Lloyd Court - and Lloyd

The two parts of this title have little to do with one another, other than their being significant artifacts from my career as a Safety Boy. The first is a street, usually written as “Lloyd Ct.,” but henceforth to be pronounced by you, dear reader, as “Lloyd Coit” (I’ll explain why later on). The second is a pseudonym for a boy who deserves to not have his real name associated with the sad story I intend to tell.

To begin, let’s talk about Safety Boys and their counterparts, the Service Squad Girls. I’m not sure either of these still exists in today’s public schools, but throughout the 50s and 60s they were important instruments of school decorum. Service Squad Girls had various duties. First, they sold ice cream, bringing a tray of cups and bars on a stick to each table, making you raise your hand before accepting your nickel. They patrolled the lunchroom watching for misbehavior. Before you could leave your seat you needed to raise your hand, and if the SS Girl determined you had sufficiently cleaned your place, she would formally announce, “You may go.” The Girls also stood guard at the slop counter where the kids who bought a hot lunch would leave their trays. Finally, on rainy days when there was no lunchtime recess, there’d be Girl watching over every 1st through 3rd grade class, allowing their teachers to eat their lunches in peace.

But Safety Boys got the glory jobs; patrolling the playground, school buses, and street corners, and every winter morning they’d get hot chocolate. And while the Girls got to wear modest little armbands, the Boys were issued amazingly cool looking white belts with an even cooler looking shoulder strap. It was a combination that struck fear into most kids, at least the younger, more innocent ones. Plus – and this was big – Safety Boys got to “report” kids; that is, sort of like “arrest” them and get them in trouble with whichever 6th grade teacher was heading up the Safety Patrol that year. SS girls could report you, of course, but I don’t remember it ever happening.

Once as a 2nd grader, I got reported for fighting on the playground (I don’t even remember who I was fighting with). We were taken to Mr. Gabriel, the scariest teacher at Oxford School. He held us against the lockers with his huge arms. Despite his height, he managed to get about two inches away from our faces. Then softly, slowly, but oh so sternly he warned us, “No more fighting. And I don’t ever want to see either of you like this again.” I nearly wet my pants.

Three years later, a bunch of us 5th grade boys were chosen for I guess what you’d call limited duty or “auxiliary” Safety Boys. Boys without belts. We’d get to patrol a nearby street corner at lunch. And this is how I ended up on Lloyd Court, “the dangerous corner.” Though not a very long street, Lloyd Ct. connected Coburn Avenue with U.S. 24, Telegraph Road, a multilane divided highway running from Detroit all the way to Kansas City. A quarter mile to the north, Telegraph intersected with U.S. 12, Michigan Avenue, which ran from Detroit all the way to the Pacific Ocean! The intersection was a marvelous concrete cloverleaf; the only spot in the country where two even numbered U.S. highways, one being double the other, crossed each other. Each day, thousands of cars and trucks passed in four directions, on their way to who knows where.

How disappointing it was for me, then, to discover that seldom if ever did any cars travel down Lloyd Ct. It became known as “the dangerous corner” only because of Jeff Biggers’ sharp sense of sarcastic irony. He even came up with this little song about it, which I will gladly sing for you on request.

“Lloyd Coit, the dangerous corner!
Lloyd Coit, the dangerous corner!”

The day would come, however, when “Lloyd Coit” indeed became a very dangerous corner; albeit in an approximate, vaguely indirect sort of way.

It was a sunny spring day. I had nearly finished crossing all the kids heading home to lunch; which is to say I had crossed the one little girl and one little boy who walked home that way. Having accomplished another busy day’s work, I headed back toward the school. But for some reason, a moment or two later, I turned looked back over my shoulder at the deceptively quiet intersection and saw something so strange, so troubling, that I would barely be able to eat my second helping of meatloaf before later reporting it to the Safety Patrol teacher supervisor, Mr. Kotyk.

(Editor’s note: Roger doesn’t exactly remember whether or not he ate his lunch before reporting what you’re about to read. But he did think it was funny to imagine that he had.)

The boy who every day crossed Lloyd Ct. and headed left for home had been picked up by a black car. Or dark green maybe. Anyway, he’d gotten into a car and I’d never seen him do this before. So I told Mrs. Berry, who sent me to tell Mr. Kotyk, who apparently called the police. An hour or so later, Mr. Kodyk came to Mrs. Berry’s classroom, called me out to the hall, and gave me the news I dreaded to hear.

“It was his father. His father picked him up to take him to lunch.”

“Oh…good,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.

“But it was good that you reported it,” Mr. Kodyk said in a somber respectful voice, and I headed back to class. Of course I had told all my pals about what I’d seen, including Jeff Biggers and Johnny Kotlarczyk, who as soon as they had a chance began singing, “Lloyd Coit, the dangerous corner!”

