Northport Nostalgia: The Seventh Grade

The seventh grade is the mother of all wonder years. It’s the beginning of
innocence lost, the age of discovery and new-found independence, a practicum in disobedience, and anything else I may have left out that makes parents want to re-think the idea of propagation. 

It was the fall of 1957. For me, it’s easy to keep track, because the last digit of the year always corresponded to the grade I was in.

Before my journey into the epicenter of the Northport educational system, I had been sequestered at Ocean Avenue School where most of the kids were "good" little boys and girls. Once in a while, we had our little disagreements and somebody would get a bloody nose, but that was about it. 

I was the baby of the class and when I entered the 7th grade, I was eleven. I hadn’t even hit puberty yet!  Now, I would be cast into a maelstrom of people, many of whom were the kids I had heard about from “the other side of the tracks.” There were some there who had repeated grades, repeatedly. My God, some of them were 16 and had chest hair!  Many were nearing the end of their educational assignments and were about to embark on their own careers that would undoubtedly take them to Attica, Riker’s Island, and other similar points of NY interest.

Now they always had these amalgamated gym classes where they combined three or four regular classes into the same period, so we got a pretty good cross section of folks. The coach (we now had a “coach”) said, okay, we’re going to play bombardment! That sounded good to me. I always enjoyed the game at Ocean Avenue and now I would wow ‘em.

When I got out on the floor I couldn’t believe the brute force of those guys. Volley balls were whizzing by my head at light speed and I thought if ever I got hit by one, my mother could surely expect a call from the coroner’s office! It was my first real wake-up call and I knew if I was going to survive as “the baby of the class,” I would have to toughen-up.

I observed the tough guys: how they looked, how they walked, how they held their heads, how they talked and so on. I was a student of “Hoodlum,” or as they were commonly called, "Hoods” or “Rocks.” I think Elvis influenced a lot of that. There was one guy in our 7th grade class who was short and of small build, but, oh, so scary!  He was one of the guys from the “other side of the tracks” that I had not dealt with yet, a good study though and a role model in survival! 

Fifty years later, when I talked to him at a reunion, I recalled those early years and he told me he had to establish himself as a tough guy, or be pounded into the pavement. He was right and back then, in my mind, he was a tough guy. If I could be cool like him, nobody would bother me. I decided I'd morph into a tough guy.

My pals and I all wanted to be tough guys. Nobody would bother us, we would have all the pretty girls on our arms and life would be ours for the taking. To do this we would change our image. At least I did. I bought taps at Dan's Bootery (we called them cleats) for my shoes so I could make a lot of noise while walking down those "halls of echo" at the Laurel Avenue School. The teachers hated them and tried to make us take them off, but we claimed we were trying to preserve the heels of our shoes. The Gym teacher didn’t buy it. He would sooner tear your face off than allow any damage to his beautiful end-grain hardwood floors!

We wore fruit boots, engineer boots, baggy pants, long sleeve shirts with the sleeves partially rolled up because the sleeves were too small to clear our imaginary massive biceps. We turned our collars up, un-buttoned our shirts and actually combed our hair with Vaseline! We were a mess!  We pursed our lower lip in defiance, and walked like we had just had an accident in our pants!  Oh yes another trick was to carry a pack of lucky strikes in the breast pocket of a white dress shirt so the red "bull’s eye” on the lucky pack would show through, validating that you were not just a smoker but a smoker of non-filtered cigarettes! That was an important distinction.

This was 7th grade. I was eleven!

Now surely with all these image changes, we would be in great demand with the girls. I had my eye on a cute little girl at the time who I knew back in Ocean Avenue. I told myself I would ask her out...pretty soon. Just as soon as I completed my "cool" transformation. But then, on the other hand, I didn’t have any wheels to take her out (except for my bike). Well, maybe I could just talk
to her if I could think of something to say. Maybe I could carry her books for
her if I could just get the nerve to ask her. Or maybe, maybe maybe...and so
it went. I thought maybe just being cool would be enough to attract her
attention! It didn’t. Who could blame her?

