The most rewarding events of my junior year in high school were associated with weekends devoted to interscholastic debates and ex temp presentations in forensic competitions throughout northeastern Ohio. There were also new adventures in social settings. Although I never felt I was truly part of the “in group” of Niles McKinley, I really wasn’t completely excluded. I attended events on my own, and many times I was lucky enough to infiltrate existing groups and do some “riding-along.”
Riding-along was the mainstay of being an adolescent. My father refused to buy a car for his own use, let alone for a teenager like me. Since he walked everywhere he needed to get to, including his work in the local steel-mill, I had to do the same. He had his own driver friends who took him to gambling places. I should find friends who had access to their dads’ cars to get to places to which I could not walk. And so, I did.
I frequently went on ride-alongs with Scott Garrett, who was a close friend and closer rival. The word wasn’t used at the time, but “frenemy” would have been very descriptive, even then. Scott was the only son of the school superintendent for Niles. He was bright and we always tried to outdo one another in all of our academic work. Debate and forensic events served as a primary battlefield. He also played basketball, baseball and track, areas in which I was vastly deficient. Scott, also, had access to his father’s car and allowed me to join with him and his buddies, especially Bill Smith, when he thought the result would improve his standing in our competition. He later became a nuclear engineer in Seattle. Later, at high school reunions held every five years by our graduating class, we have said “hello,” but have never had a real conversation.
Back then, we were always taking opposite sides in most of the verbal interactions we had, even while driving. Our destinations were places like Hat-o-Mat or Isaly’s or that new place on Route 422, McDonald’s with its twenty-five cent hamburgers. Sometimes, a group of four or five of us would attend a movie at the McKinley Theater which routinely showed second-rate films such as House of Frankenstein or Jungle Headhunters. Audience participation was part of the fun.
Scott and I became members of the usual leadership groups such as Student Council and the newly formed Ductorian Society. Neither of us would be elected President of any of them, but we did vie for the lower offices in both the prime groups and the secondary ones, like Social Studies Council.
School-wide sock hops were the major sites for social gatherings. I would attend but usually volunteered to take tickets or do other busywork, so I did not need to have others notice I was not dancing. I had “fun” participating and being there, but usually wished I was “really” having fun and “really” participating instead of merely “observing.”
The year of 1951 passed quickly enough, and Christmas was upon me. Once more I received my Christmas present before the day actually arrived. That year it was a proper student desk, one I used throughout the remaining years of high school and college, when I returned home for vacations. It had a built-in clock! My journal has a note that my father gave my mother a can-opener and some candy. Once more, we spent the evening “up-the-hill,” where I received a five-dollar bill from Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe. I looked forward to the second semester of my Junior year, even to further interactions with my frenemy.