And that’s the story of Lloyd Court. Looks like there’s not enough time tonight to tell the other story, the story of Lloyd, a boy who all you who were there at the time know was not really named “Lloyd,” but whose name I must change because it’s simply the decent thing to do.

Next time: The Further Adventures of Roger of the Safety Patrol: The Lloyd Story.

I Don't Want to Set the Room on Fire

Like most guys, I’ve always loved playing with fire and blowing things up. Fireworks and gunpowder; I learned how to make my own. But despite this, neither of the fires in Mr. Kodyk’s classroom were my fault.

The first incident happened during Mr. Kotyk’s soap making assignment. I have no idea why we were making soap. Were we studying pioneers? Who knows? For several days he reminded us to bring in “some lye, grease or fat, and some kind of small container.” Amazingly, on the appointed day I actually remembered to bring it all in. I mean, why not? There was no homework involved. We’d get to kill an hour or so making an oily soapy mess.

So, my mom bought some lye, gave me some bacon fat, and a container, all of which I carried in a bag to school. We began around mid-morning. Mr. Kotyk had set two or three hot plates in the back of the room, and though I can’t remember exactly, the procedure must have involved heating and mixing fat and lye, then pouring the mixture into our small containers. Mr. Kotyk supervised everything, pouring hot molten soap into students’ containers one by one. All went well until he poured mine, when two problems intersected in sudden exothermic fashion.

1. Mr. Kotyk either didn’t know, or else never considered that some kid’s container might be a turkey pie tin.

2. Lye, aluminum, and warm liquid really don’t play well together.

Ok, so a moment or two after Mr. Kotyk pours my bacon soap mixture into my turkey pie pan, smoke begins billowing up from the counter. The pan is dissolving, kids are yelling, and Mr. Kotyk is cursing. He grabbed the burning pie tin with a pair of pliers and headed out of the room, down the stairs, and out the door. I know this because we all followed him.

After lunch, Mr. Kotyk announced our grades one by one. “H” meant “hi,” “S” meant “so so,” and “L” meant “loser.” So it was like, “Hanson, H; Kotlarczyk, H; Lakomy, S; … Shouse, L,” and he said it with that sardonic grin he was so good at. It didn’t seem fair and I said so.

“Well you darn near started the room on fire!” he bellowed, and I was caught without reply.

I got even with him, however, when I did it again.

It was the volcano project. Very simple. Just make a model volcano. I made a beauty out of paper mache, with simulated flowing lava made from red candle wax. At the top I installed a small metal cup to hold some kind of flammable chemical. But now where would I get such a thing? Where could I find some kind of powder that would shoot sparks out the top of my paper mache and wax volcano?

There was just one place to go. The Shaders’ house. A teacher and counsellor at one of the local high schools, Mr. Shader was a like a walking encyclopedia of science, nature, and history. During the summer, Mr. Shader worked as the Town Crier at the Henry Ford Museum. Antique rifles covered the walls of his basement den, along with an old crank style telephone. The adjacent laundry room was filled with interesting chemicals and other science stuff, so, I figured Mr. Shader might have just what I needed.

“Copper sulfate might work,” Mr. Shader suggested, and he gave me a not-so-small vial of the stuff, which I took to school on the appointed day along with a book of matches. When it came time to show off our volcanoes, I told Mr. Kotyk that mine could erupt.
“Really?” he said with a genuine glint of childlike curiosity.

“Sure,” I said, “but I have to light it.”

In today’s American school, this would all be impossible. Aside from streaming video, “erupting” of any kind would never be tolerated and God forbid anyone suggesting “lighting” anything. But Mr. Kotyk, I guess was thinking to himself, “what could possibly go wrong?”

Having obviously forgotten the soap incident, he gave the go-ahead. It took one match to set off the powder at the top of the cone. Sizzling blue sparks and yellow flame began spewing out and the whole class was going “ahh” and “ooh” and then we all realized that the whole volcano was starting to burn. I guess wax covered paper mache burns pretty well once it gets going. Whoda thought?

As he lunged across the room, Mr. Kotyk did some of that, oh, whaddya call it, “almost swearing.” You know, like “gonna fran san, whatta little muffa bung dongit!” He grabbed the burning mass by the plywood board it sat on, headed out the door, down the stairs, out through the kindergarten hallway doors, and onto the playground blacktop. I know this because we all followed him.

I liked Mr. Kotyk, but I’m not sure whether or not he liked me. On the last day of school he signed me an autograph. I still have it. It reads, “To the world’s biggest clown. Mr. Kotyk.”

Coming soon: Other reasons why Mr. Kotyk might have thought I was a clown. Problems with the Safety Patrol. A sad love story.

