1969 Springtime in boarding school
New language drills, prepping for an overseas trip and starting to step over every line I could find
DEVELOPMENTAL NOTES UPDATE***
These are getting more complicated to write. I apologize for the long delays that have been taking place. I am now planning on working within a schedule and bring some discipline to the process of how I have grappled with the following bumps that have arisen in my writing journey.
A dear friend warned me not to let my Substack just descend into a personal, rambling memoir. I promised him that I was trying to honestly seek out where I actually made changes, where the changes were made by others and my responsibility either way.
I am now reaching the years where I began to make movements that changed my life’s course, often dramatically different to that of my peers. The density of my life (and I think most folks) during those late adolescent, early adult years was a very, very thick quagmire. The goals and desires that ran through me from 1968 to 1974 spanned a broad range and could illuminate me as the ultimate dilettante or an semi Renaissance man. Since I am no Renaissance man, I can only hope that my endeavours were those of a truly committed man and not someone feigning interest. Anyone who knew me then can confirm that I tended to dive in rather than wading.
Finally, and not meaning to disrespect my wise friend’s admonition on memoir: The next few decades of my life recounted are truly period piece memories and I think for those reading who are not baby boomers, there is much in the day to day swirl that is worth noting. Some of that will be in separate, specific entries, but some will just be the usual day to day of life at that time.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
My deeper leanings into politics was beginning to scare my parents. They originally thought getting to interview Dave Dellinger was an interesting step for their son, but the unrealistic “invitation” from the SDS for me to join the initial Venceremos Brigade was really disturbing and they immediately began looking for summer options for me. Options that would be dynamic, challenging opportunities and would not only draw my interest, but possibly set me on a more balanced course than the off center paths I was beginning to take.
By March, they presented to me a proposal that I travel to Europe and spend the summer working with Austrian orphans at a camp in the Dolomites of Northern Italy. It was an ideal, service oriented spin off from my work tutoring kids in Hartford. I would be tutored in German three days a week by the wife of one of Suffield’s masters who was German born. So on top of schoolwork, political explorations & writing and experimenting with drugs, I had another long row to hoe and I was excited about it.
Throughout the spring, I learned more about the complexities of the Vietnam War and civil rights for everyone who was not a white male in America. I subscribed to Ramparts, but there were other periodicals that one could not purchase at the little drug store on Main St in Suffield. So, when off campus, I would acquire a stack of the most recent issues of the Village Voice, East Village Other, Berkeley Barb, RAT, Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, etc. Unlike today, one could not find other viewpoints or their expression using a search button. There was a bookstore - newstand in the West Village that I think was at or very near to the intersection of 4th and Cornelia. They had all the above mentioned rags and also all sorts of surprises now and then out of Ann Arbor, Pittsburg, Austin, LA and whenever Stewart Brand had issued an update to the Whole Earth Catalog, they would have a huge stack.
It was a funny time as so many of my friends were rejoicing from their reading of Kerouac, Kesey and assorted beat poets. While I had read them, I seem to have been primarily drawn to political news data and cannot say that “On the Road” changed my life.
Other than the Glee Club, Suffield had no real music programs and as a non playing music fan, I was able to begin a music appreciation club that allowed for trips to Hartford and concerts at the Bushnell Auditorium. That first spring, both trips were classical, but I was already looking at the fall schedule with some great options available.
By the spring of ‘69, I had become pretty familiar with LSD. Many Saturday nights on campus were spent in friends’ rooms listening to music or breaking the rules and venturing off campus with “Townie” girls. This was not a common practice and there were only a slight few of us slipping the school noose.
One night I met Merle C. Merle had been off to San Francisco two years earlier and returned to care for her sick mom. She was college age, probably three to four years older than I at the time. There were assorted fantastical tales about her, most of them I assumed were apocryphal.
