Moving up to High School 1963

In Junior High, I had a friend Franny Moore, whose mother had come from southern Ohio and was the only person I knew then who drank iced tea. She wore her hair in pin curls and laughed too loud. She was inelegantly inappropriate in the way that made me think that only white trash must drink iced tea and so I would always refuse it when she offered. To this day, I have not gotten over that image and still find it surprising that so many cultured people drink it! I still think of Franny Moore's mom Edith, yelling to someone at the back door “If you're white, all right. If you’re black, get back.” And it was a black mailman bringing her a package.

Franny was no more popular than I was, and we both longed to be. Marita, my first best friend from kindergarten, thought were both frivolous. But then Marita and I had a serious falling out over a large grasshopper that I chased from the sidewalk (where it was fair game) to her front steps (where she claimed it as hers) the summer before 6th grade.

Then came high school and, just like that, the in crowd was out. With me anyway. I discovered “The Theatre,” our high school group was called the Thespians, and I discovered the Newspaper, and I discovered Don Hamm, who was news editor of the paper and also in the Thespians. I discovered art and drama and journalism. I met kids with cars who went to Chicken Charlie’s after theatre practice. I did the props. Don acted. I discovered kissing, first a guy from Franny's church on a hayride (yucky), then Don Hamm (yummy). Then I really got into it and was kissing the boyfriend of another girl in Thespians. Whoops.

Then very sad times when John Kennedy was shot and after that my parents broke up, no surprise, as they did not have a happy marriage, that was plain for all to see. It wasn’t something you talked about though, so no one did. One day the house was posted for sale and my mom and sister and I moved across town to a small apartment on the bottom floor of a two flat. This was in the winter and I almost had to transfer to this big brick inner city school, which terrified me. My school Loy Norrix was featured in Life magazine the year it was built, only a few years before I started there. It was all glass, and pods and had all the mod cons you could imagine. Plus my friends and Thespians and the Newspaper.