Eighth Grade
      This year is lost almost entirely to my memory. I don’t even remember my homeroom teacher or whether homeroom was on first or second floor. The school had a book fair in which kids were encouraged to dress up as characters from American literature. Mom made me some pants from a burlap bag, made an old shirt look even more ragged, and I wore as a hat, a small stove-top kettle we used for boiling spaghetti. My costume/character were a hit. I had read a story about young Abe Lincoln, Three Rivers South by Virginia S. Eifert. The book impressed me, and I truly enjoyed meeting the author. She was a conversationalist on a par with some of my best teachers.
      Mrs. Broche had moved on elsewhere. In came Tom Patrick, an excellent music teacher who introduced us to Leonard Bernstein and greater appreciation of classical music. He was as close as an idol/teacher I ever knew. He was relaxed at the head of our tiered class room, built so we could stand at our desks and practice singing as a choir. The kids’ seating was arranged so tenors sat with tenors, altos sat with altos, etc. Sometime during that year, our class broke into about six study groups, each assigned to write a report about a famous American composer. Each group elected a chairman, and I was elected chair of the Stephen Foster study group. We met away from school to assemble the information we had (four or five of us including Beth Kirman and Patti Long) and I combined the info into a report form and presented it. It was great fun. I also learned to appreciate George Gershwin and Ferde Grofe during the presentations. Later I would become a major fan of Gershwin. The major lesson I learned from the Foster report we gave was that the man died trying to imitate his earlier style of writing, and that this approach did not succeed. That influenced how I’d write songs in later years.
      During my time at Franklin, I grew up inside a flying airplane. Dad had mentioned that Bill Castor, a friend of his, offered to take us for a ride in his Cessna 172, and at that moment, I decided I was NOT going to be afraid of flying. Dad was a little concerned. He didn't want to get into the airplane with Bill and me only to have me change my mind.
     I didn't change my mind, and enjoyed a wonderful trip. The idea of fear wasn't even in my mind for the duration of the day. We didn't know when we got in -- at least I didn't -- but we were headed to Lambert Field, St. Louis. We landed and walked into the terminal from the apron by the terminal with all sorts of large ariliners nearby. We were right on the ground with them, looking up at them, but completely safe. I have often wished I had brought my camera. In the terminal, Mr. Castor made a phone call, probably filing his flight plan for the return to Springfield, we returned to the Cessna and flew back with no problems and no tears.
    As we were helping him push the Cessna back into the hangar, Mr. Castor walked over to a fellow pre-flighting his sleek Beechcraft Bonanza. His name was Joe Gerzin, who happened to be my Mom's boss at City Hall. Gerzin talked to Castor about stepping up to a Bonanza, about how the company had a partial ownership option (which I didn't understand of course). Castor said he'd look in to it, and that was the last time I saw the man. It came as a surprise to me in 2004 when I was elected President of Central City Neighborhood Association, that the association's vice president, a CPA whom J've known for a few years as a CCNA member is Bill Castor, III. The fellow who took us all for a ride in his Cessna was Bill Castor, III's grandfather!
      In eighth grade I met Bob Gilbert soon after he had won a contest to name the school’s new popcorn popping machine, very popular at sock hops and basketball games. The winning name Bob had conceived was "Kernel Franklin." a great name from a fellow who would be a long-time friend into college and beyond.
      Also a good friend was a fellow named Tadd Baumann. He was as enthusiastic about aviation history as I was, and he was a plastic model builder of World War I airplanes. His enthusiasm and knowledge equaled mine; his skill as a modeler exceeded mine. We got together a lot over the next few years. Tadd was also interested in armored tanks and ships. I was not infected with the same breadth of enthusiasm. Airplanes were my only focus. During this time, I purchased my first hardbound aviation history books and still have them today. William Green wrote four excellent books about World War II fighters and bombers. These pages were manna for my mind. I almost memorized the books and bought more as often as I could.
        Though I don’t remember who organized it, there was a special program slated for the St. Nicholas Hotel, a civic awareness seminar called Operation Alert. I don’t know why I was interested in this program, but students were invited to attend, and I was lucky to be one of those who did – with Mom and Dad’s permission. The hotel was full of grownups, and there were some serious speeches by nationally known (not by me of course; I was a kid) leaders, with the focus on drugs, how the enemies of US freedom were using drugs to weaken the strength of the people of this country as a whole, and the importance of fighting drugs. It made a real impression on me, and I never had any trouble resisting that kind of insanity.
Another event that year was a school referendum. Franklin’s principal, who happened to be the father of my friend Lee Halberg, invited students to help distribute literature supporting the referendum. Since I was used to walking and biking neighborhoods, I was one of many who volunteered to help. It wasn’t until the end of the school year that I realized I had done anything important. We who had helped had a special mention of our helping in some kind of annual publication at Franklin,which I soon misplaced and almost forgot.
