High School Memories

Class of 1967

We were the class of 1967—and those last two digits, class of ’67, linger with the graduating senior well into dotage. Even in the nursing home you’re gonna remember your date of high school graduation. Graduation does not guarantte financial gain, but without the high school degree you’re nothing. May as well get it.  is a Even famous college dropouts, genius billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and guys you wouldn’t figure to be college dropouts, like newsman Walter Cronkite—felt compelled to graduate from high school. My pals, Bruce, my Jewish buddy, Whitey, the baseball pitcher, Bone, the skinny guy who became an airline pilot, and Ronnie, the Italian, all made it through high school. We went to colleges in places like Wisconsin and Ohio, and in my case to the intellectual hothouse at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

I was popular but shy around girls. My cheerleader heartthrob,would go off to a SUNY school, short for State University of New York. And for her I pined for her the most. But I even pined for her when we were just a few feet away from eachother, attending classes together at Peninsula High. We passed notes in class. She knew some technique for drawing a goofy cartoon figure, big hands draped over a fence. She and a few of her cheerleader girlfriends referred to themselves as “the Prudes.” That sums it up. No sex with her. So that adventure had to begin, without the cheerleader, when I got off to college.

Senior year brought some magic but mostly served as a device for letting go; letting go of parents, letting go of friends, letting go of the hometown on the south shore of Long Island. American teenagers get four years to absorb a mammoth amount of hormonal and intellectual growth. Peer pressure presses down like solid steel girders resting on a wooden palette placed squarely on your chest. Of course you don’t know that at the time. The horrid question—“What do you plan to do with your life?” kicks in midway through senior year and persists for the next few decades. The simple answer—“Going to college” takes care of the next few years.

Senior year exists in a blur. Certain images of flashing intensity appear, tell their story and move on.

Whitey shows me a diagram of a baseball stadium of the future—“You see Theo, move this section of seats and the field changes from baseball to football. Everybody has a good seat.”

What the hell was Whitey talking about? I thought a stadium was just a stadium. He had ideas for cool baseball uniforms design for major league teams. I didn’t get it, didn’t see the charm. Hell, was I wrong. Yards got built in Baltimore in 1992, a full 25 years after Whitey showed me his diagrams.. His sensed for professional sports explosion. Hell, ESPN didn’t even start until 1979. Should have invested in Whitey. And yes, he is a millionaire now and sports gear is his main portfolio.

Ronnie and I shot pool in his attic almost every night of senior year. My GPA was top ten in the high school class. Ronnie was way below but smarter in realizing that high school achievement has no correlation to future success. Ronnie retired a wealthy man, at age 45, after a career as an immigration lawyer .

Ronnie and I debated a single point during those nights shooting pool in his attic: “Who’s better—the Four Tops or Bob Dylan?”

I chose Bob Dylan, me being the son of liberal, NY Times reading parents. Ronnie went for the soul music, and the Motown sound of the Four Tops. We camped out in the attic at the top of his house. He had a pool table, and a record player, or turntable. You could play 45 rpm singles and 33 1/3 rpm LP, or long playing albums. I recall the Beach Boys playing a prominent role on the playlist. We actually had surfing on Long Island, just across the Great South Bay on the Atlantic Ocean, but we were not surf practitioners. The Beach Boys great line, “two girls for every boy,” expressed in Surf City, qualifies as the most succinct expressions of male fantasy fufillment every brought to vinyl.

We never resolved Who’s better—Four Tops/Temptations or Bob Dylan? The discussion lasted all of senior year and one thing clearly resolved itself—Ronnie shoots a better game of 8-ball pool than yours truly. I still remember Ronnie looking down his stick with only a corner of his left thumb guiding the front end of his stick, his eyes focused calmly on the shot, just before he nailed it and moved around the table in the cramped attic before lining up his next shoot. Boom, he calls “8-ball, corner pocket” and another game is over. I didn’t mind losing to Ronnie, just hated the predictability of it all.