RANDOM HIGH SCHOOL MEMORIES

RANDOM HIGH SCHOOL MEMORIES

I remember when we moved into the new school building during my sophomore year. The building hadn't been finished on time for the start of the new school year, so we moved in during October. We each were assigned a book locker and a combination lock. This was my introduction to technology – the first combination lock I had ever used. The combination was 22 - 0 - 10. It took all of us a couple minutes to get our locks open, and it didn't take much longer for people to start sharing lock combinations with friends. That was not always good because today's close friend might not be quite as close next week. Within a few days it started: people's locks would be upside down, making it difficult to enter the combination and get the lock off. More than one person was late to class because of an upside down lock. Soon, someone discovered an even more nasty lock trick. Somehow, the lock was not only upside down, but it was also tucked into the locker handle making it harder to even see the side with the numbers. I'm sure I don't remember how that worked.

Our high school baseball coach had been in the armed forces with Bob Turley, a pitcher with the Baltimore Orioles. He had been Turley's catcher during their stint as baseball players for their armed services unit. Bob Turley came to visit our high school, and I got his autograph – the first real major leaguer I had ever met. That autograph has long since been lost.

During away trips to football and basketball games, the team and cheerleaders rode the same bus. It was generally a noisy and fun ride. Sometime before we got to the opposing team's school, one of the cheerleaders would start singing “The Lord's Prayer,” and everyone – players, coaches, as well as cheerleaders, joined in. That has always been a cherished memory.

I didn't play football (I was an equipment manager.), I never made the starting lineup for basketball, and my high school baseball career was as short as it was embarrassing. During my one at bat, I watched three pitches start toward me and then curve over the plate for called strikes. After the third pitch, the umpire said, and I quote, “Sit down, son.” My disappointment was profound, for baseball had always been “my sport.” Even though I knew what a curve ball was, I didn't realize that it would look and act quite like it did. Sooooo, I became the baseball equipment manager and score keeper, quite a comedown from my dreams of knocking in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth in the championship game.

My first car was a 1951 Chevy two door. Even though my mother asked me not to get it painted red, it wound up being “Morocco Red” and “India Ivory.” Our school colors were maroon and white, and “Morocco Red” looked a whole lot like maroon, so my mother was okay with the color. Gas mileage was good, 23 mpg on a trip, but oil mileage was another deal, 50 to 100 miles per quart. BUT, it ran, and it looked pretty cool with the school colors, fender skirts, and white walls. Well, they weren't really white walls; they were “portawalls.” Portawalls were white rubber circles made to fit the rim size, and they could be moved from tire to tire, so I didn't have to spend the extra few bucks for whitewalls. Unfortunately, the car had no radio, and that was a serious disadvantage in dating.

On our senior class trip to Washington, DC, several of us decided to take a trip to the Russian Embassy during a free afternoon. We took a taxi to the address, got out of the cab, walked up to the door and knocked (or rang the doorbell). We were admitted to the foyer and asked why we were there. We had no real answer, so our stay there was rather short. I'm sure my photo coming out of the Russian Embassy in May of 1959 is somewhere in the FBI or CIA files.

I don't know how many times I was in love in high school, but I was very deeply in “like” several times. To my everlasting joy, I am now married to one of the beauties I was very deeply in “like” with in high school.

Three of us who later in life were to become a farmer, a missionary, and a Christian school teacher/administrator, once conspired to put birds in the open window of our home-room teacher. The later-to-be missionary had the job of closing the windows at the end of the day. On this particular day, he closed but didn't lock them. The three of us went to the later-to-be farmer's home and caught three or four birds in the hay loft of his father's barn. Since the school was at the edge of town near a woods, we could sneak up to the school house after dark. That night we parked along the dirt road in the woods, crawled down the hill to the school, pushed the windows open, and put the birds inside. The next morning I was a little earlier than usual and was waiting at the classroom door when our homeroom teacher showed up. Well, the birds had done their job very well. Many desks had been “decorated” by the birds, and our homeroom teacher was in a tizzy. I helped chase the birds out the windows while someone else went to get the janitor. I don't know that the identities of the “bird dropping pranksters” were ever discovered by the school officials.

The three of us occasionally triple dated in the future farmer's 1955 Buick Roadmaster, and we always took the girls home first. That is until the night the future farmer came walking back to the car with a silly grin on his face, after walking his steady date to the door. It seems that they had had a good night kiss at the door. After that night, the girls never went home first. I'm happy to say that the future farmer and his steady got married several years later.