Memoir, part 6

King and Queen of the 1951 BHS Girl's Formal

67 years later

For the most part I am going to write about high school in this section.  I have many memories of this time of my life, not all of them particularly uplifting.  But first I am going to talk about character: what kind of person I suppose I must have been.

My father kept journals for a few years, starting during WWII.  Most of what he discussed concerned the war; current events, and his musings on them.  However, often he would include observations about the family, and especially about me and my sister.  Apparently I could be a morose, egotistical, defiant little shit.  By contrast, Susannah seems to have been an unfailing ray of sunshine.  It appears that I went around with a scowl on my face, referring to anyone who thwarted or annoyed me as a “moron”.  (Unfortunately, I know this is true; I can remember.)  Susannah, however, was a happy child.  Somewhere in my anti-cancer blog I remember writing that all my life I have “walked” in a state of constant striving and inner turmoil.  Well, I guess it started early.  I was four years older than Susannah, so I tormented her unmercifully.  Also, I often sassed my mother and was mean to her: once - only once - in the presence of my father!  So, anyway, I wasn’t a very nice guy then – totally unlike now, right?

Now let’s talk about high school.  I was a good student so I didn’t have to study much.  I played several sports: football (reluctantly), basketball (earnestly), and tennis (joyfully).  I played clarinet and bass clarinet in the band, which was a very large and sophisticated affair, led by a Mr. Schaeffer, who was the very model for the movie the “Music Man.”  I also took piano lessons (against my wishes), and learned an easy technique that allowed one to sight read from sheet music designed for guitars.  That got me into Ted Ward’s dance band, as mentioned earlier.   My family seemed to think that I was a great piano player, but I knew better.  For one thing, I had no real ear for harmony: when we were playing some piece for which I lacked the sheet music I had to rely on the guitar player to tell me what key we were in!  Lately (2014) I have been trying to teach myself piano again, but progress has been slow and difficult.  Imperceptible, really.

Like any red-blooded American boy of that age I spent most of my time and energy thinking about girls.  I have mentioned the Big Four earlier (Marjory, Patsy, Peggy, Mitzi).  There were at least another half-dozen extraordinarily lovely young ladies in my class.  But, forget it!  None of them wanted anything to do with a geeky kid they’d grown up with; someone who wore droopy glasses, had fuzzy hair, didn’t drink or smoke, and got good grades.  Of course not: they went after the few upper classmen who projected a vaguely bad-boy aura; a bit like “The Fonze”, perhaps.  (Anyone born after 1970 should ask their parents about that allusion.)   By the time I was 16 and could drive I did manage to snag a girlfriend, Janey.  Janey was two years younger than me, and in a few years became at least two inches taller than me.  No matter: she was a girl!  I also dated several other females in her class, including one I later married – Virginia.  My  girl cousins, Charlene and Ginger, were two years younger than me, so I had an “in” with girls that age.  I also dated two girls in the class ahead of mine: Hildegard Hiller and Mary Cain – but neither relationship took off: they were smarter than me, but not smart enough to hide it.

My male friends included Art and Stan, of course, Jim Walling, and also several others.  We were mostly a bit nerdy; we did things like agree to wear the same day-glow orange shirt to school on a given day.  None of us smoked, none of us drank, and only Stan had much success with the other sex.  We served on the Student Council, the Student Newspaper, the Annual, and were officers of things like the Scholarship Society.  None of this had even the slightest effect on the fact that we were – nerds!  As I look back on that era now, after 63 years, I am astounded that all this didn’t get me down, but it didn't.  I was happy for the most part, and high school rolled by with what I suspect is a minimum of agony. 

You have to realize that Beaumont Union High School in those days had no more than 250 students.  There were only about 50 kids in my graduating class.  I was Valedictorian, starting quarterback on the football team, starting guard on the basketball team, and first singles in tennis.  With a class of 50 – not much to brag about.  I got my comeuppance the next year, when I started college.

So, now I will write down some of the more interesting things I remember about high school, as they pop into my mind.   No dark secrets will be divulged.

