El Dorado Union High School

From Captain and Quarterback to Second String Guard… The MisAdventure Series

/ Curt Mekemson / 18 Comments

The 1959 school yearbook had this photo of Junior Varsity members of the EL Dorado Union High School football team. I am on the upper left corner.

 

I discussed my elementary school desire to be ruler of everything in my last MisAdventures’ post. I wrapped up my blog by mentioning that since I had cornered the market on being president of this and that, I should also be a sports hero. I’ve made better decisions in my life. Lots of them.

Sports presented a totally different type of challenge in meeting my need to be leader of everything. I am not a natural jock. It isn’t so much physical as mental. You have to care to be good at sports and I find other things more interesting. Part of this evolved from a lack of enthusiasm on the home front. There was little vicarious parental drive to see us excel on the playing field. Being as blind as a bat didn’t help much either. Like most young people I was not excited about wearing glasses. When Mrs. Wells, the school nurse, came to class with her eye charts, I would memorize the lines and then breeze through the test. As for class work, I would sit close to the black board and squint a lot. While I got away with this in the classroom, it became a serious hazard on the Little League field.

I remember going out for the Caldor Team. All of my friends played and social pressure suggested it was the thing to do. Nervously, I showed up on opening day and faced the usual chaos of parents signing up their stars, balls flying everywhere, coaches yelling, and kids running in a dozen different directions at once.

“Okay, Curtis,” the Coach instructed, “let’s see how you handle this fly.”

Crack! I heard him hit the ball. Fine, except where was it? The ball had disappeared. Conk. It magically reappeared out of nowhere, bounced off my glove and hit me on the head.

“What’s the matter? Can’t you see?” the Coach yelled helpfully. “Let’s try it again.” My Little League career was short-lived. I went back to carrying out my inventory of the number of skunks that lived in the Woods. This didn’t mean I was hopeless at sports. In the seventh grade, I finally obtained glasses and discovered the miracle of vision: Trees had leaves, billboards were pushing drugs, and the friendly kid waving at me across the street was flipping me off. I could even see baseballs. It was time to become a sports hero.

My brother, Marshall, actually made the Caldor Little League Team. He is shown here with our dog, Tickle. (Looking back on it, I think Tickle may have been a publicity hound since we have few photos without him.) Marshall also had vision problems that made it difficult to play. He was born blind in one eye.

It says something about your future in sports when your career peaks in the eighth grade. Thanks to Mrs. Young kicking me out of school in the first grade, I was slightly older than my classmates and, thanks to genetics, slightly bigger. More importantly, I had mastered the art of leadership: make noise, appear confident and charge the enemy. As a result, I became quarterback and captain of the football team, center and captain of the basketball team and pitcher and captain of the softball team. I even went out for track and ran the 440 but they didn’t select me as captain. That honor went to a seventh grader. I was severely irritated.

A Penguin’s Guide to Long Distance Running

When I arrived as a freshman in high school, I still had the desire to be ‘ruler of everything in sight,’ but my success in this field of endeavor was about equal to my success with girls. It wasn’t hard for me to remember I had come close to my desired goal the year before. Now I lacked the confidence to run for Home Room Rep. Instead I managed a campaign for my friend Ron Williams to become President of the Class. His parents owned a small ranch on the southeast side of Diamond. The year before he had taught me how to milk a cow. I owed him big. I put a dog collar on Ron’s neck, attached it to a chain and led him from class to class. Of course, he won.

Sports were another area where I blew it. Any red-blooded American male knows that you have to go out for football to become a high school sports hero. There’s some glory in basketball and a little in baseball, but other sports are pretty much on the level of “Oh I didn’t know you did that.” What did I do? I let Jimmy Butts talk me into going out for the cross-country team. Now if you are really, really good at cross-country, like best in the state, you might get a mention in your high school paper when you win the state meet. But say you are the quarterback of the football team and you throw a winning touchdown pass in the final seconds of the homecoming game against your school’s primary rival. You are immortalized. You get the front page of the school paper and major coverage on the sports page of the community paper. As for the babes, they come out of the woodwork. Fifty years later, classmates are still reliving the experience at the class reunion. It doesn’t matter if your team lost every other game that year.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the best runner in the state, or in the community, or in the school, or the freshman class for that matter. In fact, I am not really built for running. My friends sometimes describe me as penguin-like. I have the upper body of a six-foot-six basketball player and the lower body of a five-foot-five VW bug racer. It was only excessive stubbornness that usually found me somewhere near the middle of the pack in my cross-country races. It certainly wasn’t a love of running. There was to be no glory in the sport for me, and certainly no babes. But a lot of character building took place. Great.

