Story of Dan: Part Three
FAITH
This little (half) Irish Catholic boy was struggling with the whole concept and purpose of God at age fifteen. I’d seen too many bad things happen to good people, and via my reading was becoming quickly aware of other cultures, perspectives, and modes of spirituality that seemed equally or more valid to mine. When I realized that the only reason why I was attending Sunday mass was to sit behind the girl I liked, I was through with it. In retrospect, this was a necessary part of growing up for me, and I’ve never looked back.
SCHOOL
School days in freshman year started with my clock radio going off at 6:10 (the song at the time – Bread’s “Guitar Man”). My first two years of high school were split shift—seven to noon morning shift, noon to five afternoon shift. No lunch period, primarily due to previous year’s riots of white vs. black students. This racial strife had settled down by my junior year when they reintroduced a full school day. Due to the baby-boom class sizes, the frosh/soph students went to one campus, junior/senior at another. Since I took French in junior high, I placed in the upperclassmen French, which was at another campus which I got bussed to for my final class period as a sophomore. This is how I got to know some of the older kids before the rest of my classmates.
I was fortunate that ours was one of the only public high schools that offered Calculus and college-level Physics in senior year. I went from class to class with mostly the same nerdy kids and now it seemed okay to be smart. We had some outstanding teachers—case in point Mr. Bolton, who taught Physics and Calc, and was a true eccentric. His typical class was half lecture, and half open—leaving us free to do homework, study, ask him questions, or rummage around in the lab backroom where he let us take out measurement gear or Van derGraff generators and play around. My wisecrack attitude was in full flower (which was one of the ways I was finding to become more social), and on more than one occasion, he threw me out of class for a particularly choice zinger. I also confess to have been a “Mathlete”. Mathletes had monthly competitions which involved taking tests in competition with other schools covering specific topics. I was a slide rule gunslinger (this was a year or two before scientific calculators like the TI SR50 became affordable). At one competition, one of my teammates walked into the slide rule competition after forgetting his weapon and proceeded to do everything longhand and was henceforth dubbed Mr. Invisible Slide Rule. After the Mathletes competitions, the teachers would take us out for pizza. I think the most eggheaded thing I did was to tackle advanced sets theory – which involved an oral presentation from memory and being grilled by a math teacher panel. There was a tangible benefit for all this rampant nerdism in that I ended up placing out of first-year Calc, Physics, and English in college. In senior year, I was highlighted as Teenager of the Month in our local paper and was president of the National Honor Society. That was it. I had peaked.
I discovered tennis when I was twelve, and spent hours hitting balls against the wall of the nearby grammar school. I was on the team all four years of high school and was competent but by no means spectacular. My specialty was serving and the highlight of my tennis career was scoring an ace against the eventual conference champion at the sectional meet before he creamed me 6-2, 6-1.
I took a creative writing class in junior year and one requirement was to keep a journal and write something every day. This unleashed a strange urge in me to express what was kicking around in my head that even today I can’t ignore. Miss Smith, a somewhat hippy-type dark haired young woman, was our teacher and inspiration. She was into Astrology and she did a detailed horoscope for me, summarizing by quoting the lyrics of Ruby Tuesday: “Catch your dreams before they slip away.” Most of us were in love with her. I had several poems make the literary magazine and continued with writing verse throughout college.
TOYS
Cars change everything. Up to then, my early teen preoccupations were centered on neighborhood play and seasonal outdoor sports. Any wanderings were on foot or on our bikes. I imagined roaming the world on my 10-speed, with my tools and Boy Scout-like provisions in a neat rucksack attached to the seat.
That all ended when my mom dangled the keys to the family’s 1969 Pontiac Catalina (with a 425 cubic-inch engine) in front of me. A ticket to the big wide world. I got mom’s okay to install a cassette deck and two-way speakers in the back and did some fiberglass and bondo body work to make my ride more presentable. My friends across the street went as far as installing a steel beam across their garage to pull and replace engines. They had a classic ’66 Chevelle that they upgraded to a 396 cu-in small block engine with a 4-barrel Holley carb, Hurst shifter, and Cragar mag wheels. I begged for my Mom’s keys to zip over to a buddy’s to just hang out in his basement and play records—or drive to Korvette’s discount store for records, or to Hegewisch’s near the Indiana steel mills for their trove of jazz, classic rock, and later, punk—you guessed it—records. I was temporarily infamous for executing a brutal burn-out (translation: to apply sufficient torque at start up to leave rubber deposits on the pavement) in front of a girl’s house, not noting the police car that was only 50 feet down her darkened street. Instant ticket. One of many to follow.
FRIENDS
The first high school friend I made was Ron, my sophomore chemistry lab partner, who would drop over to play ping pong in my basement. During workroom period, we would draw up charts for elimination tournaments involving our favorite rock artists or girls from class, and then pass them back and forth. Tennis introduced me to Jeff, my best buddy during HS. We found jobs together, did endless cruising in the car together, suffered over girls together.
