Tag: sports

What can I say about high school? For some people it’s the best time of their lives to be looked back on in future times with great longing. For others it’s an extension of that twilight zone that is junior high where adjustment to life escapes you and you’re mired in confusion. Which one was it for you? For me it was a combination of both.

In high school I felt like an adult for all intents and purposes. I could now drive a car. I had a choice to make about fooling around with my boyfriend and risk getting in trouble (and have to figure out how to go to Colorado to get an abortion or get married or have the kid and give it up for adoption). Yes, I could get married if I wanted to. Just like “adults” I could have children. Mom got me a bank account. Some people I knew went into business for themselves. It wasn’t all that hard to get emancipated and then live on your own. If guys were 18 in their senior year they could get drafted or sign up for the armed forces. In high school we were adults in many ways. But in other ways, we still had a long way to go.

Just like elementary school and junior high there was no line of demarcation between junior high and high school.  You were out of junior high, had the summer off, and then next thing you know you’re in high school and expected to behave like a quasi-adult.

Artie refurbished a Volkswagen convertible Beetle which he painted cherry red and gave to me to drive. It was my pride and joy. He showed me how to drive it, and I stripped the gears before getting good at driving it. When I was finally good then my friends and I went crazy scooping the loop every Friday and Saturday night. I’d get behind the wheel and Christine, Kathy and Tani would pile in, and we’d drive down Main Street and South Third Avenue from the Times Republican newspaper building to the A&W root beer stand, turn around and do it all over again. We heckled our friends as they drove by and sometimes, we’d throw stuff at them like the canned figs that Christine stole from her candy striping job at the hospital.

Eventually we’d make it over to Christine’s mom’s house to watch Gravesend Manor which showed scary movies like Masque of the Red Death and The Tingler until it was time to go home. It was corny as all get out, but we loved it. Malcom the Butler, The Duke of Desmodus, Claude the Great, Clyde, and Esmarelda. Ah, the days of corn and roses.

We would have slumber parties at someone’s house. To call them slumber parties was a complete misnomer because the point was to get as little sleep as possible. Once we had a big slumber party at Maribeth’s house. First, we drove all over town and did the usual scoop the loop. While driving we played the radio in the car. They were playing Chug-a-Lug by Roger Miller when we stopped off at the root beer stand and we turned the car off while we sat there waiting for our food. Then ate the food, and got going again. When we turned the car back on Chug-a-Lug was still playing! That’s weird! We decided to try an experiment. We decided to turn off the radio and then in a while turn it back on and see what happened. A half hour later… Chug-a-Lug! Now we were getting a bit paranoid. We drove over to Maribeth’s house, got out of the car, went upstairs to her bedroom and turned on the radio. Chug-a-Lug! We freaked out and imagined all sorts of conspiracies. There disk jockey must have really liked that song. We didn’t consider that.

During these slumber parties we got up to all sorts of shenanigans. One of our favorite idiocies was making each other pass out. Pass out? You guys think this is fun? How you did it was one person would breathe hard, in and out, in and out, in and out, for a minute and then someone would grab them around the abdomen and hold. If all went well the breather would pass out. Yeah, we thought this was fun! Of course, the “evening,” because by now it would be 1 or 2 in the morning, would end with all of us in our sleeping bags on the floor telling ghost stories. “I am the viper and I’m on the first step, I’m the viper and I’m on the second step, I’m the viper (all the way to the top landing). Anybody vant their vindows viped?”

Someone told me that people thought I was aloof but that was really me being shy. I had to learn to be outgoing. Mom’s idea was that we weren’t the crème de la crème of Marshalltown society. She was always talking about someone doing this and someone doing that and that we weren’t a part of that social strata. Instead, we were artsy working class living in a very modest part of town. No two-story houses on wide tree lined streets. Just dinky little houses close together and small trees. Other families had better incomes and bigger houses in the nicer parts of town, so I grew up thinking I was deficient in some way. I don’t blame Mom. She was only being how she was raised and had never overcome that upbringing. She had an inferiority complex and overcame it by being outgoing. It took years but eventually I learned that being outgoing was the way to compensate. Kind of how a short boy becomes the class clown.

