Even now, decades later, it’s easy to visualize this. In eighth grade, I played second oboe in band – and yes, there were two of us. Mike Moxley played first. There I sat at 7 AM, bored out of my mind, probably daydreaming about the Youth Center Dance and idly twisting my music stand without realizing what I was doing.
It was neither my first nor my last mortification in band. I had no innate talent and no hope of developing any since I hated to practice. I’m not sure why I didn’t quit in 7th grade; perhaps Mr. Royer persuaded me to stick it out because Mike Moxley and I were the only two oboe players at Jefferson. I knew my tenure at second chair would terminate should another oboe player appear. This was hardly an imminent threat. Oboe wasn’t my first choice either but I was even more hopeless at flute.
The only song I recall from our limited repertoire was my favorite, The Green Leaves of Summer. I can still picture the sheet music and hear the melancholy chords.
“It was good to be young then – to be close to the earth”
It wasn’t so good to wear Peter Pan collars and ankle socks. No wonder I’m not thrilled to preserve this look for posterity.
At thirteen, mourning my lost youth brought tears to my eyes. Then again, it didn’t take much. I’m surprised I didn’t break down when I toppled the top of my music stand.
Growing up in Santa Clara, I took the Rosicrucian Museum for granted because it was close to home and easily accessible. Every other year from fifth grade on, my class toured the museum on a field trip. My favorite exhibit was the Egyptian tomb replica, a dark mysterious cave. I think this ’67 visit was my last. I’m sure the structure and collection improved significantly in the ensuing decades.
Rose Garden PostcardA digital painting of the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden
I hope I’m not the same girl who levelled such appalling questions at my unsuspecting boyfriend. “Do you feel superior or inferior to me?” I can almost hear him saying “Neither one,” and thinking, do I really have to answer this? Indeed he did. Apparently I suffered from a neurotic compulsion to bully people into giving me answers I didn’t want to hear.
KathyLewis
Similarly, when my friends and I made our monthly or yearly predictions for ourselves and each other, I forecast heartbreak for myself. I didn’t dare write down my wildest dreams for fear I’d jinx myself. Instead I focused on my fears as if anticipation could inoculate me against pain and disappointment. Another exercise in futility, guaranteed to produce results I didn’t want.
While I don’t believe our thoughts create all of our reality (as in The Secret), I do believe our thoughts and expectations effect the trajectory of our lives. My friend Lewis is a prime example of the power of positive thought. Diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 1996, he is alive today. Obviously, factors other than positive thinking played a part – happy thoughts alone haven’t cured cancer yet. That said, I doubt he’d be here now if not for his relentless optimism. I’m going to give it a try.
To my mind, the Wilcox High cafeteria operated like a caste system. The highest caste – cheerleaders, athletes, homecoming queens and student government honchos – held court on the kidney-shaped Senior Lawn, an area so sacrosanct even their fellow seniors dared not sidle onto the hallowed grass unless expressly invited.
Descending castes fanned out from the metal tables under the cafeteria’s fluorescent lights to the picnic tables and benches surrounding the snack bar in the quad.
Inside the cafeteria, you could spot the brains by the books piled beside their trays. The low-riders laughed louder and indulged in more food fights. The hippies preferred the lesser lawn outside where they could skip in circles and blow bubbles. The surfers sunned themselves at the picnic tables.
Sandra re-enacts buying a sandwich in the snack bar line.
The Untouchables were marooned between the Special Needs table and the line of trash cans between the boys and girls bathrooms. They were the lowest caste, miserable souls yoked together by nothing more than the fact no one else wanted them.
Sandra finds a sign suggesting life will improve after high school.
Anybody and everybody could gauge your caste in a glance based on where you ate lunch. Once assigned to a caste, it was almost impossible to move up. Moving down was not such a problem.
