Jeff Biggers showed up in Mrs. Powers’ fourth grade class at the start of the 1963-1964 school year. He was a bus rider, along with me, John Kotlarczyk, Beth Nierman, and a slew of other kids. Bus riders were the minority at Oxford School. We all lived west of Telegraph Rd. and north of Michigan Ave. Later, we’d be known as “cake eaters,” referring to the fact that some of our dads were professional or white collar workers. Some of us had books in our homes, even magazine subscriptions. Some of us even had encyclopedias, the kind you bought one volume at a time from A&P.
The kids who lived southeast of the US 24-US 12 intersection constituted the majority of Oxford kids. Later on we’d call them greasers, referring to the hair and high Cuban heel shoes some of them wore. For all we knew, some of them had A&P encyclopedias too. Anyhow, Jeff Biggers, though he could often be a jerk, was one of the funniest kids I ever knew. You’d see some stupid TV commercial one day, and the next you’d hear Jeff doing a hilarious word for word parody. So one day you see the toy ad where the kid is on the walkie talkie saying, “Hello headquarters? Just wrecked my truck!” And the following day Jeff would be like, “Hello headquarters? Just wrecked my pants!” I once heard him parody an entire episode of Johnny Quest. He was South Park 30 years ahead of its time.
The one time I ran away from home, I ended up at Jeff’s house. It was probably the summer between 4th and 5th grade. There had been some kind of horseplay going on in my basement involving my brother, sister, and my sister’s boyfriend. A lamp got broke and it wasn’t entirely my fault. But I got sent to my room. Pissed, I snuck out the back door, hopped the back fence, and suddenly realizing I had nowhere to go, ran two blocks over to Jeff’s. It was past dusk. I just showed up at his side door and yelled “Je-e-eff,” stretching out to three sing-song syllables the way we always called on each other. He let me in and we sat in his basement watching Johnny Quest.
After half an hour I realized I might be in trouble. I said “seeya” and began slowly walking home, down Fairway Dr. and around the corner on to Cambridge St. As I walked past Beth Nierman’s house, a station wagon slowly approached and I quickly recognized my mom and dad in the front seat. I stood there like a porch jockey. They parked, and my dad got out, came around, opened the back door, and kicked my ass in such a way as to clearly signify that I was to get in the back seat.
That may have been the last time my dad ever used physical punishment on me. There was one other time later on that he wanted to. I don’t remember what I did, probably mouthed off to him, as was my wont, and he chased me down into the basement. I knew what was coming and I didn’t want it. I saw a large mailing tube, grabbed it as if it were a battering ram, and pointed it right at my dad. He stopped suddenly and almost laughed. I mean, it was just a mailing tube that he could easily have snatched away before lowering the boom. I guess that was the moment he realized I was too big to spank.
Now, I’m gonna get back to Jeff in a moment. But first, I need to explain a little more about fighting and why it was so hard for me. When I first started having to fight at school, my dad took great pains to try to teach me the value and technique of self defense. He’d show me how to punch six ways to Saturday. My mom, too, would implore me to defend myself and never to let anyone push me around. But my problem was that I couldn’t bear the idea of hitting anyone in the face. I had punched a couple of skinny kids in the stomach before, but found the stomach punch to be of little use when up against a kid of real heft.
So, I took a lot of bruising from Sam and one or two other stocky kids who used to push me around. But the day came when Jeff and a couple of older guys started giving me a lot of crap. Jeff, the funniest kid I ever met, turned his full range of smart ass sarcasm on me. It continued for the entire next day of school until we finally decided to settle matters behind my garage at 4:00. I might take a lot of crap from some kids, but I figured I couldn’t live with myself if I kept taking it from Jeff. So, I went straight home after school and caught my dad just as he was about to leave for his afternoon shift at Ford’s.
I leveled with him. “Dad, I don’t like to fight. I don’t like to hit. And Jeff’s my friend.”
“Rog,” he said, “there’ve been a lot of guys who said they were my friend, but….”
My dad was never afraid to fight. I saw him in action a few times, at a gas station, the bowling alley, Tiger Stadium. He told amazing stories about some of the fights he had when he was young. He was always standing up for his rights. “Stand up for your rights!” he’d tell me.
“Rog, there was this one time at the bowling alley when a guy who said he was my friend started saying bad stuff about me. Friend or not, I met him outside and popped him one!”
He continued. “Here’s what you do. When he comes over, you follow him out behind the garage. And just as he’s turning around, you lay one on his jaw.”
It sounded so simple. Why had I never thought of this?