Still, I wanted to be popular and have people like me. The only way I knew how to do this was to join clubs. So, I joined the drama and art club and eventually became president of both. See? It was working! I got parts in a couple scripted plays and then was a cast member in the improvisational theater group that our drama teacher Stan Doerr directed. He called our troupe Gli Capriccioso (The Capricious Ones) after the style of Italian Commedia d’elle Arte theater from the 16th and 17th century in Europe. Pretty sophisticated for a podunk midwestern town, huh?

Stan Doerr was a wonderful drama teacher.

What a character Stan was! He had the most expressive face and was not shy even though he was pretty darn fat and in any other world would have been the target of bullies. He made it a blast to be part of the troupe. He would yell and fume and the actors and stage crew would cower but eventually it would all turn right in the end, and he let us know that we had done well. In the Commedia d’elle Arte I was cast in the part of Isabella, a female innamorata, and we made masks out of rubber to be as authentically Italian as we could be and then we dressed in half assed homemade period costumes.

With Gli there was no script. Just a scenario which was a basic plot line and we had to make up our own lines as we went along like they do in improv theater. We used slapstick Italian stories for the scenarios, and if anybody had any ambition this might have been an entrée into theater groups like Second City in Chicago that nurtured people like Chevy Chase, Gilda Radnor and Gene Wilder. I got a big laugh when another player was doing something inappropriate and I yelled out, “Cool it!”

In another scene Ralph, playing the part of Pantalone, a greedy old man and a lecher for young ladies, was to give me, as Isabella, a big comedic wet one right on the mouth. The comedic part was trying to negotiate the giant noses of our masks. But when Ralph finally made it to me, he opened his mouth wide, wide open and I, having never been properly kissed, had no clue how to kiss back. I didn’t fall in, but I didn’t enjoy myself either. Yuck, Ralph!

Doing all this worked because I then got dates from boys that would have otherwise been out of my so-called league. But there was still prejudice and peer pressure. Here’s an example: I went on a date with a boy that I had a big crush on. I thought he was edgy and a hipster, a renegade, a bad boy and I was excited by that. He was reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau and he was one of the popular kids. He came to our house, and I got in his car, and then he took me to a party where there were a lot of older kids, and some were making out. These were the kids that were in a rush to grow up, and I was trailing them by many lengths. Not knowing what to do, I sat on the couch with him and felt extremely out of place and uncomfortable. This went on for a while, and I guess he got bored because it was clear that nothing was going to happen with me so finally, he took me home.

When we got in front of our house, we parked at the curb and all of a sudden and without warning Mom turned all the porch lights on as if they were searchlights looking for prison escapees. You could almost hear sirens. I got out of the car and hurried to the front door. Not even so much as a good night kiss. I was so embarrassed and mad at Mom. I felt she ruined it for me, but truth be told I had probably already ruined it for myself by not putting out at the party. The search lights from the porch didn’t help, even so, in my mind. The next day a girl from the popular crowd came up to me and ordered me to not date him anymore because “you’re not in the popular crowd.” I was humiliated and he never asked me out again. I thought it was true, and it made me sad.

So, there I was. Sixteen and never been (really) kissed. This had to be corrected, and I was going to make it happen because I was not going to be that old stereotype. Since brothers seemed to be in good supply, I picked one of my classmate’s brothers. We went on a date and when he escorted me to the back door of our house, I let him kiss me. The kiss did absolutely nothing for me. Dang! Kind of soft and mushy and not exciting whatsoever. It did not inspire the fires of passion, but mission accomplished. Now I could relax.

Eventually I managed to snag a guy who Mom considered one of the elites. He was the son of a prominent doctor, and he had a couple cars that he would drive me around in; an old black model T and a little red convertible MG. I can still smell the scent of that MG. Anyway, I thought, “Oh boy! Maybe there’s hope for me yet.” On top of that he was a good kisser! However, this relationship was not destined to go anywhere. I did not want to get married and do what many people planned to do. I wanted to see the world. I had gotten a taste of what the world might offer beyond the confines of little old Marshallberg. I craved more.