      Shadid’s Book Mart on Sixth Street downtown was book Mecca for me. Two narrow aisles, lined eye-high and higher with myriad magazines and books. This is where I purchased all my aviation books, including my first hardbounds, and most magazines. It was a treasure trove! I rode the bus downtown often in those junior high days on Saturdays. What I couldn’t afford to buy, I read as I browsed. Mtch and Woody Shadid and their sister always smiled when I came by. They were my first major contacts beyond family and friends. They were icons of city commerce and stars in the sky of my life.
      Phil Gekas was as enthusiastic about airplanes as I was, and we chatted about them, mostly in the Franklin Library where we would race for the latest issue of Flying magazine as soon as it arrived. "Geke" (an affectionate nickname before the word "geek" came into usage) was a good guy who seemed to appreciate my knowledge of the subject . . . to a point.
      Mr. Ankenbrandt was our history/civics teacher, trim as a marathon runner with a crew cut and a voice like a drill sergeant’s, a nice guy, a gentleman if there ever was one. And (I was to learn by accident when I discovered his electric guitar in the choir room closet) he played electric guitar! One day in class, he was telling us about his service in the infantry in World War II. I believe he went ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He was among the first US men to arrive at an airfield just inside Germany where they found rows of German jet planes, perfectly lined up by the runway, unable to fly because the German air force had run out of fuel. WOW. (Years later I saw pictures of US soldiers at probably the same air field with rows of He-162s being examined, and wondered if Mr. Ankenbrandt was in one of the pictures.) He said he would never forget "those Messerschmitt 163s because they were the first German jet planes, and some of them had actually bombed the troops." I raised my hand.
      "Mr. Ankenbrandt, the Messerschmitt Me-163 was a rocket-powered airplane; not a jet. The planes that bombed you were probably Messerschmitt 262s or Arado 264s." His reaction was predictable: words that said in effect – Job, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I was there. I saw these airplanes with my own eyes! And I responded, Mr. Ankenbrandt, if you’re saying the first German jets were Me-163s, I am saying you are mistaken, and I’ll show you tomorrow. It might have been a Friday, and I might have said "next Monday," but the reaction from my friend Phil Gekas was also predicatble when he said in art class which followed, words to the effect – Job, how can you tell him he is WRONG? He was THERE! Didn’t you HEAR him say that? Man, you are in for it! – and when I took him my first aviation book, William Green’s Famous Fighters of the Second World War and showed Mr. Ankenbrandt the facts, he admitted that his memory was wrong, that he had been in error, and that I was right. Phil never got how crazy I was to have called a teacher wrong. With me, it was no big deal. Having facts on my side was a terrific confidence builder.
      My science teacher was Mr. Schwartz, an intelligent fellow with the physical appearance of Adlai Stevenson. He was a methodical man; probably a good lab scientist and probably capable of better than teaching junior high science. Mr. Scwartz was the only teacher I ever met who gave his students specific instructions for how to throw away paper. "Fold the paper twice and deposit it into the waste paper basket." I admired that, and to this day I usually fold twice before discarding paper. Mr. Schwartz was a minor thorn in my side that year, mostly because of what he called a wrong answer on a test that meant the difference between a B and an A grade. The question asked for the "kinds" of a (long-forgotten animal).and I responded with a description of each of four. My answer was marked WRONG because he wanted the TYPES of the animal. I knew the types, but he didn’t ask for the types, which are more specific than KINDS. When I explained my complaint to him during class, he brushed me aside. He would not admit I had a point and refused to change the grade. I decided I would not forget or forgive his incapacity to understand the difference between "kind" and "type," and I didn’t.
       The final day of class that year, during class, as he pontificated from the front of the room, I surreptitiously tore into small pieces, no larger than 2 x 2 inches, about 20 sheets of used notebook paper and unobtrusively deposited the mess inside the desk space under my seat used to put school books during this, the last class of my last day in eighth grade. When the bell rang, I almost sprinted to my bike and pedaled home in a hurry.
      Half an hour later, I watched from a front window at home as Mr. Schwartz pulled his dark green 1955 Plymouth into our driveway and approached the front door, rang the doorbell and waited. I was the only one home, and I cowered in a corner of the vestibule, barely breathing, hoping he would not linger long. And he didn’t.
      Flash forward to September and the start of ninth grade. I saw Mr. Schwartz in the hallway, and when he gestured for me to come over to him, I had no choice. I was no longer afraid of disciplinary action, but I knew what he wanted. He asked me calmly if I had torn up a lot of paper into tiny pieces and left them in my desk the final day of school before vacation, and I replied that I had, and added that it was because I was still angry at the time because of his unfair test grade. He said, in effect, okay. He just wanted to know if it was me. And I went on my way. End of story.
