School Story:
Our superintendent, R. G. Brooks, became Governor and we got a new superintendent. Incidentally, one of my students once spelled that Super Attendant! Anyway, the new one hadn't been there long until he saw cuts on the old mural that was on the wall of the auditorium. We were all herded into the auditorium--"Where you will all sit until one of you confesses to this malicious deed." No one confessed, of course, this time because no one had done it, so we were there a long time. While we waited, Greg Harring, the art teacher went out, examined the "cuts," measured them, went down the hall to Cliff Greenlee's custodial closet, and found the mop. Its metal bracket where the mop was attached was exactly the same measurement. Case solved, assembly dismissed. Cliff had swung his mop around and, without knowing it, scratched the mural. He felt terrible until Greg went to work on the mural and soon you couldn't tell it had happened. It is probably very childish of me that I still think of that superintendent as a, well, "non-contributor to the shaping of my character"!
Besides a blurb, I wanted to add a poem for our reunion and our friend Mike:
The Fiftieth Reunion
For Michael Steel Confer
History was our enemy then, the future was our friend.
And we were headed toward it in a fury.
How strong we wondered, if we thought at all
Could something as abstract as history be?
Young and yet to learn the gravity of its eons of weight,
We could barely have guessed how leather lashes
Could pin our wings, how our fuselage could flare into flame
No matter how high or how fast we were flying.
History was colorful dragons on silk jackets.
History was glassed in medals and trophies,
History was the glories in the pictures on the walls of the halls,
Or, the dent that warped the locker door
Where someone from an earlier class had kicked it in
When his girl gave him back the class ring
Made to fit her finger by layers of nail polish.
History could be returned, the future was waiting.
But now, as our reunion looms ahead, we sense
How much the future has become our enemy,
And our history has now become our new friend,
Like the transfer student we’ve just started getting to know.
Our future, a dwindling dividend of days, while.
Our history holds what only we will ever know,
Who we were and what it was like to be us, then, there,
Something we can’t even explain to our grandchildren,
And can no longer talk about with those who are gone:
Whose jeans hung low, whose hair duck-tailed,
What made us laugh, what smoke got in our eyes,
The waxed car or hair curlers that preceded a date,
The 45 r.p.m.s or bad band and crepe paper streamers
That turned a dimly lit gym into a dance hall,
The way we held hands or slapped backs,
The cast of our eyes when we lost, or felt lost,
The choir room curtain that could never
Protect the girls where they uniformed up for band
From the eyes of the uniformed boys,
So ignorant of the knowledge that,
In those deceptive days between Korea and Vietnam,
Resided just beyond the so easily parted veil
And, once known, would draw down the curtain
On our young years.