Smashing My Way to the Top: Not

By my sophomore year, I decided that I would have more fun playing football. But it was too late. I didn’t eat, dream and sleep football. I lacked the necessary motivation to smash my way to the top. I would come to practice after a long day of work in the fruit orchards where I had put in nine hours of hard, physical labor. The first thing I did was don miscellaneous body pads that were still slimy with yesterday’s sweat and smelled like week-old dead fish. By then the coach would be screaming at us to hurry up and get out of the locker room and on to the field. He did lots of yelling. I decided there must be a high correlation between football practice and boot camp including push ups, wind sprints, humiliation and more push-ups— everything it takes to turn a wild bunch of undisciplined young men into a snarling group of fanatics eager to go out and win one for the Gipper. (Remember the Ronald Reagan movie?)

The hard work was okay, but I was highly allergic to being yelled at. I still am. My rapidly waning enthusiasm took a sky dive leap when the coach decided my position would be second-string left guard. Now don’t get me wrong, guards and tackles are critically important to the success of a team and I confess that smashing into opponents and sacking the quarterback resembled fun. Where else could I practice physically aggressive, anti-social behavior and be applauded? I even remember feeling proud about breaking some unlucky kid’s rib. Shame on me.

Even second-string made sense. The other kids had played freshman football and earned their places. But I lacked the psychological orientation for being second string and had something else in mind in terms of position. I envisioned myself charging down the sidelines with the people in the stands on their feet cheering wildly.

It was not to be. I dutifully put in my time, finished out the year and decided to forgo a career in sports. I am glad I played. I gained new friends and new experience, both valuable. But I can’t say I learned anything of great significance. What I recall from the season was there was little ‘thrill of victory’ and lots of ‘agony of defeat.’ We were not a team destined for glory.

TUESDAY’S POST: I review the second part of my Thousand Mile Trek.My route will take me from world-renowned Lake Tahoe to Mt. Whitney, where I will finish my journey by climbing the 14, 505-foot (4,421 m) mountain— the highest peak in the contiguous United States.

FRIDAY’S POST: In my next MisAdventure’s post, I explore some of the things that led me to choose the path in life I did. It’s a question that always interests me, not just for myself but others as well. For example, what role did Miss Casty, aka Nasty Casty, play in my deciding not to pursue a career in anything involving higher math?

A Cold and Stormy Night… Lost in a Snow Storm: Part I

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

Having friends for a long time means having lots of stories about each other. Getting together means reliving the best ones.

Some stories fit the R category “If you don’t tell that one about me I won’t tell about the time you…” Black mail is an effective ploy. I’ve used it frequently with my friends Tom Lovering and Ken Lake.

Bob Bray, my friend for over 60 years, is different. Most of our tales are G, PG and PG 13 rated.

I’ve been posting stories over the past three weeks in honor of our 50th Reunion for the 1961 Class of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville, California. I started with a story of Bob and I shooting out the window of an ‘abandoned’ bum shack with our Wham-o slingshots. It reconfirmed his mother’s belief that I was not a child her son should be around.

It’s only appropriate that I finish off this series with another story about Bob. This one was 20 years later and had more serious consequences.

When I returned to Sacramento after my stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa and as a PC Recruiter in the South, I reconnected with Bob and other friends from Placerville. One thing we enjoyed doing together was hunting and fishing. Our usual companions included Hunt Warner and Chuck Lewis although putting a rifle in Chuck’s hands was scary.

While I wasn’t particularly good at shooting things either, I was great at wandering in the woods. Hunting was yet another excuse. And, I must add, I enjoyed hanging out with the guys. Lots of male bonding took place.

In this story, Phil Dunlop replaced Chuck as our fourth companion.

We were hunting north of Highway 50 in El Dorado National Forest one Saturday afternoon in late October when snow flakes started drifting lazily out of the sky. It wasn’t much to worry about; we zipped up our coats and went about our business. If anything, the gently falling snow was quite beautiful.

But it kept snowing and the flakes became more serious. After a couple of hours, there were six inches of the white stuff on the ground and my tracks began to disappear. I decided it was time to forget the macho requirements of being male and make a judicious retreat to the T-bone steaks waiting for us back at Hunt’s jeep. I soon ran into Hunt who was walking with Phil.

“Have you seen Bob?” I asked. He and I had parted a half hour earlier at the edge of a large thicket of brush where Bob had been convinced he would jump an evasive buck.

“I haven’t seen him for an hour,” was Hunt’s reply. Phil hadn’t seen him since the snowstorm had started. Normally we wouldn’t have been concerned; Bob’s very competent in the woods. But evening was coming, the temperature dropping, and the snow accumulating.

“Maybe Bob has more sense than we do and has already returned to the jeep,” Phil suggested. That seemed logical so we made the short 15-minute trek back to the jeep. No Bob.

“This is getting worrisome guys,” I said in a definitely worried tone. It wasn’t like Bob to take undo risks. “Let’s go back to where I saw him last and see if we can’t hunt up his tracks.”

The advantage of snow was that it left a trail even a city slicker could follow, assuming that it hadn’t already covered the tracks. Even then there were usually obvious dimples in the snow.

