West Whiteland Black Hole

I did a search on Google for West Whiteland Elementary and turned up nothing, except one image, which was a photo I took of the building several years ago. How odd, for much of a mystery surrounds this particular school for me, I was certain it existed. I attended there for most of 1948 through 1949. For pete's sake, there on the left is the picture I took of the place, so it was real.

So I pulled up a Google Map and followed the roads until I found the place it was located and discovered it was now the Exton Elementary School and had been since 1962. On the school's website it gave a short and sketchy history. The school opened as the West Whiteland Consolidated School in 1941, coincidentally that was the year I was born, so I attended in the first decade of its existence as well as my own.

But what happened there? I began grade school at Downingtown East Ward on Washington Avenue, right across the street rom where we lived in 1946. I remember my First Grade teacher quite well, Mrs Mary Warren. She was a big woman, not overly heavy, but tall, at least from a six year old's perspective. She wore print dresses and these thick heeled shoes. She was sort of scary and she was strict. It was a different time and teacher's could lay hands on unruly or non-co-operating pupils. one of her favorite forms of getting your attention was to come up from behind and pull your hair if she felt you were not attentive.

I never had this experience. Mrs. Warren liked me. A lot of teachers liked me; it was a curse. Being Teacher's Pet did not make you popular with your peers. What got me in so good with Mrs. Warren was my ability to read. I could read long before ever going to school and when called upon to read "Fun with Dick and Jane" I put real emphasis on the command to "Run, Spot, Run". Yes, I did not drone out the text, I red with expression, which Mrs. Warren pointed out to the entire class, "was the way you all should be reading."

And here the strangeness begins. I didn't finish First Grade with Mrs. Warren. Halfway through the school year, during the Christmas break of 1947, my parents and I moved to the countryside near Glenloch. Just after New Year's Day 1948 I went into West Whiteland Consolidated School and finished First Grade there. I remained in West Whiteland for all of Second Grade and the first half of Third Grade, moving back to Downingtown and East Ward after New Year's Day 1950 and into the class of Miss Elizabeth Ezrah.

That is my Third Grade picture on the left, my first official school photo. I have an official yearly picture from that one throughout the rest of my public school life. I missed a First Grade photo at East Ward because we moved before one was taken.

There are no photographs of me at West Whiteland, official or otherwise. That is the thing, there are

no photographs, no report cards, no nothing, not even memories of my time in that institution.  I can't tell you who the principal was, can't name a single teacher and only one other student, but that is the one kid in that school whose home I visited. His name was Bobby Cuelers and he moved to Downingtown about the same time we moved back, thus was also in my class at East Ward. I can't remember anything about our relationship in West Whiteland.

The photo of Bobby to the right was taken in Sixth Grade at East Ward. By then whatever friendship we apparently had at West Whiteland had dissolved, just as any of my recall about it has. (Bobby always reminded me of James Cagney a little in looks.)

My First Grade report card only adds more puzzlement to this mystery.

This is my report card from East Ward, but I only attended class there from September through December of 1947. By January 1948 I was attending West Whiteland. You can see on the front that my teacher was Mary L, Warren and the Supervising Principal was Charles P. Emery.

On the back of the card it says I was promoted to Grade 2 and that this was approved by a M. Wallace.  I have no idea who M. Wallace was. Mrs. Rhonda Yost was principal of East Ward.

Was M. Wallace the principal at West Whiteland?

If so, why was she signing the report card issued by an entirely different and separate school district?

You can also see my mother's signature on all four marking periods. The inside of the card only complicates things. My marks are shown for all four marking period, plus the final exam and the final mark. Again, I remind you, I only attended East Ward for marking periods 1 and 2. My days of attendance are noted beneath the columns of grades, 29 in the first and 32 in the second. The other periods for attendance are blank.

The ink for the two periods at East Ward are both darker and in a different hand than those written in for the remainder of the year.  My performance also decreased in the second half, having had mostly A's at East Ward, I apparently had mostly B's at West Whiteland. My worst subject was Music, receiving a C and a B at East Ward, but no marks at all at West Whiteland. My overall grade point average at East Ward was 3.80, but fell to 3.375 at West Whiteland.  But who wrote my West Whiteland grades on this East Ward Card and are they true?

My Third Grade Report Card only includes the last two marking periods that I attended at East Ward, as it should.

This may all be silly after all this time. Why should I concern myself with what happened in early grade school? Well, that is the whole point. What did happen to me in early grade school? Why should two years over three school grades completely and utterly disappear from my memory? One would think I would remember something about that school, but I don't.