      Over the summer, my brother and I took a Greyhoud bus trip to visit my sistere in Wheeling, West Virginia. Parents would drive out later, and we’d travel with them from Wheeling down to Elberton, Georgia to visit my Aunt Stelle and Uncle Turner who had retired from Leavenworth to Turner’s home turf, red clay farms and quarries in the right clavicle of the old south, the head being Virginia and the foot being Texas. When Bill and I boarded the bus about 5:00 P.M. on Friday, we were told we’d arrive in Wheeling about 5 P on Saturday.
         From Springfield through a few hours’ layover in St. Louis, to Terre Haute, Indiana, things went as predicted. Bill and I travelled well together. No arguing or fisticuffs, the best comaraderie we had in our entire lives together. When we exited the bus at Terre Haute, we learned our trip would not go as planned. There would be a 6 hour delay!
      There were about eight other travelers, grownups, who were also laying over for severeal hours and we all decided to go walking around the heart of downtown Terre Haute at about 10:00 on a foggy Saturday night. There was hardly another human being in sight as we walked, stores all dark, hardly any traffic. We found an open restaurant, ate dinner and walked back to the bus station, a few blocks away. The others caught their bus soon after we returned, leaving Bill and me alone in this HUGE bus station with only custodial crews with mops and one man behind the counter at the station’s "gift shop." It was here that I purchased a book that would influence my life almost as much as Martin Caidin’s Samurai. This book was Thunderbolt by Robert S. Johnson. Started reading it in the bus station that night, like it was wine, and I was a thirsty man. It was raining in Terre Haute that night, and Bill and I were, more or less, the only life in the station as we heard the rain on the roof and the sound of a distant radio in the gift shop, early on a Saturday morning. I had absolutely no interest in sleeping, but I think Bill caught a few winks, slumped in one of the polished wood benches. Sometimes a bus would arrive and people would get out, mostly people coming home. Our bus arrived about 3:00 A.M. and we got on.
      THEN I caught some shut-eye. Once clear of the city, the bus seemed to stop every 15 miles at curbsides in small villages to let riders off or on. That was okay. There was a coziness and sense of security in that dark bus.
When we arrived in Columbus, Ohio about 10 A, instead of an hour layover, I heard over the PA system we had 10 minutes, and I had a mad rush to find Bill who had headed for the coffee shop. We made it aboard okay, but it was close.
      During most of the trip the rest of the way to Wheeling, Bill and I sat in separate sides of the aisle because that was where we had found empty seats. Somewhere in eastern Ohio, a girl about my age sat down next to me, and we had a solid-good conversation until Bill and I departed at Wheeling. Told her all about Springfield, and she told me all about Pittsburgh, which was where she was heading. Another passing comet in this cosmos of humanity, who enlightened my heart and wandered on. I hope she felt something similar about me.
      We had arrived about three hours before Dot and Bob were expecting us, but I didn’t want to wait. As I was calling them, Bill met a fellow about my age named Terry Wilson. Terry was on his way home to Moundsville, West Virginia, about 30 minutes from Wheeling. He gave us his phone number and invited us to call him and visit.
      The visit with Dot and Bob was phenomenal!
Highlight of my visit was meeting Kathy Dow, my age, and Sally Dow, Bill’s age, who lived two doors down from Bob and Dot. If I had not been such a clumsy oaf with my uncertain expectations and not a CLUE about how to neck, I am sure Bill (with Sally) and Ksthy and I would have had some significant fun. But I must have inherited the Woody Allen personna gene, and the evening with them in Bob & Dot’s living room (Bob and Dot had gone out for the evening) turned into a lamented farce. No one surrendered clothes, though all sense of my composure was blasted to smithereens, and no one was scarred for life . . . I think.
      Wheeling was a wonderland of discovery. The Wheeling River, or more likely a tributary, flowed along a road probably three blocks from the Shymansky’s house. Bill and I spent hours exploring its steep banks and skipping rocks over the water. Across the river was some kind of camp ground with cabins. We sometimes saw people over there but never spoke to them. During our visit, a shopping center was being constructed nearby, and we’d watch the tractors grade the ground. And on the far side of a semi-wilderness area was a bowling alley that we visit once to have Cokes and watch them bowl. The real grandeur of Wheeling was found in the parks: Wheeling Park and Oglebay Park. Both had swimming pools, and Bill, Dot, her first son Bobbie and Steve went swimming fairly often. Oglebay Par was nationally known and had hosted performances by internationally known artists. Dot told me the open spaces were popular with skiiers during the winter. It seemed like a form of paradise, compared with Springfield.
      Dot and Bob owned a compact Opel station wagon, and it was also great fun, especially with on what the locals called "Suicide Hill." The place had a panoramic view of the countryside, and was sometimes closed during the winter because of the snow.
