Comments and enhancements associated with stories are welcome. If appropriate, they will be posted after the story. #1: Physics Class #2: The Award #3: Coggshall Shocked! Denies Everything! #4: Where Have You Gone... #5: Accident on Youth #6: Cleo #7: Cappriccio #8: She Says He Says #9: Chemistry #10: Science Guys #11: Three Quotes #12: High School: What Ya Wanna Be When Ya Grow Up? #13: A Shout Out #14: Sharon--Part 1 #15: Wrestlemania #16: April Fools ____________________
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PHYSICS CLASS In the late 1950's a group of scientists calling themselves the Physical Science Study Committee came up with what they considered a better way to teach high school physics, and in the fall of our senior year Dr. Dewitt Zien taught the first PSSC Physics class at IHS. It turned out to be pretty much of a nightmare for everyone except the science whizzes like Fred Mayer. Dr. Zien himself admitted that when he had taken the summer course on how to teach PSSC Physics, he had gotten a 25 on the first exam. Nevertheless, one day early in the term he was clearly delighted to spring on us what he called "a little quizzie," and he handed each of us two pages of very hard questions that he again gleefully called "a little quizzie." As we looked over the two pages, there was a good deal of groaning and moaning from all parts of the room, and then from toward the back came the voice of Tom McCarthy saying, "If this is one of your quizzies, I'd hate to see one of your testies." That and so much else is why we elected him President For Life and would do so again in a heartbeat. --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. Comment from Loulie Kent, Class of 1961: PSSC physics was first tried out on our class ('61) when we were juniors. As far as I was concerned, it was a disaster. Dr. Zein was [Ed. Note: remove original wording and insert politically correct text] ?essentially learning the curriculum along with the class. Much of the class was taught by George Kent, Alan Kellogg, Nordulf Debye and a few other brilliant students. I managed to pass the course, but never took another science course at IHS. ____________________
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THE AWARD John Worthen's father had a sister named Rachel, and my father had a brother named Paul. Rachel and Paul were married for a few years in the 1930's, so John and I were cousins before we were born, but not after, though I would sometimes call him "Cousin" and he would laugh. Shortly after the Awards Assembly in our senior year, John came up to me and said, "You got that big award and you deserve it, but Fred Baumann is a great guy and he didn't get an award. We've got to give him one. We should give it to him at the Senior Dinner." Fred was indeed (and still is) a great guy, but I was a little surprised it was John who was leading the charge because Fred was also a guy who went around singing opera in a loud voice and gesticulating operatically. For the next few days I saw John buttonholing our classmates in the halls and pressing his case, and so, of course, Fred got his award. Last summer I mentioned to Darlene Lynch Klein how sweet I thought it was of John to have gone to bat for Fred, and she said, "John was always that sweet." --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. ____________________ |
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COGGSHALL SHOCKED! DENIES EVERYTHING! It is well known that the Class of 1962 had the highest average IQ of any class that ever graduated before or after from Ithaca High School. What wasn't known was that at least one high IQ class member was accused of plagiarism, but still graduated among the highest levels in the class. It was 5th period English class, and the teacher, who will remain nameless mostly because this writer doesn't recall names anymore, had assigned a paper on Moby Dick, or maybe it was David Copperfield. The assigned paper had been handed in a few days before, and was due to be returned to us that day with its grade. It was a significant paper and this writer had spent way over an hour honing his paper to perfection, or if not that, at least average. He had even typed it out on his Underwood for presentation purposes. But, I digress. The paper was due to be returned, and I was pleased to see I got a B+ (2+) or maybe an A- (1-). It was hard to compete with the brainpower in this class. Once the papers had been distributed, only Gene Coggshall, who sat next to me, didn't receive his paper back. The teacher asked him to see her after class. Gene was about as smart as they came, so it was likely she was going to give him a substantial monetary award for his Moby Dick paper. After class we found out the teacher had told him: "This paper is too good not to have been plagiarized. I'm giving you an F (5)." Note: The grades ranged