Eventually that boy went off to college and by that time I had taken up with another boy who was an artist and a musician. This guy expanded my world and that was part of the reason I was drawn to him. He was a year older than me and on the day I graduated I remember waiting for Mom in front of the school and here he came out the front door walking straight toward me. As he passed, he said loudly, “You are the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” OK! I thought. That’s what I’m talking about.

I was surprised by what he said to me because back then the role models we had were actresses like Sandra Dee in Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Blonde and perky with button noses. My nose wasn’t cute and perky, and my hair wasn’t blonde. My nose had a bump in the middle. Mom called it “aquiline” whatever that meant (a long nose with a bridge). I also wasn’t the cheerleader type, and my chest was flat as a pancake. I was in a training bra clear into high school.

Having unusual clothes was one way to express my individuality. I liked to sew even though I was not good at it and I could not find the styles in Marshalltown that I saw in magazines and in the movies, so I made my own clothes. Mom was a snappy dresser in her younger days, and her clothes were elegant and tasteful, so she encouraged me that way. Vogue magazine inspired me but mostly movies like Tom Jones and Doctor Zhivago. I liked fashions from Great Britain, Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy, and the Beatles. I liked the long straight hair with heavy bangs, like the actress Jane Asher had.

Up until that time we wore the ridiculous ratted bouffant with the flip ends and bow placed smack dab in the middle at the part between the bangs and the bouffant. I’m so glad that fad passed. The long straight hair looked good on me but the bouffant did not. In vain I tried to make my hair do a ratted bouffant. I could never get my flip to come out even. One side always sagged lower than the other. (I’m feeling like a character from Bridget Jones Diary as I write this.) Such a disaster. To achieve this look, we wore curlers to bed. The curlers made sleep impossible because the plastic teeth jabbed into your head. I remember Mom telling me that all this discomfort was necessary. She said, “You have to suffer to be beautiful.” OK, Mom, sign me up.

After the bouffant deflated (yahoo!) and was replaced by British styles, straight hair ruled. Once Marjorie and I decided we needed our hair to be straighter than nature had given us. (mine was a bit wavy.) We put an iron on a low setting, draped our hair over the ironing board and ironed so it would be stick straight. I heard of some girls accidentally burning their hair this way, but we were careful, and it worked!

After I was invited to the prom I saw a picture of Mia Farrow in Look magazine in what I thought was the most beautiful gown. I decided that I had to have it. I begged Mom to make it for me, and she agreed. Mia’s dress was a black and white striped voile, and it was stunning. We looked and looked around Marshalltown and couldn’t find anything even remotely like it.

But Mom was undeterred, so we drove to Des Moines to a fabric store, where we still could not find the exact fabric. What a disappointment! So, we compromised and made it with a blue watercolor kind of floral voile. Not really sophisticated, dag nab it, but it turned out fine because Mom did a great job. When we danced at the prom my date held me by the forearm instead of my hand and we sat around the tables being uncomfortable. We were working on the night moves and no one told us how to do it.

I assisted Artie in making the life-size players cut outs in the background.

I was not a sporty girl but one thing that stood out was basketball. We had talented players and a great coach in George Funk. Going to the Bobcat games in the new auditorium was thrilling, tantamount to being in Madison Square Garden. The place would be packed to the rafters and the cheerleaders would come out and bounce around doing splits and waving their pom poms and then the team would enter the auditorium by plunging through a paper-covered hoop with a Bobcat painted on it. The energy was palpable, and we yelled our heads off. “Whomp the hobbum, Beat the shobbum, whee whee whee.” Marshalltown was so good that we won the boys’ state basketball tournament 10 times. Pretty  soon the tourney was dubbed “the Marshalltown Invitational.” Once a year you were guaranteed to be able to skip school and head to Vets Auditorium in Des Moines for the games.

There was the pep band, led by Jerry Ellingson, and they would fire through classics like “Sweet Georgia Brown“ but once the ‘Cats came around the corner to take the floor Ellingson would cut off the band, and they would immediately launch into the MHS Fight Song. It always seemed like Coach Funk would come through the crowd right at the point where the band circled around and started the song for round 2.

It was a time and there’s no doubt about that.