tell her, “you’re with me, so you’re safe. Me? I’m protected by The Mark of the Phantom. They won’t bother us.”

Right after which a couple of the bigger ones (looking pretty ominous, sporting their shades and tattoos) might just playfully block our way for a moment and challenge, “Now just where do you two think you’re going…?”

To which my quick and witty comeback would always be something like, “Oh, I dunno. Straight through you if you decide not to move and instead wanna end up pickin’ broken glass outta eyes for the next two hours.”

And then of course there’d be the light-hearted little shadow-boxing horseplay between me and them (you know, that dumbass male bonding thing) but we’d always end up sailing right through them unscathed. And why? Because they’d learned to like me by then. And why was that? Because they’d realized that for some unfathomable… whatever-reason, they could tell I’d honestly taken a shine to them. Which in their world… for a teacher… was unheard of.

But anyway, after the near-daily shepherding-of-the-kids-off-the-sidewalks routine, the cops would mosey themselves on into the pastry shop, ostensibly turning a deaf ear to the retreating catcalls behind them referencing the ‘fat-ass’ physiques of a couple of those doughnut-devouring stereotypes.

However, that’s just what the kids would do overtly.

Covertly, the retaliation strategies they’d come up with could’ve earned them a place among the French Resistance Forces during World War II. The worst one being (in my opinion) to move their gathering on down the street to where the patrol cars were parked in order to (wait for it) set that poor, shivering, little pug right onto the hood of one of them— specifically the one with the drug-sniffing German shepherd left waiting inside.

Because oh, that canine locked in there didn’t like that little pipsqueak “hood ornament” rattling its toenails on the patrol car paint job one bit! And according to them (I never witnessed it myself, of course) that dog would be going bat-shit wild in there, leaping amok around the interior, and trying to bust out of the car to get at the lot of them, his berserk talons all the while just a-tearing the old stuffing right out of the upholstery!

Oh I’m sure they were exaggerating in their glory… but they sure loved telling me all about it.

However the most devious (or should I say most deviant) strategy they’d come up with was the ‘secret seeding’ of the police station flower garden with marijuana seedlings at night. The custodian there, who also served as the part-time gardener, ended up unwittingly watering and caring for them for quite some time. Right up until the moment one of Mexico’s finest eventually spotted the embarrassing extracurricular green and glorious growth among the camouflage.

Now that one made the Police Log in the local paper. And I’ve gotta say, they were oh so proud of themselves!

Vive la resistance!

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

Now of course this Harry Chapin song that I’m honestly dying to share with you in a moment, “What Made America Famous,” isn’t about my little biker friends, per se. Rather it’s about America’s signature civil conflict between the “hard hats” and the “long hairs” that indelibly marked the 1960’s and ‘70’s. Think of the musical Hair. Think Easy Rider. But no, more than that, this ballad is all about about human decency. Pure and simple.

But first, allow me to share this particular little memory I’ve been holding onto over the decades:

So… I’m sitting in a warm, old-fashion barber shop on a frigid night in January, 1965. Whenever another customer sidles in through the door, an icy gust sparkled with blowing snowflakes shoulders its way in right behind him. There are five or six of us waiting to have our ‘ears lowered.’ I’m the youngest here, a college kid matriculated at the local state teachers college, the only one there not balding or with a head of white hair. It’s busy, but there are two barbers buzzing and clipping away, so my wait won’t be long.

So I’m just sitting back and contenting myself with listening to the old gents jawing away. Cackling about that ‘new streaker craze.’ Ruminating over the shipping off of American troops to Viet Nam. Weighing in on Muhammed Ali’s defeat over Sonny Liston, and who the hell does he think he is anyway, calling himself Muhammed like that, for Christ’s sake? This is much livelier than sitting me just sitting alone in my dorm room, poring over my World History text.

Suddenly whoosh! The door blows open. And standing half-in and half-out is a smiling young man with almost shoulder-length, snowflake-flecked hair. And he’s wearing a faded old Army field jacket.