from 1+ (best) to 5 (worst). So, the lower your grade point average, the smarter you were. Gene assured her that he did the work himself. But she stood firm. By now you're wondering how this story can end happily. Well, here it is...are you ready...have you noticed that semi-colons are extinct? They're only needed for emoticons like this: ;-) ...but again I digress. As it happened, Gene and I were in the same 4th period Study Hall. Gene also sat next to me in that class. I saw him write the entire paper the hour before he handed it in. He did not use research books. He did not consult anyone. He did not use the internet. He wrote it entirely in a one hour study hall. Once the teacher was notified of this by me and others, she immediately resigned and Gene was appointed class teacher. But wait a minute! It's possible that she didn't really resign, but it makes for a better story. The true part is that several people did confirm that Gene wrote the entire paper in the Study Hall just before English. --Author: Bob Garmise Note: Considerable time has blissfully passed since this episode, and in retrospect, I think it more likely that Gene had previously read an analysis of Moby Dick, memorized the entire thing, and then wrote it down verbatim in Study Hall. If so, he should have been appointed Principal. ____________________ |
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WHERE HAVE YOU GONE BARBARA GARLAND? Everyone knew that Emmy Adler always sat in the first seat in the first row. Everyone also knew that Concetta Zazzara always sat in the last seat of the last row. But what everybody didn’t know was that I always sat behind Barbara Garland. English. Math. History. You name it. For every class in every grade in high school. I sat behind Barbara Garland. I still have her back memorized. What I don’t know, is what she looks like from the front. The only time we faced each other was in the Annual, and even then she was at the bottom of one page and I was at the top of the next one. I do know these things about her. She was smart. Her hand was often in the air to answer questions. Her voice was nice when she answered all those questions. Her handwriting was impeccable. I could tell that from the inscription in the Annual. See her photo above. She wrote me a personal note. It’s very neat, but I do not understand it. That’s not because it was personal, but because it’s in the Cyrillic alphabet which I forgot 10 minutes after the final bell rang in June, 1962. Barbara, I hear that you’re not coming to the 50th reunion. How will I ever know what you look like? How will I ever know what the note says? Later, after several years of thought, I began to wonder who sat behind me during all those classes. They might wonder what I look like from the front. It might have been Pat George, alphabetically speaking. If it was, I’ll be sure to ask her this question at the reunion: “Was I going bald even back in high school?” I’m sure she’ll remember. --Author: Bob Garmise ____________________ |
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ACCIDENT ON YOUTH I began smoking and drinking when I was fourteen and living in Europe, where I could get all the tobacco and alcohol I had money for. I smoked non-filter Italian cigarettes, switching, when I got back to the US, to Camels and, when I could get them, cigars, and I mostly drank the hard stuff. For a reason or reasons I can no longer remember or reconstruct, I kept my hobbies a secret from, among others, my IHS classmates and felt the same amused scorn for their flirtations with filtered cigarettes and a few beers that Alcoholics Anonymous members show in their nickname for New Year's Eve: "Amateur Night." The one exception to the rule came on a Friday night in the early fall of our senior year when Tom Cullen was catering a dinner party for my mother, though he and I were supposed to go down that night to WHCU to tape a Cully-Nully show to be broadcast Saturday afternoon as part of the IHS program "Accent on Youth." While Tom cooked, I made myself a pitcher of martinis and had drunk all of it by 8 pm, when we were due at the station. I insisted, of course, that the show must go on and that I would do our segment by myself, so Tom drove me down to the station and left me there. Tom ("T. J.") Joseph (who never referred to the show as anything but "Accident on Youth") was, as usual, running the control room. Unluckily for me, however, also present, for the first and only time, was the station's second-in-command, Joe Short, who was also the chairman of the committee that each month of the school year chose the senior who would appear in the Ithaca Journal as Boy of the Month. Mr. Short called me into his office, had me sit down and said, "Have you been drinking?" "No," I said, but a few seconds later I threw up on his shoes. Goodbye to ever being Boy of the Month. Someone