Your High School Days

Discussion in 'Other Reminiscences' started by Hal Pollner, Feb 17, 2021.

  1. Hal Pollner

    Hal Pollner Veteran Member
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    My high school days (1950-1954) were socially uneventful.

    I was promoted a year ahead in Grammar School, making me the youngest student in all my High School classes, which I didn't like.

    Being shy and antisocial, I never had a Date with a girl, never went to any of our Dances, never went to any of our Football Games, never went out for Sports, never participated in Senior Field Day, and never attended our Graduation Prom.

    Instead, I ran with like-minded social dropouts, and had fun doing things and going places with them, working on our cars, etc.

    Scholastically, I graduated with a B average throughout High School, and was President of my Spanish Class.

    My favorite classes were Math, Science, Physics, Print Shop, Electric Shop, Metal Shop, Auto Shop, and Spanish, where I was more popular than in other classes.

    So as you can see, I was never a Big Man On Campus!

    Hal
     
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  2. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    I was sort of (definitely note the words, "sort of"), like you. When I entered 8th grade, I had already moved in with step-parents (legal guardians). If it wouldn't have been for them, I would've stayed in the 8th grade for another year. Yes, my grades were that bad. They were told that if I didn't get some type of schooling during the summer, I wouldn't become a Freshman in high school for another year. So, they paid for private tutoring for the summer and I became a Freshman.

    One of the problems was, these Legal Guardians had never had a kid. I was very skinny and my step-dad had me get a very short haircut when he got one. Being that skinny and short hair, I really looked like "dork" in high school.

    Luckily, a neighbor down the road, took me to all three of the class dances. The girls I had an "eye" for, were way, way above me "scholastically" and family wise. The only date I had was to a fairly gory movie and to the After Prom Party after the movie.

    I didn't get my first car until I was 3/4 of the way thru my Senior year. My step-dad had me take Drafting, of which I hated and my grades showed that exactly. However, I did excel in Speech & Drama Class and all three years of Typing Class. Most other classes, "Bah-Humbug" LOL.

    No sports, but was involved with yearly Science Exhibit Show and 4-H. Got two 1st Place Ribbons for Science Projects two different years.

    Highlights of high school days: Two major ones (to me it was anyway). At high school graduation, I got an Award for Perfect Attendance for all four years of high school. And, at our Senior Banquet, I was crowned Miss Huntertown High School. There were three of us guys that dressed up in ladies 1-piece bathing suits, wearing a shower cap. We pranced around the Banquet Hall showing off our looks. The Class President escorted me around the Banquet area and I gave a kiss on the cheek to our U.S. History teacher. I was in the Yearbook for that.

    Weekends and summertime, during high school, were made up of either work on the hog farm or spending Saturday night/Sunday with my cousins. Farm work was "ok", but it was definitely "party time" when I was with my cousins. Their mom and dad were on a bowling league on Saturday night and boy did we have fun (soda, popcorn, candy, music) while they were gone.

    Three weeks after graduation, the U.S. Navy called me up for Basic Training.
     
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  3. Tex Dennis

    Tex Dennis Veteran Member
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    I had little interest in any classes but shop, AG & math classes spent almost all my free time with my cousin Sandi as we both liked the same outdoor things most other school kids were not interested in but us. We both worked multiple jobs in dad's grocery store and uncle's cotton gin which we both quit the store to work more in the season ginning cotton plus walked to work. We finally were trusted to work the night shift by ourselves, trucks and trailers just checking in gin it the following day they go to one other's house and sleep more ang go back later to check in and move trailers, she did all the weighing in and out and book posting I moved most of the trailers and did the suction of picked cotton. I loved that job. We had zero interest in any school sports, We both made all A's in AG and math.
     
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  4. Boris Boddenov

    Boris Boddenov Very Well-Known Member
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    @Cody Fousnaugh I bet you were quite fetching prancing around in your shower cap and one-piece bathing suit. Congratulations.

    1958-62 were among the happiest yrs. of my life. All boys, high falootin' Christian Brothers' parochial school that my parents couldn't afford but they did without their own wants to send me anyway. Thanx, mom and dad. School was strict and I even got punched out by a Christian Brother and the irony was that I was innocent of the offense for which he hit me.

    On the football team, the guys called me "EJ" and "The Beast" for EJ "The Beast" Holub who was a college player at the time at one of the Texas schools.

    There were no cliques at this school of 1,200 students, athletes got along with the nerds, and no real troublemakers. Great group of guys.
     
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  5. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    I didn't feel so bad, since the other two guys, that were prancing around, were upper-classman. I was definitely not that.
     
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  6. Boris Boddenov

    Boris Boddenov Very Well-Known Member
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    Just yanking your chain. Proves you guys were good sports.
     
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  7. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    My social outlet was band. I played trumpet from 4th grade through high school (and some years after that.)

    I was in every band there was: symphonic, marching, jazz, pep band, brass choir, stage band. Because of that, my friends spanned a large age range: some were seniors when I was a freshman, and some were freshmen when I was a senior. So because of that, I never attended reunions (except once), because few friends were in my graduating class.

    Other than that, I hated high school.
     
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  8. Hoot Crawford

    Hoot Crawford Veteran Member
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    High school? I'm so old that pot had not been invented yet. The drug of choice was "3.2" beer, which I avoided. Small school, 45 or so in our class, 12 of whom have now passed away. The physical building, which was built in the mid 50s, was abandoned about 20 years ago, and most of it has since been torn down.