That night I was very high on some really spectacular acid when we snuck off campus. The visuals were constant and ever-changing. Merle offered me a joint, which I turned down and I apparently sat out most of the evening, pie-eyed and in a sense of absolute wonder at the universe. She thought I was a Suffield preppie kid too scared to smoke reefer until later in the evening when someone hipped her to my actual state of mind and its causation. As we parted that night, she called me a “tricky devil”, gave me a deep, wet kiss and said I should lay off the acid for next time we met.
In April, a group of us headed to NYC to see Paul Butterfield, Savoy Brown and Foundations at the Fillmore East (yes, there will be Fillmore specific post on that trip). A group of townie friends joined us on the train ride down, Merle included. I had pathetically lost my virginity only a year before and except for the Miss Porters dance, most of my contact with girls or women had been clumsy and inept. That Saturday night in NYC, my perspectives changed as a caring, experienced woman ushered me into a new world. Over the remaining spring, my education continued. Amazingly, she came to Lancaster in June before I left for Europe, met my parents and stayed in our house. And then two years later at May Day 71 we crossed paths again. These will both be recounted in later journal entries.
I had been creatively writing a great deal throughout the year and when our literary magazine was published, both my roommate, Jim M and I were heavily represented. I personally found my own poetry to be saccharine, but was proud of it being chosen and printed.
Three years earlier a Suffield student (EWD) had passed away during summer vacation. This was prior to both Jim and I attending Suffield (I arrived in 67, Jim in 68). The family and school decided to award a memorial prize in his name for the most creative student each year.
On the evening prior to commencement, the awards are given for English, History, Language, Mathematics and Science. In 1969, a new award was announced and Jim and I were chosen to share the inaugural EWD memorial award. Jim was an accomplished artist as well as a writer. My theater work with Cue and Curtain and my writing provided us with the unique clout to access this new pinnacle at Suffield. Although I was not there in the spring of ‘70 or ‘71, I believe Jim swept them both.
At Suffield, there were plaques for each of the standard awards with the year and then the winner. Each plaque held about a dozen names or 12 years to my recall.
32 years later, my wife and I were driving from Boston to NYC and I chose to make a detour and show her the campus where I spent two and a half years of my life. Needless to say, the campus had expanded (enrollment had doubled and now included young women). And while I remembered exactly where my forlorn plaque had hung when I returned to campus in the fall of ‘69, it was no longer there. In fact there were no plaques showing in that building at all. I went and inquired at the school offices and found they had no idea what happened to such antiquated material and was informed that the award had not been continued after the mid 70’s.
Later, in the fall of ‘69, I was invited to share dinner in New York, with the mother and sister of the student named in the award. They had a park view property on CPW and staff to serve the meal. After a remarkably disconnected meal, the mother disappeared, leaving myself and the sister alone. Suddenly the disconnection was vaporized and I was talking to a very lonely young woman of my age, who was simply seeking attachment out of a family that had gone adrift years before. She shared the truth of her brother’s passing. What had been described as a beach house rip tide drowning was in reality a black out drunk drowning in the pool. I listened, I held her while she cried, but I had nothing to offer her and felt I left her as disconnected as I had found her. I wandered back to my hotel feeling pretty vacant …. just vacant and empty.
My parents are pleased with the solid reports of my growth with spoken German. They are thrilled with my winning the new creative award.
They are not at all pleased with the year’s wrap up letter sent to them from Appleton Seaverns, the headmaster at Suffield (you cannot make up a name like that for such a position!!)
It was an added inclusion with my grade finals for the year which were mediocre. But most importantly, the school faculty felt that I was part of a group of students who were taking drugs. They also believed that I was breaking social rules in fraternizing with locals. This would not be tolerated when I returned to campus in September.
Better grades - no drugs - no townie friends. But interestingly, they had agreed that next year, I could room with my friend Charlie L., who would be a senior, while I would be a junior. In this abeyance of usual school protocol, Appleton posited that the school supported my uniqueness and this privilege was a leg up for me to finally rise to the potential that he and the faculty believed I possessed.