led me into the unlit office of the station manager and foolishly left me standing there. I fell over, smashed my head against a metal desk, making a noticeable dent in it, and then passed out. I remember nothing more until I woke up the following morning in my bed, my mother sticking her head in the door and saying, "What were you drinking?" When I said, "Martinis," she said, "Good heavens, I didn't have a martini until I was thirty-five," and she closed the door. Tom later told me that he had been called to come get me, and he had called David Light to help him. With Tom at one end of me and David at the other, they carried me down the WHCU stairs and out to State Street, where our class' No. 1 Bad Boy, Lew Cherkoss, happened to be walking by. Tom said that Lew looked at me with an expression that seemed to say, "Maybe he's more interesting than I thought." I'm sorry I missed it. --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. Comments by Patrick (aka Tom) Cullen: Jeff's recollections are pretty much correct. We actually did the show by telephone before he passed out. As I recall the show was an interview being done by our crack reporter Cosi Fan Tutte with the world's oldest teenager (114) Edna S. Grummens. It had to do with Edna being an Avon lady and, when asked how she would choose a likely customer, she said, look for signs of family life, "you know, dog shit on the lawn - that sort of thing." In complete disregard of our 1st amendment rights, station manager Joe Short censored the "dog shit." Comments by Webmaster: Times have changed and we no longer have a censor. Patrick/Tom's 1st amendment rights remain intact. ____________________ |
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CLEO The Class of 1961 likes to remind itself that it was the first class to graduate from the new high school, but the Class of 1962 enjoyed a much greater honor. We were the first seniors to share the school with the then sophomore phenomenon Cleo Rubens. A healthy, vibrant, gorgeous Italian-American example of female humanity at its most physically perfect, Cleo was so obviously a paragon that Health teacher Albert Bedworth apparently realized the absurdity of writing even one critical word on the homework assignment she handed in listing all the food she had eaten over the weekend (and keep in mind that back then Catholics did not eat meat on Fridays):
Friday
Dinner: spaghetti, beer Saturday Breakfast: coffee Lunch: salami sandwich, beer
Dinner: salami sandwich, beer
Sunday Breakfast: coffee
Lunch: salami sandwich, beer
Dinner: salami sandwich, beer
--Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. ____________________ |
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CAPRICCIO FOR M. ISABEL MURRAY Miss Murray, English teacher and drama coach at IHS, was an eccentric, and she knew it, revelled in it and rode it for all it was worth. She had a thing for Tom Cullen and would constantly ask him, "Do you love me, honey?" to which he would reply, completely deadpan, "Passionately." She ordered her tombstone, had it erected on the plot where she would be buried and then cajolled Tom into going with her to christen the stone the way a battleship is christened: breaking a bottle of champagne on it. So it was a piece of cake for Tom to get her to choose The Man Who Came to Dinner as the school play in our senior year and to cast him as the lead, playing a character who has about 60% of the dialogue and appears in almost every scene. She got another cast member--that marvelous man, Oliver York--to write a review (a rave, of course) of Friday night's performance for Saturday's Ithaca Journal, but then, unaccountably, she broke faith with Tom, getting further publicity by having me--who had a very small part--photographed after the Friday performance, in costume, presenting a cake to Claude L. Kulp, the former Superintendent of Ithaca Schools for whom the high school auditorium was named. That was the only play-related photograph that appeared in the Journal, and I don't think Tom has (understandably) ever quite forgiven me. Please permit me this digression: During rehearsals, the male romantic lead (our future President For Life, Tom McCarthy) and the female romantic lead (the lovely Katie Hedrick) developed very warm feelings for each other--to be expected, of course, but sweet nonetheless. Two or three weeks before the play opened, Miss Murray asked me to come to her homeroom after school to rehearse my few lines. It soon became clear that what she really had in mind was to ask me some quite personal questions. She started by saying, "Have you ever been drunk, honey?'' When I said that I had, she said, "On what?" The next day, when I was telling this story to Diana Solomon and had gotten to this point, Diana said, "On my ass." --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. Comment from