I have a vague, very vague wisp of something about soccer associated with West Whiteland, but I don't know why that. I do know it was the one team sport I knew how to play when I came back to East Ward.

It is a black hole in my life and why it nags at me is you hear about so many people who experienced a negative happening in their childhood that they blot out of their mind. Did something bad happen at West Whiteland?

I know I was different when I came back to Downingtown than when I left. I was outgoing before that period, but withdrawn and shy afterward. In my first years I was sociable and had many friends in the neighborhood, as shown in these photos of birthday parties, but when I returned in 1950 I was shunned or bullied by former friends and had to slowly develop new friendships, mostly with other outcasts.

I always attributed this change to the isolation of living behind the swamp in the nowhere that was Glenloch in those days, but did something happen at West Whiteland School that contributed to the struggles I had afterward?

I wish I knew.

Sports And Me

Boys and sports are supposed to go together. What is a more nostalgic picture than a father and son playing catch? But my father wasn't around much in my childhood. I can't recall he and I ever having a catch with baseball or football. My grandfather was about, but tossing balls wasn't in his repertoire either. His sport was fox hunting, but there wasn't much opportunity to go out in the backyard and toss a fox around.

When I was five my grandfather did give me a bunch of sports paraphernalia, a baseball uniform, glove, bat and catcher's mask. That is me squatted down in the photo, rather out of position for a catcher. (The other two boys are Tim Mahan with the bat and Billy Smith. They were my best friends in those days.) The bat my grandfather gave me was an Official Stan Musial Signature Louisville Slugger. It weighted 36 ounces and was about that length in inches. I don't know if that is the bat Timmy's holding or not. It was really too big for a child my age, but it was what I learned to hit with and I used that bat forever. I mean, I still have that bat, although it is pockmarked and Stan's signature long ago wore off and there is a crack down one side held closed with duct tape now.

In those early years of my life, boys really only engaged in three sports, baseball, football and basketball. (Hockey was strictly a girl's game in those years. I recall somewhere at some school a boy went out for the field hockey team, but they made him wear one of those little plaid skirts. ) Because of circumstances beyond my control, I was isolated from other children for some of my first grade school years. Halfway through third grade we moved into Downingtown and I found myself an outsider, often teased and not very knowledgable about team sports. In grade school others didn't want me on their team when sides were chosen. Although I was not usually the last player picked, I was often sort of ignored during the game.

Yet I really wasn't too bad when I began to learn the sports, especially in baseball and football. I even had a football uniform, with shoulder pads and helmet. I think my grandmother gave me that outfit. I liked the rough and tumble of football and usually played running back, because I was fast and hard to catch. The only thing I didn't like was being piled upon by a bevy of boys. I sort of panicked if I was buried beneath a half-dozen other kids with my face smashed into the ground. Once I got kicked in the throat while squashed beneath such a scrum and thought I was going to die, but nonetheless, the older I got the more I enjoyed the violence of the sport. When I was in high school we used to play our pickup games in a graveyard with a couple of tombstones as the goal line.

I would never go out for the teams at school, though. I had such a fear of being made fun of in those days I wouldn't have chanced failing at anything in front of others. I was content to play in pick-up games with friends and acquaintances.

Whenever there was a chance to play baseball I took it. Despite owning that catcher's mask, I wanted to pitch...at first...and for a brief awhile. In grade school I use to pitch in these playground games until one day I caught a line drive in the solar plexus and crumbled to the ground in a pile of pain. After that I preferred the outfield. The further away from batter and ball the better.

I tried out for one team while I lived in Downingtown. There was not in those days a Little League team in town, but there was Babe Ruth Baseball for boys over 13 and up. My friend Stuart (pictured left) and I tried out for Babe Ruth when I was 14, but my family moved out of town before the rosters were announced, so I never got to play. I don't really know if Stuart made the team or not.

When I started at my new school after the move, I was approached by a coach about playing basketball.  The only qualification I had was being tall. I am six foot. Back in 1956 that height was well above average. Now, I was good at volleyball, bad mitten, ping pong and tennis. It seemed I excelled at games with a net, but not basketball. Oh, no, I could throw the ball through the hoop and in games of PIG and HORSE could certainly hold my own, but on the basketball court I was completely lost. I was constantly confused by the fouls. I didn't know what the heck they were talking about. Traveling, of course I'm traveling cause I'm trying to get down there where the net is. Everybody around me is traveling too. Double dribble? What are you talking about? I don't have anything running down my chin. All that chaos going on put me in a trance. If someone said, "Toss me the ball," I would, it didn't matter if it was a guy on the other team or not.  As I  noted, I could throw the ball through the hoop, but chances were I'd do this through the one on the wrong side of the court and score two points for the opposition.