Unfortunately, no tracks were to be found and not even our overly active imaginations could turn the various dimples into a trail. I did spot the tracks of a very large deer, but they disappeared at the edge of the thicket.

“It looks like the buck stops here,” I said to Phil and elicited a weak groan. I suggested we split up and look around.

“We need to meet back here in 30 minutes,” I urged. “Don’t go far and pay attention to where you are going. It is getting close to dark and the last thing we need is a second person missing. If you come across Bob’s tracks, fire your rifle and we will join you.”

My degree of concern was reflected in my bossiness. Normally we were a very democratic, almost anarchic group.

Twenty minutes later I had made my way to the other side of the thicket and found nothing. Neither had I heard any rifle shots announcing either Hunt or Phil had success. Somewhat discouraged, I turned around to rejoin my fellow searchers. It was then I spotted tracks leading out of the thicket. I pointed my Winchester toward the sky and fired off a shot.

“Bang!” the sound of another rifle being fired resounded from the direction Bob’s track had headed. I quickly levered in another bullet and fired again. There was no response. I did hear Phil and Hunt making their way through the brush toward me, though. They sounded like a pair of large bears. We held another council. Once again, we decided to split up.

Phil would return to the road where the jeep was parked and flag down a car. His job was to get a message through to the El Dorado Sheriff’s Department that Bob was missing. Hunt would cut back through the thicket and wait on the jeep trail where the thicket began in case Bob made his way back there. He’d fire his rifle if Bob appeared.

I was going to follow Bob’s tracks until dark to see if I couldn’t catch him. There were only about 30 minutes of daylight left so the odds were slim. My concern was that Bob had broken a bone and was stranded.

Next Blog: Still no Bob but the night is so cold the doors on the jeep freeze solidly shut.

Lust, Love and Like…

/ Curt Mekemson / 3 Comments

Figuring out our relationship with the opposite sex is a lifelong challenge. I was in my late forties when I met my wife Peggy and finally got it right… from my perspective. Twenty years later I suspect Peggy still considers me a work in progress. I know her sister Jane does.

As a friend, co-worker and sometimes boss, Jane had been training me for 15 years when Peggy appeared on the scene to take over. Jane also assured me that their mother, Helen, was prepared to step in if necessary. I am probably lucky that Grandmother Honey had already passed on. Today, my daughter Tasha has joined the fray.

I’ve never met a more formidable group of women and I am not sure how I ended up as a community project. (“Okay, whose turn is it today to civilize Curt?) But my guess is I got lucky. My family and friends agree.

I am convinced that Lust, Love and Like are the key ingredients to a happy relationship. I’d throw in respect if it started with an L. Lust is around to light the fire and keep it lit. It lurks deep down in our brain as a primitive urge to assure that little people are born, which is a messy, painful process that needs all of the encouragement it can get.

Love is the deep bonding that comes along to guarantee the little ones are raised and survive their early teenage years. It’s also helpful in encouraging Daddy to hang around and help with the process. It may even last a lifetime so you have someone to talk to when you get old and grouchy.

But for me, like is the crème de la crème, the frosting on the cake. The partner you lust after and love can also be your friend, even your best friend as is the case with Peggy.

So, where was she 60 years ago? My interest in girls started early.

The long-legged blond Carol Butts caught my attention in the third grade; she could outrun me. Red headed Judy Hart became my passion in the fifth grade, as she did all of the other boys in our combined fourth and fifth grade class. Judy obligingly cut off lockets of her hair and gave one to each boy. I’m surprised she had any hair left. It was the Kludt twins that occupied my seventh grade year and the raven haired, dark-eyed Ann Pierce who I fell for in the eighth grade.

It’s in high school when relationships take on a more serious, urgent tone however.

I blogged about my disastrous freshman year last week. Things started improving my sophomore year. I ditched my thick glasses for contact lenses and came back to school buff and tan from a summer of working in the pear orchards. A few girls even provided a wiggle or two to see if anyone was home. There was.

More importantly, I had my first date.

Paula Griggs called me. Her mother was obviously encouraging the process. The date involved Mom, Boyfriend, Paula and I going out to dinner in the small town of Sutter Creek, about twenty miles away from Diamond Springs over California’s curvy Highway 49.

After we filled up on Italian food, Mom and Boyfriend promptly climbed in the back and suggested I drive home.

“Um,” I noted nervously, “I only have a learner’s permit.”

“That’s okay, it will be good practice,” Mom stated before I could add that I had obtained the permit the week before.

Paula, meanwhile, was waiting for me to open the door for her on the passenger side of the car. She gave me an encouraging smile and my options dropped to zero. Any further hesitation would appear wimpy.

After doing the gentlemanly thing for Paula, I dutifully climbed into the driver’s seat and miraculously found the keyhole and lights. Minimal gear grinding got us out of town and I breathed an audible sigh of relief.

