REMINISCENCES – The Early Years 1950-1956
by E.B. (Bruce) Michael
Hi gang. It was so great to see so many of you at the reunion! What a turnout and what a class! I wish I could have stayed around at least one of the nights in order to get to talk to everyone. I’d look across the sea of faces and recognize classmates I hadn’t seen for decades. If we do the cruise in a few years, I’ll be there unless it’s absolutely impossible. Otherwise, see you at the 50th.
For several months I’ve been rolling around in my mind some of the memories I have of Bay, particularly the early years. I’ll bet most of us, in all the years since those days in school, have looked back many times and realized how lucky we were to grow up when and where we did. Those times were simpler and much more innocent. Our families didn’t need to lock our houses when we went to Avellone’s or Kroger’s. Similarly, we didn’t lock up the car every time we left it in the parking lot at the shopping center or at Westgate. I used to ride my bike all over town with no need for a bike lock and no worry that some nutcase would try to abduct me. It just didn’t happen. No way. Bikers didn’t wear helmets. Cars didn’t have seatbelts.
On Halloween we could wear any kind of costume we wanted and run around collecting goodies all night long until we got completely tuckered out or realized we’d sucked the neighbors dry. We didn’t have to check apples for razor blades or Hershey bars for needles. We could burn fallen leaves in trash barrels or in long narrow bonfires at the edge of the tree lawn. To this day the aroma of burning leaves transports me back to my childhood. Remember the big homecoming bonfires across the street from the high school? And wasn’t it great having that lake right out there! I’ve always felt it gave us a definite orientation. That was north.
For most of my years in Bay I lived two houses south of Lake Rd. on Longbeach Parkway near Huntington Beach. Summers I would hear lifeguards yelling through megaphones at wayward swimmers, "Hey yooooooou, let’s get out of the water down there. That beach is closed!!!" Also, the summer I turned 10 years old I had "front row seats" for a little Bay drama called "The Sheppard Case". I was amazed at the gawkers who drove slowly by the Sheppard house to catch a glimpse of where it all happened. Many people actually pulled over and stopped in front of Doug Paine’s house to have their picture taken with the crime scene in the background. (Side comment – Now there’s a great name for a reformed masochist. He dug pain.) That was a little too much excitement and notoriety for our fair city, which the papers always seemed to refer to as a "bedroom community". Yeah, we had bedrooms. Didn’t all towns and cities?
Anyhow, since most of us were born in 1944, we were slightly ahead of the baby boom. Our class size hadn’t started to swell. There were just two elementary schools and one high school at the time – no junior high or middle school. My teachers were, from first through sixth grade respectively, Miss Brookens, Miss Gibson, Miss Linabury, Miss White, Miss Byrd, and Mr. Gervison. Any of those names ring a bell? I don’t remember too much about Miss Brookens other than she was young, slim, and pretty. She didn’t stay at Glenview too long. Miss Gibson was a little more "full-figured" as I recall. She left after the school year to teach on an Indian (Excuse me – Native American) reservation in the Southwest. Miss Linabury was an older, no-nonsense teacher who stayed teaching in Bay for a few years after I had her. Poor Miss White. She was fresh out of college and wasn’t sure how to handle fourth grade cut-ups like Jimmy Maudsley, Peter Bott, Ted Stirgwolt, and, yes, Bruce Michael.
Our classroom was in the basement, an anteroom leading to the boiler room. It wasn’t originally meant to be a classroom, but it was fixed up just fine and we liked it. It was away from the routine school traffic and had its own separate door and steps leading to the playground. One minor distraction was that the custodian, Mr. Gitano, made frequent trips to the boiler room where he probably took his naps. Mt. Gilead’s Miss Annie Byrd was a character. She had lovely white hair and claimed to be 800 years old. I wasn’t sure if I believed that or not. She seemed so sincere in her claim. She used to say, "Actions speak louder than words." Thanks to Dwight Allen we got her a nice desk plaque with those words printed clearly for all to see. Had I known a little more grammar back then, I probably would have spouted off, "Miss Byrd, shouldn’t it be ‘Actions speak more loudly than words.’"