Kathy re-enacts the loneliness of the Untouchables
Sandy and I flirted with the fringes of various castes without adhering to any for long. Something about the group dynamic just didn’t work for us. This was surprising, since my Scandinavian forebears are famous for their community-minded club and choir culture. A chorus of perfectly blended voices, none of which stand out or call undue attention to themselves, is the Danish ideal. Their sense of group unity is one of the reasons Denmark is ranked the happiest country on earth.
The Scandinavian joiner gene lies dormant in me. I’m acutely uncomfortable in any group larger than three and I far prefer one-on-one. That said, it’s easier to be an outsider if you’re lucky enough to find a fellow solitary soul with a huge imagination and quirky sense of humor – someone like Sandy. The truth is, we had a blast being outsiders together.
Changing my schedule in my sophomore year was a brilliant decision I’ve never regretted.
Lloyd (not his real name) told me he had psychiatric problems when we met. Because of this, he claimed he could never have a romantic or sexual relationship with any girl. I didn’t want one with him so that came as a relief. Even though we didn’t live far apart, we started our friendship as pen pals.
His voluminous letters were the first warning sign. Ten hand-written pages a day were typical. A tiny warning light flicked on when he pointed out that the stamps on the envelopes his letters arrived in were never cancelled. In other words, he drove them to my mailbox himself late at night.
He loved photography and wanted me to model for him. He took the photos featured here on one of our two photo sessions. As a vain, shallow adolescent, I lapped this up – but not for long. His criticisms of me were scathing and increasingly frequent. In retrospect, I think one of the reasons I hung around was to win his admiration back. The desire to recapture something I thought lost kept me in a lot of relationships in those days. For that matter, it’s one of the reasons I kept a diary.
That’s why I can’t deny I saw Lloyd’s red flags long before our trip to Ensenada; I just didn’t heed them. There was that trip to San Francisco, when he threatened to swerve into oncoming traffic and kill us both. The fact that he didn’t follow through on that threat doesn’t negate it as a red flag.
I’d be crazed with fear if my daughter was dating a guy who displayed Lloyd’s character traits but for some reason I failed to fear for myself. Like other young, dumb adolescents, I believed I’d live forever. I didn’t end the relationship with Lloyd because I was afraid but because I was exasperated.
This entry fails to convey the overwhelming confusion and excitement of my first day in high school. If my memory serves me well, Cabrillo Jr. High and the now defunct Jefferson Jr. High fed into Wilcox High, effectively doubling the student body and ensuring that at best any student might recognize half of the student body. Naturally, the structure itself needed to be twice as large to accommodate approximately 2000 pupils. To me, it seemed huge. I’d never gone to school in a two-story building before.
I harbored many illusions about high school, gleaned from movies, TV and the Scholastic Book Club. Classes didn’t loom large in any of these narratives. Instead they focused on sock hops, meet-cute flirtations, proms, football games, gang warfare (West Side Story) and popularity.
I longed to be popular and, in my own misguided way, I tried. I didn’t succeed. I’m not sure how the chosen kids in the In Crowd reached their exalted status. Was their success due to their self-confidence or was their confidence due to their success? There seemed to be no objective criteria although good looks, athletic ability and the means to buy bitchen’ clothes and hot wheels didn’t hurt.
There was no category for Most Popular, but these categories were owned by the popular kids so I’ve selected a sampling.
I’m not saying Soc’s were stupid but being known as brainy was not a plus. Neither was being a P.K.(preacher’s kid), not to mention an introvert. Aside from Carrie, no introverts ever got elected King or Queen of the Prom. My parents, however, were elected King and Queen of their high school prom. Unfortunately, they failed to pass their popularity gene down to me.
My parents as King and Queen in 1943
According to Ralph Keyes (Is There Life After High School), popularity comes with its own set of problems. It’s hard to hold on to, for one thing – not only in high school but afterward. The adulation accorded a high school football star fades after graduation. It’s not that easy to duplicate – let alone surpass – high school glory days when the bar has been set unrealistically high. If you’re addicted to applause, withdrawal is painful and it’s hard to hook up with a new supply in the real world.