      Bill and I were almost constantly bickering during the early days of what would become about a month’s stay in Wheeling. Bill was the alpha dog, and I was the pacifist. Finally Bob and Dot announced they had had enough, and they brought us together to duke it out in the back yard one night after dinner. My protest fell on deaf ears.
     So Bill and I began boxing and then wrestling. I defended myself – thanks to some excellent coaching from Bob – and then I started fighting back. After a few minutes it became obvious that since I was larger than Bill, it was really not a contest. I inflicted some significant pain, and Bill conceded the fight, and that was the end of it. Registered nurse Dot had to treat some marks I left on Bill. There night have been some bleeding too. I remember crying out loud when I realized I might have really hurt him. I also learned there ain’t no prizes for compassion, and there would never be tears with company after that fight.
The escapade put an end to Bill’s physical aggressiveness, but our mutual antipathy continued well into our 30s, even though we would be cordial to each other when other people were around us. The relationship was not one of constant resentment, even though years later (I was 22 at the time) he threatened to murder me, and I called the police from a girlfriend’s house to see if I could have him arrested. I was told Bill would have to do more than threaten me for the police to pick him up.
      I had given Terry Wilson Dot & Bob’s phone number at the bus station, and he visited us at their house. We walked down to downtown Wheeling and too the municipal bus back to their neighborhood. We took him back to the intercity bus station for him to take the bus back to Moundsville. A week later, Bill and I took the same bus to Moundsville.
      An interesting town, almost as close to the soil of the land as they were at the turn of the century, from what I could tell. A major state penitentiary was located there, and Terry explained that everytime someone was executed in its electric chair, the lights all over town dimmed because of the load of electricity sent through the chair. Moundsville also had a city swimming pool, and during our visit we spent some time there. Bill and I had lunch with Terry’s family, good people who were as West Virginia Hill people as my Mom was Georgia Cotton people. Kind, friendly folks who probably graduated from sixth grade and went to work. Terry was a notch up from that, clearly headed for college, though that possibility occurred to none of us at that age. He was articulate, intelligent and paid attention. A Yankee from Lincoln Land can’t ask for better than that.
Even though Dad was born in Columbia, South Carolina (might have been North Carolina), I never thought of him as Southern-bred. He and Mom were too cosmopolitan to have ever been considered from the soil of the South.
We bade Terry & family a fond goodbye after making plans to have him visit us in Springfield later in the summer.
      Soon after, with July 4 approaching, Mom and Dad had arrived to spend some time before the four of us headed south for Georgia. I was having fun with firecrackers in a meadow-like area behind the houses on Dot & Bob’s street. I had discovered that by wrapping a Coke bottle in aluminum foil and then dropping a burning-fuse firecracker into the mouth and then running to a safe distance, the combination made a heck of a noise and none of the glass scattered like shrapnel from a bomb. I could then peel the foil back and see how the bottle had been affected by the blast. Brother Bill didn’t think much of my amateur research, and we actually got into a wrestling match in the meadow area behind Dot & Bob’s house as he tried to convince me to stop doing it. With me on top of him on the ground, he lunged up and I fell back. When I lunged forward again, my left hand came down on a big shard of dirty Coke bottle glass. It cut the base of the palm of my hand at the wrist severely, and that ended the "discussion."
     It was a dash back to the house, to wash the wound with 100 percent of the attention and concern from my registered-nurse-sister, and blood soaked through an ice-packed towel Dot hurredly wrapped around the hand as though it was a tissue. A fast drive to the emergency room at Wheeling Hospital ensued. After cleaning up the wound, the doctor (an older woman, probably in her early 60s, gave the area a local anesthetic to prepare it for some stitches. I was pretty calm during most of this ordeal, at least for the first three stitches. Trying to be of good humor I commented that she sure knew her craft with needle and sutures and asked, tongue in cheek, if she ever considered a career as a seamstress after she retired. The woman with the needle saw no humor in my remark, but a glance at Dot revealed she was stifling a grin. At that point, as the needle went in for the fourth suture, it became obvious to me that the anesthetic had not affected that part of my hand. It took major effort to keep calm, but I knew it was the last stitch, and there was no outburst . . . and no more humerous repartee.
       From that point on – at least during that vacation trip – I was "the evil one" of the family because of my stupidity with firecrackers and Coke bottles. Even so, I was allowed to attend a movie in downtown Wheeling with Bill and the rest of the family. We saw It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and we enjoyed every minute of it.
      In another day or two, Mom, Dad, Bill and I piled into the car and headed south to visit Aunt Stelle and Uncle Turner, now retired from his practice in Leavenworth and living in the same "neighborhood" of rural Georgia where he had grown up.