“What’re the chances of getting a haircut tonight?”

I catch both barbers glaring at him. “Zero!” the older says. “Now get the hell outta here and close that fucking door!”

I’m shocked. But the young man acknowledges that he’s letting the weather in so, still all smiles, he steps inside and closes the door behind him. “No, seriously.”

“What? I don’t look serious? You didn’t hear me say ‘No?‘”

“But c’mon, why not?”

“Jesus, look around. Can’t you see the crowd we got in here tonight?”

“Well, if that’s it, I don’t mind waiting…”

“Beat it, kid!”

“Hey, come on. I gotta get a haircut. How much will it cost? I’ll be glad to even pay extra. Just tell me how much.”

The old guy studies him. “Fifty bucks.”

“What? Fifty…”

“And that’s only if. If… you take a bath, and shampoo the lice outta your hair first.”

“Lice?” No longer smiling now.

“See, we don’t do hippies in here, pal. Now beat it!”

The kid looked around the shop. At the grinning old men. At uncomfortable me. And then back at the barber. The kid’s got a pretty good glare going himself now. “Jesus Christ. I just wanted to get a fucking… Hippie!? Alright then! Fuck YOU!”

He turns on his heel, yanks the door open, and storms back out into the snow, purposely leaving the door open. Open wide.

I’m feeling bad for the kid. But I realize too that where the old fellas are coming from is their definition of patriotism. It leaves me feeling uneasy. Kinda confused. I mean, my dad flew missions in a B-29 during World War II and, man, I’m super-proud of him. And you know… I’m only a sophomore, but I’ve been entertaining some thoughts about perhaps enlisting myself, in the Air Force after college.

But this whole thing just leaves me feeling… not knowing what to think.

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

So anyway, the song and lyrics I’ve got waiting for you below I feel skillfully and emotionally capture the conflict I came to know back then as the long hairs vs. the hard hats. And there’s a recurring single line in the lyrics that pretty much kinda sums up my little barbershop example in a nutshell:

“There’s something burning somewhere.”

Please. Take a listen and follow along. I believe you will find it a powerful experience. I know I always do…

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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…

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

(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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SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOVER-FOXCROFT: REC CENTER, 1961

The Rec Center over at Central Hall runs on Friday and Saturday nights. On Fridays it’s open exclusively to the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders; Saturdays, it belongs to the big dogs of Foxcroft Academy. Guests are allowed in only if one of our students has personally invited them, and secondly if the invitation has first been cleared with a faculty advisor of the Rec Center Committee (of which I am now a member— I’m the freshman class of ’64 rep) and a permission pass signed by our principal, is presented at the door upon entry. Yeah. We run a tight ship.

Now, I’ve never ever been a committee-kind-of-guy, but this Rec Center is one of the most important things in my life. I’d be so damn lost if we didn’t have Rec Center to look forward to on the weekends. But being on the Committee does mean that I have to man the check-in table in the foyer for a half hour one evening every other week. Because if someone without the official and required ‘invited-guest’ pass manages to slip on in past, me without me catching it (and immediately alerting the faculty advisor or chaperons on duty), I’d probably get kicked off the committee. And I don’t want that.

So tonight, here I am, happily walking the frigid little fifth of a mile in the snow storm from my house to Central Hall. And when I push my way in through the front doors, I check in with whoever is seated at the greeting table and then begin to clomp up the old wooden staircase toward the second floor, drawn forward by the tantalizing thrum of the muffled jukebox bass.

Forty per cent of the reason I love coming here every week is the music, pure and simple. The other sixty can probably be summed up by the title of that 1940’s book (that I’ve never read) titled The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Because that’s me. Lonely heart. Lonely hunter. But a hunter who’s actually pretty pathetic at the hunting, if you wanna know the truth.

At the top of the landing, I stop to stare in at the dance floor, which I can’t really even see yet as it’s cloaked in total darkness. (Ah. It’s a slow one. Jim Reeves. “He’ll Have to Go.”) I’m not too crazy about bumping into anybody in the dark, so I’ll just stand here listening until my eyes have started adjusting to the change in lighting from the brightness downstairs.