About 10 minutes later, Jeff came to the back door. He had a smirk on his face as we walked to the back of the yard. Behind the garage, he still had the smirk as he turned around, and just as he did, my fist hit him square in the jaw. It felt really good. Jeff was clearly annoyed by this. I guess he never expected it. We boxed around for a few more minutes until my dad came back and broke it up.
The next day at school, Jeff was all, “he sucker punched me!” But no one really paid any attention. What mattered to me was the sense of justice I felt having popped him one. Never fear; Jeff and I stayed pretty much pals after that.
The last punch I threw was in 1987 at the age of 33. It was self defense. If I had to, I could do it again.
Next time: Devil’s Night
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Mrs. Powers and JFK
I’ve been meaning to write about the day President Kennedy got shot. But first, I’ll tell you about Mrs. Powers, my fourth grade teacher.
Mrs. Powers was probably in her 40s. Remember, no boy kid can ever tell how old his woman teacher is, I mean unless she’s clearly hot and in her 20s. Mrs. Powers was a sturdy looking woman, probably a smoker, with a stern Scottish face. She could probably drink her dates under the table, if she weren’t married. I have no idea if she drank or not, but she just looked like she’d be “not bad, once she got going.”
But she was usually quite stern with us, only rarely showing a slightly softer side. She used writing as punishment. Whenever I pissed her off enough, she’d make me write 50 times (100, if she was really po’d), “I will not bother my neighbor.” That may not seem like a lot, but it was. Once I even used carbon paper. She must have realized this, but didn’t seem to mind.
Once she caught Jeff Biggers reading Ian Flemming’s Thunderball, one of the the James Bond novels. Biggers wasn’t really “reading” it, he was just looking for the parts involving breasts. Anyhow, Mrs. Powers sees the book, walks over and snatches from Biggers, literally pinches it by the corner as if it were a filthy tissue, then takes it over and drops it in the trash. “That’s a nasty book!” she exclaimed, drawing out the word “nasty” like a sheep saying “baaaaaah.”
Jeff Biggers, by the way, was one of the funniest kids I ever knew. I once punched him really hard in the jaw. I wonder what he’s doing now.
Anyway, back to the Kennedy assassination. Let me first say that on the evening of November 22, 1963, I went to a football game with my Cub Scout troop. I know that sounds strange, but it was the Annual Detroit High School Friendship Game at Tiger Stadium, which pit together the best public and Catholic school football teams. They didn’t cancel it because, someone said, JFK wouldn’t have wanted them to. I mention this now because later it will seem anticlimactic.
Sometime in the early on that Friday afternoon, Mrs. Powers left the room for about 5 minutes. Of course we all started goofing off. But when she came back, instead of shouting at us, she just stood in the front of the room and said, “Class, I need to make an announcement. The President has been shot.”
We all got quiet. Roseanne Raidel and a couple other girls started crying. Boys started asking questions. “How? Where? Did the Russians do it?” Mrs. Powers answered calmly. “In his car, in Dallas Texas, we don’t know.”
After a few minutes of this, Mrs. Powers said, “We’ll all go over to the library. Mrs. Shay will tell us more about this.” Mrs. Shay was the librarian, who I used to like, until she turned against me.
We walked down the hall to the library. We sat in small groups; four or five little circles of little library chairs. My group was near the window. I sat across from Roseanne Raidel, a girl I always liked. She had stopped crying, but was holding it back. Mrs. Shay, who had not yet turned against me, pulled her big chair over to our group, sat down, and asked, “Does anyone have anything they want to say?”
Like a lot of families, the Shouses had a copy of Vaughn Meader’s LP record, The First Family. This was an album of funny sketches poking fun at JFK, Jackie Kennedy, and various other political figures of the time. Most kids who listened to The First Family gradually gathered the ability to do a bad JFK impersonation, and I was no different. So when Mrs. Shay asked, “Does anyone have anything to say?” I replied that I thought that if President Kennedy could talk to us, he would say (and this was in my best bad JFK voice), “Let us proceed with vigah!” (“Vigah” as in “vigor,” a word Kennedy seemed often to use.)
Mrs. Shay smiled (this was not what turned her against me). But Roseanne Raidel’s face soured as she said, “Roger, I don’t think that’s funny at all!” I hadn’t really meant it to be funny. I was just trying to cheer people up, as if a presidential assassination was like losing a dollar.