Sixth Grade, Michelle, Jade East, Everything

Sixth grade. The awkward grade. I had a terrible crush on Michelle, but watched her turn from fratgirl to greaser chick over a period of months. In fact, all the girls turned weird. They used to be so easy to get along with. Now, in the corner of my eye, they almost seemed to be snickering at me. No matter how much Jade East I splashed on my unshowered face each morning, I could never make any progress with Michelle. In fact, as time went by, she grew more and more distant. What could explain such behavior?

· Was it our sixth grade teacher Mr. Kotyk’s fascinating approach to pupil control?
· Was it because I was accused of unethical Safety Patrol behavior?
· That I nearly set the classroom on fire twice?

I overheard someone on TV say that girls matured sooner than boys. Impossible! I was totally mature! I wore white khakis and a no-collar shirt, the kind that buttoned from the chest up. I was able to describe everything that happened on Man from Uncle from the previous Friday night. I was reasonably good at 4-square. Oh, sure, I was a Boy Scout, but I seldom wore my uniform to school. In what possible way did I lack the maturity needed to get Michelle, or any suitable girl for that matter, to “like” me?

Maybe it was my shoddy approach to “learning.”

I was a “smart” kid in that I knew a lot of stuff. But, as I’ve said earlier, I seldom did homework or viewed it as any sort of imperative upon my valuable time. If the homework seemed interesting and did not cut into my street football or favorite TV show time, there was a reasonable probability that I would complete some of it. Scratch “reasonable.” Say “some.”

Perhaps the most amazing example of this was when our vocal music teacher, Mrs. Edwards, assigned us to make some kind of musical instrument. But I already had a guitar, a trumpet, and a piano at home and I really saw no reason to make some kind of dorky second rate noise maker. Oh yeah, I could have put beans in an oatmeal box and covered it with construction paper, but why? For a while, I considered making a sort of guitar out of cigar box and I went so far as to cut a hole in the lid.

That hole-in-top cigar box sat on a shelf at home for about a month, the length of time Mrs. Edwards had given us to complete this important assignment. Essentially, I had forgotten about the whole thing. The night before it was due, I realized that this was the night before it was due.

I took the cigar box to school the next day and to music class that afternoon. Mrs. Edwards asked each student to show off his/her product. When it was my turn, I stood up and demonstrated what a loud noise the box made when I slammed it, and I had the balls to add, “It wouldn’t make such a loud noise if I hadn’t cut a hole in the lid!”

I could almost see squiggly comic book lines of aggravation shooting from the head of this friendly, funny, sweet, and very talented teacher. “Roger,” she said in her deepest, most serious tone, “I’m very disappointed in you.” Fortunately, I think – I hope – this was the only time I upset her so.

On the other hand, my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Kotyk – I disappointed him lots of times. But given his sarcastic familiarity with the ways of 12-year old boys, he really might not have given a shit. Mr. Kotyk was funny and friendly, not like kindly Mrs. Edwards, but in a Greek, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Son of Popeye, part-time bar tender at the local Elks Club sort of way. He was a tough old cuss who could pat you on the back one moment and give you a quick pop in the chops the next. I tended to get more pops than pats.

Example: Mr. Kotyk hated “long hair on boys,” meaning any hair he could see or pinch. When he wanted me to get a haircut, he didn’t make a request. He’d just yank the hank o’ hair above my ear and say something like, “If I can still do that on Monday, you’d better hope I’m not here!”

Example: My desk was usually a mess, filled with stuffed and bulging books and papers. Kotyk had a simple solution. He’d drag it out in the hall, dump it all over the place, and make me clean it up. Actually, I kind of enjoyed this. The peacefulness of the hallway made up for the brief moment of humiliation.

But now here’s the grand example of Mr. Kotyk’s unique approach to pupil control, an example that I still speak about with tremendous admiration to my Penn State education students. Allow me to set the scene.

It’s about 2:00. We’re supposed to be copying sentences from our language book, learning to write, “Pass the potatoes to me” instead of “Shoot me the potatoes.” The book had an illustration of a cowboy shooting his pal for having use the incorrect phrase. They don’t write ‘em like that anymore. Anyhow, it was always at this lazy boring afternoon moment when Mr. Kotyk would leave the room.

We didn’t know where he went. Maybe he went to the bathroom, maybe to make a phone call, maybe to sell insurance. Sometimes two minutes, sometimes twenty. Sometimes we’d sort of carry on with our work, but most of the time we’d start screwin’ around. Imagine a classroom as an engine and disruption as a flywheel. It takes some effort to get the initial gear moving. But when you get it going just right, all the other gears start to spin.

For example: Somebody’d say to Jeff Biggers, “do your Man from Uncle!” and he’d rearrange the parts of his pen, hold it up to his mouth, and say “open channel D!” Then all the boys would be take their pens apart and pretend to be Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin. Somebody’d make a fart noise or actually let one. Colleen Collins or Ruth Umstead would fall off her chair and the room would explode into sweet mayhem. Once again, however, we were doomed.