Miss Byrd knew what to do with troublemakers. "Out in the hall, young man!" Remember being sent out in the hall to stand and think about what you had done? Maybe most of you never had the pleasure. I sure did. At some point in every one of my 6 years at Glenview, with the exception, ironically, of 5th grade, I spent time in the hall. You just stood there like a dork, even though that term hadn’t been invented yet. From time to time some kid would walk by and razz you about being naughty. I recall that once I had a pencil and a small note pad with me, so I passed the time drawing pictures. I felt as if I had the last laugh. I was enjoying myself! What was I sent out in the hall for? I dunno. Talking out of turn or throwing a spitball. Something like that.
One year it dawned on me that I could sharpen a twig in the pencil sharpener and stick it in one of the two openings in the drinking fountain. Remember those fountains? Normally water came out of two little openings and the two flows joined to form a nice gentle arc from which you could slurp up a refreshing drink. If, however, you clogged up one of the openings, the water came shooting out of the remaining hole with greatly increased pressure. Usually it would splash all over some unsuspecting classmate’s face to the howls of laughter from the perpetrator and his close buddies. Somebody ratted on me and the principal, Miss Dietz, showed up. At first I tried to blame Bill Rolf, but when she interrogated him about the incident, it was painfully obvious he knew nothing about what had happened. I got lectured about not only the initial act of mischief but also trying to "weasel" (her term) out of it by blaming an innocent classmate. While I was being dressed down, some girl tried to take a drink and, of course, got spritzed. Those were the great problems that challenged the teachers and administrators in our day.
My band, The GeezeCats, performs the Coasters hit "Charlie Brown". Charlie was a troublemaker who was always "writin’ on the walls", "goofin’ in the halls", and "throwin’ spitballs". Was he bad or what? I certainly wouldn’t want my daughter dating an anti-social loser who "called the English teacher ‘Daddy-o’". My God! What lack of respect! So what do you think, have times changed? How many fights did we see? How many weapons and drugs came to school with us? Maybe some of the teachers were having sex with each other, but I’ll bet they weren’t doing it with us students. If you have any information to the contrary, tell me. I’d love to hear the gossip, even if it’s 40 to 50 years old.
In 5th grade, we changed classes. It was nothing like what we’d heard about how Bay High School was going to be, with 9 periods a day. A few times a week, Miss Byrd’s class would go next door to Miss Lusher’s classroom for a lesson that apparently she was better suited to teach than Miss Byrd. In 6th grade we’d go downstairs to Mrs. Brown’s classroom and her class would come up to be taught by Mr. Gervison.
At the reunion, Mary Seckler remembered an incident that, as a teaching device, made quite an impact. We were studying fractions, specifically how to divide. Mr. Gervison had me come up in front of the class and asked us if anyone knew what "invert" meant. No one knew. He was standing behind me and, to my great surprise, the next moment he flipped me upside down and held me there. I was inverted. Had I been the divisor fraction, you had only to multiply me and the math process would have been complete. Nearly 50 years later we still carry the memory of that incident with us.
I remember when Normandy School was being built. They had a contest to name the school. Whichever school, Glenview or Forestview, came up with the winning suggestion would receive a banner with that school’s name emblazoned on it. In the end, both schools got banners because enough kids from each school thought up "Normandy" for the name of the new elementary school which just so happened to be built on Normandy Rd. Duh! Actually, the school board probably came up with the name early on and ordered three banners from the gitgo. Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition to promote esprit de corps, even if the "contest" was rigged.
Hey, how about health education? Wasn’t it in 6th grade that a nurse, Mrs. Rush, taught us about the birds and the bees? Those classes got my undivided attention. All in all I’m grateful to have had some expert instruction on what was then a somewhat delicate subject. She did a marvelous job of approaching the task in a mature manner without making us too self-conscious, and I think we did a good job of not giggling too much. We had a great field trip to the Health Museum. Other field trips were to the Art Museum, Severance Hall, and the Federal Reserve Bank where we saw $1,000,000 in cash. Remember our art teacher, Miss Furnace? She had purple hair. All right, it was actually silver white with a purple tint to it. To grade schoolers it was impressive, even if it was an object of ridicule. Does the term "cloak room" jog anybody’s memory?