Though love is blind, make up your mind

I’ve got to know

Should I hang up, or will you tell him

He’ll have to go?

When I can partially make out some of the shadowy, slowly-swaying couples leaning into one another in hugging embraces (oh yeah, that must be nice), I venture in. Stepping around and in between them, I hang a right and make for the coatroom door which, when I push it open, lets the lone, 60-watt, bare light-bulb-hanging-from-the-ceiling brightness flash-blind the dancers in the dark nearest the door, as well as myself all over again. The music muffles when I close the door.

This room’s the size of a really small office. And, as usual, there’re mountains of jackets and coats piled up here, there, and everywhere, right on the floor even. I unzip my parka, wiggle out of it, and bury it under a pile over in the far corner so I’ll know where to dig r it when it’s time to go. Then, it’s back out through the door. And the new song starting up is “The Bristol Stomp” by The Dovells.

The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol

When the do the Bristol Stomp!

Really somethin’ when they join in jumpin’

When they do the Bristol Stomp!

I drop myself down in one of the chairs over on the left side, the boys’ side, of the hall, and wait for my night vision to catch back up with me again. The dance floor is actually a basketball court with a hoop at either end, one fixed just above the coatroom door and the other, down at the far end, hanging just in front of the stage. The seats are lined up on either side, left and right. And it’s kinda funny, the left side by some unwritten law being the boys’ side. The girls all park across from us on the other side of the hall.

I watch the couples gyrating to the peppy rhythm. “Bristol Stomp” is pretty lively and yeah, some of’em are really going at it. Me though, I’m pretty much a watcher, basically. Not that I wanna be. I don’t like to think about it too much, but each time the music starts up and the couples rise to meet each other out on the floor, our two segregated rows become, by default, the wallflower rows, I guess.

Yeah, we’re the wallflowers, the shy ones. The ones who are not part of a couple. Not really by choice exactly.

Oh sure, I mean physically…all we’d have to do is get ourselves up on our own two legs and just… walk over there. And just ask somebody, if you have the guts. But the thing of it is, some of us have learned that it’s a whole lot longer walk, plodding way back across the floor when somebody just looks right at you and says, “No.” Especially when a fool bunch of her girlfriends all bust a gut giggling like crazy just as you’re turning around and feeling stupid.

And…isn’t it dumb, and totally unfair how it always has to be the guy that asks. The girls can’t really get shot down, can they. Not when they never have tobe the ones asking. Well, unless it was a Sadie Hawkins dance, which we never even have. And then, too, oh yeah, it’s perfectly all right for the girls to just step right out onto the dance floor in two’s or three’s or four’s and start dancing up a storm together to rock’n’roll songs. But you’d never catch a bunch of guys doing that. It’d be pretty much frowned upon, you dig?

So… yeah, at least they have something they can do instead of just sitting over there like a bunch of morons. Like we do.

Anyhow, most of them left sitting over there in their own little Lonely Hunter Hearts row aren’t ones I’d even want to ask to dance with me. Why? Because stupidly I’m a movie-romantic. See, I go to the movies every week on my allowance. Practically no matter what is playing. So I see all kinds: westerns, comedies, gangster-flicks, horror, sci-fi and, yeah, the love stories. I would never admit this to my buddies, but the love stories? For some reason, they really get to me. Basically, because I can’t help identifying so much with the male leads on the screen in all of those boy-meets girl plots. And then I just can’t help fantasizing all the time that some day, some girl, some Sandra Dee or Natalie Wood, is actually gonna take an interest in me. And then… you know, we’ll get together. Dating. Somehow.

Problem is… it’s just never that day.

Oh God, you wanna know something embarrasing? My favorite show on TV (well, next to The Twilight Zone that is) is something titled The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. It’s a silly sit-com starring Dwayne Hickman as Dobie and Bob Denver as Dobie’s comical beatnik sidekick, Maynard G. Krebbs.