From out of nowhere, Mr. Kotyk would burst in and announce, “All the talkers come to the front of the room!” Because this would cause dead silence, one might think that we’d all be smart enough to just sit there and quietly go back to work. Yet inevitably, one or two of the good Catholic kids would slowly rise and walk to the front. That was bad enough, but then one of them – often my pal Johnny Kotlarczyk – would turn back to me and admonish, “Shouse! You were talking too!” Kotyk’s sardonic grin would hit me like a tractor beam. "C'mon up here, Shouse!"

So, what was in store for us? Long chalkboard pointer in hand, Kotyk stood at the head of the line. One by one he’d order the boys to bend over and the girls to extend their hand (except that one time when he was so pissed at Colleen Collins that he made her bend over too). Some days there’d be three or four kids up there. But on a really good day, there might be 20 or more and only three or four left in their seats. This was classic Kotyk. If he was having a good day, there’d be a wisecrack, a whack, and a smile for each kid. If not, it would be just one wicked whack.

The entire ceremony was highly functional. First, it allowed Mr. Kotyk to kill 15 or 20 minutes of class time. Second, it must have seemed to him like a reasonable way to teach a room full of kids to behave themselves even when the teacher was out of the room. Today’s teachers and school administrators whine and moan weird stuff like, “oh, the teacher must never leave the room!” which, of course, I find absurd. Obviously, a sixth grade teacher must sometimes leave the room, if only to help students develop habits of self control.

Finally, the ceremony was a way of establishing a sense of classroom justice; for there were days when some of us did keep doing our work, while others had tried hard to get the damn flywheel spinning. If you were one of the mature, responsible kids, you felt a great sense of satisfaction to watch the festivities at the front of the room.

Mr. Kotyk demonstrated what I would call the artful use of corporal punishment, the pros and cons of which we can debate another day. One more thing—this wasn’t the only way Mr. Kotyk “killed time” in the afternoon. On nice spring days he’d take us out for an extra long recess to play softball. He’d pitch. It was good for all our souls.

Coming soon: Fire in the classroom; Safety Boy scandals; The Story of John and Barbara.

Devil's Night

I guess I’ve been talking about Devil’s Night so much that the words to follow will seem anticlimactic. It’s not so much that I have some amazing story to tell about a particular Devil’s Night; I just want to explain how amazing it is to even have a Devil’s Night and why it’s such a shame we don’t seem to have one anymore.

You first have to understand that Halloween was not always a night of simple trick or treating. And to that end I highly recommend all readers to watch the movie, Meet Me in St. Louis. Among the many fascinating scenes of turn-of-the-last-century-life depicted in the film is one involving Halloween night. The kids in this middle class neighborhood have built a massive bonfire in the center of the street. They’re dragging all the wood they can find – old furniture, buggy parts, tree branches, whatever – into that flaming mess. Dressed in hobo clothes and masks, they talk over which kids will “take” which houses, and by “take” they mean “kill,” and by “kill” they mean…well, I don’t want to give it away. But the cool thing is that the adults in the neighborhood all seem to accept the fact that these young kids should be out building fires, ringing doorbells, and “killing” people after dark.

I’m not sure if I remember my first Halloween, though I do vaguely remember dressing up in a Mighty Mouse costume at age three. The following year I was a devil, but I think it was all hobos each and every year after that. My brother, our pals, and I would go out for what seemed like hours until we filled up a pillow case full of candy. Not crappy little snack sized Milky Ways, but the big ones (I think they cost a nickel back then). And there were homemade popcorn balls, cupcakes, even miniature loaves of Silver Cup Bread. We’d try to hit the “fancy” houses or the ones where we thought famous people lived. For example, quarterback Milt Plum’s house (his candy turned out to be nothing special) or WKNR disc jockey Swingin’ Sweeny (he handed out old 45 records). Then there was the year when neighborhood punk Jimmy Yeagley handed out Ex-Lax….

But though my Halloweens were great fun, we always talked about Devil’s Night and how “next year for sure” we would all go out the night before Halloween to soap windows, ring doorbells, and pull the flaming bag o’ crap on the front porch trick on Roy Meyer’s dad. But somehow we just never got around to it; that is, until that one year, I think it was 1966.

I’m pretty sure that Jeff Biggers, John Kotlarczyk, and I must have been daring each other all week that we wouldn’t be able to go out on Devil’s night. Jeff would razz Johnny, “you’re mommy and daddy won’t let you!” Johnny would insist on betting five dollars that they would, then quickly withdraw the offer. I wasn’t sure if my parents would let me go or not. I just assumed I’d walk out the door after dinner with a bar of soap and two rolls of toilet paper under my coat, hop the back fence, and blend into the dusky darkness.