Kate (formerly Katie): Hi everyone. Gee, I hadn't thought of that play in years! What fun. And Isabel Murray certainly was a piece of work. At least she never invited ME to her homeroom to see if I had ever been drunk. Go ahead and print the story for posterity. Mexicans don't do silly lawsuits for such stuff anyway. Saludos to all from sunny Guanajuato, Kate Note: Kate currently lives just north of Mexico City. Comment #1 from Tom (currently known as Patrick) Cullen: What fun to remember "The Man Who Came to Dinner", and the inimitable Miss Murray in Jeff's capriccio. Ah yes, I remember it well. I need not forgive Jeff or others for the photo. I do not remember that piece of the story. However, let me add to the remembrance. A key prop in the play was an Egyptian Mummy case, one of many strange gifts "man who came to dinner" receives from his friends. As I remember it, and I could be wrong, a plot twist puts the unforgettable Katie Hedrick in the mummy case. It should not be forgotten that Sheridan Whiteside is over-staying his welcome as an invited dinner guest on the ruse that he injured himself on slippery house steps when leaving. But he actually was not injured at all, and there is an X-ray to prove it. But the fact is conveniently kept secret by Doctor Bradley, brilliantly played by Jeff Nulle. The doctor may not have had many lines, but his role called for numerous untimely entrances which served to ease tension in the plot, and he milked each of them for every laugh possible. It may have been Jeff sitting on the mummy case with Katie trapped inside to thwart her romance with someone other than Sheridan Whiteside who was madly in love with her. It was quite easy for me to play that part of Sheridan Whiteside's character as I was and still am in love with Katie. The closing party was held at Joe's Restaurant. The cast, and Miss Murray, I believe, attended, as did the mummy case. Outside Joe's we put Jeff in the mummy case and carried him in, stopping at the bar and standing the case upright. A local patron, exuding the cheer that comes from imbibing more than the national norm, knocked on the door of the mummy case. Jeff (Dr. Bradley) slowly opened the door and said "You're not going to believe this tomorrow morning." He then closed the door, we picked up the case and left the bar for the dining room where we released Pharaoh Bradley and a good time was had by all. And as far as I can remember, that's the way it was. Comment #2 from Tom (still aka Patrick) Cullen: I would be remiss in my recollection of the the play if I did not bring to our collective attention the critical and brilliant performance by Margery Vaughan as Nurse Preen. She was at times testy, once telling Sheridan "Mr. Whiteside, I can only be in one place at a time." Sheridan: "That's very fortunate for this community. "But Margery, as Nurse Preen had one of the best lines in the play, when she said to Sheridan Whiteside, "After one month with you, Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on, anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure." I, for one, expected to see Margery on the silver screen. Boundless talent. Matchless beauty. Editor's Note: Margery currently lives in Albuquerque, not far from Silver City. Is that close enough to "silver screen" to count? ____________________ |
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SHE SAYS HE SAYS Speaking of Diana, she told me one Tuesday morning when she was a junior and I was a senior that a boy had taken her out on Friday night and hadn't called since. I said, "He'll call you Wednesday night." Thursday morning she came into my homeroom and said, "Guess what." "He called you last night." "How did you know he was going to call then?" "Because I'm a guy." From then on she would occasionally tell me her boy problems, and I would give her advice from the boy point of view. I never asked her about this but apparently she told a few of her friends and the word spread that I would listen to you, give you honest advice, not tell anyone what you'd said and not tease you about it because sophomore and junior girls--never seniors--began coming up to me in the halls. They would always say the same thing: "Can I talk to you?" I would say sure, and they would tell me their current boy problem. At first I enjoyed it, but then it got to be painful because almost every girl had the same problem, and I wished I'd had a sign printed up that I could point to that said "It doesn't matter what he SAYS, it matters what he DOES!!!" But I didn't have a sign, and I had to say it myself, and the girl would always say, "I know you think that, and I agree with you, but he says...." --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. E-mail from Jeff: I called Diana Solomon (now Diana West) to say I hoped she didn't mind what I had written about her. She wasn't aware of the Class of 1962 website but a few days later sent me an email from which I have her permission to quote. She said she'd gone to the website and "enjoyed reading all the recollections. It made me remember things such as......my shorthand 2 Transcription class with Mrs. Seager. I sat in the back by the window, and you used to stand outside that window and read me poetry. Do you remember that??? Sometimes you would be joined by Tom McCarthy or anyone else who happened to walk through the courtyard. Mrs. Seager never said a word about it, she just would walk slowly back to the window and shut it!!! Those were good times!" ____________________