The weekly plot is almost always a variation on the same theme: Dobie has his heart set on Thalia Menninger, played by the gorgeous Tuesday Weld (one of the biggest reasons it’s a favorite show of mine) but she’s totally out of his league, see? Sound familiar? Yeah. The Heart of the Lonely Hunter? Story of my life.

P.S. you can add Tuesday Weld to my Sandra Dee and Natalie Wood list.

OK. Enough watching. I’ll come back upstairs here real soon, but as always, first I’ll just zip back down stairs to scout out which, if any, of my Maynard-G.-Krebbs pals have shown up.

The Rec Center is an entirely different planet downstairs. It’s well-lighted, and looks sort of like a little teen-age gambling casino. The card games always consist of poker, cribbage, and black jack. You can also sign out a chess or checkers set, and so usually there’s always one of those brainy games ongoing too, surrounded by its usual small handful of kibitzers looking on. Me, I mostly can be found playing cribbage or chess. But then too there’s the noisiest thing going down here: the ping-pong table. Ping pong is fun.

So sure, I enjoy it down here and all, but I have to say it: my lonely-hunter heart remains up there in the romantic darkness of the second floor, with all Dover-Foxcroft’s Dees, Woods, and Welds practically living out there on the dance floor.

Part of my problem is that three-quarters of the kids who show up here on Saturday nights are the upper classmen. Well, mostly sophomores and some juniors. The popular seniors (and some juniors) what with having their driver’s licenses and their own set of wheel, have obviously discovered better things to do. Like ‘parking.’ Parking out on lover’s lane. Or parking in the public beach parking lot.

OK, ten minutes have gone by down here. I start to take a deep breath, planning to head back up there with my new New Year’s resolution to honestly ask some girl to dance, when the head advisor appears and pulls me aside. “Glad you’re here tonight, Tommy. Eddie hasn’t shown up. So, I’m afraid I’ve gotta ask you to pull a double shift at the check-in table.”

“What? A whole hour?”

“Yeah. Afraid so. 8:30 to 9:30.”

“But, jeez. That’s a lot.” Man, why does this always happen to me? I mean, I just knew, damnit, that between 8:30 and 9:30? With my luck, that’d be the exact same time that the girl of my dreams, whoever she might be, will show up, alone without a date, and would be looking over the dance floor… someone, anyone…”

“Yeah. But… what can I say? It is what it is. So, can you do this for me?”

“Well… sure. I guess.” Me thinking, Oh sure! But… don’t you see? I was planning to make my move!

“Thanks, Tommy. You’re a good man.”

And then he’s gone. With me glaring at his back thinking, Well why don’t YOU do it then! I look at my watch. Oh well, I’ve still got forty minutes or so left before having to man the table. And plus, after that, I’ll still have 9:30 to 10:00 at least. Anyway, I head for the stairs.

As I start jogging up, I’m hit by a very eerie silence up there. Which is odd. Because even if it’s them just deciding what next song to play, where’s the usual loud buzz of conversation? So I’m feeling that old movie line: It’s quiet. TOO quiet. And then too, jeez, what the hey? The lights are all on. Somebody’s turned the lights on! Is the Center what, closing early? Man, I hope not.

I sort of blunder in. Whoa! All the seats are empty! And what else!? I see everybody’s crowded around in a big semi-circle, facing the stage with their backs to me. But… there’s no one on the stage. I can see that! So… what’re they all looking at? Curious, I squeeze myself into the crush and worm my way in to the front. OK. So there’s some guy, some man, standing at the center of the semi-circle. And he’s got a guitar, and he’s talking. But I can’t hear him that well yet. So I have no idea what he’s talking about. But uh… he looks… and sounds… very familiar! But who in the…?

And then it hits me!