In my senior year at high school they had tournaments for wrestling and boxing. I went undefeated in both. In my final wrestling bout Phil Hahn was my opponent. He out weighted me by fifty pounds, but I prevailed. At some point he whacked me hard on the nose with his elbow. When the bout was over all I heard was the gym teacher yelling, "Who got blood on my new mats?" That would be me. Blood was streaming out of my nose.

I was best at boxing. I don't know how good my technique was, but I could take a punch. You might knock me down, but I always got up and I would just keep going like the Energizer Bunny.

I might as well mention I also won the sit-up competition.

Perhaps the success I had in boxing and wrestling, and sit-ups,  gave me some confidence. I finally went out for an actual team in my senior year. I joined the track team. That is the team on the left, so where's Waldo? We were not a great team. We lost every one of our meets, but one. We beat Phoenixville in our final meet and it was the one I came closest to winning my event. (If you are looking for Waldo, he isn't there, but I am. I'm the guy in the dark sweatshirt and glasses near the right side three rows up.)

Now here is the thing about me and track. In the beginning there were tryouts in all the events. I stood out in the mile run. I had the fastest time, just over 5 minutes. It was, in fact, a very good time for a teenager who had never ran a mile before. The record at that time was something like 4 minutes 12 seconds for a high schooler. The coach wanted me to be a long distance guy. He figured with some training I could press that 4 minute 12 second mark.

I didn't see it that way.

I hated running and I knew the milers ran all the time. That was all they did, run, run and run some more. I decided to shot the put and fling the discus instead. The shot putters and discus throwers were called weight men. Most of the kids who did these events were big and heavy. I was not. I was tall, but slender and I had never been know for my upper body strength. However, weight guys ran the least, so that was for me. Of course, I didn't stand much chance against some of the behemoths the other schools rolled out to the throwing circles. I was like a popgun in the middle of a cannonade.

I was a bit better with the discus. It was a lighter missile, kind of a frisbee on steroids. Throwing these things goes back to antiquity, but at least the school allowed us to wear a uniform.

If I remember rightly, and at my age that is not guaranteed, one began standing at a slight crouch with one's back to the field inside a circle. Some places had actual wooden circles, but most had circles drawn in lime. On my one brief moment of glory, the circle was wood. The tosser would then spin about inside this circle and as one approached the front edge would release the discus into the air with a mighty fling of the arm.

You got three flings.

On this particular day, our last meet of the year in Phoenixville, I was the last competitor in the discus and had come to my third and final fling. I crouched, I spun, I released and gloryoski that discus was arcing far out over the football field and when it came slashing down it was further than any fling by any flinger before me. I teetered there on one foot watching victory and then I bounced again the wooden frame and tapped my other foot down and outside the circle.

I had fouled. I was disqualified. I was disgraced. My team went on to win the meet, our only win of the year, which is supposed to be of consequence since it is a team and that is the object, but it was little solace to loser me.

I've played my share of sports since those boyhood days, bowling, tennis and golf mostly. I was on a church league softball team in the 1970s and I was the best hitter with an average somewhere over .800. We played softball a lot in Junior High Gym and I could never seem to catch the softball when it was hit my way. My way was right field, because that is where they put guys who couldn't catch. I could catch hard balls just fine, so I blamed this inability on not having a glove. But when I played in the church league we wore softball gloves, but I was back in right field because I still couldn't catch a softball. I wonder why? I mean, the thing is big so you have to see it coming at you like some huge white meteorite from outer space that is going to crash into you hand, glove or not, and take your arm off up to the elbow...but I digress.

At any rate, my sports playing days are pretty much over, I guess, unless walking counts.

Streets

I sit here this morning about to enter a new street, and not so far away, and yet very distant another long ago friend has come to the dead end of a one way avenue.

His name is Gary Kinzey, and although he died the other day (October 15) and his life became a "was", I like to think his name remains an "is".

It is in my thoughts, it is in my faded memories and it is in various records somewhere. His name and he will always be part of me until I also travel that last avenue.

