Leaving Kalamazoo

When Kennedy was shot I was in Mr. Frechetta’s social studies class and the announcement came over the intercom, and kids were running into the hall, with their hands over their mouths and crying and holding onto each other and no one knew what to do. Pretty soon it was clear school couldn’t continue, kids were weeping and looking dazed and it was a major group trauma; the group was the whole world it turned out and everyone went home to watch it on TV.

I saw Oswald get shot on TV, Jack Ruby walked right to him and blam pulled the trigger and Oswald got a look like he just ate something that tasted really really bad and collapsed.

And then there wasn’t any school because of the funeral and John John saluting in his short pants and Jackie in her veil. And before that Johnson taking the oath in the plane.

Suddenly it was summer and not only had we moved across town we were moving across the country to Methuen Mass, where my grandmother lived. It was 1964 and the Beatles. And the Rolling Stones and I fell down on the floor at my grandmothers house when Mick Jagger came on the Ed Sullivan Show and swooned. I never screamed like the younger Beatle fans, but I swooned in front of the TV. My aunt lived with my grandmother and she didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

The new school was another brick building but not so old as the one I almost had to go to in Kalamazoo (Did I tell you I grew up in Kalamazoo Michigan, halfway between Detroit and Chicago; how Midwestern can you get?). But there wasn’t a pool, and not much of a paper and no theatre and certainly no glass walls and pods.

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.

Dancing with the Republicans

It was 1960 and John Kennedy was on the stump. My mother was for Kennedy. My father was for Nixon. I dressed up in a Nixon sign for Halloween and my friend Marita Slobovitch wore a polling booth, a big cardboard box. We had a friend, Harold, who dressed as Uncle Sam and we three posed for pictures. I still have one. Boy were we dorky!

Then Kennedy won, and my mother was happy and my father didn’t really care. And I decided I was for Kennedy after all.

Then it was January, 1961 and I stayed home with my friend Debbie, with cerebral palsy who lived with her grandmother on the other side of the golf course, we stayed home and watched the inauguration on tv at my house with my mother. We ate snacks on metal tv trays.

Debbie lived near this golf course where we went out and hit golf balls around that we found with clubs her grandfather had. She lived in the same part of town as my little crush Jimmy Bodkins, whose big brother Dwight was my real crush, but he was older and unattainable and also a bad boy, so I walked to school with Jimmy who had red hair and was two years younger than me. That was when I was 11. when I was twelve, I think that was the year they moved away to live with their mother and slept on the floor on blankets, they didn’t have beds. That’s what someone said, probably Debbie, since she lived on the same street and lived with her grandmother too. Did they all live with their grandmothers on that side of town?

It was around that time I met my first famous person. Actually, I don't remember if I actually met this person, or just saw him from afar; let's say I was in the proximity; his name was George Romney and he was just elected Republican Governor of the State of Michigan. My father, who was a mostly unemployed cook/car salesman/private eye/process server, somehow wangled tickets to the Governor's Ball. It was in a hotel in Lansing and I wore a white dress. My mom did not attend. My dad and I sat in this room with a bunch of guys my dad's age, and older. (This was 1960 remember, my dad was 35 years old!) We watched TV, I'm guessing the victory speeches? then went down to this ballroom where everyone was taller than me and I danced with my Dad.

Later, of course, that man's son, a Mormon, no less, would run for President in the Republican primary, after serving as Governor of Massachusetts. That was my closest brush with Republican politics.

1962 I do not remember so well, except yes I do that was the year Sara Schellenberger and I read about lesbians and taunted our friend Janie Samuelson, we called her Puppy, that she was one, "Puppy is a lezzie" we would say; we thought it was a hysterical, then we worried that might be lezzies ourselves and the counselor at the junior high called us in to talk about it without ever using those words. Years Later, I caught up with Sara on the web and she mailed me she was happily living in another state with her lover. "It wasn't a phase with me," she said. I still worry about Puppy, whether she ever recoverd from our merciless taunts, (whether she was or wasn't; kids are cruel, and I wasn't even one of the Mean Girls).

I also had a big crush on Greg Malomar, who was kind of a jock (basketball) and kind of in with the in crowd (the fringier elements of it), but looked sad and in need of my friendship, so I read teenage advice columns that said if you liked a boy you would sort of turn up where he is and say hi with a big smile on your face. I did that a lot, I would be at the door when he came out of class, with my big smile and say "Hi Greg;" he would scowl and walk away and once he said, “scag”

Once one of the fringy Mean Girls said Greg really likes you but he is shy, but I knew she was making fun of me, because she didn’t like me one bit and she would never tell the truth.

If she said it, it was a lie, but I still kept my hopes and said “Hi Greg” once again and he said "Scag!" in a louder voice,

I had thick glasses and home perms my Mom did called Tonettes, and wore clothes from the Lerner Ships, so was not likely to get a rise out of Greg or anyone else for that matter.