Ohmigod! That’s my French teacher there! Mr. Bennett! Reason I didn’t recognize him at first is I’ve never seen him before without a sports jacket and tie. And then again, too, I’ve always only ever seen him in the classroom, never anywhere else, so… well, he’s… out of context here. Especially holding a guitar. And look at him! He’s wearing a very cool ‘dickie,’ like a turtle neck, under his shirt… and he looks… I don’t know, just so surprisingly casual. And cool. And so what’s he doing here then? I mean, he’s not an advisor, or anything.

The Meddibempsters of Bowdoin College, 1960s. Mr. Clay Bennett, 4th row (right). Strangely, James Howard, front row (alone), was also my high school English teacher at the same time…

Mr. Bennett is a super-great teacher. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with French this year. English will always be my favorite class, but French is a close second. And it’s all on him. When he speaks French, he sounds so authentic. And he makes it fun when we practice those… nasal sounds. Like the on at the end of garçon: -ongh… gar ’çongh!You almost have to wrinkle your nose to say it right. Fun, like I said.

And he regales us some with a few of the memories of his sojourn in Paris. And his recollections leave all of our heads dancing with sugarplums of, say, a bicycle parked on the grassy banks of the Seine, and a romantic afternoon consisting of a baguette, fromage Français, a bottle of wine, and… a friend. Heady stuff. And like I said, I love the class, even though oddly I’m barely passing it, thanks to all the strenuous French literature translation assignments, and the verb tenses. But all in all, I am in awe of this teacher, and I really can’t say that about hardly any of the teachers on the faculty.

And now (surprise) here he is suddenly playing the guitar in his hands, his soft beautiful chords floating around us, and now his voice beginning to sing… surprisingly… “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” And no, not like The Tokens sing it. The way he sings it, because he’s making it his own. And it is really working. My God, I love it. His voice is gorgeous.

I remember now hearing that he was a member of Bowdoin College’s highly regarded acapella chorus, The Meddibempsters, and his vocal training is so obvious. I mean, wow. He’s good. You can feel that everybody in this crowd, like me, is totally knocked out by his performance, and we all want an encore at the end of the song but, no, it looks like that one is all we’re gonna get. However, this little one-song concert is something I’ll long remember, I’m sure. And I’ve just made me a conscious decision: I’m gonna go back and spend a lot more time practicing on my guitar.

And man, I’m just thanking my lucky stars this thing didn’t go down when I’d be stuck downstairs, sitting at the check-in table. So happy I lucked out. But speaking of my check-in duty, it’s pretty close to that time. And since nobody seems to be in any hurry to start the Top Forty music back up again (everybody, content to just be standing around in a daze marveling that one of theirs teachers could be so talented), I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that I’m not gonna get to ask somebody for a dance, at least for right now. But there’ll still be that half hour left between 9:30 and 10:00 though. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky then.

Yeah. Right.

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

So here I am, sitting alone at the table, loose-leaf notebook open in front of me in which I have to log everyone’s comings and goings. And it hasn’t exactly been busy. One set of parents popping in to pick up their daughter. That’s pretty much it, because it’s late. I nod at the guys continuously go back and forth, going up and coming down the stairs. And try rather meekly to engage the giggly girls who are doing the same in clever conversation as they flit by. The restrooms are down at the far end of the hall; that explains the majority of the traffic. Other than that, I’m spending my time contemplating what I’ll probably do after the place closes down. Play basketball upstairs with my brother and his buddies? Join a couple of my own pals and sneak into the movie theater to see who’s there? Oh well. I’ll figure it out.

(yawn) This job is so boring.

Until it isn’t.

The front doorsuddenly gets yanked open, letting in a rogue blast of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles four young men, not boys! Their faces rosy. And just bursting with energy. Talking loudly and animatedly about… I dunno, something. Fortunately the door manages to slam itself shut. These guys look like they’re freezing, like they’ve been walking outdoors rather than riding in a vehicle. And they’re too busy yakking to have noticed little me yet.

Even though they’re in their civvies, they’re all sporting their tell-tale Air Force parkas. So. They’re flyboys. Flyboys from Charleston Air Force Base, eight miles southeast from here, up on Charleston Hill. The flyboys? They aren’t too popular with the homeboys around here, as you might imagine. Not enough girls to go around… is the word on the street. But that doesn’t have much to do with me.

