Part IIIb of a multi-part series

[The author and his pal, Fred Lancaster,  had  agreed on the "inevitability" of one of them being elected Student Council President. The Very  Fabric of the Universe was threatened when a  girl, newly arrived from a military base overseas, decided to test the Pre-Ordained Order of Things.]

Mary Wolak’s family lived on 25th Loop at Sandia Base. That street, on the east side of the base, had the larger houses for the colonels and generals. Her father, an Army colonel, was the base engineer. My family lived on 51st Loop, on the western boundary of the base. This was literally as far away from 25th Loop as one could live. My father was an Army major, about to be promoted to lieutenant colonel. At the time I met Mary, Dad had just left for Viet Nam. We would remain in the house on 51st Loop until he returned.

Because we didn’t go to Catholic school, my siblings and I had to attend “catechism” or”CCD” classes. [CCD stood for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine]. These classes, taught at Sandia Base by the Sisters of Charity and a few lay volunteers, had been on Saturday mornings when I was younger. At some point, the classes were switched to Sunday mornings before the 9:00 a.m. Mass. Sunday was not a sleep-in day in our house. As I had expected, Mary Wolak turned up for ninth grade CCD the Sunday after our encounter in the school hallway. The ninth graders were taught in the sanctuary of the chapel, because instructional space was short. Mary Wolak sat two pews in front of me, due to the Sisters rules that boys and girls did not sit together at Mass. (A violation of the spirit of Vactican II, in my opinion. Fortunately, I had the good sense not to point this out to Sister James). As I looked at Mary’s brown hair and listened to her voice as we sang, 1968 threw at me what was about to become the second great unrequited crush of my teen years.

But Mary just wasn’t buying what I was selling. And I tried everything. She tossed them right back at me. Although there are explanations–and one big one, of course,–why in 1968, the year Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was an Oscar-winning film, a Polish-American girl might keep an African-American guy at arms’ length, there was something different about her parries. I realized that aside from the crush, I would like Mary Wolak in any event.

*** *** ***

Back at school, the presidential campaign was in full swing. There were posters for the three candidates. Mine featured a representation of a doorkey, with the inevitable and unfortunate slogan: “He’s the key to our success!”

On the day of the election, there was a school-wide assembly in the gymnasium. The three candidates would speak and the student body would return to their classrooms to cast their ballots.

Fred Lancaster and I had worn ties that day and Mary Wolak showed up in the brown suit I had first seen her wearing. There was a straw pick for speaking position and I got the third and last position. This to me was a good omen. Fred had to go first. As he rose to speak, I could observe in the audience scores of purple objects made of construction paper affixed with straight pins to their wearers’ lapels. They were doorkeys and each said, “I’m on Craig’s Key Team.”

The speeches themselves I don’t recall in great detail. I’m sure Fred listed reasons why he would be a good student council president. I do know that Mary Wolak introduced herself and said why she was running for president. I do know that after my speech, it seemed that there were a million people crowding around me and that I had a headache.

About two o’clock that afternoon, the principal, Mr Mock, used the school intercom to summon the candidates to the office. My recollection is that we didn’t make to the office, but were met outside by Mrs Dart, the much-reviled [well, muchly and mostly by me] drama teacher, and Mrs, Campbell the Younger, who was the student council advisor. Mrs Dart began announcing the results for the “down-ticket” races. My informal coalition partners, Judy Worlund and Eva Castleman, had been elected vice president and secretary respectively . . . and, yes, I had won the presidency! Amid exultation of some and gloom of others, the candidates were dismissed to return to class, except for me.

Mrs Dart said, “Young man, did you write that speech yourself?” Uh-oh, where is this going? I thought.

“Yes, ma’am, I did,” I said truthfully. Mrs Campbell the Younger said, “We’ve never heard a student speak like that before. Not just the ideas, but the vocabulary . . . .”

Mrs Dart said, “With ability like that, you should be in the Honor Society. Why aren’t you?”

I thought very carefully about what to say next. Hearing my mother’s refrain in my head, “Honesty is the best policy!”, I decided to go for it.

“Well,” I said measuredly, “I got a ‘D’ in a course in eighth grade.”

“What course was that?” Mrs Dart asked.

“Drama,” said I.

Mrs Dart seemed taken aback momentarily. Then she said, “Mrs Campbell and I have reviewed the Honor Society regulations and it seems that we have the power to admit any student who character, morals, and achievement meet the desired standard regardless of his grades. So from this moment on, you are a member of the Van Buren Honor Society.”

Now this was sweet!