They might have let us out of school early that day, I can’t remember. We rode the bus home. I got off at the usual corner and ran home to tell my mom the news. I sped around the corner at the back of the house and up to the back door. I pulled it open and started to exclaim, “Mom! The President was…..” Before I could finish the sentence, I looked up and saw my mom sobbing. I’d never seen that before. I’d never seen my mom cry.
Coming soon: Why did I punch Jeff in the jaw?
Mrs. Powers was probably in her 40s. Remember, no boy kid can ever tell how old his woman teacher is, I mean unless she’s clearly hot and in her 20s. Mrs. Powers was a sturdy looking woman, probably a smoker, with a stern Scottish face. She could probably drink her dates under the table, if she weren’t married. I have no idea if she drank or not, but she just looked like she’d be “not bad, once she got going.”
But she was usually quite stern with us, only rarely showing a slightly softer side. She used writing as punishment. Whenever I pissed her off enough, she’d make me write 50 times (100, if she was really po’d), “I will not bother my neighbor.” That may not seem like a lot, but it was. Once I even used carbon paper. She must have realized this, but didn’t seem to mind.
Once she caught Jeff Biggers reading Ian Flemming’s Thunderball, one of the the James Bond novels. Biggers wasn’t really “reading” it, he was just looking for the parts involving breasts. Anyhow, Mrs. Powers sees the book, walks over and snatches from Biggers, literally pinches it by the corner as if it were a filthy tissue, then takes it over and drops it in the trash. “That’s a nasty book!” she exclaimed, drawing out the word “nasty” like a sheep saying “baaaaaah.”
Jeff Biggers, by the way, was one of the funniest kids I ever knew. I once punched him really hard in the jaw. I wonder what he’s doing now.
Anyway, back to the Kennedy assassination. Let me first say that on the evening of November 22, 1963, I went to a football game with my Cub Scout troop. I know that sounds strange, but it was the Annual Detroit High School Friendship Game at Tiger Stadium, which pit together the best public and Catholic school football teams. They didn’t cancel it because, someone said, JFK wouldn’t have wanted them to. I mention this now because later it will seem anticlimactic.
Sometime in the early on that Friday afternoon, Mrs. Powers left the room for about 5 minutes. Of course we all started goofing off. But when she came back, instead of shouting at us, she just stood in the front of the room and said, “Class, I need to make an announcement. The President has been shot.”
We all got quiet. Roseanne Raidel and a couple other girls started crying. Boys started asking questions. “How? Where? Did the Russians do it?” Mrs. Powers answered calmly. “In his car, in Dallas Texas, we don’t know.”
After a few minutes of this, Mrs. Powers said, “We’ll all go over to the library. Mrs. Shay will tell us more about this.” Mrs. Shay was the librarian, who I used to like, until she turned against me.
We walked down the hall to the library. We sat in small groups; four or five little circles of little library chairs. My group was near the window. I sat across from Roseanne Raidel, a girl I always liked. She had stopped crying, but was holding it back. Mrs. Shay, who had not yet turned against me, pulled her big chair over to our group, sat down, and asked, “Does anyone have anything they want to say?”
Like a lot of families, the Shouses had a copy of Vaughn Meader’s LP record, The First Family. This was an album of funny sketches poking fun at JFK, Jackie Kennedy, and various other political figures of the time. Most kids who listened to The First Family gradually gathered the ability to do a bad JFK impersonation, and I was no different. So when Mrs. Shay asked, “Does anyone have anything to say?” I replied that I thought that if President Kennedy could talk to us, he would say (and this was in my best bad JFK voice), “Let us proceed with vigah!” (“Vigah” as in “vigor,” a word Kennedy seemed often to use.)
Mrs. Shay smiled (this was not what turned her against me). But Roseanne Raidel’s face soured as she said, “Roger, I don’t think that’s funny at all!” I hadn’t really meant it to be funny. I was just trying to cheer people up, as if a presidential assassination was like losing a dollar.
They might have let us out of school early that day, I can’t remember. We rode the bus home. I got off at the usual corner and ran home to tell my mom the news. I sped around the corner at the back of the house and up to the back door. I pulled it open and started to exclaim, “Mom! The President was…..” Before I could finish the sentence, I looked up and saw my mom sobbing. I’d never seen that before. I’d never seen my mom cry.
Coming soon: Why did I punch Jeff in the jaw?
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
In the Field
Before getting back to the Oxford School saga, I’d like to write a few words about The Field. The Field, in its original configuration, lay at the NE corner of Michigan Avenue and Gulley Road. In the early days, you could walk south down Gulley, past the March house, and there you were. The first thing you saw was a pile of rock, which we called “The Rock Pile.” Actually, it was a pile of broken concrete and brick, construction debris left over from when our houses were built.