We had made it just past Plymouth when I ran over the skunk. Its response was to become a virtuoso of glandular activity.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Boyfriend said as the first powerful whiffs of eau de skunk came blasting through the air vents, “it happens all of the time.”

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled to myself through tongue-biting teeth, “young men always run down skunks on first dates, especially first dates with Mom and Boyfriend along.”

Fortunately I made it home without further incident. As for the date, I can definitely say that is was memorable.

I previously posted the story on Paula several months ago. This blog is part of a series in celebration of the 50th High School Reunion of the Class of 1961 of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. Next up: I Discover True Love… or Not.

Graduate or Go to Jail… I Have a Choice

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I organized a protest my senior year. It was probably the first time El Dorado Union High School students in Placerville ever went on strike. (It may have been the last.) As I recall we skipped class and presented a petition to the Principal. Some our more rowdy classmates added an exclamation point by lighting a trashcan on fire.

As a 60’s issue, it wasn’t a biggie. The Administration had axed our Senior Ditch Day; we wanted it back. Practicing for my future at Berkeley wasn’t what almost got me thrown in jail, however.

My problem was with the LAW, or, in this case, Mike Denatly, the Placerville Chief of Police. I had my run in with him on the very day I was to graduate.

It was a goof off day. All the tests were over, yearbooks signed, and caps and gowns fitted. There really wasn’t much to do except celebrate and say goodbye to friends. Lunchtime meant a final cruise of Placerville’s Main Street to check out girls, to see and be seen.

What happened was out of character for me.

I normally keep my comments on other peoples’ driving habits inside the car. The horn is for really bad infractions and, on very rare occasions, a single digit comment is appropriate.

I would never stick my head out the window and yell at someone. That can get you shot.

But heh, it was graduation day. When a blue car stopped in the middle of Placerville’s crowded downtown street in front of us, it irritated me. When the driver got out to have a leisurely chat with the driver of the car in front of him, it pushed me over the edge. Out went my head as we edged around the two cars and I had an attack of uncontrollable Y chromosome aggression.

“You SOB,” I yelled,  “get your car out of the way.”

So what if I didn’t recognize the Chief of Police out of uniform in an unmarked car. So what if he had stopped to offer help to a guy who had managed to stall his car on Placerville’s busy main street. So what if I had suggested he had canine parentage in a voice that half of Placerville heard. It was an innocent mistake.

“That was Mike Denatly you just cussed out,” our driver managed to stutter with mixed parts of fear and awe.

As a teenager, I pulled some fairly dumb stunts. Most of us do. Young people have a responsibility to push the envelope. It is the rather awkward method evolution has provided for growing up and developing unique personalities. Mistakes are bound to happen. But I was carrying my responsibility too far; I had gone beyond dumb and plunged into really stupid.

“Keep driving,” I uttered with all the hope of the irrevocably damned, “maybe he is too busy and will ignore us.”

Sure, like maybe the sun won’t rise tomorrow. The poor stalled guy could still be sitting in the middle of Placerville for all of the attention the police chief paid to him after my little admonition. Denatly jumped in his car, slapped his flashing light on his roof, hit his siren and sped after us. Not that he needed to speed fast or far. We were creeping up Main Street in sheer terror about one block away.

I am sure my car-mates were wishing fervently that one Curtis Mekemson hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning, had never made their acquaintance, and was, at that very moment, facing a group of starving cannibals in a far off jungle.

We pulled over with Denatly literally parked on our rear bumper and resigned ourselves to the firing squad. Luckily, for my friends, the Chief had no interest in them. He appeared at my window red-faced and shouting about five inches away. Under the best of circumstances he was known for having a temper and these were not the best of circumstances.

“Get out of that car,” he yelled. “Get out right now!”

I moved fast. This was not the time for bravery and stubbornness. It was a time to be humble… it was grovel time. And I groveled with the best. I blathered out apologies and managed to work “sir” into every sentence, several times. I trotted out my friendship with his stepson Brian Morris, I threw in the City Treasurer who was a mentor and I even brought in Father Baskin, the Episcopal minister, as a character reference.

“Get in my car,” he ordered. My groveling seemed to be having minimal impact. At least he hadn’t handcuffed me.

We drove up to City Hall and I had visions of being booked and thrown into a cell with some big hulking giant who either didn’t like young men or liked them too much. I thought of having to call my parents and explain how their son had become a common criminal.

But Denatly had even more diabolical plans in mind. We slowly made a turn through the jail parking lot to give me a sense of my future and then, to my surprise, hopped on Highway 50 to Canal Street and drove up to the high school.

I was going to have to explain my actions to the Principal. My chances of graduating that night slipped another notch. I doubted that the Principal would have much sense of humor about one of his students cussing out the Chief of Police. But explaining my inexplicable actions to the Principal would have been mercy in comparison to what happened.