This is the only photo I have of him as a boy, in the time I knew him as a friend. Film was costly then, to buy and to get developed. For that reason I didn't take as many pictures as I may have wished. It was taken in front of another friend's home, Stuart Meisel, looking toward Lancaster Avenue. The date I have on this is 1952, when Gary would have been 11.

There is a story about the bike. It will seem an odd one to the children of today with their tricked up little X-games stunt bikes, but that bike was too small. Things were larger then; cars were larger, bikes were larger. The bike may not look that small, but for it's day it was. Notice how the seat is pulled high up on the shaft. The diameter of the wheels on his bike were 24 inches; the rest of us had bikes with 26 inch wheels. Two inches may not seem much, but in those days when it came to wheels, size mattered.

And yes, Gary was sensitive about his smaller bike.

We often feel different in life over insignificant and unimportant things.

When I say he died "not so far away" it is because he lived on a street not so far from me and died at home. But I only knew he lived there and only saw him at a high school reunion a couple years ago. My friendship with him was from that now distant time of childhood, when we were sometimes close friends and sometimes not.  So now after nearly sixty years much of those days has blurred and faded.

I know I met Gary when we were very young, somehow, somewhere. He lived in apartments a couple blocks east of me and then, I believe, in a small house near where the Farmers' Market stood just outside of town. He seems to have flickered in and out of my boyhood because he moved and I moved and sometimes we were near and sometimes not.

He played the saxophone and I the trumpet.

What we had the biggest in common was trains, electric trains. We both indulged in building elaborate (at least it seems so) layouts. We had different emphasis, however. I was into building realistic landscapes, with papier-mâché mountains full of tunnels, with elevated tracks over felt-green meadows and little towns with rows of stores and bedroom communities. He was much more taken with the electrical mechanics of it all, building a master control of dials and switches where he controlled his world, of light displays and working gizmos here and there.

My room was full of comic books; his had stacks of Popular Electronics.

I thought him an electronics genius. In Junior High he came to class with a fountain pen in his pocket; except, it wasn't a fountain pen at all. It was a radio he had built inside a pen's shell.

His nickname was Sparky.

One of my last memories of Gary was also in Junior High. We were walking side-by-side between classes and for whatever reason, he began to punch me on the upper arm. Every so many steps down the corridor, wham, a punch to my arm. He ignored my pleas to stop and finally I turned and popped him back, at which point Mr. Caskey grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me to the principal's office. One of the few times I ever got in trouble in school.

Strange the things we recall.

After school, like many other old friends and acquaintances, Gary and I went our separate lives. None the less, we once were friends and 70 is far too young to die.


(Left - Gary in 2002 at Downingtown High School class picnic at Dave Fidler's. Photo taken by Ronald Tipton.)

The Kid Met Him in the Funny Pages

Merry Christmas, Kid, welcome back to your old hometown now try to find a homie, a compadre, a chum, a confidante a mate. The Kid wasn’t having much success along the friendship line.

Then Miss Ezrah struck some cord within him with something new he had never tried. She told the third grade class to write a story, not some “What I did over Christmas vacation” story or “What was my favorite toy” story, either. A real story, a fiction just like some of those in their reader, something with made up characters, a plot and a climax.

Don’t know about any of the others in that class, but The Kid had never tried writing a story. He made up stories in his head all the time when playing. It was what one did when they lived alone and had no one else about. It was called imagination. Why should writing a story be much different, except you wrote it out on paper, not just in your head?

The Kid was already a voracious reader. His mother had this incredible collection of books he read. They were kind of squat and thick with a lot of pictures or illustrations dispersed through them. They were called “Big little Books”.

They weren’t short stories; for gosh sakes, they were books, like novels. Some were novelizations of motion pictures, some reprints of classics, adventures of radio heroes like Green Hornet, Sunday papers detectives like Dick Tracy and they often featured famous names, like Frank Buck or Tom Mix and even Mickey Mouse.

So The Kid got out his paper and pencil and he wrote a story. It no longer exists either as an artifact or in the memory of The Old Goat other than a couple minute flickers. It was some kind of Western and the villain was known as Mr. X. The Kid turned it in to Miss Ezrah who read it to the class and Miss Ezrah was very complimentary about this tale. She not only awarded The Kid with an A, but put his story up on a bulletin board for display.

In the heart of The Kid a spark was struck.

That is not the amazing part of this long ago event; it had a more important outcome, one that seemed highly unlikely.