Right next to The Rock Pile was a big pile of grass clippings. Each time my dad would cut the lawn, using one of those push mowers with a “catcher,” he’d dump the clippings from the catcher into a wheel barrow and I’d follow him down the sidewalk toward The Field. He’d dump the clippings, pick me up, set me down in the wheel barrow, and give me a bouncy ride back home.
When I was old enough to walk down to The Field myself (maybe 4 years old), I’d climb up on The Rock Pile and make gunpowder. Tommy March (we called him “Little Tom”) showed me how to do this. You take a brick and chip it against a slab of concrete until you get a nice orange-red powder. “Gun powder.” Years later I learned how to make real gun powder in my garage, but this ersatz version was fine for a four-year-old.
East of The Rock Pile was a massive billboard, one of those three-panel jobs built on a steel frame that we could climb. Most of us would just climb up a little way, staying below the signs themselves. But one day Bobby March climbed really high, all the way up to the signs. He was up there waving and laughing and having a ball when suddenly a Dearborn Police car pulled up. I don’t think I’d ever seen a police car pull up before. The cop made Bobby climb down. I don’t remember if he took Bobby home, but if he did, I know for sure that Bobby’s mom beat him with a broom.
Right below the billboard to the east was our ball diamond. Most of The Field was wild in the summer with tall grass and weeds. But the city would cut just enough grass for us to play ball. We had a big old plywood sheet that leaned against the billboard and blocked pitches from going under the structure. The ground was worn bare at home, the pitcher’s mound, and at each base. Some days we had enough kids to have four or five on a team. We fashioned our own rules so that we could play with any number—even with just two on a team; “right field is out,” “pitcher’s hands is out,” and “imaginary man on first.”
One day my sister Mike (just like the book!) came down to play. She was 11 or 12, older than most of the boys, and they made a little fun of her when she stepped up to bat. That is, until she hammered a ball almost all the way to Cambridge Street.
When not playing ball or fighting over ball, we did other stuff in The Field. We once dug out a network of long ditches, covered them with boards and sod, then crawled around inside as if it was a big cave. Bobby, Little Tom, and Linda March were way into this for several days. But then Mrs. March discovered what we were doing and, as she often did, decided to take fun out in the desert and kill it. Bobby, Little Tom, and Linda appeared at the dig site one evening and announced that their mother told them it was too dangerous, no one could play there anymore, and we had to quit. Jerry and “Big Tom” Shader, the other kids, and I had a different notion and we kept on digging and playing cave. No one died.
One fall day Roy Meyer, Craig Kotlarczyk (Johnny’s brother), and I discovered that a heavy rusty steel front side panel from an old car had been dumped around home plate. Craig lifted it at one side to see what was under it. I stood there looking. Then Craig dropped it. The rusty edge slammed down on my ankle. I cried my way back home. Once again, I was “rushed to Oakwood” for stitches.
Besides the cop who busted Bobby March, and the one who busted Dennis Korloff and me for shooting of firecrackers, I don’t remember ever seeing a grown up in The Field. The Field was kid territory, a place to dig holes, play ball, and make up our own rules. Once, I discovered a hand-sized rock, split into three layers, with big shell fossils in between each layer. I kept that rock for many years until it disappeared.
One summer evening, six years old, I wandered alone from my house to The Field. I turned left into the abandoned alley that ran along its northern edge. There was a tall hedgerow on my left. Just ahead was an opening that led into Sissy Wine’s back yard. Sissy Wines was real old, at least a couple years older than my sister Mike. I turned into the opening and waved. Then I heard a scream, the whoosh of an arrow, and the “pfwt” sound it made as it hit the target just a few feet away from my head. The next thing I knew Sissy Wines was stomping toward me, bow in hand, yelling at me for almost getting killed. She marched me home, spanking me every step with her bow.
Over time, The Field changed. First they put up an Amy Joy Do-nut shop and that was fine; we still had plenty of room to play ball. But when I was in ninth grade, they put up a Burger King right next to Amy Joy. That pretty much killed baseball for all but the littlest kids, but I got to eat a lot of Whoppers. The final blow came a few years later when they put up a Long John Silver’s Fish & Chips. The Field was gone, buried beneath tar and cement.
I still dream about The Field. Standing on its edges in a grey dusk or middle of the night, seeing strange hamburger shops, parking lots filled with cars, but no one inside. I dream about being on the far end of The Field. Covered with water and mud, I struggle across it to get home.
After I wake up, I lie there wondering where kids today can find a field like mine.
