Middle School Years: The Idyllic Interlude

The popular conception of the middle school years is that it is a time of turmoil and angst for teachers, parents, and students alike, a volcanic eruption of hormones and antisocial behavior. But my middle school years, as they survive in memory, were a happy time, a blissful bridge between the circles of hell that were elementary school and high school. It is peculiar, though, what you recollect and what you understand when you look back from later years.

I started middle school, sixth grade, the fall of 1961. The previous year had been a special one for our family. In May of that year, after a decade of having boys, my mother had a baby girl, which, judging by all the family excitement, I gathered was a very big deal. It also was the year that the first Catholic, John F. Kennedy, was elected president, something that gave my Catholic father a sense of satisfaction.

The advent of my baby sister meant the need for more living area. We lived in a two-bedroom bungalow with an unfinished attic. My brothers and I shared a bedroom. To add a bedroom for the new arrival, my father undertook to finish the attic for us three boys. That meant adding plumbing for a bathroom, electrical wiring for power and drywall and paneling for the walls, much of which my father did himself. Along the side wall that had two windows, he put a long, laminated board for a desktop, bracketed by bookshelves and beneath which each of us boys had a drawer for our pencils and pens. To save space, he set our dressers inside the walls and beneath the slope of the roof and then attached paneling so they matched each other and the paneling of the surrounding walls. I thought that this was so cool. When he did the plumbing, he taught me how to solder pipes. There was a thrilling sense of danger holding the blow torch and an hypnotic appeal watching the solder melt and be drawn around the pipe toward the blue flame. I was dad’s apprentice.

There was this fascinating new little being that my mother doted on. But I wasn’t jealous. She showed me how to change my sister’s diaper. I was mom’s assistant. My entry into middle school corresponded to the opening of St. Albert the Great Elementary and Middle School, which was only a half mile down the road from our home. Being a Protestant, my mother never went to church with us, but the school being so close, she became involved in its fundraising activities, like bake sales and game nights. I was Mom’s bunco partner.

With the school being within walking distance of my home, instead of boarding a crowded bus in the morning, I walked to school. I didn’t mind the walk and felt grown up being in charge of my younger siblings. I was the responsible older brother.

St. Albert’s middle school, as classes changed, moved around the teachers rather than the students and that meant the comfort of progressing through the school day with the same group of familiar faces. It was in middle school that I had my first best friend: Raymond Schaeffer. I remember nothing about him except that he often had a broad grin and would laugh at my jokes.

There was also Dan. He had a glass eye and would like to take it out and open his empty socket to make the girls shriek. He was not a stellar student as I recall. Then there was Donald. He dwelled in the academic basement. Our grade cards were folded cardboard with the course names running down an inside margin and the term names running horizontally, forming a grid where our grades were marked. For each subject, there was a bright red line. It was our expected grade average, placed there so that parents and students could see if grades were above the red line, showing improvement, or below average, showing lack of effort. Once, Donald was eager to show me his report card. His red lines barely rose above the bottom of each square of the grid, but he was proud to show me any D pluses that appeared above it.

Big Mike sat beside me. He was not academically motivated, which meant that, when the teacher was talking in front of the class, he had a lot of free time. He passed some of that time dropping pencils and looking up the blue plaid skirts of girls in the class. Although a fascinating activity for him, he still had time on his hands. So he invented a game in which I was a somewhat reluctant participant. The game was simple. When the teacher’s back was turned to the blackboard, he socked me in the arm. When the teacher wasn’t looking, I was expected to do the same to his arm. On the other side of me was Bigger Mike. He liked this game too. He was a good student; he was just able to multitask, learning while punching. Big Mike’s punches could hurt a bit because he punched with his knuckles. But I discovered, although I was a small boy, that I too could punch with my knuckles, targeting the part of the shoulder beneath which was the knobby upper end of the humerus bone. Eventually these strikes would cause Big Mike enough pain that he tired of the game for the rest of the day. Bigger Mike, fortunately, punched with the flat of his fist, which really didn’t hurt. But, unfortunately, it landed with more force than Big Mike’s, jarring me and sometimes moving my desk so that it scraped across the floor. His arms were like whole hog legs, and, pound away as I would, I could not reach bone. I had to wait for Bigger Mike to become bored. Nevertheless, life seemed good. I was one of the guys.

