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EVERYBODY’S DANISH – Ending Poly High!
By fred | October 18, 2009
EVERYBODY’S DANISH
This time we will finish our adventures at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School.
In another week I will relate a few family tales about my beloved brother in law Jack W. Anderson, I still ache when I think of him leaving us – Jack left us but memories of him will linger on forever, I would like to relate a few with you. After that ‘Everybody Danish’ will join the army with me and you will see the army as it was back then – in 1949 & 1950.
A peace time army that I loved – At the end of my one year of active duty I truly thought I wanted to stay in and go to OCS and become an officer, fortunately my father talked me out of that.
In fact I was killed so many times in war games we had after our 12 weeks of basic training that I fear to think what real combat would have done to me. In real combat you can only die once, not like war games, where you get to live again and there is another combat problem the next week!
So now – let us return to the end of our chapters of Poly High –
BACK TO GIRLS AGAIN
Back to girls, high school girls – I guess I already described them. You can tell where my mind was – and the minds of all my buddies at dear old Poly high school back then in the mid 1940’s.
Tell me that a boy in high school is not interested in girls and I will have to take his temperature and see if he is alive – or not. At that age the hormones are decidedly starting to top out. They, the girls, were very exciting; of course, most of us guys were really in love with love. Of course, now at my ancient age I can be honest – it was sex, thinking about having sex, wanting to have sex with each and every one of those exciting creatures that God had created was uppermost on every boy’s mind.
We talked about it, oh not about having sex with a girl friend, they were above that and if anyone even made a remark sexually about ‘your’ girls he would get a fist in the mouth. It was, of course, the male hormones exerting themselves in our young lives. Yes, we were in love with love. There is little I did not like about our Poly girls, hey some were tiny, some bigger, some black, some darker, some very fair, some shorter, some taller, some skinny, some plump – all were ‘hot’ to a young male. Still —–
The one thing I did not like about the girls in high school was a bunch of them together.
I can remember them standing around at the ‘nutrition’ period or at the lunch hour. They would be talking to each other. They would glance over at where us guys were standing and start to giggle. I guess I had an inferiority complex because I always figured they were laughing at me. I found out that other guys thought the same thing. I guess they often were laughing about us guys, the ladies were so far ahead of us socially, and in matters related to the heart it wasn’t even funny. The girls used to drive all of us nuts.
Girls would walk down the hall, you could be taking something out of your locker, and they would yell, “Hi, Fred!” Now this was nice, but as they walked further down the hall they would start that awful giggle stuff and glance back at you. My ears would sure get red; I knew they were saying something bad. What the hell are they laughing at? What did I do or say? They could, with their darn little silly giggle, totally destroy what I considered was a big two hundred-pound stud football player in seconds. Damn, that used to make me mad! Those tiny girls could, in seconds, with those silly giggles drop you from the top of the world to the depths of despair. It was absolutely amazing!
Girls are the most wonderful things that have ever happened to us on earth, I am talking about us guys – but as a group, in a group, they are murder. Especially high school girls! They did not need knives, pistols, or clubs to totally wipe you out just that damn giggle.
Now when my best of all buddies, Hugo Valesquez, finally got to Poly over a year later, the situation with girls improved for me. Hugo was just ‘cool’ with girls. That so and so was very smooth with chicks. He had two sisters at home that may have been part of it. I don’t really know what it was; he was certainly into girls like all of us it is just hard to explain. He was so darn relaxed talking to girls. Hugo was a good looking six foot well built guy, had a good smile, but that wasn’t it. There were certainly better looking guys in school; they just did not have his ‘class’ with girls.
While the rest of us were always trying to impress the girls, be super ‘cool,’ old buddy Hugo would just not give a damn. He would walk over to a group of girls and they would take him in and talk to him like he was their brother. He would be able to find out stuff, and sort of be our ‘agent’ to the girl’s camp. I guess my being able to relax around the female sex, enjoy their company, have more fun with them was due to my buddy being relaxed. Hugo was a grade behind me, but so far ahead of most of us in the girl department that it wasn’t even funny.
HIGH SCHOOL SOCIAL CLUBS
High school clubs, – there were two types of clubs, the ones that the school recognized and the social clubs that the school did not recognize. Clubs like the honor clubs, Knights for boys, and the Athenians for girls. The music, acting, language, science, and the Lettermen’s Club for sports were all school authorized. None of these clubs ran the school the school was run by the social clubs, in a round about – but usually effective way.
We made damn sure that the top guys and gals in the school were in the social clubs, the most popular, the top athletes, the swingers, the sharpest wits. These would be tendered an offer to join a boys or girls social club. Now I am not always talking about the smartest students, I am sure a lot of students had better brains, had better grades, and stuff like that. What we looked for in prospective members were the guys and gals we considered ‘cool,’ acted cool, looked and dressed cool, were popular and well known, the top athletics and so forth.