That’s what I did. And as I did, my mom just gave me one of those looks that all at once said, ok, be careful, behave yourself.

After meeting Johnny in the little traffic island right in front of his house, we cut through Schwartz’s yard and headed to the “staging area” – the field. Jeff was there along with a few other guys (I don’t think any girls went out on Devil’s Night). After standing around wondering what to do next, we spotted Johnny Mason walking toward us from Michigan Avenue carrying two large grocery bags. Johnny was Charley Mason’s younger brother. Just to recap, Charley leaned psycho, Johnny leaned socio. Johnny was the kind of guy who’d play like a puppy one minute, then snap like a cat the next. I recall one day him sitting in front of me in junior high math class. He had tied several short pieces of black string together so that each of the residual tied ends stuck out about an inch. Turning to me, and while holding the entire two foot long string tautly with both hands, he cackled in a creepy witch-like voice, “Nice fresh barbedwire!”

So anyway, Johnny Mason walks up to us with these two large bags, sets them down on the dirt, starts pulling stuff out, and in a sing-song voice says, “Here’s one for you, and one for you, and one for….” They were cartons of eggs.

This next bit I’m still a bit ashamed about. After passing out what must have been a dozen cartons of eggs, Johnny Mason says, “now gentlemen, on to Nearman’s!” Recapping once again, Beth Nearman was a smart, friendly, precocious girl who, for reasons known only to the gods of cruel little boys, was frequently targeted. Alas, amidst the boy mob electric night excitement, we all agreed and followed.

It’s one thing to soap a few car windows and TP an occasional house. But when we got to Beth’s house it was like a junior version of one of those movie scenes where the crowd surrounds the jailhouse. Instead of torches and rope, we had eggs and Charmin. I threw several eggs at Nearman’s roof. I think Johnny Kotlarczyk, perhaps struck by the total wrongness of it all, decided not to throw any. I threw a roll of toilet paper. If done properly, it unrolls and “tents” the roof. My first effort failed, then someone showed me how to do it correctly, and the next one sailed over the house. Police cars were spotted in the distance. Dropping the rest of our eggs, Kotlarczyk and I ran two blocks back to his house. Standing beneath the crabapple trees that grew on the small traffic island, we caught our breath.

Down the street we could see what strikes me now as dozens of guys moving hither and yon. We heard the sounds and smelled the smoke of cherry bombs in the distance. For a 12 year old Roger, it was all hell breaking loose – and yet he was drawn to it.

But I snapped out of it as two things happened. First, Jeff Biggers comes running up and in his typical deadpan style says, “uh… [Charley] Mason and Yeagley are out with BB guns.” Jesus. The psycho and the punk, together, like an embryonic version of In Cold Blood’s Perry and Dick. Next, as I fathomed this bit of info, a police car rolled slowly past the traffic island. Under the streetlight, with his window down, the cop gave us a look much different than the one my mom had given me when I’d slipped out the back door. It was time to flee.

So I hear you ask, "How can this kind of activity have any kind of value whatsoever?" All I can say is that it was real life youth drama, the sort from which kids develop experience, independence, and a sense of moral agency. We learned how bad we could be and why it's usually better to be good. Yet, soaking in a nightful of risky freedom and figuring out for ourselves what to do with it, we felt the power and joy of disobedience. Where today can young people gather this knowledge?

Coming Soon: Mr. Kodyk and some Oxford summarizing.

The Turning of Mrs. Shay

What year did Hogan’s Heroes first air? The reason I ask is because it’s around that time that our dear Oxford School librarian, Mrs. Shay, began to turn against me.

Look. We all know that books are wonderful. As some thoughtful person once said, “a book is like a story in words crammed between two colorful pieces of cardboard!” But for pre-teen boys in the 1960s, two other things were even more wonderful; real life and TV. “Real life” consisted of everything I did outside of home and classroom – bikes, firecrackers, the Rouge, Motorcycle Hill, baseball in the field, football in the street, games of “dogpile,” or “tackle the guy with the ball” played across acres of neighbors’ yards. We’d stay out every night until the streetlights came on, sometimes a little later. “Real life” was what happened when one of your buddies started telling you about sex beyond the earshot of grownups.

Then there was TV. The mid-60s gave us The Outer Limits, The Addams Family, The Man From Uncle, Time Tunnel, Get Smart, Combat, McHale’s Navy, and maybe a dozen other shows that captured the imaginations of millions of young boys, including the aforementioned Hogan’s Heroes.

That was our world. Why would any of us want to read books?

Oh, sure, I read stuff; comic books, Mad Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, The Detroit News, and from time to time “normal” books about stuff that really fascinated me. Books like Frank Edwards’ Stranger than Science or Mac Davis’ Sports Shorts: Astonishing, Strange, but True. But for anyone to plop some “classic” book down in front of me was like a Baby Ruth in the swimming pool—a good thing, but in the wrong place at the wrong time guaranteed to repel me.