    Damn, I'm old.....
     
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  9. Boris Boddenov

    Boris Boddenov Very Well-Known Member
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    Oh wow! Our musical paths started out similarly but how we diverged. You kept at it. Kudos.

    They started me out with Bb clarinet lessons at age 8. “I really like the guitar, mom.” “No, you can hardly hear a guitar in an orchestra?” (Who the hell wants to be in an orchestra? Besides, guitars come in electric.) “I really like tenor sax, mom.” “No, everybody knows you need to play clarinet before moving on to sax.” (I think she still had a crush on Benny Goodman.) Anyway, I had neither the talent nor the interest and after four years, they surrendered, wasting all that $$$ on lessons.

    Fast fwd. Two years. “Try to get a musical scholarship.” They pulled out the old clarinet case, dusted it off and sent me to auditions. The music director was telling the candidates to execute movements, riffs, and licks that even Liberace or Benny Goodman couldn’t handle. Talking Italian musical terms to them. I snuck out the side door without auditioning and told mom that I tried but don’t expect too much.

    Summer before freshman yr., they talked me into trying out for the marching band, again with the clarinet. The band director wasn’t impressed -- "You're no better than these other kids who never picked up an instrument" -- and put me on the tuba. Mom was incensed.

    I was probably the first guy in high school history to quit the band to play football.
     
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  10. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I forgot about 3.2 beer. The only high you got from it was the irrational adolescent giggles born of drinking something with zero intoxicants.
     
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  11. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Your story resonates with my memories of others I've known.

    Archibald was one of our 2 tuba players, except during football season. I forget what position he played. Lucky bastard got out of marching band duty...very few liked marching band.

    I have 5 siblings, all of whom played an instrument. My older brother (trombone player) also wanted to migrate over to guitar. Dad would not allow him to (dad also had a big band fetish, probably Tommy Dorsey), and that brother went on to have a career with The Army Band at Fort Myer in Washington DC.
     
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  12. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    @Hal Pollner

    A duplicate of my own experiences!

    Frank
     
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  13. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I had all the confidence in the world through the eighth grade. Of course, I was related to almost everybody I went to school with through the eighth grade. I knew them, they knew me, and there were very few reasons for social awkwardness.

    High school was another matter. Because the town that I grew up in didn't have a high school, we were bussed 15 miles or so - actually, I think it was less than that - to the nearest city, which was barely over 1000 people, for high school.

    For whatever reason, my cousins (who had been my closest friends through elementary school) were all in different classes than me during high school. Frankly, I never saw much of them anymore. The first summer after ninth grade, I worked on the staff at a Boy Scout camp, so we never did the usual summer stuff together; I don't know if we would have otherwise. At any rate, we didn't hate each other or anything so drastic, but we were never really friends again.

    High school was not disastrous for me, but I had never really had to go out of my way to make friends with anyone before, and I didn't do so in high school. For some reason, although I had never had that problem in elementary school, I developed a stutter - not a terribly dysfunctional one - but it was embarrassing, nevertheless.

    Through boy Scouts, and some other things, I had come to make friends with people in Menominee and Marinette, rather than Stephenson, which is where my high school was. I got along OK with most of the people that I went to high school with, but I wasn't very close to any of them. I didn't play sports, I didn't join clubs, and my closest friends were about 10 to 15 miles in the other direction from where I lived.

    By 10th grade, I had learned, to my surprise, that I only stuttered when I had something to say. If I was talking nonsense, or reading, I didn't have a stuttering problem. I signed up for a role in the 10th-grade play and did fine. I was reciting lines, they weren't my words, and I wasn't particularly invested in them. Maybe that's the reason. I was in the junior variety show, and I was in the senior play in both my junior and senior years. I joined a community theater group in Stephenson and took part in some of their productions.

    Actually, by my junior year in school, my stuttering had pretty much gone away. It turned out that it amounted to only a couple of years of awkwardness. Oh, I still stutter once in a while, but not much, and not badly.

    Still, my closest friends were from Menominee and Marinette, not from Stephenson, where I went to school. That wasn't a big problem, particularly not after I got a car. By my junior year, I guess I was reasonably popular within my school. It was the 60s, and perhaps because Stephenson was more of a farming community than Menominee or Marinette, I was the only one in my grade whose hair length represented the 1960s. Girls liked that, although some of the guys didn't. But that's fine, I didn't need them.

    I would go to high school sports games, particularly football, because it didn't involve going into a building - not to watch the game, as I don't remember ever looking at the field - but to see who else would rather be doing something more interesting than watching a football game, and I was usually able to find someone.

    I was never popular in the same way that the academic achievers or the sports players were popular. Although my grades weren't bad, mostly A's and B's, the friends that I did have from Stephenson were troublemakers. I can remember, in one of my history classes, in which I had never gotten less than an A+, one of the more snobbish girls in the class making a comment about my inability to take anything seriously. I had to mention that I was doing much better in the class than she was. That shut her up and it served as a victory to me - obviously; since I still remember it.

    I have never gone to a class reunion, although I really wanted to attend our 50th. It just didn't work out, financially and timewise. I don't know if we'll have any more since a good part of our class is no longer alive. I did want to show off the fact that I still had my hair, however.
     
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    Last edited: Feb 20, 2021
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