And I invented my own fun game. At lunch time, we were released to play, usually going to the grassy yard beside the school. A friend named Steve would crouch on all fours behind a boy in our class and I would push them so that they tumbled back over Steve. No victim was hurt or took offense. We all would laugh together at the prank. Steve and I decided to prank every boy in our class. We were successful until it came to the last boy: Ralph. Ralph was the largest boy in my class, larger than Bigger Mike. He had legs like tree trunks, and, like tree trunks, they seem rooted to the ground. Despite catching him by surprise and pushing with all my might, he simply rocked a little and remained upright, looking at us the way a lion might regard a gnat.

Academically, my red line was a smidge above the C range. I liked to read. The school had a small library, and I took out hagiographic books on American presidents and explorers, books that fed my naïve, idealistic view of the world. I also enjoyed the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, his Tarzan books and space adventure tales. When my aunt took me on visits to downtown Cleveland, she would buy them for me when I picked them from the paperback sections of department stores.

The scantily clad women on the cover of those books, along with lingerie ads in the newspaper, were an outlet for my prurient interest in girls. I once or twice prayed to God to see a naked lady, hoping that there was sort of divine dispensation for good little boys, although deep down I think that I realized God must put those prayers on the discard pile.

My religiosity was part of my sense of security, adding to that supplied by family and school. Of course, there were unfortunate events in history like the Protestant Reformation, but now John F. Kennedy was president and things were looking good. Once a boy in religion class asked a nun, “If God is all powerful, could he create a boulder that he couldn’t lift.” Now, that was a stumper. But my faith was affirmed when I would pray at night to catch a pass the next school day at the lunch time football pick-up game, and then, that next day, sure enough the ball would come sailing to me, I would securely grasp it and run, and my teammates would cheer.

I loved football, playing at school and with my brothers and the neighborhood kids, watching the Cleveland Browns on television. I had a football embossed with the name of Milt Plum (Browns’ quarterback 1957-1961) and idolized number 32, the great Jim Brown, who was in his heyday at that time. My father, like many other dads, strung antennae wire all through the upstairs, hoping to catch the out-of-town television signal for at-home games that were blacked out.

It seemed such a good time in my life. Even my father’s drinking seemed better, although perhaps sleeping upstairs, I just could no longer hear the arguments or my mother crying at night.

The world outside my family, church and school barely existed for me. There were professional sports, of course. There was also the one television that stood in the corner of our living room, the set on which my mother watched westerns like Bonanza and Wagon Train and variety shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and Lawrence Welk. On Saturdays, our favorite aunt, unmarried Aunt Kate, would always come to stay the night, and we kids would sit with her and watch Saturday Night at the Movies. We would have all had our weekly baths. She would bring her hair dryer, and we took turns with the bonnet on our heads drying our hair. As the bonnet would swell with warm air, my aunt would be in the kitchen making Jiffy Pop, shaking the tin pan as the foil cover would expand with hot air and popped corn, swelling up like the plastic hair bonnet in the adjoining room.

Other than the music of the variety shows, the outside world was the polka music that my father played on the car radio on the way to church, music with lyrics like “In heaven there ain’t no beer, that’s why we drink it here” and “I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me, she’s too fat for me, she’s too fat for me.” There were also the 45s that my aunt bought me, novelty records and the crooning of pop idol Ricky Nelson, songs that I would play over and over on a small victrola, easy listening for easy living.