Transportation to Laurel Avenue School was a bit of a problem because there was no school bus to the Laurel Ave. Jr. High from the Bayview Avenue area. The school board felt that the kids lived close enough to walk. They were right! Today, the kids won’t walk next door. Anyway, I didn’t mind the walk so much but it was time consuming and it meant that I had to get up early enough to make the walk.  I reasoned that the Northport Bus Company could become my ride in the morning for a dime a day. I got a bus schedule and there was a bus that went by Laurel School at about 7:10 a.m. Homeroom, as I recall, started around 7:30 which left a solid 20 minutes or more on my hands. My friend Ronnie and I took that bus for the whole year of 1957, arriving way early.

In the fall of the year, we brought a “Pluto Platter” which has now evolved into a “Frisbee.” The toy is exactly the same today - only the name has changed. We would pass the time on the front lawn of the Laurel Ave. Jr. High with that little bit of entertainment, but as the fall began to turn to winter we looked for warmth
within the building. The doors to the school were open at that early hour and
we were in! The only two individuals in the whole school! We sat down on the
hall floor with our backs to the lockers in front of Room 10 which was my
homeroom and waited and waited. Finally, Miss Reuben, the homeroom teacher came with her key and opened the door. I noticed that the key she used was a skeleton key, a type of old style low-tech key that opened old style low-tech doors. That was a "key" observation.

By the weekend I was at Milt Jacobs’ Northport Hardware where they had made a clarinet repair for me a few years earlier on a borrowed instrument. I asked to buy a skeleton key and they asked me which configuration. I explained that they came in three different styles for three different lock designs. They were (I think) about a dime apiece. I bought all three and one of them fit the homeroom door. I added it to my key ring and discarded the rest. Ronnie and I would now have a nice warm, comfortable place to sit while we waited for Miss Reuben to arrive.

This sounds innocent enough but the story doesn't end here, oh no!  One morning, while we were waiting for Miss Reuben (or Reuben as we called her) we decided that it would be a good idea to have an eraser fight. After-all, we had the whole homeroom to ourselves. Who could regulate our behavior? We were in charge, at least for the next 20 minutes or so. We began throwing those chalkboard erasers at each other. It was like a mini-game of bombardment right there in homeroom! What could be better? I was on the east side of the room by the windows and he was on the west side by the hall wall. We were lobbing those erasers and really trying to hurt each other! Ronnie winged one at my head and as I ducked, it went sailing over me and right through the window. That stopped the game. It was an automatic time-out while we discussed (argued) culpability. We had a bit of a donnybrook right then and there which resulted in a long-time rift between us.

When Miss Reuben arrived, she was displeased to say the least. I wound up doing time in Principal Big Ed Twining’s office. I don’t remember why I took the rap for that caper, but I did.

Now you didn’t want to deal with Big Ed. Big Ed really was big! Even our parents called him Big Ed! He only had three fingers on one hand and he would contemplate his words as he rested his chin in those three fingers. We used to mock him by creating a three finger position with one hand and stroking our chins. I wasn’t mocking him this day, oh no. My dad was on the school board and of course he knew my dad, so I knew it wasn’t going to be good. Big Ed made his point and I had to make restitution. By now, I was familiar with the word and knew how to use it in a sentence.

It's strange that the issue of the homeroom key never came up. I think Miss Reuben thought that the janitor was opening the door and nothing was out of the ordinary. I continued to open homeroom for myself for the two years I spent in that school and I continued to put Vaseline in my hair. I walked like my underpants were in a wad and carried myself with a “James Arness” kind of confidence, a personal statement that smacked of stupidity, and immaturity. The girls weren't hanging off my arms but I was surviving as the “baby of the class."

The comfort in this little slice of life was that all of my friends looked and acted
just as I did. I was in my element! I was accepted! This 7th grade environment
provided a "boot camp" which helped me prepare for a mountain of yet unseen
challenges in life. In time, I would be tested by the armed forces, career,
parenthood and huge unexpected physical health realities.

I came through the Northport School System to get an education, but I got so much more, one mountain at a time.