There was another boy in the class and there was something different about him, too. For one thing, he sometimes got picked for team sports even after The Kid. He was kind of awkward at times and very tall for his age. The Kid was tall, but this boy was taller. Because both were tall, the boy sat near The Kid in class, somewhere in the back. Yeah, teachers often drew up seating charts based on height. This tall boy was called upon to read his story.

The tall boy was reading and familiar scenes were forming in The Kid’s mind. The characters names were strange, it appeared they were human people in this story, it was some kind of adventure, it…it had been in that spare room back in the swamp.

Yes, yes it had, it had been near the top of a stack because it was recent. It was one of his favorites. The Kid had read it more than once.

“I read that in an Uncle Scrooge comic,” he blurted out.

The Kid hasn’t the foggiest of what happened immediately next. There might have been embarrassment all around. The rest of that scene slipped into a deep recess of The Kid’s brain and for the life of him The Old Goat can’t extract it.

But it was a different story after class and after school. The Kid, who lived right near the school and the tall boy who didn’t were walking in the same direction. The tall boy behind and gaining across the schoolyard with his longer stride made The Kid nervous. He had squealed on this guy, called him out right there in class before everyone. Was this tall kid going to beat him up?

Comic books in those days had advertising and a popular item being marketed to the youthful readers was the Daisy Air Rifle, the most popular of which was the Red Rider Bee Bee Gun (as some may recall if they saw the film, “A Christmas Story” and who hasn’t). Perhaps this tall guy would be back with a rifle and assault The Kid with the stinging pellets of revengeful death.

“Hey,” it was the tall boy.

The Kid froze.

“You like comic books?” the tall boy asked.

The Kid shook his head.

“You got many?”

The Kid shook his head.

“Wanna trade?”

The Kid    

The Tall Boy

Stranger In a Familiar land

The Kid and lived in town six months short of six years. It was all he knew or remembered at age six. Six months, six years, age six, 666, the Beast’s number, perhaps that was a sign.

He had gone to a private kindergarten in town, twice. He had started first grade at the East Ward Elementary School, right across the street from where he lived. There was no trouble there; he got along with his classmates and with Mrs. Warren, the hair-pulling disciplinarian. She never pulled his hair because he never misbehaved. He was a good reader and although Mrs. Warren made a point of showing that skill off, his classmates didn’t seem to resent it.

He had a lot of friends in the class; he had a lot of friends, period. They were all from his neighborhood. You didn’t wander far at age six. He never considered where these friends came from and he assumed they would always be companions as he grew. There was Tim and Billy, Denny and Gary, there were two Bobbys, there was Sandi and Iva and Toni and Judy, and others.

Although his father was away to war, he never felt loneliness. He lived with his mother and her parents and he had all those friends.

And then the war ended and his dad came home and moved The Kid out of town to a place between a swamp and a cow pasture. There it was lonely. It was void of others and isolated. His dad became a long-haul trucker and was home not much more than when he was in the Navy. The kid lived alone with his mother and his imagination. It may have been only two years, but perhaps two years that affected the remainder of his life.

After two years they moved back to town, back to the same house on the same street and back to East Ward School. It was a familiar land populated by familiar faces. What a shock when The Kid discovered he was a stranger there.

To be shunned, ignored and even bullied by those he had once played with was a new experience. It was hard to understand why his friends had morphed into antagonists in such a short time. True, some hadn’t become hostiles; they had simply moved elsewhere and disappeared from his world. Billy was in another town and Gary was on the West Ward side, which may as well been the dark-side of the moon, but most of the others remained. Iva was still his friend and playmate, but Iva was a girl. Eight-year-old boys have a hard time accepting a girl as there best friend.

In a way, this lack of friends was not a problem to The Kid. After two years of isolation he had come to be comfortable alone. He knew how to entertain himself, how to fill the hours without compatriots. Still, even a loner occasionally feels the need to talk with someone who is a peer.

The question for The Kid was how to make a friend. Those who had once been were more often now tormentors, laughing at his clothes, jeering at his lack of team sport experience, even picking on his hat.

In those days Philadelphia had two baseball teams. The Kid wore a Philadelphia Athletics cap, blue with an A on the front. The A’s had once been a great team led by the legendary manager-owner, Connie Mack. But the Kid moved back to town in 1950 and the A’s had fallen on tough times, while the Phillies were about to have a season that would take them to only their second World Series in their history.

So the taunting revolved around a silly cap. “Why ya wearing that hat? Don’tcha know the A’s stink? Why ain’tcha wearin’ a Phillie’s hat?”