My eight-grade year, the outside world began to make itself felt, began to disturb the peace. In November, we arrived at school, opened our desks as usual, and got to work. Then came the principal’s voice on the school’s PA system. The president had been shot. A television on a cart was wheeled into our classroom, plugged in and turned on. The president was dead. All the girls in the class cried. The nuns wept. We boys looked simply uncomfortable. Except for Donald. His head was down on his desktop, beneath his crop of wavy blond hair his face was bright red as he sobbed. All the boys stared at him in silence. Finally, I cracked, “I think he has his nose caught in his desk.” The boys laughed with relief. We knew that boys didn’t cry. Even for murdered presidents. Even Catholic presidents. I was one of the guys.

In February of the next year, the news showed a new British band arriving at an airport and being surrounded by a mob of screaming teenage girls. When the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, we didn’t know what to make of them. My father came into the living room, paused before the set, and predicted, “Those guys will never make it.”

At the end of the school year, it was time for awards. Old Father Winters came into our class. He announced the award for academic excellence, and no one was surprised, although over fifty years later I can’t recall her name. Then came the award for Best Effort. Here the priest paused for dramatic effect. All the guys around me began whispering, “I bet it’s David. It has to be David. Yeah, David.” Then the priest said my name, and the same boys looked befuddled for a few seconds. It was my proud moment, the crowning achievement of three years of earnest endeavor and academic performance just a smidge above the C range.

The glory culminated the following Sunday when Father Winters read the award names from the pulpit. After he read my name and award, he was moved to add, to tack on a bit warm sentiment, “Before I read the name of who would get the Best Effort award, all the students knew whose name I would say. They began to say, ‘Dale! Dale! I bet its Dale!’ So, well-deserved recognition.”

It was downhill from there. At the end of the academic year, the school took students on a long bus ride to Cedar Point amusement park. We had to pair up for the trip. In sixth grade, I went with David whose red line on his report card was, like mine, a smidge above average. But I got motion sick on the trip there and didn’t want to go on any of the rides with him, so next year he paired up with someone else. Fortunately, a kid named Kip was willing to go with me. Kip didn’t mind if I got sick on the bus because he planned to go on the rides with the girls. When the end of the eight-grade year rolled around, though, he shocked the other boys by boldly asking a girl to go with him. That left me being the loser paired with the teacher since no student was willing to partner with me.

The most crushing blow, though, came with the realization that, beg as I may, my father would not send me to the parochial high school, Padua. All the students whose report red lines were average or above were going to Padua. My best friend Ray Schaeffer was going to Padua. By what I perceived as my father’s willful cruelty, I was condemned to be going to public school. Back then, parents didn’t explain their decisions to children. You just got your marching orders. It was probably just a matter of not having the tuition money.

There was something else, though, keeping me up at night that summer, a painful itching, twitching irritation in my ankle. After my parents saw that it wasn’t going away, they took me to a specialist who said that it was an inflamed tendon in my ankle. “Don’t worry,” the doctor solemnly reassured my father. “It won’t keep him from servicing. He’ll still be eligible for the draft.” My father said nothing in reply to the doctor’s unsolicited remarks.

The draft reference meant nothing to me then. In the presidential biographies I checked out of the school library, I am sure that I never read about the Truman doctrine of containment, reiterated in Lyndon Johnson’s policy on Vietnam. I am sure that I had never heard of Vietnam, nor in August of that year 1964 would I have been aware of Congress passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, authorizing the president to use military force in that country. The draft would not be activated until 1969. The doctor’s comment would be just an odd kernel of information to deposit in my memory bank, along with a story told by my mother. I was born that day after the Korean War started. Some old crone of a relative caused my mother to burst into tears when, visiting my mom with her newborn child, the old woman said: “Why did you have to have a boy? He’ll only grow up to die in war.”

To rehab my ankle, the doctor advised that it would have to be immobilized for weeks, first with a cast and then with a leather brace.

I would start high school boarding a bus and attending classes while on crutches, forced to go to school, I thought then, with the academic bottom dwellers of my middle school class and having to associate with the hellbound Protestants. Worse awaited.

THE END