Prior to fifth grade (the year our teacher told us where we could all go), the relationship between Mrs. Shay and me was as sweet as puppies and cookies. I impressed her with my reading ability, and she impressed me with her willingness to leave me alone to work independently in the library. But from the fall of 1964 until I left Oxford in June of 1966, a combination of events and interactions began to transform our mutual perceptions.

First, there was “advanced reading” class. A handful of presumably gifted students from each of the three fifth grade (and, later, sixth grade) classes were selected to take our reading instruction in the library with Mrs. Shay. At first this seemed wonderful, because I expected that as she had done in the past, Mrs. Shay would allow us to read books of our choice. Instead, she assigned us all to read – was it Call of the Wild? –a very good book, but at the time one that I had absolutely no interest in reading. This was followed up by two other Baby-Ruth-in-the-pool books, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and Captains Courageous. I understand that kids sometimes need to be “forced” to read particular books. But Mrs. Shay’s approach to this was not to persuade or encourage, but to launch accusations of indolence against all those failing to show enthusiastic obedience. “Stop watching the ‘idiot box’ and pick up your book!” she would nag. I stubbornly resisted reading any of the books she assigned, which, of course, lowered my grade, increased her disdain, and eventually prompted her to threaten my exile from the class.

Second, there was a sixth grade creative writing contest, which for some time Mrs. Shay had badgered me to enter. Like a lot of boys, I had no interest in writing a story of any kind. I was a smart kid. I knew a lot of stuff. I was a talkative expert in astronomy, current events, geography, and maybe a few other things. From this Mrs. Shay apparently inferred that I could write stories. A week before the deadline, I began poorly crafting a story based on the Hogan’s Heroes TV show. For those of you who don’t know, Hogan’s Heroes was a show about American WWII prisoners of war in a German POW camp who ran a sophisticated espionage operation right under the noses of their Nazi guards. My awful knock off was replete with ridiculous references to Nazis, Chinese camp guards, and hand crank telephones in every prison barracks. It was truly terrible, messily written, and downright embarrassing—Mrs. Shay told me this in no uncertain terms. “You should only write about things you know about!” she bleated. Well of course! But since I wasn’t inspired to write about astronomy, current events, or geography, I wrote something inspired by my favorite TV show.

Finally, there was the awful charge of plagiarism she leveled against me. Specifically, around the late winter of 1966 she accused me of copying an assignment from another student. She did so, not by taking me aside and asking me if I had done so, but by spewing angry red ink accusations all over the paper itself. It needs to be said, of course, that my work was entirely my own. She had asked us to give examples of clichés and slang in speech and writing. I knew a bunch. We did part of the assignment in class and I would say some of them out loud to my table mates before I wrote them down. One of them, a sweet little girl above reproach, apparently borrowed some of my answers. Hence Mrs. Shay’s angry red ink accusation.

After that I seldom spoke to Mrs. Shay again. I saw her years later while I was working as a substitute teacher at Bryant Junior High School. She came over to my room to complain about my noisy class. I introduced myself and tried to spark kind memories of me within her and let bygones be bygones (ha! Now there’s a cliché!). She gave me a cold stare and returned to her room across the hall.

School librarians: ask them about a book, and they’ll tell you how books are made. Then they’ll accuse you of plagiarism.

No, that’s not fair. A couple years later I would meet Mrs. Haniford, the Adams Junior High School librarian, who always let us read whatever we wanted—even Detroit’s seditious, profanity-laced underground newspaper, the Fifth Estate. I bet she could have gotten me to read Call of the Wild!

Coming soon: Devil’s Night (oh sure), Mr. Kodyk, and goodbye to Oxford.

A Few More Stories about my Neighborhood

It seems I've forgotten a few salient points. Or, maybe I wrote about them and have simply forgotten that I did so. Either way, here we go.

It's important to reiterate how much freedom I felt I had as a kid. Oh, sure, I whined to my parents about how they never let me do stuff, but, in fact, they let me do an awful lot. Even at an early age I could get on my bike and be gone for hours. Or walk. We'd walk or ride east on Michigan Avenue to Pat's Party Store. Pat's little store had comic books, ice cream, candy, Coke, Sunny Boy Pumpkin Seeds, and even rotisserie chickens. There were Pixie Stix, baseball cards, string licorice, and, oh man, I could go on and on. You could take a dime to Pat's Party story, buy a Coke for eight cents and a box of Sunny Boy Pumpkin Seeds for two cents. Take 'em outside, sit on the stoop, and you had yourself a sweet summer day.

