The Life of a Story in Progress 14: Dealing with small town mini-minded people

Sherman, set the Waybac machine to…blah, blah, blah, yeah, whatever.

 

If it’s the tenth grade, then it must be 1971. Tenth grade was an odd one. I started the year at Monterey High School in Monterey, Ca. It was the most sophisticated school I’d ever attended and it had what seemed to be an endless choice of classes from which to choose. I ended the year in Sutton, MA.

The Monterey’s school science department offered many choices, but forget about biology, chemistry, physical sciences or earth sciences… BORING! I took oceanography. Did they have oceanography at YOUR high school? Art…they had so many cool classes, and decided on ceramic arts. I learnt to throw clay onto a potter’s wheel and all the techniques for creating objects of clay as well as glazing technique. I made a set of dishes (setting for 4) that included 4 plates and 4 bowls, as well as a coffee sugar bowl with cover, creamer, a few vases, some incense burners, some plant pots, and a couple of objets d'art. These skills came in handy when I went to work for Almazetta’s Barnyard in San Clemente a short 5 years later! I don’t remember all the other classes I took but I know I was surprised by the unusual and interesting choices that were available.

I spent most of the 10^th grade in CA, but near the end of the school year my family moved back to Massachusetts. Well, that’s not exactly true. I should say that my brother Ron and I moved to Massachusetts and my parents took my sister Carol and brother Wayne with them to Texas (not San Angelo). My father had some secret TDY assignment (temporary assignment). He was in the security service, but we’ll discuss that in some other blog entry in the future. Why they took Carol and Wayne with them and sent me and Ron to live with relatives is a mystery.

My brother Ron went to live with our Aunt Bernie and Uncle Gerry in Millbury, MA and I went to live with my grandmother (Memere). Memere lived in the Orchard Apartments in Wilkinsonville, MA, a retirement community where she wasn’t supposed take anyone in; especially not her 15 year old grandson. Someone loaned her a small cot and I slept on it in the living room.

I signed up for school in Sutton (Wilkinsonville is part of Sutton). The Sutton High school was a very sad little school. It was little in size and had little to offer. The art department had, uh, well, ART. The other classes were also lame; they didn’t even try to come up with cool names. I think I took English with a roman numeral after it. There was no music (back then every school had music) and there was biology but not chemistry. I didn’t really care too much about the meager academic choices because I had just come from Über School in California. I had all the credits needed to pass the grade, even though there was about a month left in the school year.

Because I liked English, I signed up for English. I don’t remember what else I took, but I remember they made me take a full schedule of courses. At the end of the year, I got my report card and my English teacher gave me an F. She wrote the F in red ink and made it really, really big. I asked her why I got the F and she said that I hadn’t applied myself to the course material. I didn’t understand why she said what she did. But it meant nothing. I commented that I’d just come from Monterey High School in CA and had taken much more difficult English classes and got all ”A’s” AND that I already had all the English credits I needed before I came to Sutton High. She smiled and said; "well now you have an F."

I couldn’t let her be so mean and think I wouldn’t stand up to her; she was, after all, acting like a bully. I smiled back and said, “I don’t think an F from an unaccredited high school counts.”

That’s right, the poor little Sutton High school was a mess, and it had lost its state accreditation the previous year. “Graduates” of the school that year couldn’t go to college without first taking a GED test!