In 1965, I would’ve gladly shouldered these burdens for a seat at the In Crowd’s table, proving how easily I forget who I am. I don’t like groups, for one thing. I’d rather watch from the sidelines than be the center of attention. And I’d hate to lose the perks of membership in the Out Crowd – the freedom to be silly and screw up (when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose). The fierce drive to prove myself to people who rejected me.
I’ve heard it said that for a writer, a lousy childhood is the gift that keeps on giving. So is being on the outside looking in during high school.
Maybe some people go to their high school reunion with no motive other than to share a good time with old friends. Not me. I RSVP’d to show my former classmates I wasn’t the loser they remembered. Just to be on the safe side, I brought an entourage – my sister Joyce, husband John, and two friends. Sure, it practically screamed insecure, but at least I wouldn’t wind up sitting at a table by myself. I wore my favorite outfit – an ill-advised Evan Picon vested skirt suit that failed to stand the test of time.
I wanted people to think I transcended high school but in truth I was obsessed with it – so much so that at age 29 I posed as a high school student and returned to Wilcox as a student for a brief spell – but that’s another story.
Disguised as high school student for my return enrollment at Wilcox in 1981. I hoped the huge hair would draw attention away from my face.
Suffice to say, it’s no coincidence that well over half of my scripts and teleplays concern high school kids. It became my specialty. It was easy to channel adolescent minds, because my own mind was mired in adolescence. While I might be excessive, I’m not unique.
In Ralph Keyes’ excellent book Is There Life After High School, he distills his experience, research and interviews to three major points.
These memories focus on comparison of status and
High school is the source of indelible memories
Status comparisons continue long after graduation, in a society shaped fundamentally by high school
Big hair to compliment my chic ensemble
On the outside, I’d travelled far since high school but on the inside the neurotic outsider I used to be ran the show. I drank too much, talked too much, got too giddy and too grandiose. The harder I tried to be one of the cool kids, the more I proved I was not.
These photos are, I think, cheats from later reunions.Carolyn Sakuaye, Ruth Anderson and…..Sandra Hegwood, Ray Prevost, Steve Hoffman
This entry is a perfect illustration of the tricks memory plays. I would have sworn that my father came to LA to inform me of the call to San Diego and that today was the first time I was aware of the possibility. I was even more certain that it was on this day, at LAX, that he dropped the bomb – it was a done deal, they were committed to moving and I had no say in it. This, too, is apparently false. Who am I kidding, apparently? If the battle for truth is between my diary and my memory, the diary scores a knock-out.
SNEAKY FAMILY PREPARES TO ABSCOND
If I hadn’t written everything down in my diary, I’d buy my own fiction in which, not so coincidentally, I am cast as the hapless victim. Until I came across this particular entry, I believed my version was 100% accurate. It turns out none of it is factually true.
In my defense, my version was emotionally true to my feelings about abandoning Santa Clara for San Diego. I felt blindsided and betrayed. When I left to attend UCLA, I expected to return to Santa Clara every Christmas and summer – where else would I ever want to go? I didn’t remember any other home before Santa Clara. The shocking realization that – aside from a quick dash to box my earthly possessions for a move to a city I’d never seen and where I knew no one – aside from that, I could never go home again. The house I grew up in would be occupied by strangers.
If I ruled the world, my family would never leave Santa Clara (or age, for that matter). My parents would live in our old parsonage which would look exactly like it used to – but that hasn’t been true for 47 years now.
And I’m still not completely over it.
DEL MONTE THEN – We didn’t own our house; Hope Lutheran owned the parsonage, we just lived there. The new pastor thought it was too small (no duh) and the church sold it in October, 1970, for $27,700. It was your basic three bedroom two bath Lawrence Meadows tract house. My thanks to Lester Larson who posted this 1956 Lawrence Meadows brochure, below, on Facebook. The floor plan depicted in the brochure was ours; I think that may even be our house in the picture.