      Somewhere in one of the Carolinas in 1961, we were rolling along a typical two-lane highway, and I was sitting in the back seat with my brother, watching the world go by, though, technically speaking, we were going by the world. As we approached a farmside mailbox, I noticed a girl, about my age, who had come out to get the family mail. My eyes looked onto her eyes and hers onto mine. She was a regular girl, no skimpy clothes or splendiferous face, just a nice-looking girl who had looked up from her mailbox and locked her eyes onto mine, and there they stayed as we drove by at probably 60 miles an hour until a dip in the road cut us off. The whole event lasted less than 15 seconds, but she didn’t look away from me, and I didn’t look away from her. And the memory of her face – not smiling or grinning; not frowning either, perfectly neutral; black hair, shoulder length – is a part of who I am today. I have wondered, countless times, who she was and what happened to her. In a dream later on, I imagined my asking Dad to stop the car so I could walk back and introduce myself, and telling Dad for him and Mom and Bill to go on their way, and I’d rejoin them later. It was only a dream, but it was a good dream.
     Aunt Stelle’s and Uncle Turner’s farm was not far from the South Carolina border, an idyllic setting: 40 acres on a two-lane blacktop in the middle of nowhre, probably 10 minutes from Elberton, a village, more than a town, with a granite museum. Aunt and unc lived a five minute walk from his brothers Preach and Cran, who farmed a large piece of land, far more than 40 acres.
      P and C had a barn, corral, pigs, horses and dust! Crushed rock had never been introduced to the big farm. Bill and I were the perfect age for city kids to be introduced to farm life, and these two gentlemen were Billy Bob, Bubbas come true. They were gentle and patient knights of the red clay, and their humor was more delightful than I can share in words. I understood where Turn learned how to laugh, and I learned why Turner got the heck away from that part of Georgia.
       Bill and I were introduced to pigs by being allowed to chase 15 piglets around the corral to the hoots of grownup kin sitting on the fence. We also learned how to ride horses, bareback, but with reins. Bill took to the large steeds like a duck to water, but though I learned how to control a horse, sitting bareback with nothing to hold onto, I did not learn how to enjoy it. Their trotting gait was especially exasperating: I felt on the verge of toppling off every second the horse was moving faster than a gentle meander. I was told that a gallop was smoother, but I had no nerve to try. Bill became an almost-adopted son at Preach and Cran’s but I found a desk in Aunt Stelle’s house the more welcoming environs.
      It was here that I decided to design flying model airplanes. Using large, yellow ledger paper that someone found somewhere, I designed a free flight model and a control line stunt plane, drafting these aircraft in some detail using a ruler and right angle I had made by folding a piece of paper a few times. This pursuit turned me into a recluse or sorts. With a left hand stitched and bandaged, any real physical activity was out. It was almost two weeks there before Turner (who still practiced medicine when he chose, but without an office or hospital privileges) could remove them.
       It was outside this wonderful house that we had the most significant family reunion of my life, and I wish to BLAZES I had taken pictures. Mom's brother Johnny was a Buick dealer in Jonesboro, Georgia (just outside Atlanta) and he had married a woman I fell "in love" with on sight. Today I don't even remember her name. She was blonde, had a southern accent -- heck down there they ALL had southern accents! -- as soft as Mom's but sweeter somehow, and for all I know she had been a model. Her kids were my cousins Brock and Scott if I remember right. Nice kids, a little older than me. None of my warm regard for Brock & Scott's mother was apparent during the reunion picnic on long granite slabs of tables in the back yard. I am sharing it now because I hope the entire Jones family could know how much I loved them and how I wish I had known them better. Johnny Jones was a riot too. Good people!
      During our stay, we visited world’s largest granite mine, a big hole with water in it and the afore-mentioned granite museum that also prepared granite by cutting, polishing and engraving it for funeral homes all over the world. We purchased 2 x 2 x ½ inch souvenir pieces of polished granite with stickers ("Souvenir of World’s Largest Granite Mine, Elberton, Georgia" on them and kept them for many years in dresser drawers and junk boxes.
     Dad gave me my first driving lessons along Georgia blacktop during the visit. I was permitted to practice in the long driveway that led to Aunt Stelle and Uncle Turner’s house. It was good fun, and made me pretty confident about learning how to drive – really – in Springfield when I was old enough.
      Near Elberton was a stream that wasn’t deep enough to navigate by boat, but was a natural theme park ride with its fast-moving water and gentle rapids that coursed over algae (or some green plant) covered rocks. There were places where locals could park, picnic and they go swimming in the calm parts of the stream and ride (on their gluteus maximi) the rapids, descending probably 20 feet in a quarter mile part of the stream, walking back along the bank and repeating. Sometimes one might bump a head or come down hard on the gluteus max, but it was great fun. In some places, the water was deep enough to actually fully submerge as one went, literally where the stream pushed. On the two more three occasions when Bill and I did this, my recently stitched and bandaged hand was protected by a big green dishwashing glove with a rubber band almost at the elbow to keep the inside water tight – HA! In any event, even when my hand did get wet, there were no complications.            About halfway through our stay with aunt and uncle, Turner removed my stitches, and pronounced me fit to continue living. He also predicted that based on the size of my head, I would grow to 6 feet, four inches in height. This made me feel pretty proud, considering I was years away from the age where, according to Turner, I would reach that lofty altitude. As things turned out, I reached about 6’1" and felt fine at that height. I will always remember and respect Uncle Turner’s cool confidence and competence and rock-solid composure. He was so much like the actor who played Paladin in the TV show "Have Gun Will Travel," with the same eyes and pencil-thin mustache, the resemblance was uncanny.
