Spanking new, but amazingly rundown when I arrived. The place had been open for only about two years and it already looked dilapidated. It always seemed like the maintenance staff was running two weeks behind in their repair schedule and they never really did catch up.
Meanwhile, the High School was as far north in Mount Vernon that you could go without actually leaving the city. It's as if the dummies at the Board of Education really wanted their town's high school to be in bordering Eastchester. Our High School was nestled on the wonderful sounding California Road but it was hardly the land of palm trees and surf. Every morning, school buses from all over the city would arrive to dump off their human cargo and I'm sure the surrounding neighbors would immediately double lock their doors.
I remember my first day at the High School vividly. I wasn't quite ready to make the daily trek via public transportation. My dad drove me up there. It was pouring rain and there were still pockets of construction around the building. The clowns had just finished the new building wing the day before and the healthy dose of precipitation had created lakes of mud all around. I naturally stepped in one. So much for the new Hush Puppies I was wearing.
The geniuses at the High School knew that this was a hugely populated building. So, in order to create more of a sense of intimacy, they divided everybody into divisions. Each would have their own principal and guidance counselor. I was slated into Division B and I noted that all the divisions had letters in the same manner that barracks had them in Nazi stalags. Looking around the building, it felt very much like a wartime motif anyway.
You got your locker combination and your class schedule. Then you waited with trepidation for the first bell and prayed that you'd find your first class in time. Naturally, there was no thought given in getting from one classroom to another. Period one would be on the southwest corner of the school. Period two would be on the northeast corner of the school. And then period three was at the gym and all bets were really off at that juncture.
Meanwhile, there were three lunch periods assigned and I was given the first one in the tenth grade. You were dining around 1130AM and only my grandmother would eat lunch earlier than that. Of course, I had assembled a nice collection of lunch table pals in the ninth grade. Naturally, none of them were assigned to mine in the tenth grade. I was cast adrift again and left to wander around the cafeteria looking for new folks to dine with. I had to figure out how to fit in all over again.
When does the easy stuff start, please?
Back in this day, there were no backpacks on kids. If you were a guy in Mount Vernon High School, you carried a book bag. And this presented all sorts of problems when you had to use the bathroom.
The Men's Room in Mount Vernon High School was a dangerous prospect. Evil lurked in every toilet stall. The tough guys used to hang out in there and, if you were a schmuck like me, you'd be in trouble whenever you had to pee. You would stand there at the urinal doing your thing and suddenly one of the ogres would flip the lights out. You'd be lucky if you could zip up correctly in the dark. Meanwhile, your book bag was confiscated, taken out into the hall, and slid all the way down the corridor. You'd run to retrieve while there were guffaws behind you. After this happened ten or twelve times, I learned to control my bladder and I never peed in the high school for the entire eleventh and twelfth grades.
There was real drama in the Spring of that year when the Black students decided to hold a sit-in and commandeered the cafeteria. It may have been the very first "Occupy" protest. Chairs barricaded the doors and everybody else had to eat their lunch in the courtyard. The "strikers" got bored by Thursday of that week and stormed the main principal's office. Eventually, one of these stooges got hold of the public address system and made a gleeful announcement.
"WE IN CHARGE NOW. NO MORE SCHOOL TODAY!!"
That was the earliest dismissal I had in high school. Of course, going home was never relished. As it turned out, my dad was able to drive me to the high school on most mornings. But, the return trip was on one of the dreaded school buses that meandered all over Mount Vernon, New York before it ultimately stopped on my block around 7PM. It was technically a regular city bus and you'd get the complete tour of not only Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor, and a little bit of the Bronx.
Of course, I was usually standing on the bus the entire trip.
Indeed all of this drama were classes and some of these teachers in the tenth grade ran the gamut from inspiring to downright coma-inducing.
Mr. Bickford was my tenth-grade English teacher who lisped and butchered every book title he assigned.
"The Housh of Sheven Gables."
"The Lash of the Mohishans."
"The Great Gatshby."
Nobody wanted to sit in the first three rows of class.
I took advanced Algebra from Mr. Feigenbaum, who was absent at least two days every week. There were rumors abounding as to what caused these disappearances. From illness to gambling problems. By May, we ultimately concluded that he was just plain lazy.
And then there was my extreme nemesis.
Miss Kass, who taught advanced placement World History.
How I happened to merit being in this college-like course in the tenth grade was beyond me? And, indeed, Miss Kass (with emphasis on the "Miss") was a terror that belonged in the hallowed halls of Harvard. She was something akin to Professor Kingsfield in "The Paper Chase." She'd look out into the class and call on you by addressing you as "Mister" or "Miss." If she picked you out, you were dead.
Luckily I was seated behind this fat girl. I'd come to class and crouch down behind her, hoping to stay out of Miss Kass' POV. One day, I was busted.
"Are you hiding?"
Ummmm......
"No use doing that. I can still see you."
Ummmmm.....
"You don't know the answer to my question, do you?"
Well, I can answer that one. No.
To this day, I don't think any of us totally understood what we were taught in that class. Byzantine Empire. Ottoman Empire. It all sounded the same to me. The only thing I focused on was trying to stay out of Miss Kass The Conqueror's way.
It didn't get any better when I ran into her outside of class either. Our schedules during the day coincided in the fact that she and I would be walking to the luncheon areas at the very same time. Miss Kass would sneak up behind me in the hallway like a Central Park mugger.
"Let's walk together, Mister ______"
Um, no. I'd try to speed up.
"You want to walk fast, Mister ______? Let's walk fast."
She'd increase her gait. I'd start to trot. She might have thought it was exercise. I was merely trying to run away from this fucking lunatic.
It never worked. And World History in the tenth grade was perhaps the worst experience of my entire high school tenure. I wound up with a final grade of C+.
But, even more importantly, I did escape with my life.
Dinner last night: Kung pao with beef, shrimp, and chicken from First Szechwan Wok.
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