Part IIIa of a multi-part series

At school, life was humming along with the usual start of the year energy, but made all the more intense for me as a ninth grader. How had I arrived here so fast? There was quite a lot to be done as a ninth grader and if ever a class took ninth grade with gusto, it was the Class of 1969.

Van Buren Junior High School was in 1969 about eight years old. It was situated along a busy north-south thoroughfare in southeast Albuquerque, near the edge of the semi-secret atomic weapons installation called Sandia Base. All of the “base kids”–those who lived at Sandia Base–went to Van Buren as did the kids from the surrounding Southeast Heights neighborhoods which varied from working class to upper middle class. Students from further west and around what then constituted Kirtland Air Force Base, went to Wilson Junior High School, Van Buren’s archrival.

My “posse” (to use a word in a context not yet invented in 1968) consisted of smart but strange guys like Dennis Johnson, the scholarly Marvel comic book fan John DuBois, the just plain smart Charles McElwee, the smart and athletic Johnny Teale, the smart and preppy Fred Lancaster, the smart and clever Doug Carlton and others who floated in and out of this ill-defined group.

Doug Carlton epitomized the combination of brilliance and irreverance in our set. One day in eighth grade science, my favorite teacher, Mrs Alice Scott, was at the blackboard lecturing and writing notes about a certain class of metamorphic rock that had igneous origins and was found in New Mexico.

Doug, as usual, was carrying on a running commentary on her remarks which had the middle of the class room in an uproar. Mrs Scott, a very genial woman in her forties (I would guess–the forties part–not the genial part), had admonished him several times. We all knew not take advantage of Mrs Scott–we liked her too much. But this day, Doug kept going and at some point must have crossed a line.

When that line was crossed, the next event was shocking. Mrs Scott, wearing low heels, spun around like a right-handed pitcher about to pick off a runner at first base. Her hand was drawn back quickly and there was fire in her eyes. Her hand moved forward faster than anything Koufax or Drysdale had ever had, and with her skirt swirling, she fired a piece of chalk aimed precisely at Doug Carlton’s forehead. Paradoxically, it all seemed to happen in slow motion at first.

Doug was sitting to my left and as accurate as her aim had been, Doug’s reaction was as quick. He ducked to the right, avoiding the missile by millimeters. The chalk exploded into dust against a blackboard in the back of the room with a loud bang.

When I looked up, the classroom was silent. Mrs Scott still had fire shooting from her eyes and was breathing heavily. Doug Carlton dusted himself off and said, “Wow, that scared the schist out of me!” A beat. Then Mrs Scott doubled over laughing.

The really important thing to me about September of ninth grade was the student council election. I had been thinking about it all summer and I was ready to run for president. Having just watched the two major party conventions on television, I felt I knew enough about politics to pull it off. I went to Fred Lancaster and suggested that we run as a ticket–he could be the vice-presidential candidate. Fred and I knew each other well enough that he was neither surprised or offended by my offer. Likewise, I was neither surprised or offended when he turned it down and told me he was running for president.

Fred was one of the “Four Hills” kids; one who lived in an upper middle class enclave near the Sandia Mountains called Four Hills which had an actual country club, stables, and horses. Most folks that of Four Hills people as “rich,” but I don’t know. I don’t recall exactly what Fred’s father did for a living. Fred did have an unmistakable air of privilege about him; how we became friends is hard for some people to fathom. Anyway, I liked Fred then and have pleasant memories of him now.

The presidential campaign would be the old fashioned type: we would comport ourselves as gentlemen and let the better man win. Fred and I each, for different reasons, felt a certain inevitability about winning the office.

One day about a week or so before the election, Fred caught up with me between classes. He had a look on his face that I couldn’t quite read.

“Have you heard?” he asked me. He seemed a bit huffy–indignant in a way.

“Heard what?”

He fairly snarled as he answered. “There’s a girl running against us.” He gave each word the emphasis the situation called for. A girl! Running against us! For whatever fate had in mind, the inevitability of one of us being elected student council president did not countenance the entry of a third candidate–and especially not a girl!

Any fool could see that her plan was that the boys would vote for anybody but a girl, thus likely splitting the boys vote and leaving the path wide open for the girl to win!

Who was this conniving wench? Kathleen Gregory? Not her style; besides, she would have told me first. Marta Hoge? Really not her style: weren’t her parents Quakers or something? Judy Worlund and Eva Castleman had already pledged to support me as had Laura Wells, Barbara Stewart, and other ninth grade girls.