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CHEMISTRY In our junior year I took chemistry with Edgar Clemens, and one day early in the semester he said, "From time to time I'll be posing a question for you to ponder in your spare time for a few days, using what you've learned about chemistry. And the first question I'm going to pose is: Why do some solvents dissolve certain solutes and not others?" All of us sat there listening glumly, certain that this pondering business was going to wind up leading to extra work. All of us, that is, except Pat O'Brien, who had taken a compact out of her purse and was checking her appearance in the mirror while Mr. Clemens was talking. Then, apparently deciding (quite correctly) that she looked pretty good, she put the compact back in her purse, raised her arm and waved it to get Mr. Clemens' attention. He was electrified. He pointed to her and called out, "Pat!" and she said, "Why do some solvents dissolve certain solutes and not others?" Though Mr. Clemens was the mildest of men, we sat there waiting for some sort of explosion, but he just smiled a small, weary smile and said, "I thought you were going to ask me that," and he never posed another question. Belatedly but sincerely, thank you, Pat. --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. ____________________ |
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SCIENCE GUYS In On the Road Jack Kerouac says that Americans are natural born thieves, and the Class of 1962 offered some evidence for that. When we were juniors and took World History, teachers Lilly Reichmann and Will-Robert Teetor wanted to replace the then current IHS world history textbook with what they considered a far superior textbook written by a man named Bruun (a Cornell professor who pronounced his name "Broon") and a man named Ferguson. Mrs. Reichmann and Mr. Teetor were told that it was Ithaca school policy that once a textbook had been selected and bought, it had to serve for at least fifteen years before it could be replaced, but, as a concession to them, the school bought thirty copies of what came to be called Bruun-Fergusons and put them on reserve in the library so students could use them for reading assignments. Within a few months, twelve of the books had disappeared.
Mr. Teetor was furious and often vented about the matter. That year all the Class of '62 science guys took German from him, and though they all liked and respected the man they always called "Herr Teetor," in the spring when one of them came up with a diabolically ingenious prank to pull on him, they couldn't resist it. I came across it as I was leaving school one afternoon and was stopped by Bob Singer, who told me that I had to go to the library and wait for what would be one of the great events of my high school years. He said that at exactly 3:30 each day, Mr. Teetor began looking in all the desks in his homeroom and throwing away anything he found. That day he was going to find a sheet of paper that said "For sale cheap: Bruun-Fergusons" along with a telephone number. Bill Snyder was in the hall outside the room and would signal Bob when the paper had been found, and Bob would then run to the library and alert all the other science guys there that Mr. Teetor was on his way. When I got to the library, there were seven or eight science guys sitting at tables in a kind of semi-circle, each holding a book. I guessed what the books were for, and I took a book from a shelf and sat down. In less than two minutes Bob Singer came running in, and we were all pretending to be engrossed in our books when the library door flew open and Mr. Teetor stormed in, waving a piece of paper, calling out for the school librarian, Miss Stocking, and then dramatically handing her the piece of paper. She looked at it, looked at him, looked at the paper again and then handed it back to him. He was clearly incensed by how calmly she was taking this, and he said, "Don't you see?! We've caught them red-handed!" She smiled a tiny smile and said, "That's my phone number." --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. ____________________ |