I encountered the Gerzen brothers in junior year. They were both a year older and introduced me to new music—The Dead, The Doors, jazz, bluegrass, progressive—and beer. Their graduation party was a total blowout. Kids were jumping into their pool fully clothed. I was doing frenzied air guitar duets with Jim to Communication Breakdown. The infamous, and fairly drunk Chuck demanded Deep Purple’s “Flight of the Rat” and then passed out under the stereo cabinet. He rose from the dead soon after to barf on the basement floor, then dance on the table, and then run outside to strip naked as the cops arrived.
And many, many heavy philosophical discussions with Wayne, a triple threat of scholar, athlete, and Sons of the American Revolution scholarship golden boy who had an incredible beer can and album collection in his basement. He introduced me to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the more obscure works of Genesis and Hawkwind.
JOBS
Cars meant paying for gas. I started out mowing lawns around the neighborhood, and Jeff landed me my first steady job as maintenance man at Bonaparte’s Apartments in Blue Island. Our main job was to scrape, prime and paint all the railings for his five apartment buildings. These were cheap two-story rectangular structures with all doors leading outside and steel and concrete stairs leading to a balcony/walkway to access the second-floor units. The prep and painting was endless and boring and Jeff and I would spend our day imitating Bill Cosby routines to each other and talking about anything under the sun. Monday was a special day when we changed all the exterior light bulbs that were burnt out. When we amassed all the duds, we would position ourselves at the back of the building near where the Illinois Central train would zoom by. We’d launch the bulbs high over the train so that the they’d explode on the top and frighten the commuters. This job gave me the worst assignment I ever had, which was to clean out a refrigerator that an angry, departing tenant had left, but not before he unplugged it and put a raw chicken in it for a week. We both spent an afternoon with this godforsaken appliance in the front yard, taking turns throwing up and trying to clean it out with bleach water. Then there was the adventure of mowing the lawn at the other set of buildings this guy had near the canal. I made the mistake of letting the mower get away from me down the hill and I followed it, my feet slipping under the running mower blades. After a sickening chewing sound, I fished my foot from under the mower, and ripped off my mangled sneaker to find all five toes neatly scored across the middle, bleeding, but pretty much intact. One more incident pushing me towards an office career.
The last high school job I remember was at the Homestead Restaurant, famous for their BBQ ribs. Bus boys there didn’t split tips with the servers, so it would be eight hours of running around cleaning and setting up tables for about two bucks an hour, passing the time by flipping butter pats into the ceiling near the setups, and sharing smokes with our favorite waitresses during breaks. At the end of the shift the cooks would whip up some fried chicken and mashed potatoes for us which was the best food I ever tasted.
MUSIC
During high school I was building up my tape library by recording borrowed albums and live radio shows. I made mixtapes for cruising in the car. Barreling through McDonald’s parking lot blasting Led Zeppelin was about as badass as I got. I made money by carefully splicing broken tapes for my friends as 8-track tapes were always breaking.
I trust you enough to tell you now: My first live concert experience was the Bee Gees in 1975. Followed by Neil Diamond in 1976. You know what? They were great. By 1976 I was catching The Grateful Dead at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre delivering some of their classic shows.
SEX
As a freshman and sophomore I had several pretty intense crushes that I was too shy to pursue. I was in a school service club called the Euclideans, who were math students who would wear nylon white tuxedos (that screamed “I can’t get a date!”) and serve refreshments at school functions. Ironically, it was via the Euclideans that I got up the nerve to ask Marie (not her real name) out on a date. I didn’t know that to do, so we went bowling and went home, and that was it. She drove me crazy for two years, but she was more interested in hanging out with the group.
Sex was a constant topic with the guys. Who was hot, who was with whom, lies about our sordid adventures, and the endless fantasizing. Early in senior year, I finally got a real girlfriend. Susie (also not her real name) was in all the math/science clubs and in my classes. She was smart, hip and cool. When I was at her house studying with her, she showed me her copy of The Doors’ L.A. Woman, pointing out that her mom had cut out the picture of Jim Morrison being crucified on a telephone pole as it was too sacrilegious. She thought that was funny. She was my Prom date, and I remember taking her one summer night to Memorial Park to make out on the grass near the stadium, and things were going swimmingly until a cop drove straight up the grassy hill we were on and told us to clear out. Unfortunately, the next year I was destined for the Illinois Institute of Technology, a nearly all-guys school of engineering. What the hell was I thinking?
At the awards ceremony for Senior year, I won the math scholarship and Susie won the top mathematician award. I got one of my teachers to admit that I deserved the top math award but they wanted to share the accolades with Suzie who was also outstanding. This bothered me—I was never a good loser as I had usually taken losing as reflecting on my self-worth. I let my mood poison my relationship with Suzie, and that gave me a lot to think about. I came around to a personal vow to never give competition nor awards any weight whatsoever. I had a colleague in my office recently who noted that I had no recognition awards nor patents displayed in my office. I commented that they are not that important and I see no point in trotting them out just to show somebody else. I really had no use for that anymore.