The Kid begged his mother for a Phillies hat and he tossed away the blue cap for a red one, but nothing changed, they found a new target for teasing. It was an interesting insight into human nature. If you are the object of the ruling class’ scorn, you do not bend to appease them, for there is no appeasing them. What they tell you is the reason for their animosity toward you is only a convenient excuse. If you remove it, they only find another excuse and those excuses are only subterfuge to justify themselves. It is the deceits they play upon themselves to hide their insecurities and their own black hearts.

The Kid knew whatever he did, they were not going to let him play in their Reindeer games, and when they were forced to by the interference from adult authority, then The Kid would be chosen near the end of the choosing. So the ones to watch were those others also chosen near the end for he knew friends wouldn’t come from the in-crowd, but from his fellow outcasts.

What The Kid didn’t realize was a room back in the house in the swamp held the key to unlocking the door to his best friend to be.

Tilt Your Head to the Side, Please

In adding the year-appropriate photo to some of these posts of early work brings back a pet peeve. The photographers taking school pictures insisting The Kid tilt his head to the left or right. Unlike many of his classmates, he could never get an official snapshot full face. (I wonder if he had been arrested and a mugshot made if it would have been tilt-faced?)

What caused this prejudicial phenomena? Nearsightedness was the culprit. From his early teens The Kid's beautiful blue eyes were inprisoned behind circular bars of plastic called eyeglasses. The lens, if staring straight at the birdie, would reflect the lights and in the opinion of the photographer ruin the shot.

Before it was discovered The Kid couldn't read the blackboard from the rear desks (pupils were often seated by height and he was tall for his time), he could get that glorious full-face treatment.

Every Great Comic Trio Needs a Larry

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."


So posited William Shakespeare in Act II, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet.  (I know, I know, the picture is from MacBeth, not Romeo and Juliet. I'll explain later, show some patience. I wonder why the witch on the right looks more like a pirate than a witch?)


"What indeed?" might ask Wild Bill Shakespeare aka The Kid aka Frantic Frank aka The Barber aka Hearse [or was he Gravely] aka Larry.

Yes, The Kid was blessed with the first name of Larry, and that was it, no Lawrence, Lorenzo or Lorenz. This being named essentially a nickname was to give The Kid some problems when he got into school and roll call was taken. Sometimes on the first of these daily routines the roll call would slip into an Abbott and Costello routine.


Pretend Bud Abbott on the left is a teacher and Lou Costello on the right is The Kid. Here is how roll call once went (honest).


Teacher: Lawrence Kid?


The Kid: Here. But it's Larry


Teacher: Yes, but your given name is Lawrence.


The Kid: No, it's Larry

Teacher: No, it's Lawrence now isn't it?


The Kid: No, it's Larry.


Teacher: I will call you Larry if you prefer, but for the record I have to have your proper full name. I am sure that is Lawrence.


The Kid: No, it's Larry.


Teacher: Your parent's did not name you Larry.


The Kid: I know what my own name is.


Teacher: Then what is your full name?


The Kid: Larry The Kid!


Teacher:  Okay, okay. What is your father's occupation? (What this had to do with roll call The Kid doesn't know, but the Teacher did ask.)


The Kid: Transit Expediting Engineer.


Teacher: What?


The Kid: A truck driver.


[The photo is of Larry Fine as a mural over a restaurant on Philadelphia's South Street near where he was born.] 


The "Larry isn't your given name" played over and over from class to class, although not as extensively as it did with that one teacher. Most were willing to except the truth more readily, but that one teacher never wanted to accept The Kid as just plain Larry.


The teacher wasn't a male, she was a woman and we will call her Ms Hurl, because she always made me want to. I had her way too often. Besides homeroom, I had her for English and one day out of a clear blue sky she began a lecture thus: "There is something ignorant about parents who would give their child a name ending in Y. The Y on the end of the name makes it a diminutive. Billy means Little Bill, Johnny means Little John, Timmy means Little Tim. Foolish parents who gives their child such a name causes that child to think of them self as little or insignificant."


Whether The Kid ever felt insignificant because of his name I would say not, but perhaps these silly confrontations honed his sense of the absurdities of life and led him into comedic roles in high school.