It was a beautiful late spring day, this last day of school, and it seemed like half of the student body and a significant portion of teachers were enjoying their lunches on the expansive lawn in front of the school. Denatly pulled up to the sidewalk beside the lawn and ordered me out.

The Chief of Police arriving with me in tow was enough to capture the attention of several students sitting close by. Then he made sure that everyone was aware of our presence.

“Do you want to spend the night in jail or graduate, Curtis?” he asked in a voice that was easily equivalent in volume to the one that I had used in suggesting he move his car.

Conversation on the lawn came to a dead halt. Every ear in the place honed in on us with the intensity that a cat reserves for a potential mouse dinner. And I was the mouse. This was a Kodak moment, not to be missed.

My answer was easy: of course I wanted to graduate, SIR. And so it went; Denatly barking questions with the voice of a marine sergeant and me responding as the lowest of privates. Finally, after a few minutes that felt like eternity, the Chief got in his car and drove away.

I was left to deal with the not so gentle humor of the students and faculty plus a Vice Principal who wasn’t quite sure whether he should take over where Denatly left off or laugh at my predicament. At least he had the grace to wait until I left his office before he chose the latter. I could hear his laughter echoing down the empty hallways.

And yes, I was allowed to graduate that night.

This blog is part of a series in celebration of the 50th High School Reunion of the Class of 1961 of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. Next up: Love, Lust and Like

Bleeding Like a Speared Mammoth… The Joys of High School Chemistry Lab

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I would have made a good Greek Philosopher, working out problems in my head. I quickly learned in high school that I am not particularly fond of long dead frogs pickled in formaldehyde or chemicals that smell worse than an old dog’s fart.

But there is more to it than that; I am convinced that good lab technicians are mechanically inclined. They like to tinker.

I have lots of friends like that. They love to take things apart and put them back together. They can fix anything and go out of their way to find things that need fixing. My brother Marshall is a good example. He had an old Citroen in high school that he’d spend hours working on out in the back yard with grease up to his elbows.

Ask him anything about carburetors, water pumps, generators, horsepower or timing and he had a ready answer. I admired him for it, but my interest in carburetors was zilch and my primary interest in automobiles was (and is) that they get me from point A to point B without breaking down.

I feel pretty much the same way about other fix-it items. I am just not excited about getting into the bowels of a toilet and replacing its thing-a-ma-bob. Nor am I interested in replacing light switches to see how much voltage I can send coursing through my body. Yeah, yeah, I know… you turn off the electricity first.

I am not sure where this lack of enthusiasm for things mechanical came from but it was probably a combination of aptitude and attitude. Me father wasn’t particularly fond of working on automobiles and some of that may have rubbed off. But he was very handy. In addition to being a skilled electrician he loved puttering around outside making things.

I classify all such activities as chores to be avoided if at all possible. In fact, over the years I have developed a number of strategies for not having to fix things. Here’s my guide on how to avoid fixing things:

  • Don’t own any tools. You might be tempted to use them, or even worse, someone such as a wife might suggest that you use them.
  • Don’t buy a house. Every scientific study ever done confirms that the single most important reason for having to fix things is owning a home. I was 53 years old before I made that mistake.
  • If something doesn’t work, go buy a new one.
  • Plead ignorance. “What do you mean there is more than one kind of screw driver?” As a corollary, hide your repair manuals. My wife Peggy has the irritating habit of looking up things that need fixing and then saying sweetly, “Oh, this looks easy to do, Curt.”  My manliness has been challenged. It doesn’t matter that this ‘easy’ chore requires that I make four trips to the hardware store, purchase $500 worth of new tools, work ten hours straight and injure myself at least once.  I have to do it.
  • Or you can praise your wife’s ability to fix things and then hide. Peggy is a natural with hammer, saw, paint brush and screwdriver.
  • Curse a lot. Your partner may figure that leaving something broken is easier than listening to you.
  • Stall. “I’ll do it right after I cook dinner, honey.” Stalling is easier if you are doing something the other person finds desirable.
  • If all else fails, compromise. I have an agreement with Peggy that I will do one manly chore per month. That’s my quota. Some activities such as fixing toilets even earn two months of credit.

Even my hobbies as a kid reflected my non-mechanical tendencies. Building model ships, airplanes, cars, trains, etc. had no interest. My concept of a great hobby was rock collecting. I would hike along the Southern Pacific railroad tracks in Diamond Springs and pick up interesting rocks until all four pockets were bulging and my pants were about to fall off. I would then go home and smash them apart with a hammer to figure out what I had found. Geology became a life-long interest.

I do understand the arguments for being able to fix things: saving money, being self-sufficient, and obtaining satisfaction from a job well done.

These same arguments, however, apply to going out in the pasture, shooting Elsie the Cow, gutting her, bringing home the meat, grinding it up, and throwing it on the grill. Just think of the satisfaction involved and dollars saved! Or, you can go to the local fast food joint and help employ a kid who might otherwise turn to a life of crime.