So far, they’re so wrapped up in babbling to each other, I don’t even exist. Whatever the topic of their animated excitement, it seems to have something to do with something outside. I decide to introduce myself. “Hi, guys!” They don’t hear me obviously. It’s like I really don’t exist. Before I get a chance to clear my throat and repeat my friendly hello, I hear one of them say, “OK. Let’s go!” And as if somebody fired a starting pistol, all four are swarming up the stairs!

“WHOA there!” I yell (to no avail). I panic and find myself jack-knifing to my feet and bellowing, HEY! YOU GUYS!! I SAID, STOP!!”Miraculously, they hear that one. And freeze, up by about the seventh step. Then all four crank their heads around and let their eyes fall on me. Down here. In the foyer. I don’t say anything. They don’t say anything. A moment passes. They all look at one another. Then down they come. All four. To crowd around my dinky little table and lean their faces in at me with rapt interest. Like I’m a bug or something. One of them leans his face in too close, eye-to-eye, our foreheads nearly touching. His face is a blank. A big, blank poker face. “Well…?”

I find I have to swallow before I can choke out a response. “I’m sorry.” Jeez, I can barely hear myself. “But… see? This is a high school thing. Foxcroft Academy has…”

“A high school thing? So what’re you doing here, shrimp boat? You can’t be what, even in third grade yet? Right?”

I have to swallow twice this time. And I feel a drip of cool sweat sliding down between my shoulder blades. “No… uhmmm, ninth grade. “

“Oh, come off it! That can’t be right. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you show me some ID.”

OK, I don’t like the way this is going. At all. After all. I’m a little chicken-shit, aren’t I. And I’m already wishing I’d just let them pass on by. With, you know, me just ‘accidentally’ looking the other way. But now I have to say… something.

“You gotta be a student at the Academy, to come in.”

“My God. You really talk fast, don’tcha. I can barely understand you.”

“Or Be. Invited,” I manage to add.

“Oh, that! Sure. I know that! That’s OK. Because… I am invited, see? By… Jim. You know Jim, don’t you. Of course you do. Everybody knows good old Jim. Am I right?”

I haven’t been this frightened since that time on my paper route when I got cornered by a growling German shepherd for a half hour. I keep thinking, Where IS everybody? Anybody? Why hasn’t somebody just strolled by…?

“Well, see… you gotta have a signed pass.” I mutter. “Signed by the principal.”

Here, he shakes his head patiently, but with a big wolfish smile. “Ah! So you’re… the hall monitor. Oh my!” And then he does something I really don’t like.

He puts his hands on my shirt. I figure, Here we go. He’s gonna beat the crap outta me, but no. Instead, it’s like he’s just intimately… straightening my collar, and then dusting off my shoulders, like maybe there was something on them, like, you know, dandruff or something, but still all the while smiling at me, like I’m some little kid and he’s my dad, getting me spiffed up to get ready for school. It’s something that bullies like to do.

“You know what I’m thinking,” he says. I don’t say anything. I just wait for him to tell me. “I think… you and me? I think we’ve become friends. Don’t you? Don’t you feel that?”

I’m just looking down at the toes of my shoes.

“So what I’m thinking is, you’ve thought this whole thing all over, right? And because we’ve become such good friends now, you’re going to invite me to go… right on right up those stairs with our other three friends here and… then… hey, it’s all good, right? Am I right?”

I nod.

“Can you just say it? That you’re inviting me?”

I nod.

“Then… please… say it.”

I am so ashamed. “I… invite you.”

“Aw gee, thank you so very…”

Suddenly, the front door gets practically kicked open, letting in another rogue gust of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles …a cop. Wait, no, not just a cop. THE cop: Bill Fair!