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THREE QUOTES 1. John Roemer and I were the smallest boys in our gym class, and although we didn't like each other, when a week or so of wrestling came up and we were inevitably paired, John had no trouble convincing me that it made total sense for each of us to go easy on the other--to just go through the motions. It now seems to me remarkably dumb for two smart guys to have imagined we could fool an expert wrestler like our gym teacher, Jack Stanbro, but we gave it a shot on the class' first "take down." Mr. Stanbro watched us all for a minute or so, and then he called out from about thirty feet away, "Don't hurt him, Nulle. We're just playing tiddlywinks." |
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2. I was walking with history teacher Richard Caslick from the cafeteria to H Building, and when we got to H Building, he held the door for a boy who then said, "Merci." In an accent that sounded a good deal more U.S. Midwestern than Parisian, Mr. Caslick replied, "Il n'y a pas de quoi," and when I looked at him in surprise, he said, "I used to teach the stuff." |
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3. English teacher Robert Holgate once got to reminiscing about his boyhood days in Bronxville, New York, and how, back when cars had running boards, he and another boy--both of them about twelve years old--would go down at night to the local lovers' lane and take turns climbing onto the running boards of parked cars, looking in the window and saying in as deep a voice as each could muster, "God sees you." ____________________
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HIGH SCHOOL: WHAT DO YA WANNA BE WHEN YA GROW UP? My Dad was into children's clothes. |
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“Garmisch!" Mrs. Reichmann was inspiring. Her influence lasted until college when it was clear that there was no future in history. A hobby, but not a profession. But her class was exciting. I learned everything about whatever it was that she taught. "Monsieur Garmeese! Would you like to learn le français?" Sure, why not? So I took French from Miss Miller and got the pronunciation down so perfectly that even I couldn't understand myself. And I could translate like crazy. I still recall our textbook: The French Revolution. Sentence 1: “les paysans sont révoltantes!” which meant: “The peasants are revolting!” It wasn’t clear why the French peasants were more revolting than peasants in other countries, but that didn’t concern me. Then Miss Miller went to France and the natives (i.e., peasants) couldn't understand a word she said. That was not good news for a student learning from her. Eliminate another potential career opportunity. I said: "It hasn't been invented yet." He said: “Check this memo I just received from the Occupations Not Invented Yet Committee. See, right there it says: Computer Science. Next student, please." So I waited a few years and sure enough, I became a computer scientist. It could have been worse. I could have been in children's clothes. Not that there's anything wrong with being in children's clothes...well, actually there is. The years have continued to pass, and now that I’m retired, I have a first chance to choose a second career. Unfortunately, I still can’t swim. Still can't speak French. Still can’t draw a glass of water. But my inept lamp making skills are now trendy. I could still whip up a couple of delightfully incompetent lamps in a couple of hours and sell them to you for a modest fortune. ____________________ |
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A SHOUT OUT In fourth grade, my classmate Scott Guthrie, a new kid, went off to Florida during Christmas vacation to visit family and was never heard from again. A year or so later, Montgomery Meigs arrived, and he, too, soon left, but at least he turned up decades later (a general leading a brigade in Desert Storm, following in the military footsteps of his namesake great-great-great granduncle, the Quartermaster General of the Union Army, who probably deserves more credit than Ulysses S. Grant for winning the Civil War). There are ____________________
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SHARON--PART 1 For me, one of the worst and one of the best moments in high school came within seconds of each other in a World Literature class taught by Walter Schroeder. Mr. Schroeder was a good man and a good teacher, but he seemed to be growing more and more bitter at what he apparently felt was the waste of his life attempting to teach dolts. It hadn't helped that, a few days earlier, when he had mentioned how much Bach's music had always meant to him, one of our classmates had said, "How can you just sit there and listen to that long-hair stuff?" We had read a short story by Chekhov, and, toward the beginning of the class discussion of it, Mr. Schroeder said, "How do Russians feel about their children?" and he called on Sharon Leonardo. It was such a ridiculous question that he could have had no other reason to ask it than to elicit an answer he could inwardly sneer at--the expected answer being, of course, something like "They turn them over to the Secret Police if they say even one word against communism." In a tone that made clear how shocked and upset she was that anyone for a moment could think otherwise about any parents anywhere, Sharon said, "They love them," and Mr. Schroeder looked thoroughly ashamed of himself. --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. ____________________ |