I was elected “King” of the Senior Prom.  Younger kids were free to attend, and also to vote.  My Kingship came about because my cousins Ginger and Charlene dragooned all their friends into voting for me.  My King picture in the 1951 Annual shows a pretty odd looking guy; a bushy white-man’s Afro, glasses slid far down on nose, head cocked to one side, dressed uncomfortably in a new suit with a fashionable (I guess) tie, all supporting a sappy grin.  My Queen, however, was a true beauty – Terry Kaiser.  She and I played mixed doubles in a county-wide high school tennis tournament, and made it to the finals – where we were wiped out without wining a game.  More about Terry follows.

I had the hots for Terry.  (Do people still use that expression?)  We took chemistry together, so I seized every opportunity to “help” her in lab.  I remember one day we were doing an experiment involving a Bunsen burner.  I put my arm around her, crouched low to show her what to do – and stuck my Afro into the flame.  I had a neat groove burned into my hair for a few days, until I could get a haircut.  You have no idea how bad a few grams of burning hair can smell! 

Also in Chem lab, Stan and I learned how to make sulfur dioxide, which smells terrible.  Several times we brewed some up, yelled “Gas!” and dived out the nearest window, onto the lawn.  Needless to say this did not go over well with the faculty; we received a bumper crop of demerits.  In fact, I had so many demerits that they wouldn’t let me officially graduate (although I went through all the trappings).  I had to spend a day hoeing weeds around the football field to work off my demerits. 

Once I did manage to get a date with Terry.  I went to her house to pick her up and, like girls of all generations, she wasn’t ready.  Thus I was forced to sit in the living room and talk to her father.  He didn’t know who I was.  He asked me what I was doing during that summer, and I told him that I was working for the Beaumont Hardware & Lumber Company, This set him off on a tirade about what a bunch of crooks the owners were – Bebees and Becks alike.  I managed to keep quiet while he ranted on.  When Terry finally came down the stairs I said “Terry, I don’t think your father knows who I am.”  She introduced me, he turned red, and we left.  I don’t think I ever went out with her again. 

Oh, I just thought of another story that encapsulates just what a little twit I sometimes could be.  I taught myself trigonometry one summer in Colorado.  I was scheduled to take it the next semester.  I showed the teacher that I could do the work – took last year’s final, I think – so he allowed me to just sit in class and work on pre-calculus.  This must have made me even cockier than I already was.  The teacher was a big guy, and lifted weights.  One day before class I was sitting on top of my desk talking to somebody, when Mr Tierney came in and asked us to take our seats.  When I didn’t, he said “Beck.  Sit down.” And, unbelievably, I said “make me.” Next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor in the hall, right next to the girls’ lockers – and Marjory Ormsby was staring at me and beginning to laugh.  I finally got back into that class after a week – in the meantime I had to help out cleaning the study hall. 

Beaumont High School in those days consisted of about equal quantities of kids who lived in town and kids who lived in Cherry Valley, a rural area just north of town.  There was a bus that picked up the Cherry Valley kids, but – when they reached 16 and could get a driver’s license -  all the boys bought cars and drove themselves (and their girlfriends, of course).   After school these guys would hang around, “working on” their cars – showing off, actually.  None of us town kids had a car, so we were dreadfully jealous.  I got my first car the year I went off to college.

However, I could borrow the family car.  I’m afraid I made rather poor use of it – some drag racing, some mischief that will not be related, and a lot of cruising around hoping to find some girls.  The first gas I ever bought cost 25 cents/gallon.

Another thing we did when we first acquired wheels was to drive down to Palm Springs in the early evening, and go swimming.  This was in the summer months, when heat had driven out most people who had somewhere else to go.  We would simply drive down some residential street, shinny up and look over some fences, and eventually we would find a deserted house with a full swimming pool in the back yard.  Then we would climb over the fence, and have a party.  Sometimes there were girls along, but mostly not.  When not, we would splash around in the pool, then sit somewhere drinking cokes – and talk about girls.  We did talk about sports some, too, but mostly girls.  Let’s face it – we were pathetic!