(OK. I admit it. This image of Robocop is a stretch, but (if you’d ever MET Officer Fair) it’s not that much of a S T R E T C H…)

When you think Officer Fair, think Alpha Wolf. Officer Fair is big. Officer Fair is solid. Officer Fair’s face and neck are a lunar landscape of pock marks and scars. Officer Fair has… a reputation. Officer Fair can be frightening just to look at. I’m frightened just looking at him right now, and yet I’m so glad he’s arrived. It’s like the wind just blew the door in and (surprise) The Abominable Snowman is suddenly standing right in front of you… and studying you!

And Officer Fair has left the door wide open.

What I’m suddenly seeing is these four guys shrinking smaller and smaller. It’s unbelievable. They’ve become one big, cowering, little gang. If they had tails, you wouldn’t be able to winch them out from between their legs with a chain.

“Bill?” says the guy I just invited to go on upstairs. It rocks me that he’s on a first-name basis with Officer Fair. His voice noticeably shaky, he adds, “We didn’t mean nuthin’, I swear to God!”

“Honest-to-God’s-TRUTH, Bill,” whines another. “We just come in here to… find out what time it is! Is all.”

Officer Fair is a man of few words. Right at the moment, Officer Fair is a man of no words. Officer Fair is known as a man of action rather than words.

“We were just leaving, Bill. Really. I’m serious.” All four of them are edging around him now, trying to inch themselves toward the open door. Officer Fair isn’t budging out of their way much, meaning they’re really going to have to squeeze themselves past him to get out, which turns out to be about as easy as being born.

“So… hey. Whattaya say, Bill. Please. We’ll just be on our way. Alright? OK?” If looks could kill, four coffins would be getting ordered from Lary’s Funeral Home right about now.

But then, in a couple of blinks, they’re gone. Just like that. They succeeded in squeezing their way past The Man, and he’s followed them out. The door slams shut. It’s over. Crisis averted. (Well, for me, but probably not for them.)

God bless the U.S. cavalry.

Jesus, breathe, Tommy!

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

OK, so now that I’ve half-gotten my wits back about me, and I feel my heart rate slowly and steadily ticking itself back down to near normal… and even though I haven’t entirely stopped shaking yet, everything is becoming crystal clear now. Yup.

So, in retrospect it’s now so obvious that Officer Fair had been tailing these fellas before they’d shown up here. That they’d been on the run, running scared from him for whatever reason or other. And so they’d desperately crashed in here to get themselves lost in a very big building with a large crowd of people in it. Which explains why they so needed to get themselves the hell upstairs and out of sight as quickly as possible: to mingle in with the crowd or, even better, find some little cubby hole to disappear in.

“How’s it going? Did I miss anything?” asks my replacement.

I give him the look. “Well, it is now.”

He frowns. “Uhmmm… OK?”

So I suppose I oughtta tell him the whole frigging story. And I do. About how a squad of four soldiers barged in here and roughed me up but good! And about how, since no one was around here to help me out, I’d decided to string’em along as long as I possible could— you know, acting scared and all, but really? Just keeping them down here, on the bottom floor, with me. You know, so nobody else, upstairs, would get hurt, right? And about how it actually worked. About how I was able to hold out just long enough for the cops to show up and kick the door in, rough them up, handcuff’em, and drag their sorry butts off to jail. And yeah. Now I suppose I’ll probably hafta go in and ID’em and all, in a police line-up or something. Plus, you know, then they’ll probably want me to testify against them in court.

Now boy, let me tell you, wasn’t he some impressed!

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

You know what? To heck with hanging around here for the last dance, especially since I probably would never actually get around to asking anybody to dance anyway. Shoot, I’m rounding up Richie and Dale. I’m gonna talk’em into sneaking into the movie theater with me to see if there are any interesting girls, that need to be walked home. And then maybe we’ll hit Rocket Lanes. Mostly pretty much so I’ll have enough time to wow them with my practically unbelievable story along the way. Yeah.

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THE AMERICA THAT MADE AMERICA FAMOUS

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

DUDS: BOMB THREATS THAT BOMBED —PART ONE

SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOVER-FOXCROFT: REC CENTER, 1961