Right next to The Rock Pile was a big pile of grass clippings. Each time my dad would cut the lawn, using one of those push mowers with a “catcher,” he’d dump the clippings from the catcher into a wheel barrow and I’d follow him down the sidewalk toward The Field. He’d dump the clippings, pick me up, set me down in the wheel barrow, and give me a bouncy ride back home.
When I was old enough to walk down to The Field myself (maybe 4 years old), I’d climb up on The Rock Pile and make gunpowder. Tommy March (we called him “Little Tom”) showed me how to do this. You take a brick and chip it against a slab of concrete until you get a nice orange-red powder. “Gun powder.” Years later I learned how to make real gun powder in my garage, but this ersatz version was fine for a four-year-old.
East of The Rock Pile was a massive billboard, one of those three-panel jobs built on a steel frame that we could climb. Most of us would just climb up a little way, staying below the signs themselves. But one day Bobby March climbed really high, all the way up to the signs. He was up there waving and laughing and having a ball when suddenly a Dearborn Police car pulled up. I don’t think I’d ever seen a police car pull up before. The cop made Bobby climb down. I don’t remember if he took Bobby home, but if he did, I know for sure that Bobby’s mom beat him with a broom.
Right below the billboard to the east was our ball diamond. Most of The Field was wild in the summer with tall grass and weeds. But the city would cut just enough grass for us to play ball. We had a big old plywood sheet that leaned against the billboard and blocked pitches from going under the structure. The ground was worn bare at home, the pitcher’s mound, and at each base. Some days we had enough kids to have four or five on a team. We fashioned our own rules so that we could play with any number—even with just two on a team; “right field is out,” “pitcher’s hands is out,” and “imaginary man on first.”
One day my sister Mike (just like the book!) came down to play. She was 11 or 12, older than most of the boys, and they made a little fun of her when she stepped up to bat. That is, until she hammered a ball almost all the way to Cambridge Street.
When not playing ball or fighting over ball, we did other stuff in The Field. We once dug out a network of long ditches, covered them with boards and sod, then crawled around inside as if it was a big cave. Bobby, Little Tom, and Linda March were way into this for several days. But then Mrs. March discovered what we were doing and, as she often did, decided to take fun out in the desert and kill it. Bobby, Little Tom, and Linda appeared at the dig site one evening and announced that their mother told them it was too dangerous, no one could play there anymore, and we had to quit. Jerry and “Big Tom” Shader, the other kids, and I had a different notion and we kept on digging and playing cave. No one died.
One fall day Roy Meyer, Craig Kotlarczyk (Johnny’s brother), and I discovered that a heavy rusty steel front side panel from an old car had been dumped around home plate. Craig lifted it at one side to see what was under it. I stood there looking. Then Craig dropped it. The rusty edge slammed down on my ankle. I cried my way back home. Once again, I was “rushed to Oakwood” for stitches.
Besides the cop who busted Bobby March, and the one who busted Dennis Korloff and me for shooting of firecrackers, I don’t remember ever seeing a grown up in The Field. The Field was kid territory, a place to dig holes, play ball, and make up our own rules. Once, I discovered a hand-sized rock, split into three layers, with big shell fossils in between each layer. I kept that rock for many years until it disappeared.
One summer evening, six years old, I wandered alone from my house to The Field. I turned left into the abandoned alley that ran along its northern edge. There was a tall hedgerow on my left. Just ahead was an opening that led into Sissy Wine’s back yard. Sissy Wines was real old, at least a couple years older than my sister Mike. I turned into the opening and waved. Then I heard a scream, the whoosh of an arrow, and the “pfwt” sound it made as it hit the target just a few feet away from my head. The next thing I knew Sissy Wines was stomping toward me, bow in hand, yelling at me for almost getting killed. She marched me home, spanking me every step with her bow.
Over time, The Field changed. First they put up an Amy Joy Do-nut shop and that was fine; we still had plenty of room to play ball. But when I was in ninth grade, they put up a Burger King right next to Amy Joy. That pretty much killed baseball for all but the littlest kids, but I got to eat a lot of Whoppers. The final blow came a few years later when they put up a Long John Silver’s Fish & Chips. The Field was gone, buried beneath tar and cement.
I still dream about The Field. Standing on its edges in a grey dusk or middle of the night, seeing strange hamburger shops, parking lots filled with cars, but no one inside. I dream about being on the far end of The Field. Covered with water and mud, I struggle across it to get home.
After I wake up, I lie there wondering where kids today can find a field like mine.
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