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WRESTLEMANIA
I was birdwatching in Stewart Park one Saturday in the spring of our senior year and came across the IHS wrestling team playing softball, half the team on each side. I stopped to watch for a few minutes and saw batter after batter hit a long fly ball that each team's center fielder had no trouble catching--3 up, 3 down, over and over. The score, of course, was 0 to 0. There had to be, I thought, an outer limit to how far a softball, slowed by gravity and wind resistance, could travel, no matter how strong the batter. Any of my science guy friends could probably have calculated that maximum possible distance, but the center fielders seemed already to know it because they never had to move more than about fifteen feet. I knew and liked some of the wrestlers, like seniors Ken Blye and Pete Brann, and one of them invited me to play on his team--an invitation that met with approval from a few of the other wrestlers, indifference from most and unmistakable hostility from the rest, who made it clear they didn't think I should be in their game. Though all of them were, of course, athletes and I most certainly was not, I was only slightly daunted because I knew I had two things going for me. 1) I had started birdwatching when I was seven and had probably hiked close to 10,000 miles since then, so I had very strong leg muscles that made me a much faster runner than anyone would have guessed. 2) I almost always won games as long as they didn't require a great deal of practice or a great deal of strength, and since softball doesn't require much of either, I was sure I could hold my own. I foolishly thought I almost always won games because I was so smart, and it wasn't until I was in my early thirties that I learned the real reason. I was playing pool in a bar in New Jersey and beating everyone in the place, and two of my friends came over to watch. One said, "How does he do it?" and the other, a very gifted natural athlete, said, "Haven't you ever noticed? He's got amazing hand-eye coordination." That was it--it was a talent, and, like all talents, an unearned gift having nothing to do with intelligence or one's worth as a person. When it was my turn to bat, the shortstop apparently assumed I would pull the ball to my left, and he moved much too close to third base, so I hit a grounder midway between him and the second baseman and made it to first before anyone could field the ball. The next batter flied out to center field, of course, and that was the third out. But the next time I was up, I was the lead-off batter, and I was sure I could score the only run and win the game for my team. The shortstop stood too close to second base, so I hit a grounder midway between him and the third baseman and again made it to first before the ball could be fielded. I waited on first base until the moment the center fielder caught the next batter's fly ball and then took off, so startling the center fielder that his throw went wild. The moment he caught the next fly ball, I took off from second base, and the poor guy, forgetting that the ball had gotten out there with the help of a bat, apparently thought he could get it back to home plate with just his arm, so I scored. Nobody--except me--felt like playing any more, and the game was over. I realized then that I had behaved badly. Any one of them could easily have done what I did, but that wasn't the game they were playing. Each of them had been trying for a home run way over the head of the center fielder. The ancients had a saying for that kind of thing: Aut Caesar aut nihil, Either Caesar or nothing. The hostile ones had been right. I didn't belong in their game. --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. ____________________ |