Now The Kid had some encouragement about his writing ambitions from the adult world, but not many. Certainly there was none from his parents, who felt this writing thing was on par with a child saying he wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up. Their view was it would pass with age and eventually The Kid would set my sights on a "real job".  There were some, though, such as his Third Grade teacher Miss. Ezra and the young librarian in town, who allowed him to use the library typewriter and critiqued his tales. It definitely wasn't the state guidance councilors who came to the school and told him he didn't have the vocabulary to be a writer; he should consider running a machine instead. They never specified what kind of machine. He did not have anyone you could call a mentor until his senior year and Mrs. M. opened up his words to a wider world.


Some of this late school success came as a single. He was given two public readings of his work, one of poetry and one of his short stories. Since most of this fiction was of the horror genre, he acquired a new nickname, Frank, short for Frankenstein, for he was a creator of his own little monsters. 

Perhaps this nickname led him to create the character, "Frantic Frank," the somewhat spaced-out musician persona he adopted for his stand-up routines. Yes, The Kid did stand-up comedy at his school and some other venues. That is Frantic Frank to the right. Little did The Kid suspect this was a vision of the future as far as the top of his head and his chinny-chin-chin were concerned, although both his fringes would be gray rather than dark in that distant future when The Old Goat appeared.


Actually, The Kid had appeared on stage as another comic character before "Frantic". It was that appearance that led to the opportunity to be "Frantic Frank" and it was an appearance engineered by Mrs. M. She asked him to write a comic assembly explaining Shakespeare. This piece became "Shakespeare and the Theatre" and was performed twice at the school. The three witches at the top of this page were from that assembly, although they were in a bit on Macbeth separate from The Kid's portion. The Kid appeared in the play as narrator and host, "Wild Bill Shakespeare". The success of "Shakespeare and the Theatre" resulted in a request from another teacher for The Kid to write a comic piece for an evening performance at the school, and so jazz trumpeter "Frantic Frank" was born to explain "musick".

But perhaps The Kid's biggest triumphs in high school came when he worked with two others as a trio, and as we know, every great comic trio needs a Larry.


Now The Kid had worked with collaborators before in his short literary career. In Sixth Grade he and his good friend Stu had published and sold a newspaper. Stu and he had also written some songs together, mostly humorous. And later in his teens, The Kid and Rich, his friend from up the road, had written several funny skits and interviews together using a tape recorder. So working with others was not new to the Kid.


It was somewhat new how he met his collaborators this time, though.


There were two, of course, this being a trio. There was Ray and there was Richard Ray and yes it can get confusing. The Kid had his friend Rich and his friend Ray and his friend Richard Ray and his long time friend Ron. When it came to friends, he was ready for some R & R...and R & R.


This triumvirate began before The Kid's senior year and was unusual because he was approached by someone not an outsider. Or was he? 


The Kid was the new boy in school and came with some trepidation after his experiences in the town where he had come from. He did not run into the harassment he had suffered before, but he did not make friends at the new school easily that first year, until some time in the spring when along came Ray. Ray was not someone The Kid would expect to sit down and break bread with in those days. Ray wasn't down there in The Kid's strata; Ray was up in the major leagues.


Although The Kid had improved in some sports, especially baseball, he was a long way from a major athlete. He was a good running back in pickup football games now and he seemed to have an odd ability in sports requiring hitting something over a net. He had finished in the finalists in a Ping Pong tournament back at his old school and he was a fierce volleyball and badminton player. He was also becoming fair at tennis. Basketball continued to elude him as did many of the type of things rolled out for indoor Gym. Apparatus was more likely to conquer him than the other way around.


One day, after bumbling something in Gym enough to draw laughs, The Kid was feeling a bit down. This Ray came up to him and told him not to take it so hard. Then Ray began giving The kid some advice on how to improve in whatever it was. After that day they became fast friends who were always together at school. How, The Kid wondered did this happen? Ray was on the A list, The Kid was somewhere around List Q at best.


Ray was on the A list quite literally; he tended to be a straight A student. He was well behaved and he did his homework, therefore the teachers liked him. This is usually anathema for a teenager with his peers, but in this case — not the case. Perhaps this was because Ray was a four letterman, excelling in every type of sport he decided to attempt.


[Now I must pause and give some explanation because of the passage of years and of generations. In my day and before it, when a person was said to be a three or four letterman it was a compliment. It meant the person was an excellent, outstanding high school or college athlete. A person would be awarded a "letter" if they met certain criteria in sports. The person would wear a letter sweater, which he might give to his sweetheart if they became pinned; that is a steady couple. Now I find in street slang today that the term "three or four letterman" is a derogatory one, evidently originated within the Navy, to mean a Gay man. They use "three letterman" as code for "Fag" and "four letterman" as code for "Homo".]