Aha, it was Darryl Glen! But eighth graders couldn’t run for student council, even if they had skipped the fourth grade and academically laid waste to every other grade since. I couldn’t imagine who would have the moxie to challenge us in this way.

As I stood for a moment pondering, an attractive girl in a brown suit came down the hall. She had brown hair and blue eyes, and I had never seen her before. And not since Phyllis Bloom’s tailored suits and polished nails in seventh grade had any girl at Van Buren dressed so stylishly.

“There she is!” Fred snarled, pointing a finger. I had never seen him like this before. Then I did something I had never done before. I walked up to a girl and introduced myself.

“Hi. I’m Craig,” I said, extending my hand. “You must be new here [muttering under my breath "or else you'd have the good sense not to mess with inevitability!"].” I couldn’t stop taking in her striking beauty.

“Yes,” she said, shaking my hand and looking me in the eye, “I’m Mary Wolak. We just moved here from Germany.” Ahhh, another Base kid like me. “I think I saw you at Mass on Sunday.” Hmmm, a Catholic Base kid like me. But wait a minute, you just got here and you’re running for student council president?

Had I said that out loud? Apparently so, because Mary Wolak replied, “It was my dad’s idea. He thinks it’s a really good way for me to get to know people.” A good way to get to know people? Didn’t Mary Wolak and her dad know better than to fool with the inevitable forces of nature?

Part II of a multi-part series.

In 1968, my family lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico,  at the then-semi-secret installation known as Sandia Base, a place I have referred to as “the ultimate gated community.” We attended Albuquerque Public Schools both on and off the base. In 1968, I attended Van Buren Junior High School at 700 Louisiana Boulevard SE, very near the base.  Albuquerque, then a city of about 250,000 in population, could seem like light-years away from the strife in the rest of the Nation.  There was relative calm after Dr. King’s assassination. When the 150th Fighter Group of the New Mexico Air National Guard (the so-called “Enchilda Air Force”) was called to active duty in January 1968 in response to the USS Pueblo incident, there were no protests, but instead, great civic parades. The somewhat skewed view of civil rights events troubled my parents with respect to their children’s limited experiential education.

School was out just before Bobby Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles. And a little while later, we were off on what would be the last of our California vacations. But so much had happened in such a short period of time–well, I felt I had to talk it all out with somebody. Who? Kathleen Gregory came to mind first. She was one of the sort of bright people I always had found attractive–at least since my encounter with Ginny Lodge in the fourth grade. Kathleen read the newspapers every day, unlike most eighth graders [The editor of the city's leading newspaper, The Albuquerque Journal, was the father of our classmate, Mary Beth Brown.] And apparently Kathleen had a family that encouraged her to read, learn, and discuss current events, quite like mine.

But Kathleen’s family was off on vacation while we were still in town–they’d be back about the time we left. I spent the rest of the summer talking to Kathleen Gregory in my head.

Apart from the vacation, it was quite a summer. I played in the Senior Division of Little League baseball and had my best season ever. It was actually as if over the off-season, I had magically acquired some talent. Dennis Johnson and I were on a team called the Devils; I don’t recall the names of the other teams in the league. In any event, we pretended that we were a major league team–an expansion franchise. We located our team in San Diego, which would not have its own major league Padres for another year. Of course, our perversely named “San Diego Devils” were a National League team.

The Devils laid waste to the rest of the Senior Division league and won the league championship. This was remarkable for several reasons, not the least of which was that we didn’t have an adult coach. We managed ourselves and once in awhile, some adult or another would stop by our practice and make sure we were doing the fundamentals.

One afternoon as we were practicing in a field along Gibson Boulevard, sirens pierced the air as an ambulance and military police vehicles raced toward lower A Street which ran parallel, mostly, to Gibson. We stopped to watch what was happening. The official entourage pulled into the next to last cul-de-sac on A Street. We couldn’t see what they were doing, so we went back to baseball. The MPs and Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputies were still there by the time we left for home. That evening, Mom told me that Mrs Baker of lower A Street, had killed her husband with a shotgun as he walked through the door from work that afternoon. [The Bernalillo County District Attorney said there was insufficient evidence to charge Mrs Baker with a crime. Albuquerque Journal, July 3, 1968, p. B-8.]

School started all too soon again. But, as was traditional, the Albuquerque Public Schools had a holiday for the Opening Day of the New Mexico State Fair. Dennis Johnson and I decided to go to the Fair. I also decided that at almost 14 years old, I would forgo the boots, spurs, cowboy hat, and faux six-shooter that I and a lot of kids had worn to Opening Day in the past.