When I was really little, maybe three or four, my sister Mike walked me even further, all the way to Wilson's Dairy Bar (which later became Gabe's Party Store--the "party store" is a Detroit area thing; a small shop that sells pop, beer, snacks, etc.). We walked all the way to Wilsons and bumped into a punk by the name of Jimmy Yeagley. I didn't know him that well, but I guess my sister did because she kept me away from him. Jimmy Yeagley was about four years older than me, which would have made him about eight at the time (my sister Mike was 11 or 12) and had just been kicked out of Wilson's Dairy Bar. The woman working inside Wilson's literally pushed him out the door shouting something like, "don't you come in here for water! You go home and get your own water!"

I say Jimmy was a punk, which means he was a bully who would instantly back down as soon as any kid his size stood up to him. But the one time I tried to stand up to him when I was about 8 9 years old, he starting spitting on me and spit on me almost all the way from the little island where Whittier met Riverdale to my back fence. Part of me believes in forgiveness, but part of me hopes he's very unhappy now.

As an aside, for a long time when I was little, I kept having a nightmare about my sister and I walking along Michigan Avenue. She would say, "C'mon Roger! Let's go to the movies!" The Dearborn Theater was across Michigan Avenue from Wilson's/Gabe's, right where Michigan Avenue intersected Telegraph Road (the great intersection of highways US 12 and US 24--I love US highways). Anyhow, in the dream I would say, "No, Michael, no!" because I knew that between our house and Telegraph Road, Michigan Avenue was a bridge that crossed a terrible river, terrible because its water would turn you to stone. And because I'd had the dream before, I knew that my sister would fall into the river and suffer that fate.

So, I'd beg her, "No, Michael, no!" But "C'mon Roger!" she'd insist. We'd cross the bridge, you know the rest.

But I digress. (Oh, Mike actually did take me to my first movie at the Dearborn--it was The Shaggy Dog.)

Later on, when I was maybe eight, my brother and I began bringing fireworks back from Alabama. My grandma lived in Lillian, just across Perdido Bay from Florida. While down there, we'd get dad to stop at various roadside stands and stock up on Dixie Boys, Texas Twisters, Buzz Bombs, Cherry Bombs, and whatever else we could afford. Gradually, our neighborhood friends would give us money to buy fireworks for them and we'd bring 'em back and deliver 'em for no profit of any kind. From summer to fall we'd shoot off fireworks with no more concern than for shooting a basketball.

One day, Dennis Korloff (I'm not sure that's how to spell his last name) and I were lighting some Dixie Boys behind his garage, tossing them into the alley behind Amy Joy Donuts. Imagine--having the gall -- no, actually it was a sense of innocence -- to light firecrackers within a stone's throw of the police cars parked there! As we lit the eighth or tenth firecracker, I noticed a guy in a uniform walking slowly toward us. You won' t believe this, but my first thought was, "that's odd! What's a forest ranger doing here?"

I quickly realized my error. The officer made us empty our pockets and told us to go home. I don't remember if I told my parents, but they must have looked at my face and wormed the information out of me. My dad laughed and my mom tisked. I'm sure that by evening I was lighting bottle rockets.

Ok, enough for now. No wait, very quickly, three things that happened at the Shader's house.

1. I once stayed in the Shader's basement watching TV so long that nearly all of them had left the house and my mom had to come in and get me.

2. One summer day standing in the Shader's yard when I was maybe 7, Jerry Shader suddenly shouts, "let's have a water fight!" I excitedly ran home to change into my bathing suit, then ran back to the Shader's yard. All the Shader kids looked at me and laughed, "Roger! Where's your bathing suit?" I had forgotten to put it on and was standing there in my underwear.

3. They had a rooster. I walked over there one day and it met me in their front yard. It pecked my foot and I backed up. It pecked me again and I started running home. The damned rooster chased me all the way home. Big Tom Shader witnessed all this, laughed his head off, and told everyone in the neighborhood.

Oh, the Shader stories!

Next time: For sure Devil's Night. For sure Mrs. Shay. I know, I know, I keep promising...

Bill, Bobcat Blood, and Bus Trips to Hudsons

I just learned that one of my friends from the old neighborhood passed away in 2001. Bill Wargo lived on the corner of Whittier Place and Riverdale Drive, sort of across the fence from John Kotlarczyk, who, of course, lived across my back fence. I can’t remember when I first met Bill, but when I did, it probably had something to do with bobcat blood.

Bill told me that you had to drink bobcat blood before you could become a Cub Scout. He would know, since he was a year older than me and his dad was the pack leader.

I was dying to join the Cub Scouts. My brother had been one before he moved on to the Boy Scouts. I had all his Cub Scout books-Wolf, Bear, Lion-and had been scouring through them for months before my 8th birthday. I was in kid heaven thinking of all the badges I could earn.

