***The Bard Of 1964?- For Linda, Class Of 1964

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for "Rebel Without A Cause", an appropriate link for today's post.

Al Johnson, Class Of 1964, comment:

Recently someone from our class, who shall remain nameless, wrote an e-mail, a friendly e-mail I assume, asking me if I, with this never-ending (my word) stream of messages, was trying to be the bard (her word, oops) of the Class of 1964. I rapidly replied with this short answer- “What, are you kidding?” Later though, after I thought about it for a while, I realized that I did mean to be ONE of the latter-day voices of the class. Why? I have, with all due modesty, the perfect resume for the job. Here it is:

I belonged to no clubs, not even after school ones. I played no major sport that drove a lot of the social networking of the time (I am being polite here: this is a family-friendly site after all). The sports that did drive me throughout my high school career, track and cross-country, were then very marginal sports for “nerds” and other assorted odd-balls, and I was, moreover, overwhelmingly underwhelming at them, to boot. I did not hang around with the class intellectuals, although I was as obsessed and driven by books, ideas and theories as anyone else at the time, maybe more so. I was, to be polite again, painfully shy around girls and therefore somewhat socially backward, although I was furtively enthralled by more than one of them. Gorls, that is And to top it all off, to use a term that I think truly describes me then, I was something of a ragamuffin from the town's wrong side of the track. Oh, did I mentioned that I was also so alienated from the old high school environment that I either threw, or threatened to throw, my yearbook in the nearest river right after graduation; in any case I no longer have it.

Perfect, right? No. Not complete enough? Well how about this. My family, on my mother’s side, had been in the old town since about the time of the “famine ships” from Ireland. I have not gotten that far back in the genealogy but way back someone in the family was a servant of some sort, to one of the branches of the presidential Adams family. Most of my relatives distance and far, went through the old high school. The streets of the old town were filled with the remnants of the clan. My friends, deny it or nor, the diaspora "old sod" of North Quincy was in the blood. How else explain, after a forty year hiatus, this overweening desire to write about the “Dust Bowl” that served as a training track during my running days. Or the oddness of separate boys and girls bowling teams, as if social contact in that endeavor would lead to .....whatever. Or that mysterious “Tri-Hi-Y” (a harmless social organization for women students that I have skewered for its virginal aspirations). Or the million other things that pop into my head there days. Oh ya, I can write, a little. Not unimportant for a bard, right? The soul of a poet, if not the language. Time and technology has given us an exceptional opportunity to tell our story and seek immortality and I want in on that. Old Walt Whitman can sing of America, I will sing of the old town, gladly.

Well, do I get a job? Hey, you can always “fire” me. Just “click” and move on.

***Desperately seeking..., For John D., Class Of 1964

Desperately seeking...

....an idea. I will keep this short and sweet. I have to admit to failure, abject failure, in my efforts to keep up a steady drumbeat of commentaries about the old days at North Quincy High (many of which, mercifully, have been relegated to the Recycle Bin). I believed that my commentaries would act as a catalyst and draw 1964 classmates, and other former students at North, out. At some point I figured out that this was not to be the case and I resolved to push on anyway at the whim of whatever demons were driving me on. Now, frankly, I have run out of ideas. A recent re-reading of some of my commentaries has rubbed my face in that hard fact. Two themes in various guises have emerged from the work- the 'tragic' effects of my growing up poor in the land of plenty and the usual teenage longing for companionship and romance. Gee, those ideas have never been the subject of literary efforts before, right?

Okay, okay nobody asked me to volunteer to be the unpaid, self-appointed voice of the Class of 1964 and so I have only myself to blame. I swear I will get into a twelve-step program for the nostalgically-challenged just the minute I get out of the rehab program for political junkies. But in the meantime-help, or else. And what might that or else threat mean? I am desperate enough to steal someone Else's thunder from the general North Quincy High Message Board. Do you really want to hear me on the subject of Squaw Rock? Or how nasty so of our teachers were? Or the dark side of the North Quincy High School Band? Or ........go into back into that dreaded Recycle Bin? Think about it. Send an idea-quick.

***

Someone has suggested a comparison or contrast between Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis along the lines of the Rolling Stones/Beatles (Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles) or Brenda Lee/Patsy Cline (Battle of The Sexes-Round 235) commentaries that I had done earlier this year. This does not count as a new idea for me because I have already written a commentary for a blog that I belong to reviewing Jerry Lee Lewis's 2006 documentary- Last Man Standing.

Of course, Jerry Lee was better than Elvis-that's a no-brainer. But it is an idea that will find its way into these pages soon. Meanwhile how about some North Quincy idea? I am ready to start writing about President John Adams if nothing better comes along. You have been forewarned.


Originally posted on Jul 27 2008 on Classmates