School Story
EDINA HIGHLANDS: Duck and Cover drills. Having Don Miguel’s B&W TVs rolled into the gymnasium so we could all watch Bill Mazeroski win the 1960 World Series on Channel 5. SOUTHVIEW JUNIOR HIGH: Mr. Melenthin. Walter Cronkite on the PA in Mr. Hakula’s 7th Grade geometry class at 1:15 PM. “The President has been shot”. Martin Umberger’s wicked little matchstick darts. Orville Engen’s Tippi Hedren solioquoys. Mr. Melenthin. EHS: Six trips to Williams Arena in three years. Bob Savre’s annual “Squaw of the Hippopotamus” joke. Mr. Matlon’s “Persh shh spective” lectures. Room 161. The one-row, 40-character screen on the school’s 300 baud remote computer hook up. Being gob smacked by “Ba Da. Ba Da Da Da.” in the hall on the 3rd floor. It was the first hearing of the Mamas and the Papas -- on vinyl -- wafting down the hallway out of Mr. Stott’s room. Why there, and why not on KDWB or WeeGee? Did Stotts score a pre-release version? (He also knew six months early when WTCN was going to play “Rodan”. “Rodan is coming.” Trying to make sense out of muddled writing and bad headlines: “Johnson Lands Marines at DaNang; Reds Escalate”. All in all, I think 1968 represents the high water mark of K-12 as a delivery vehicle for Western Civilization. We did Socratic questioning drills. They told us who Plutarch was. We diagrammed sentences. We memorized Chaucer’s Preamble. We recited Portia’s mercy speech. We memorized the Declaration. We knew the brief on both sides of Plessy v Ferguson. Is the Class of 2018 getting any of this?