When we got to the Fair that evening, Dennis and I headed straight for the food booths where we each bought a foot-long corn dog. To fully appreciate what happened next, it is perhaps useful to have an example of the deportment of Dennis Johnson.

Dennis was a tall and lean blond kid who looked like he was or could have been a surfer. Dennis was extraordinarily bright, which was obvious when he and I won the regional science fair the following year. But Dennis was not a nerd or geeky in any sense. Dennis was just a bit short of being Lex Luthor — a handsome, brilliant guy who finds less than socially redeeming outlets for his creativity. In the fall semester of our eighth grade year, Dennis had caused panic among a segment of the faculty–and outrage among those who weren’t panicked. He had brought a “Batman” action figure to school and hung it in his locker. I mean hanged it, with an elaborately contrived noose! When other kids saw “Batman” having been “executed” in this manner, it touched off a frenzy of similar “hangings.” Barbie and Ken were lynched, for who knows what offense. Gumby was strung up. And certainly most offensively of all considering where we were and who we were for the most part, somebody hanged G.I. Joe, naked from the waist up, with a bag over his head. Most of the hangings were in the lockers of kids who were not known as troublemakers–who were in fact the National Junior Honor Society types.

Now the capital punishment of these effigies was widely known among the eighth grade, and perhaps part of the seventh grade. But it was weeks before any faculty member caught on to it. It happened that some ne’er-do-well was being suspended or expelled and his locker was being cleared out by a teacher who discovered that he had hung somebody, er, something in his locker. Well, this was to be expected of his type, I’m sure the teacher must have thought. But then, Mr. Ne’er-Do-Well spilled the beans on the rest of us and the faculty went into a 100% meltdown.

I don’t know if it was the hangings alone or if it was the fact that “the good kids” had done them that set the faculty on the path of believing that they were dealing with a major psychological epidemic. The entire eighth grade was summoned to open their lockers and to explain everything therein that was not a schoolbook. The principal, Mr. Mock, himself, arrived to oversee the operation. One could read the palpable distress in the teachers’ faces as they discovered that their high achievers had undertaken to “kill” various superheroes and glamorous dolls. But I could see a slight, ever so slight, grin on the face of Dennis Johnson. Then I got it. He had not set out merely to put some crazy thing in his locker; no, that wasn’t it. This was it. Horrified and dismayed teachers . . . confused classmates struggling to explain the unexplainable . . . this was what Dennis Johnson had had in mind all along!

[Note: Some will find this story deeply troubling, given the history of lynchings of African-Americans in the South not that far removed from the time of this story and the then-recent assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I can say that the idea seemed to have been inspired by a Halloween display several kids had seen. I can also say that neither nor my younger brother had ever experienced any racial incidents from white students at Van Buren Junior High School (except the one time a white girl told me that her father, a preacher, had told her that I was going to hell for "liking" another white girl--and I got the better of that in the end). I can also say that there is some similarity here to an incident in which I had purchased at the State Fair a piece of jewelry the vendor described as a ""surfers cross" and assured me that all the "cool" kids in California were wearing them. When I wore it one Saturday, my father exploded in anger and forbade me to ever wear it again. He said, "Don't you know what that is? Don't you know what that stands for?" Then he explained that the "surfers cross" was an exact replica of a Nazi military decoration called the "Iron Cross." The fact that this story may evoke such a response from some is evidence of the necessity of educating our children--all of our children--of the evils that have existed in the world that they may never be repeated and that each succeeding generation learn empathy for those around them.]

At the Fair, after we got our foot-long corn dogs, we decided to go see one of the several “freak” shows. We went over to the area where it was, but stood outside to finish our corn dogs since food was not allowed in the short squat building that looked something like a mobile home, bizarrely decorated.

As we stood there chomping on our dinner, a loudspeaker on the building described what we were going to see. The voice was not the enthusiastic voice usually associated with carnival barkers. No, this voice was low in volume and creepily monotone.

“You will see a cow give birth to a three headed calf . . . a woman with hundreds of snakes growing out of her head . . . it’s all real . . . the two headed baby . . . it’s real . . . a man with seven foot fingernails . . . .”

Perhaps it was the heat; maybe it was the corn dog, but I began to get nauseous. I glanced over at Dennis, who was slightly green as well.

“I don’t think I really need the rest of this,” I said, chucking a good nine or ten inches of the foot long corn dog into a wastebasket.

“Me neither,” Dennis replied somberly, “And, it’s okay with me if we skip the freak show.”