       Aunt and unc, and Mom and Bill loved to fish. Dad and I were a part of it because we were family, and we both enjoyed being outdoors. And even Dad fished. A damn was being built by the US Army Corps of Engineers near the border of Georgia and South Carolina, and we journeyed there once (an hour on the road) to fish an area that was gradually filling with water than would be a new, large lake. There was a crushed white rock road off a two lane road that descended gently to a gravel covered parking area, and we walked from there, probably ¾ of a mile through waist-high reeds (or some kind of skinny stems,) into water deep enough to fish. After half an hour of this, I returnd to the car and watched disk arrive. It was a beautiful part of the country and the colors in the sky were incredible.
        When my fam departed Elberton for home by way of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, I didn’t know it, but it was the last time I’d see Uncle Turner. I don’t remember having a particularly wonderful time during the visit, but I look back on it as the vacation trip I would most like to do again as an adult with the same people.

Nineth Gradeth
      The school year would be the happiest school year of my life as a student in District 186. I believe our homeroom teacher was Mr. Haberle, and it was on the first floor, next to Mr. Palorsi’s English class which I attended.I sat in the far left row about three seats from the front, behind Tadd Baumann who by now has retired after an exemplary career as a teacher at Glenwood High School in Chatham, Illinois.
     Tadd was as much an aviation enthusiast as I, and we both built plastic model airplanes. In the course of the year, we visited each others’ homes, swap magazines and books and talk about what airplane kits we’d like to see on the shelves at Kresges and Hobbyland next to Ben Franklin at the sparkling new Town & Country Shopping Center. He was really into 1/48 scale Aurora kits of World War One aircraft, and I bet he built every one they produced. I was gravitating toward flying models, but I also built some plastic kits.
      During this time, using Mom’s Underwood manual typewriter, I wrote to most of the airplane manufacturers, requesting under the name of "Job Conger, External Relations, Conger Products, 2016 S. Whittier Ave…." information about their planes. Beech, Cessna, Fairchild, Piper all responded generously. Some of their brochures were cut up and pictures hung on my side of the bedroom shared with Bill. Many of the brochures, including price lists from Piper and Beech, and a spectacular publication about the executive version of the Fairchild F-27 I still have, part of the AeroKnow collection.
      We had a new art teacher: Terry Black who was a talented oil painter and model airplane enthusiast/builder. He painted a portrait of Adolph Hitler with his face stretched out on a picture frame, like it was pinned there to dry. Powerful painting! My major accomplishment was a toothpick sculpture/model of a Grumman F6F I made. I was proud of it, but it didn’t has long intact.
      The greatest change in my life at Franklin took place with the arrival of Fred Nika, the new choir teacher. To my profound chagrin, during an early September class, he discovered that my voice could reach into the upper range, unusual because number 1, boys’ voices were starting to change from "kid high" to "maturing baritone. Number two, because while I could sing in baritone and even bass ranges, I could still hit the high notes sung by first tenors, and that was what Fred needed in choir. The "chagrin" factor came because I considered high boy voices effeminate, suggesting I was not a man among men, but a man among castrati. It took me months to learn to appreciate the upside of this, which was that my ability was a valued asset to the choir, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be: a valued asset. Nika organized a Boy’s Choir that met at 7:30 A.M., about an hour before school started, and a Barbershop Octet, which met twice a week during our home room period after lunch. Every minute in those music groups was a delight. Fred was an excellent teacher, and we got along like brothers.
      Early into the new school year, our choir decided to sell candy door-to-door to raise money for choir robes. We had a fine pep talk by Fred Nika, and I was determined to do all I could for this cause. During the sales period I walked the same streets I had known as a paper boy for the Chicago Daily News and had a fine time, talking with former customers and seeing the old addresses close up again. When the contest was over, Scott Crown was recognized for selling the second-highest number of boxes of candy: 18. I was recognized for selling the most: 40. Scott and I were friends, and I was embarrassed that I had sold so many more. But he wasn’t mad, and I was glad to have helped as much as I did.