A lot of very great guys did not get into these clubs, either they were not in the ‘eye’ so to speak of sports, maybe a little shy, or for some other reason they just did not get the attention of the members of the clubs.
To get in one of these clubs it also did not hurt to have a member of a class senior to you, to sponsor you, open the door to this world of clubs. Fortunately, Ed Bravo took Johnny Brewer and me under his wing, he sponsored us, and due to that friendship we were almost immediately able to get into the Cavaliers, one of the best social clubs at the school. When Hugo got to Poly he was immediately invited to join the Cavaliers.
The clubs ran the school. The best athletes, the most beautiful girls, the senior presidents, and officers of the school were all usually club members. There would be scheming to get the members elected.
At our age in high school it was a very big deal to be a Cavalier, or whatever the name of your club was. The clubs were sort of rated by who belonged. Which club had the most lettermen, the most senior presidents, school officers and so forth.
After you were asked to be a member, you became a pledge, and had ten very rough weeks ahead before you became a full fledged member. Any regular member could ask you to do anything he wanted, at any time during the ‘pledge’ period of time. If you did not perform up to sniff, you were in deep dodo. The next meeting the regular members would have a big paddle, and I mean big! They would swing it with lust! “Assume the position, Fred,” Ray Lopez would say. When I bent over, with my butt in the air, he would wind up and ‘whack,’ would it smart.
All of us pledges would try to think up stuff to dull the pain. We would put on three or four sets of under-shorts and maybe smear some Vaseline on our butts. Ray Lopez a year ahead of J.B. and I and a star end on our football team was always after Johnny and I. One day he said, “Something is not right – strip off your pants and shorts.” When he counted three or four pair of shorts on each of us, we got it on a bare butt.
The club-pledge period was good for me in some ways, one of the guys would say to me during a ‘nutrition’ break in the very middle of the school yard with hundreds watching, “Go dance with that girl.” It could be any of the girls, usually one of the most attractive. I would not normally have had the guts to ask that girl to dance for a million dollars, especially with the entire student body standing around watching. Anything was possible when you had the fear of that big paddle.
Dance with her I did. Of course, the girls and all the rest of the students thought it was funny, and it was. They knew it was part of the ‘pledge’ stuff, BUT – you got to meet some very lovely ladies this way. I was forced to meet girls, and it helped overcome the shyness.
Close friends, Ed Bravo, John Brewer, and Hugo Valesquez all were, or became fellow ‘Cavaliers.’ We figured we had the best in that club, Herb Temple, Ray Lopez, Louie Gongora, big Al Masiello, Jack ‘The Chief’ Bighead the list of guys that were pure class goes on and on. Often older members that had graduated would show up at parties, super guys like Jess Carranza. These military vets would often liven up the parties with a fifth of vodka or pint of same getting stuck in the punch bowl. If the girls had a few glasses of punch and were giggling a lot, didn’t mind a little heavy cuddling, that was usually a good indication that one or a few of our older members had decided to join us.
Another good thing for a somewhat shy guy like me was that the clubs had parties. One favorite was a ‘stocking party.’ A member would talk his parents into letting him have a party at his house. His parents were not allowed to return until at least midnight.
We would roll up the rug. (Very little wall to wall carpet in those days) We would take off our shoes and dance with stockings only on the hardwood floors. The lights would be dim, with very cool records playing softly.
Usually there were chips, cokes, or a punch bowl, no booze, pot or stuff like I hear about now days – except the aforementioned insert of booze by the older members – AND – beer if we could get it. Hell, the girls were enough to give anyone that was alive a ‘high.’
Yes, during my senior year the parties could get a little out of hand we had more returning members from the wars. In 1946 and 47 some guys that had joined the armed services before graduating from high school came back to finish up. Some of them were former club members. Now you are talking about guys that still liked the young ladies but these guys were in fact men, most in their early twenties. That is when the weird things started happening to the punch bowl. The fifth of Vodka added without any one but the person that did it knowing. A few slugs of that and some of the younger gals and guys would be feeling no pain.
Once in a while one club would come to another clubs party, strictly uninvited, and sometimes some rather harsh words would be tossed around. Generally that was all. If a club needed money, we would occasionally rent a hall, and hire a disk jockey, and charge money for a ‘record hop.’ We would sell hundreds of tickets all over school, to anyone – you did not have to be a club member to buy a ticket all Poly students could come. There were some big turnouts for these events.
My buddy Hugo’s father and mother were really good about letting the club use their home. They had a big rambling three-bedroom home. A large front room and dining room that when combined made a dance-floor once the rugs were rolled up and the furniture pushed aside. The neighbors were nice too we tried to keep the music low, sometimes a bunch of teens milling around the front of the house must have driven them nuts, but very seldom did anyone complain or call the cops.