How about the school carnival each year? In 4th grade we made hats to sell. All sales must have been to parents because only a mother could have loved those monstrosities! And on Election Day our hallways were crowded with voting booths and strangers. Remember the little plastic red feathers we’d get for donating money to the Community Chest or March of Dimes or was there a Red Feather Agency? Ah yes, Community Chest. Later, in high school, that was the nickname of one of our particularly popular female classmates. How about Safety Patrol? Older kids with yellow harnesses and shiny badges got to play policemen to protect the rest of us dummies at intersections. They must have saved scores of lives! Maybe hundreds!
Every new school year we got a list of the supplies we’d need for that year. We needed scissors, crayons, number 2 pencils, erasers (lots of erasers), and the classic Prang watercolor paint in that long black metal case with the built-in tray for the brush. Oh, and don’t forget the little water dish – a shallow white metal container about half the size of a small margarine tub. It held so little water that after rinsing the brush a few times, you had a pan of yucky greenish brown or purple-black liquid you’d dare some kid to drink. The paint pan did come in handy at the end of the school year when you had to clean out your desk. After removing all your supplies, books, lost homework papers, notes, old art projects, ancient moldy snacks, and various unidentifiable objects, you were left with the dregs – mostly broken-off pencil points and eraser crumbs. By placing the pan directly beneath the hole in the bottom of the desk, you could sweep away the last remains of a school year’s worth of activity. Voila! A clean desk.
Then there was paste. Dinah Shaw ate paste. It probably tasted better than the cafeteria food and was at least as nutritious. Eventually we needed an Esterbrook fountain pen with a specific point and specific blue ink. In fourth grade we had to have dictionaries. Everyone else was buying a spanking new red Webster’s, but I had a green hand-me-down from my older brother. I felt so different, so left out - not one of the gang. From time to time we’d be herded down to the cafeteria for a movie. Miss Dietz would crank up an old black Bell and Howell sound projector and we’d sit through a slow, dry educational film about rock formations of the Southwest, the life cycle of honeybees, or some other such enlightening subject. It was the total antithesis of the Sesame Street approach. There were great pauses between bits of information, presumably to let it all sink into our pea brains. "Here we see the queen bee laying her eggs…."(yawn) "The worker bees seal up each chamber…."(snore) "One egg gets the special royal jelly and will develop into a queen bee…."("Out in the hall, Mr. Michael, until you can stay awake!")
That same cafeteria became a bank each Monday for Bank Day. The upper class kids were the tellers. We all had our bankbooks, and after about three years of high finance I must’ve accumulated at least 10 or 15 dollars. We had a school nurse (not the sex-educator). Remember being stabbed in the underside of the forearm with some three-pronged torture device? They claimed that in a few days the wound would reveal whether we had TB. I recall having to read eye charts with bold letter E’s facing in various directions. We had our hearing checked periodically, and we got polio vaccine shots. Wimps in later classes got sugar cubes to suck on, but we took the needle! That’s probably why we’re as tough as we are today.
But in all seriousness, we had some great formative years under the direction of some very dedicated educators. It was a special time in history. In spite of the McCarthy Hearings witch hunt and a cold war which didn’t seem to affect us much (Did your family build a bomb shelter?), those were pretty calm times. We had that newfangled invention, TV. Our economy was strong, we were the world power, and Ike instilled confidence and respect. It was pre-grassy knoll, pre-Beatles, pre-Vietnam, and pre-Watergate.
Of course those times are long gone, but I for one will always cherish the memories. Chronology and geography brought us all together and bonded us forever. I can’t think of all those years from grade school on up through high school without remembering a great bunch of kids who grew up together and played such an important part in the early development of each and every one of us. It was and is a great class. Thanks!