Now, back to chemistry. One day we had to shove little glass tubes through rubber stoppers. Apparently this is an important skill for budding chemists. It’s not a difficult task if you ignore the fact that the holes in the stoppers are approximately half the diameter of the glass tubes and, more importantly, you have a gallon of Vaseline.

I was half way through my first masterpiece when the damn tube broke and ended up jabbed into my hand. Bleeding like a speared mammoth, I was carted off to the emergency room of the local hospital and sewn up.

There was plenty of time while sitting in ER to contemplate my future as a scientist. My conclusion: there wasn’t one. I decided that the best way to avoid long-dead animals, smelly chemicals and miscellaneous dangerous objects (not to mention higher level math skills) would be to choose a career that depended on verbal agility. In other words, my future would be based solely on my ability to BS.

This blog is part of a series in celebration of the 50th High School Reunion of the Class of 1961 of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. Next up: A Choice: Graduate or Go to Jail.

The Train Wreck and Miss Kaste

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I did better at academics in High School than I did at sports. Fortunately.

I quickly learned that the humanities were my forte. I also did well in English. It was a natural given my love of books and communication skills.

Science and math proved to be a bit more challenging.

There’s an old adage that we are supposed to work hard at those things we find difficult, that it gives us character. My belief is that I already have plenty of character. If I had any more, little men in white coats would be chasing me with nets.

I prefer to spend my energy on things I enjoy, like reading a good book or hiking in the wilderness. I have little tolerance for doing things that I don’t do well or fail to interest me. In other words, the Protestant Ethic and I have serious compatibility problems.

But I can be stubborn. Math is a good example. In the fourth grade I discovered that long division was nasty. I got beyond that but word problems gave me a complex. Two trains are hurtling at each other on the same track with Train A going 90 miles per hour and Train B going 70. They are 252.5296 miles apart. How long will it be before Train A conductor says, “Ooooh shit!”

Not nearly as soon as I did.

My own expletive arrived on my lips .0000001 seconds after seeing the problem. I concentrated on sending the teacher vibes. “Curt is not here today. You do not see Curt. You will not call on Curt.”

But I continued plugging away at math. I even managed to get A’s in Algebra I and Geometry. Algebra II was different. That’s when I ran head on into Miss Kaste. It was not a pleasant experience.

Miss Kaste, according to those who were seriously into math, was very good at what she did. Students leaving her class were reputed to have a solid foundation in the basics and be well prepared to move on to the ethereal worlds of calculus and trigonometry.

Basics, I quickly learned, meant that there was one way of coming up with answers and that way was chiseled in stone. One did not diverge from accepted formulas or leave out steps; right answers obtained the wrong way were wrong answers. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

This created a problem. I had a true talent for coming up with right answers the wrong way and this brought me unwanted attention. I could have lived with that except for another problem, Miss Kaste’s teaching technique. She oozed sarcasm. She made people cry. My response was to freeze up. I started dreading her classes and developed the proverbial ‘bad attitude.’ I received my first C in high school and vowed never to take another math course. Life is short and then you die.

It was my decision and my loss. Miss Kaste was not to blame. Still, it speaks to the power of teachers to turn students on, or off, to various subjects. I wasn’t a total dunce at math; ironically, I scored in the 98th percentile on the Iowa Test in math the same year. Theoretically, that placed me in the top two percent of math students.

The upside of my decision was that I saw an immediate improvement in my GPA and attitude. The down side was that it eliminated a number of future options, particularly in the fields of higher education. It was an era when the social sciences were eager to prove their scientific nature.

This blog is part of a series in celebration of the 50th High School Reunion of the Class of 1961 of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. Next up: Bleeding Like a Speared Mammoth… the Joys of High School Chemistry Lab.

A Penguin’s Guide to Long Distance Running

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I am not a jock. It isn’t so much physical as mental. You have to care to be good at sports and I find other things more challenging.

Part of this evolved from a lack of enthusiasm for sports on the home front. There was little vicarious parental drive to see me excel on the playing field.

Being as blind as a bat didn’t help much either. Like most young people, I was not excited about wearing glasses. When Mrs. Wells, the school nurse, came to class with her eye charts, I would memorize the lines and then breeze through the test. As for class work, I sat close to the black board and squinted a lot.

While I got away with this in the classroom, it became a serious hazard on the Little League field.

I remember going out for the team in Diamond Springs. All of my friends played. Social pressure suggested it was the thing to do. Nervously, I showed up on opening day and faced the usual chaos of parents signing up their stars, balls flying everywhere, coaches yelling, and kids running in a dozen different directions.

“Okay, Curtis,” the Coach instructed, “let’s see how you handle this fly.”

Crack! I heard him hit the ball. Fine, except where was it? The ball had disappeared. Conk. It magically reappeared out of nowhere, bounced off my glove and hit me on the head.