So when Hugo got to Poly high and with the club, you could almost say I was a social butterfly.
Years later the social clubs were banned from the school, and they eventually died out. The schools had decided that they were a bad deal for the general student body.
I am afraid I have to agree, the clubs were great if you were in as I was, if you were not, you could wreck a girl or guys life by not being a member. At least that is the way some kids looked at it.
For the girls it was especially awful. All of the ‘stocking party’ dances, the record hops, the beach parties, were all planned and set up by the social clubs. Non club members better not show up unless you were asked by a club member. Even if a girl that was not a club member but was asked by a guy, she would feel like an outsider because the other girls at the party were club members. The elite Poly clubs, when I look back were a very bad deal for the general student body, think about it, the elite clubs had maybe 300 members in all, if that, there was about 2,300 students at Poly High, so that left 2,000 kids without the insulation, the protection, the fun, parties and support of a club.
I did not think about all this stuff then. I was invited to be a member of the Cavaliers, in my opinion, the elite boys club at Poly. Ed Bravo the guy I always looked up to, my older brother, if not in fact, at least in deed had become a member earlier, he got John Brewer and I in. We got our buddies Hugo, Jack Bighead and Big Al Masiello in as soon as they hit Poly. The fact that we played football did not hurt our cause. Most of the members of this particular boys club played football. Another club, the Lancers were mainly basketball players, and so on. The entire time I was in high school after that was all wrapped up in the club. The social events, meetings, and stuff, were time consuming.
In defense of the clubs I can see why a young man becomes so wrapped up in his club. You were part of a group, if you were in trouble the whole club was, we all stuck together. No one would dare mess with even the littlest guy in the club with out knowing that some big boys would straighten the situation out very fast. A club was like a big security blanket for young fellows. There was always something going on, if there wasn’t, we would be planning some event, and that was almost as much fun as the actually thing we were planning to do.
A beach party, when, where? Do we ask another club? Do we ask a girls club or just bring dates? What do we have to eat? Hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, cokes! If at night, where can we have a fire at the beach? Who can get a case or two of beer? Being all under aged this was a problem.
A lot of heavy ‘necking’ (kissing), went on at some of those parties. That is about all. Oh, maybe if you were really lucky, it went a little further, but not all the way. The girls were too darn smart and careful. Now days I understand that there can be girls that are already pregnant before they graduate. I do not ever remember this happening at Poly. I think a guy would like to think about it, actually doing it, but probably would have been totally shocked if a girl would have let him ‘go all the way.’ This was a time for gals to learn about guys, and guys to learn about girls, nothing more. You wanted more you had to marry the lady – I believe that was the mind set of our Poly ladies. I certainly wish those old-fashioned morals were still in place now.
I read about giving kids in school condoms, well if they are ‘doing it,’ — it is not a bad idea. In another way you are telling the students that this kind of behavior is acceptable. This is something I don’t agree with. Teaching the kids to wait for that lifelong gal or guy is what should be done. A hard problem with all the wild sex shown on TV and the movies now, I guess my views are a little ‘fuddy duddy’ in this modern day and age.
High school is so serious when you are there. It is really a shame that kids can not be made to understand that it is probably one of the best and most exciting times in a person’s life.
THE EXPERIENCE THAT WAS ‘POLY HIGH’
John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, what were its most valuable lessons. For me, learning to be with girls and learning to relate to other fellows, learning how to act. What is acceptable as behavior! Certainly, you must know your reading, writing, and arithmetic – that is something every person must learn in this day and age. Learning to just get along with, and live with, your fellow human being, this is what you must learn to be really successful, in most professions.
Football was another lesson – learning to take a few hard knocks, and still get off the ground, get up no matter the hurt and get back in the game of life. Learning how to just live in this crazy world! A lot of guys and gals that were not exactly scholarly, had decidedly poor grades in the basic subjects, still made a lot of bucks, provided themselves with a very good living, and a wonderful life. Why? Cause they knew how to relate to others.
Poly high took a young fourteen-year old kid and in three years graduated a confident young adult. My fellow students elected me their senior president – over three hundred classmates did that by an overwhelming vote. My teammates elected me as co-captain of my senior football squad, an unbelievable honor, I figured they were crazy but they did it. Poly gave me Sally, my love, my wife, my lifelong companion. Is it any wonder I think of those years as magic years in my life?
Is it also any wonder that those friends those classmates of over 55 years ago are still friends, friends I will honor and keep until I die? Some have gone ahead to run interference for the rest of us but they are there in our thoughts.
Poly high taught us that if you are liked, comfortable to be around, comfortable with your fellow employees and boss, liked by your customers, have a reasonable work ethic you will make a good living, believe me! My three years at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School taught me to relate to others care for others. This most valuable lesson was of far greater value through life than any course of advanced mathematics.
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