Bobcat was the lowest Cub Scout rank. It was a cool little bronze medal, and when you got it, Bill’s dad pinned it on you in front of the whole pack and all the parents on the stage in the Kentucky Fried Chicken smelling basement of Cherry Hill United Presbyterian Church. But first you had to drink bobcat blood. I did, and it tasted like tomato juice with hot sauce.

They put me in Den 6 and once a week, Bill and I would walk over to Steve Bingham’s house. Steve was a trip, the likes of which space will not permit me to explain, and I sort of mean that in a good way. Anyhow, we’d do all the Cub Scout stuff (make clove apples, fried marble jewelry, macaroni ashtrays, etc.) then get juice and cookies. Six months later, Bill’s mom became Den Mother. It was at a Den meeting at Bill’s house in October, 1962 when I learned the Ford Rotunda burned down. There would be no field trip.

About a year and a half later, Bill did something that changed the way I look at this world, the way I look at schools, kids, and even my job as an education professor at Penn State. Well, ok, I exaggerate a little, but as Christopher Robin once said, “bear with me.”

It was early summer, 1964, and Bill calls me up and asks, “do you want to ride the bus to Hudson’s tomorrow?” J. L. Hudson’s was the biggest department store in Detroit—twelve stories of everything and twelve miles from the corner of Michigan Avenue and Gulley Road. I really never thought my parents would let me go—a ten and eleven year old kid riding the bus alone and spending the day roaming downtown Detroit—but they did.

Bill and I caught the Wayne bus at about 8:00 AM and rode it all the way to the last stop at Adams Street. Bill must have done this before because he knew that our first stop would be at the nearby Quickie Cafeteria for donuts and—I’m pretty sure—coffee, the first time I ever bought coffee anywhere. The bus cost 40 cents, the donut and coffee maybe another 20.

From there we walked over to Hudson’s. What a beautiful building! Huge revolving doors pulled us into a vast shopping space as large as a train station; elevators with uniformed men and women asking for your floor, sliding a brass lever to shut a massive brass cage of a door. Bill said we should get off at the mezzanine. What the hell was that? Bill said it was like the second floor, but that there was also another second floor, which was the real second floor. Yeah, it all made sense.

I only remember two things I really wanted to shop for. One was stamps. Hudson’s had a great little philately department tucked away, almost hidden, between two sections of the building. The other thing I really wanted was a copy of the new Jan and Dean single, Dead Man’s Curve b/w New Girl in School. For those of you under 40, a “single” was a 45 rpm record, a thin vinyl disk with a big hole in the middle that you played on something called a “phonograph,” or perhaps a “stereo.” The abbreviation “b/w” – I have no idea, maybe “backed with.” Who knows?

I think Hudson’s record department was on the fifth floor. You could ask to listen to the record before you bought it and there were phonographs and headphones at various stations around the shop. I really wanted Dead Man’s Curve, a song most of you have heard about a drag race tragedy, which contains the spoken line, “well, the last thing I remember, doc, I started to swerve….” But alas, they were totally sold out. Bummer.

It was lunch time and Bill knew where to go. He said we could eat in the famous J. L. Hudson restaurant, but he knew something even better. We left Hudson’s, walked north on Woodward Avenue, and after a block or so turned right. “This is it,” Bill said, “The Flaming Embers.”

The Flaming Embers was a cafeteria style steakhouse about half the size of your local Denny’s. For a buck forty-nine you got a sirloin steak, salad, baked potato, Texas toast, and a drink. As the name implies, they cooked your steak to order over an open fire. It was the first time I ever ordered steak. I don’t think I even liked steak that much back then, but when you’re a kid on your own, twelve miles from home, everything you pay for yourself tastes furtively delicious.

Not long after that, we took the bus back home and you must be wondering why this was such a landmark experience for me. Can’t you tell? Have you not yet figured out the meaning of the Four Trees?

One summer day about six or seven years ago, my daughter, Eva Mei, and her friend Louise were sitting around our front porch like two bored little girls, because that’s what they were, seven and eight, with nothing to do. I asked, “why don’t you walk over to Wal-Mart?” They gave me a look signifying that (A) they hadn’t understood me or (B) I was crazy. I continued. “It’s not that far and you can take my cell phone. Just be sure to cross Atherton at the light.”

Wal-Mart was maybe a mile away and I was sure they could handle it. But they just kept looking at me like I was making some kind of sick twisted joke. Finally, Louise said, “I don’t think my parents will let me cross Atherton.” Well, you know, when you’re a parent, and your kid’s friend says something like that you can’t push back too much. So, I backed off a bit and told them the story of my trips to Detroit with Bill.

What’s that? You say times have changed? I say they haven’t. Only parents and kids have changed.

Coming soon: I’ve got to talk about Devil’s Night, Mrs. Shay, Sixth Grade, and English Leather.