“What’s the matter? Can’t you see?” the Coach yelled helpfully. “Let’s try it again.”

My Little League Career was short-lived. I went back to carrying out my inventory of the number of skunks that lived in the Woods.

This didn’t mean I was hopeless at sports. In the seventh grade I finally obtained glasses and discovered the miracle of vision; trees had leaves, billboards were pushing drugs and the kid waving at me across the street was flipping me off. I could even see baseballs. It was time to become a sports hero.

It says something about your future in sports when your career peaks in the eighth grade. Thanks to Mrs. Young kicking me out of the first grade I was slightly older than my classmate and, thanks to genetics, slightly bigger.

More importantly, I had mastered the art of leadership: make noise, appear confident and charge the enemy.

As a result I became quarterback and captain of the football team, center and captain of the basketball team and pitcher and captain of the softball team.

Unfortunately, such glory was not transferred to El Dorado Union High School in Placerville. I blew it. Any red-blooded American male knows that you have to go out for football to become a high school sports hero.

There’s some glory in basketball and a little in baseball, but other sports are pretty much on the level of “Oh I didn’t know you did that.” What did I do? I went out for the cross-country team. Now if you are really, really good at cross-country, like best in the state, you might get an occasional story in the school paper.

But say you are the quarterback of the football team and you throw the winning pass in the annual game against your major out-of-town rivals. You are immortalized. You get the front page of the school paper and major coverage on the sports page of the community paper. As for the babes, they come out of the woodwork.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the best runner in the state, or in the community, or in the school, or the freshman class for that matter. In fact, I am not really built for running. My friends sometimes describe me as penguin-like. I have the upper body of a six-foot-six basketball player and the lower body of a five-foot-five VW bug racer.

It was only excessive stubbornness that usually found me somewhere near the middle of the pack in my cross-country races. It certainly wasn’t a love of running. There was to be no glory in the sport for me, and certainly no babes. But a lot of character building took place. Great.

By my sophomore year I decided I would have more fun playing football, but it was too late. I didn’t eat, dream and sleep football. I lacked the necessary motivation to smash my way to the top. I would come to practice after a long day of work in the fruit orchards where I had put in nine hours of hard, physical labor.

The first thing I did was don miscellaneous body pads that were still slimy with yesterday’s sweat and smelled like week-old dead fish. By then the coach would be yelling at us to hurry up and get out of the locker room and on to the field.

I decided there must be a high correlation between football practice and boot camp including push ups, wind sprints, humiliation and more push-ups, everything it takes to turn a wild bunch of undisciplined young men into an organized group of would-be heroes eager to go out and win one for the Gipper.

The hard work was okay, even fun, but I was highly allergic to being yelled at. I still am. My rapidly waning enthusiasm took a sky dive leap when the coach decided my position would be second-string left guard.

Now don’t get me wrong, guards and tackles are critically important to the success of a team and I confess that smashing into opponents and sacking the quarterback resembled fun. Where else could I practice physically aggressive behavior and be applauded? Even second-string made sense. The other kids had played freshman football and earned their places.

But I lacked the psychological orientation for being second string and had something else in mind in terms of position. I envisioned myself charging down the sidelines with the people in the stands on their feet cheering wildly.

I dutifully put in my time, finished out the year and decided to forgo a career in sports. I am glad I played. I gained new friends and new experiences, both valuable. But I can’t say I learned anything of great significance. What I recall from the season was there was little ‘thrill of victory’ and lots of ‘agony of defeat.’ We were not a team destined for glory.

The Most Desperate of Times: PE Dance Class 1… The 50th EUHS Reunion of the 1961 Class

/ Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

Forty-six years ago I became a freshman at El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. The number of young women on my horizon was zero. I was deathly afraid of girls.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and I was a desperate man. I signed up for dance classes in P.E. I would learn to dance and become a combination of Arthur Murray and Elvis Presley. (Yeah, I know that dates me a little.) Step, step, slide and swivel your hips. Girls would flock to me.

It wasn’t until the day of the class that I learned the magnitude of my mistake. I would have to dance with girls to learn how to dance and there they were, lined up on the opposite side of the gymnasium, staring at me.

“God, why did I do this to myself,” I thought as I stared across the distance at twenty females who I knew were thinking, “anybody but Curtis.”

“Okay, boys,” the female P.E. teacher announced in a stern voice, “I want you to walk across the room now and politely ask a girl to dance with you.” Wow, that sounded like fun.

Reluctantly, I began that long walk across the gymnasium floor. I was a condemned man and the gallows were looming. I walked slower. Maybe an earthquake would strike. Maybe the Russians would shoot off an IBM missile. Maybe one of the surly seniors would throw a match in a wastebasket and the fire alarm would go off.

Maybe nothing.