      Mr. Nika had written an instrumental piano tune called Chop Suey which captured my rapt attention the first time he played it, and I became determined to learn how to play it too. After school, I’d visit the choir room to figure things out on that piano, and after he patiently showed me, bit by bit, I’d go home and practice it on the family Chickering piano. By this time, I was playing that piano regularly after not touching it for a few years, inspired by Tom Patrick the year before, playing some jazz chords on piano and my emulating him, then writing my own songs, though I could NOT write anything down on a music staff. I had to memorize as I went along.
      I must say that the dumbest thing I ever did, aside from losing Mary Ann Pullin from my life, was not re-learning how to read music. I can imagine how much I would ever learn if I had to rely on listening to others teaching me and not being able to read this alphabet as well as some folks can read a treble and bass clef.
      The highlight of my musical career as a student came later in ninth grade when our choir attended a Big 12 music conference in Danville, Illinois, a state musical festival. During a rehearsal break in the afternoon, I sat down at the piano in the middle of the auditorium as hundreds of students and teachers milled around . . . . and started playing Chop Suey. Less than 15 seconds into the piece (which was probably four minutes long) people started gathering around the piano. But the time I finished, the piano and I were surrounded by a throng of listeners. The round of applause which erupted at the end thrilled me to the core! I would never know applause like that for the rest of my life as a student. The memory still can move me to tears today if I let it . . . . but I don’t let it anymore.
     Sometime during ninth grade. Mom brought home a "how to learn to play guitar book" by Mel Bay. THIS was a book I could understand! The songs were all from the 30s and 40s, but I knew most of the melodies and most of the lyrics anyway because I already enjoyed the songs from that time. When I learned how to strum five or six chords, I pronounced myself ready for my public debut, and Mr. Nike let me have it, so to speak, during a choir class. I sang probably three songs, but the only one I remember singing was "Undecided" (First you say you will and then you won’t/First you say you do and then you don’t/You’re undecided now, so what am I gonna do?" and the rest. At the end of that song, either Fred or I asked the class what they thought, and Nancy Rose replied "I couldn’t understand a word you were singing!" And this is probably why I cannot BUY a performance gig at the age of 56 in Springfield, Ill ennui. LOUSY ELOCUTION! When will I ever learn? Oh when will I ever learn?
      At the end of the year, Franklin had a special awards ceremony in which two vocal music students were recognized for their achievements. Mine was the first name called to the stage. The second was Randy Roland, the bass whom Mrs. Broche had had me sit with to help him learn to sing on key in seventh grade. The significance of this connection was a point of pride, which (unlike distributing referendum flyers in neighborhoods) I fully understood at the time.
      Mr. Cline was my math teacher. He was a good guy, probably 27 years old at the time with a great conversational delivery of complex material. Though his teaching was superlative, the subject drove me nuts! Binary numbers to the second and third powers and beyond…. As Howard Dean once said: YEEEEAGH! As much as I enjoyed being in front of an audience singing the first tenor part of "The New Ashmolean Marching Society and Student Conservatory Band" song in Barbershop Octet, walking to the green board and working math problems in front of 30 students terrified me, in part because I hardly ever got anything right. Beyond simple arithmetic, I was transformed from "reasonably happy confident guy" into "cowering mutant gob of protoplasm." Mr. Cline had a sign that covered the clock high on the wall in his room. The sign said, "Time will pass. Will YOU?" It drove me nuts.
       There was another mitigating factor compounding my woes in that class, and if I had encountered it in English class, today I wud probaly bee wriding and spaling liq this! Her name was Judy Blount, equivalent of today’s Molly Ringwald, but with jet-black hair and eyes that could penetrate a six-foot thick wall of lead. She had a habit of reaching around and "borrowing" my pencil as it rested in the pencil trough at the front of my desk. She’d just reach around, take it, and put it back in a minute or so. No wonder I can hardly remember a thing Mr. Cline had to say. We actually got along, and I went over to her house to study for a math test once. Not only was there never any hanky, there was also never any panky. Actually, Judy did not evoke in me the desire for either, but she was great fun as far as an unknowing eighth grade boy can imagine fun.
      Harrilyn Hart was another matter. While I can’t name any class beyond choir we took together, we shared some grins and laughs at a party in the Franklin auditorium. It was a game that was like "spin the bottle" but with no physical contact. Later we dated, went to a dance with the help of "Chauffeur Dad" at the helm of our 1959 Buick Electra. Today, I cannot drive by the house on the southeast corner of Seventh and Governor Streets without thinking of her. We didn’t share anything more than hand perspiration, but she was incredible. Her smile will be with me, in memory, forever.
       Jim Richardson, Mike Evoy, Clint (forgot his last name) Phil Arndt, and I began to come together as a band of flying model enthusiasts at this time. While Jim and Mike built and flew several u-control models and I dabbled at them, building a few but never flying them, we'd meet at a baseball diamond behind Franklin Junior High. I would often hold and release them, but though I tried a few times with smaller flying control line models and wrecking them, I never completed a successful flight with a u-control model in my entire life, even though I would hang with this group for four years. Success for me was found in tow-line gliders. I was the only one in the gang to build and fly free flight models, and my success was nominal at best. I enjoyed the building and flying, but getting the planes into the air and chasing them, even though their rudders were set to keep them in reasonably close quarters if the wind didn't blow them out of sight.