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APRIL FOOLS Bill Smock--a good friend since first grade--and I wrote most of the April Fools issue of The Tattler. Tom Cullen wrote a story on sports being dropped at IHS, Margaret Evans (unbeknownst to Bill and me) wrote a few of the ads, but, with one bizarre exception, Bill and I wrote all the rest of it, with me writing three of the twenty-seven pieces, Bill writing twelve (and most of the ad copy) and the two of us collaborating on ten. I was co-editor of the paper and he was the features editor, but we both knew that he should have been the editor: he could type and I still can't, he's smarter than I am, he writes better than I do and he had put in a lot more time on the paper than I had. But I had been handed the job by the previous editor, and our faculty advisor, Miss Elliott, had then appointed Barbara Hansel as my co-editor, meant, as Miss Elliott told me, to be a steadying influence on me. I wouldn't have blamed Bill for walking away, but he stayed and was the backbone of the place. I wanted to show my gratitude in some way so I gave him free rein on the April Fools issue, and he took it, sometimes with a bit of an edge as in the ad he wrote for Swarthout and Ferris, the company that ran Ithaca's school buses: "Our motto: 'We can cram 60 kids into anything on wheels.'" We listed ourselves last on the masthead this way: "Deck Tennis editors...............Goffrey Nulle, William Smock" Bill wanted the first "e" left out of my first name, and I accepted that as part of his reward and my punishment. The bizarre exception mentioned above was by junior Tim Wright, who was unaware of the April Fools tradition of The Tattler and handed in a genuine article on a Brazilian fish that had been added to the aquarium in the library. Bill believed and managed to convince me that Tim's piece was in fact a wickedly funny deadpan parody of a typical Tattler story, so we ran it, but Bill wanted to change the name Tim had given as the keeper of the aquarium to a name Bill thought would be funnier, and, of course, I let him do it. The real keeper, Pat Husar, was furious. The excerpt below is from a story Bill and I co-wrote, but the excerpt itself is totally by Bill (with the likely exception of the first two words). School evaluators have come to IHS a week early and in disguise and have found much amiss. Rummaging through students' desks, they have recovered, among other things, 26 Bruun-Fergusons, and a whimsical doll-like figure, which was immediately snatched by a blubbering Miss Martha Neighbour. While attempting to place some refuse into nearby garbage cans, evaluators found in the first can a bewildered Lois Wiltberger furtively attempting to crush her cigarette and in the next can Mrs. Eleanor Merrifield, in her now famous black leotards, gorging herself on chocolates and other sweets. I had no idea what Bill was talking about with regard to the doll-like figure or the black leotards. I assumed Bill did and let it go at that because we were in a big rush to get the issue finished. Whatever he was referring to, Miss Neighbour was a trooper and never showed the least sign of resentment. Not so Mrs. Merrifield. I saw her a week or so after the issue had come out and she told me that, among the many faculty members she had talked to, the consensus was that I had either left alone or treated gently faculty members I liked and had gone after those I didn't like. I was about to tell her that there weren't any faculty members I didn't like when she began giving me an explanation of the black leotards, and it went on and on and on, and I had no idea what she was talking about. I asked Bill about it later, but I've forgotten what he said. I did go after one person. Doug Capogrossi, a sophomore I didn't know, had dissed me in the halls and I was in a bad mood and wanted revenge: CAPOGROSSI TAKES IHS SCIENCE FAIR
The annual science fair was held Saturday, March 17 behind the curtains of Miss Murray's G-108. There were 5 entrants in all and over 8 spectators. Doug Capogrossi walked off with first place for his Biology project, "My Hobby --Pets." Doug exhibited a fuzzy caterpillar, a can of earthworms and a picture of his cocker spaniel. He told judges he has been working on his project for a little over a week. This excerpt from a story Bill and I co-wrote was entirely by me (except the best part: the sentence listing Doug's pets) and contains my gentle swipe at Miss Murray, who did indeed have curtains in her homeroom, allowing for an "off-stage" space any batty diva would insist on. I was told that within a day or so of the April Fools issue's appearance, when Doug was somehow misbehaving in his Biology class, the teacher, Mr. Wayne Steinbaugh, said something like, "Now, Doug, just because you won the science fair doesn't mean the rules don't apply to you." Doug, I was told, was dumbfounded, but someone must soon after have shown him The Tattler because until the end of school that spring, I would see him at least once a week in the halls and he would always give me the same look: one of utter bewilderment--why me? He seemed hurt that he'd been teased but also a little pleased that I'd made him famous. It was a look of innocent wonder at it all. I grew very fond of him. --Author: This story is from the inexhaustible collection of Jeff Nulle. ____________________ |
