School Story:
Dozens of memories. High School was a strange time for me, as for a lot of us -- a time when I was carrying a sort of Rose Bowl parade float of a life on my back while doing a lot of fumbling in the humid interior.
I remember football practice and that smell of cut grass and adolescent sweat, clicking of cleats on asphalt under the oaks, terror as we emerged from the tunnel into the endless expanse of Kezar (a game we lost 56-13 to Serra, and which marked the end of my bid for football stardom. I was double-teamed into semi-consciousness as Lynn Swann ran over my face again and again, and I rode home with cleat marks down both sides of my stomach); bouncing back to "reckless abandon" against Sequoia, beating Barr Curry.
I remember the futility of playing behind Mike Costello in soccer, but still loving the muddy freedom of that unpadded game.
I remember the joys of teen spirit, the bonfire lit to Arthur Brown's "Fire," roving bands of middle class white boys with eggs in their Pacific Trail pockets taking back the streets on Halloween, and the Bahrn.
The Bahrn grew out of an informal gathering on weekends at Nelligan's, where Colt 45 flowed unchecked -- then that summer of '69 when purloined building supplies and the construction of sort of a teenage speakeasy in the garage led to the twin themes of a Barn and a Construction company. It became, for about a year, a rather sophisticated operation, replete with a front organization (The Graphic Arts Club), through which we operated like mini-mafiosi, running a rigged booth at the Carnival to channel beer money into the Bahrn. I remember how Spencer Jewel and John Preston and I were the bartenders, and we sold beers at one party for 25 cents each, making more than $300. That was shortly before the PAPD starting coming around, and despite our intricate advance warning and cover-up procedures (in which the house called the bar and alerted us to the cops, we cut the lights and everyone went silent) -- finally, I remember Officer Box breaking through our resistance and finally, the padlock on the door. But it was fun while it lasted. It allowed many of us to get our heavy drinking out of the way before college, and provided an outlet for a lot of fraternal hooliganism before such activities could truly have been considered criminal.
I remember the anti-War rallies and the Applied Electronics Laboratory sit-in especially, and the speakers we invited to the high schools to spread the anti-war gospel. George Millar was the only principal who allowed ours to speak openly in the amphitheater, and he caught hell for it; Mr. Parker in his pink coat trying to grab the microphone out of the speaker's hand.
I remember the Campanile, with Doug Letter and Scott Kilner and Eleanor Burian, Suzanne Bollock and I covering the only black KKK member when he spoke in the Little Theater, and how she wore a sexy silk scarf and called me "Robaire," which seemed so erotic.
I remember the feisty rebel energy of those days, stopping the war and challenging authority -- Dave Alford and Tom Schellenberg's antiestablishmentarian zeal.
I remember dimly, now in retrospect, conflicted attractions, subterranean crushes, unconscious attractions that wreaked havoc on my equilibrium.
I recall confusion, a short burst of embarrassingly evangelical Christianity, equally embarrassing attempts at girlfriends, terrifying encounters with the love that dare not speak its name, quickly denied....and finally resorting to my aloof collegiate persona with sport jacket and sandals, collie in tow....whatever worked.