     I had purchased several built flying models from Jim Sullivan who lived near where Spring Street dead ended into the Blackhawk School grounds. Some of the models were ready to fly, but I never flew them. I was more afraid of having a finger cut off by a propeller blade trying to start a model airplane engine than I was interested in flying the models, even though I loved to watch them fly and loved taking pictures of the guys and the models.
      I also designed color schemes, and Richardson flew several with color schemes I had produced and painted on his models. Besides flying at Franklin, we flew, literally across the street from his front yard on Cardinal Drive. There was an open field between his house and Richardson Manufacturing Company on the other side of the field. It was all the room we needed, even for my free flight efforts, and his parents were friendly and welcoming to all of us.
       Math tribulations continued and because of me; not because of Judy B. We decided to fix the problem at summer school where I would take only one class: remedial math.
       During the final weeks of my time at Franklin, I learned that a Mr. Daniel Sprecklemeyer, the choir teacher from Springfield High, would be coming around to audition students for his top Acappella Choir. When he arrived at Franklin after school one day, I got in line. The auditions were held with just a student standing by him as he sat at the piano. We talked about what I had sung, he accompanied me for a few measures of songs I had sung that year, and he gave me some music I hadn’t seen and asked me to sing the first tenor part. It was the final request I was afraid took me out of contention. I had never "sight-read " a note since my piano lessons; I just sang where the differences between the notes seemed to suggest I should take my voice: a half step when the next note was just a half a gradient up from the last and a longer leap up or down as the range suggested. I still don’t know how I did it, but only four Franklin students were chosen by Dan Sprecklemeyer to be SOPHOMORE members of his choir, and I was one of them. Man, I was pretty amazed and humbled by THAT news!
      Over the years, people have remarked about how conceited and full of myself I can be, and they wonder where it all started. I believe, as I write this autobiography, that the true genesis of my conceit (the "big bang" if you prefer) began the day I was accepted as a future sophomore into Springfield High School’s Acappella Choir. And despite my repeated attempts, I fear the world will never understand how truly thankful I am for that magic moment.
         After one week of sweating it out in summer school with Mr. Cline, teaching in the same room he had during the school year. – I decided to skip the rest of the course. This was the act of a desperate kid. I had skipped no classes during all of my book larnin’ up to that point. For the next two months, I departed the house at about 8:30 heading south down Whittier on my bike, but instead of turning right onto Outer Park, I turned left. The trek took me to Iles Park at Sixth at Ash, across the street from the municipal bus garage. I rode well into the park so I could not be seen from the streets. There I would swing, or sit at a picnic table with my school things and commune with nature for two and a half hours. I don’t believe it rained even one morning during this escapade. Every day, I would see Dad turn the corner from Ash onto Sixth Street in the used two-tone ‘56 Oldsmobile he had purchased (Mom drove the Buick to work at City Hall.) and went north to Roberts Bros. mens clothing store. Sometimes I’d return home early, and Bill was always gone. My fear would always be that Mom had come home for some reason, but I figured I’d see her car and could turn back.. When parents asked about report cards, I lied and explained they didn’t send out report cards.
     In August, the family was walking down the main thoroughfare at the Illinois State Fair, enjoying a sunny afternoon, when we almost walked into my friend Bob Smith, who greeted me like a long-lost brother, saying "Hey Job, we’ve missed you at summer school, We sure hope you’re doing okay." Dad heard the friendly salutation, called an immediate end to our visit to the fair, and marched us all back to our car. It all happened so fast, I can’t even remember talking back and getting in or the drive home!
        When we pulled into the driveway, we stopped midway up, and Dad told me to go to my room; he’d be up soon.
The lesson he taught me with his belt made a lasting impression. I had been punished before with "the belt" -- whatever was holding up his trousers at the time, but I knew I was in for something special. The sound of him coming up the steps, knowing where he was coming, the sound of the opening door, his pulling the sheet off of me and starting in with the belt after telling me to lie on my stomach on the mattress, the usual method, this is all alive in me long after the name of the cheerleader I dated at Springfield College in Illinois has faded away. I had never hidden under the covers before, and thus, I had never had them ripped off. Despite being clothed in summer shorts and a sport shirt, I cried so loudly that Nancy Gibson, across the street, later told me that he had her Dad had heard me from their from their yard. I had known Dad’s belt before, but never like that. And never again did I know the belt.

to be continued . . . . . . . .

return to Poet's Alibi, Chapter 2 here
return to PA, Chapter 1 here
return to mine personal om page here