Ray, although only about five foot six, starred in basketball and track. He was an all-around in track, he ran the dash, the mile, did the pole vault and threw the javelin. He was a champion wrestler and the star of the Gym show, featured on the horizontal bar and the rings. But in one way he was an outsider. He had also been an outstanding football player, but he quit the team on principle. There were a few guys who threatened him for quitting the team, but nothing ever came of the threats. Heck, even the Greasers left Ray alone. He could handle himself.

And the girls loved him. He was cute. 


But for some reason Ray decided to befriend The Kid.


They shared a sense of humor. They found ways to get out of study halls and go to a place in the school where they could listen to Tom Lerher records. Soon they joined with Ray Richard as the three-headed class clown.


Before they became a writing, performing trio with Richard Ray, The Kid and Ray became a duo as DJs at school dances, introducing songs, telling jokes and prodding the shy boys to ask the wallflowers to dance. They parodied the name of a popular television team named Grady and Hurst, who did a Bandstand type show from Wildwood at the New Jersey shore each summer. The Kid and Ray became "Gravely and Hearse". It is no longer clear which was which, but maybe it didn't matter. Maybe they switched names occasionally as all part of the fun.

No matter, eventually the three boys joined up to write and perform comic sketches in the school's variety show.  There they were selling French perfume in the aisles or baffooning it up as The Barber, The Boy and The Man on stage, Richard Ray doing a strange striptease, The Kid slicing off Ray's phony ears with hedge clippers; Richard Ray breaking into an impromptu Polka, Ray slapping people around for trying to steal his giant lollypop and The Kid during a pratfall off the stage into the audience. 


There they were Larry and his partner Ray and his other partner Ray.


There they were The Three Students, Ray, Larry and Richard Ray.


There they were Ray, Richard Ray and Larry gittin' 'er done.


Because every great comic trio has to have a Larry.

A Lady of Influence

I would like to say a few words about a lady who profoundly influenced my life, although I didn't know it at the time. She is not one who gained fame so outside a certain circle within a small geographic region, she would not be known. Most of the people who truly influenced me fit such a description. Such people are too often lost in the glare of the superficial star of the moment, some Hollywood heartthrob (more likely in these day to be a L.A. train wreck) or a money magnate - a golden idol building towers to himself; even perhaps a politician riding a mount named charisma.

It is not to say people of fame and wealth are necessarily bad and cannot offer good example to us. It is just that glamour, glitz and gilt may cover a lack of character and blind us to what we might have to give up of our soul to be such.

Yet we can find influence in plain wrappers if we would put on sunglasses against the glitter that emanates from the TV tube or movie screen.

Such is Elizabeth Ezra.

Who?

Exactly, who?

Miss Ezra was my third grade teacher and if not for her I might not be writing this Blog today. I was the new kid in the class, joining it after Christmas break in January 1950. It was at this time, in this class, I met and befriended two people who remain my friends still, although at a distance, one in Florida and one in Lower Delaware (the one who writes the Retired in Delaware Blog I mentioned previously.) They too feel influenced by Miss Ezra. I have learned that many feel this way.

Miss Ezra standing behind The Kid, 1950
In third grade she challenged the class to write a short story. She praised my story, put it up on the wall for the world to see and this was the first of few moments I shown in those early years, and I believe this was the seed that grew into a vine entangling my life. I can't say if it produced a garden or a weed patch, but it certainly made me a cultivator of words my whole life.

Miss Ezra never married. Her students were her children and her life. She was a quiet woman, a humble woman and is still. She turned 101 late last year.
Miss Ezra now and then.


My friend, the one in Lower Delaware, and I visited her a couple years back and she was still spry and cognizant. She walks through town each day and is much the gracious teacher she will always be.
My friend Ron and Miss Ezra at her home


I would hope we all have a Miss Ezra in our life, but more importantly, may we all be someone else's Miss Ezra.

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.Proverbs 22:6

1 comments:

Ron said:

A wonderful thoughtful tribute to a kind and gracious lady. We were very lucky to have such a wonderful woman as our third grade teacher during those important formative years. Miss Ezra celebrated her 101st birthday November 10th at Simpson Meadows Retirement Home in Downingtown, PA. Her health is excellent and she is as sharp as she was 54 years ago.

April 24, 2008 8:29 PM