I approached the line and looked for a sign. One of the girls would smile at me and crook her finger. But the girls looked exceedingly grim. A few looked desperate, like deer caught in the headlights of the proverbial 18 wheeler rushing toward them at 90 miles per hour. I picked out the one who looked most frightened on the theory that she would be the least likely to reject me.

“Uh, would you care to dance,” I managed to blurt out.

“Uh, okay,” she responded with about the same level of enthusiasm she would have if I had offered her a large plate of raw liver. It was P.E. Dance Ground Zero after all, and she wasn’t allowed to say no. We were destined to be a great couple.

“You will put your left hand in the middle of the back five inches above the waist line.” The teacher, who was beginning to sound like a drill sergeant, carefully described what we would do with our hands. It was quite clear that there would be minimal contact and no contact with behinds.

“With your right hand and arm, you will hold the girl away from you.” There would be no accidental brushing of breasts either. I assumed the correct position with marine-like precision. I was going to get this right.

I studied the chart the teacher had put up to show me what I was supposed to do with my two left feet. I listened carefully to the lecture on rhythm and down beats. I watched with intensity as she demonstrated: step, step, slide, step-step.

All too soon it was our turn. A scratchy record blasted out a long-since-dead composer’s waltz. I didn’t know who it was but it wasn’t Elvis or even Benny Goodman. With one sweaty palm in the middle of the girl’s back and the other sweaty hand holding her a proper distance away, I moved out on the floor. Step, step, slide, step-step.

One, two, and three, four-five the coach barked out. My feet more or less followed the proscribed pattern as I avoided stepping on the girl’s toes. I tried a turn and managed to avoid running into another couple. Ever so slightly I relaxed. Maybe things would be okay. Maybe I would have fun. Maybe Hell would freeze over.

“Stop class!” the teacher yelled as she blew her whistle and yanked the needle across the record, adding another scratch. We dutifully came to a halt. What now?

“I want everyone to watch Curtis and his partner,” she announced.

“Hey, this is more like it,” I thought to myself. Not only was I surviving my first day of dance class, I was being singled out to demonstrate. I smiled, waited for the music to start, and boldly moved out on the floor where many had trod before. Step, step, slide, step-step. We made it through all of three progressions when the teacher abruptly blew her whistle again.

“And that, Class,” she proclaimed triumphantly, “is not how you do it. Curtis is moving like he is late for an important appointment in the bathroom.”

The class roared… and I shrank. I don’t know how my partner felt, but I wanted a hole to climb in, preferably a deep hole with a steel door that I could slam shut. And I was more than embarrassed, I was mad. My normal sense of humor had galloped off into the sunset.

“You don’t teach someone to dance by embarrassing him,” I mumbled. An angry look crossed the teacher’s face and she started to reply. I turned my back and walked for the door.

“Where do you think you are going Curtis? Get back here!” she demanded in a raised voice.

“I am leaving,” I replied without turning, calm now the decision made. The class was deadly quiet. This was much more interesting than P.E. Other kids might challenge teachers, might walk out of a class, and might not even care.

But not Curt. This was a guy who always did his homework, participated in class discussions, and was respectful toward teachers.

I reached the door and put my hand on the handle.

“If you walk out that door, you may as well walk home,” the teacher barked. “I will personally see to it that you are suspended from school.”

I opened the door, walked out, and went straight to the office of the chairman of the P.E. Department, Steve O’Meara. Steve worked with my Dad in the summer as an assistant electrician but I knew him primarily as my science teacher.

He was a big man, gruff, and strong as a bull elephant, a jock’s jock. He demonstrated his strength by participating in the annual wheelbarrow race at the El Dorado County Fair. The race commemorated the fact that John Studebaker of automobile fame had obtained his start in Placerville manufacturing wheelbarrows.

The County’s strongest men would line up with their wheelbarrows at the starting line and then rush to fill a gunny sack with sand at the starter’s gun. They would then push their wheelbarrows and loads at breakneck speed around an obstacle course that included mud holes, a rock-strewn path, fence barriers and other such challenges.

In addition to making it across the finish line first, the winner had to have fifty plus pounds of sand in his gunny sack. Underweight and he was disqualified. Steve was always our favorite to win and rarely disappointed us. He had a very loud voice.

“What’s up, Curt,” he roared when I entered his office. I knew Steve didn’t eat kids for lunch but you always wondered a little.

“I think you are supposed to expel me,” I replied. He started to laugh until he saw my expression. Mortification and anger on the face of a 14-year-old are never a pretty sight.

He became serious. “Sit down and tell me what’s happening,” he suggested in an almost gentle voice.

Ten minutes later I walked out of his office with a reprieve. I didn’t have to go back to the dance class and could finish out the quarter playing volleyball.  Steve would have a discussion with the dance instructor.

I imagine she ended up about as unhappy as I was. At least I hoped so. I entertained a small thought that she would hesitate the next time before traumatizing some gawky kid whose only goal in attending her class was to become a little less gawky. It would be a long time before I would step onto a dance floor again.

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