OUR HOUSE IN LAWRENCE MEADOWS IN SANTA CLARA
DEL MONTE NOW – This is what our house looks like today. Apparently it now has six bedrooms and three bathrooms and the estimated value is (gulp) $1, 308,597.
Sandy wasn’t a friend who’d waste a day bronzing in the sun or swimming. We were always playing some kind of fantasy game or plotting an adventure whether it was leaving different footprints in the sand or talking to the ouija board at midnight on my front lawn. If a spectral car didn’t hurtle out of the night, we’d find another way to terrify ourselves.
Our ouija board told us his name was Rehsi and he was from the planet Asteron. He wasn’t exactly a gifted, fast-tracked ouija board. He was probably held back a few years. I don’t think he ever answered a single question correctly but being clueless didn’t keep him from making dire predictions.
I know some people think ouija boards are scary and demonic but for Sandy and me it was a fun spooky game. Not for an instant did I believe that we were summoning dark forces to serve the devil. Maybe I would’ve been more scared if I’d seen The Exorcist.
STRANGLING EACH OTHER WAS ALWAYS FUN WHEN WE RAN OUT OF OTHER IDEAS.HMMM. SANDY SEEMS MORE SERIOUS ABOUT STRANGLING ME THAN VICE VERSA.
People go to fairs and carnivals for fun, not to wallow in existential despair over the human condition. Given this reality, my own psyche was the dark cloud hanging over the corn dog stand that summer. Everywhere I turned I saw another story about loneliness, suffering, and doomed lives. There was a little boy, about 7, that hung around – son of a “carny wife” (woman who moves in with a carnival man for a month or two). All of the grown-ups kept telling him to get lost – but there were no children his own age for him to go to. He was just so – alone, (Where is he today?)
My friend JoAnn Hill, who lived in Willow Glenn, got a job in another food venue. We hung out together when we had breaks at the same time. She was tall – at least 5’11” – and model-gorgeous with long blonde hair. Walking around with her was an instant inferiority complex.
JOANN HILL
Since JoAnn and I worked there, we got free rides – not always a good thing. The guy who controlled the spidery ride wanted to impress JoAnn so he gave us what felt like hours of extra spinning – I was almost sick to my stomach. Things didn’t improve in the sweltering heat of the Pup Hut. A bad situation got worse when I was tasked to shove sharp sticks into hundreds of naked doggies. It was truly the stuff of nightmares.
And that’s why I’ve never consumed another corn dog.
Judging by the October 1955 photo above, even at four I wasn’t a “thank god I’m a country girl” type. Still, I couldn’t help wondering what my life would be like if I’d grown up in Missouri instead of Silicon Valley.
Fishing with some of our relatives in Iowa.
Most of my cousins – almost all of my extended family – lived in the Midwest in 1968. Every other year, our family loaded up the station wagon and drove to Estherville and Graettinger in the northeastern corner of Iowa. There are aspects of Iowa that are buried deep in my subconscious, images that are inscribed on my brain – brick or white houses, humidity and mosquitoes, dinners with fresh buttered sweet corn and strange puffy homemade bread. The smell of coffee wafted through the day – coffee and musty old books. The basements, which all contained a washer, dryer and toilet were damp and a little bit scary even though that’s where we always played. It was cooler down there even though sometimes it was still so hot all we could do was breathe and sweat. I hate to sweat.
With adult cousins on my father’s side
My grandfather, commonly referred to as R.S. by all grandchildren, was a real go-getter, a non-stop talker. Even after retirement, he didn’t quit; he took volunteer work in a funeral parlor, probably to remind himself on a daily basis of how much more vital he was than the average man. In a box in his basement, he stored the obituaries of all his friends. The basement also held a pool table and assorted recreation equipment but my cousins and I enjoyed the obits most. I suppose our fear of death – and its imminence for all the aged people of Estherville – made it an object of high hilarity.
With adult cousins on my mother’s side – at the tiny (very tiny) Spencer airport
