SKOOL DAZE

 I left California when I was in my early thirties. Transplanted myself in the Missouri Ozarks, West Texas, and now Tennessee.

When I abandoned California, I was really surprised to learn that school started in August in many places. I consider August to be the pinnacle of summer. School?? Never!
When I was a kid in Southern California school always started in mid-September, usually around the 15th. September in Southern Cal is almost always the hottest month of the year. Blisteringly hot.

 I vividly remember the September when I started seventh grade. I was only eleven years old (I began first grade at the age of four - - at Rutgers Prep, the posh private school in New Jersey). 

My seventh grade school was Dale Junior High in Anaheim, California. The first day that school started there was a horrific heat wave. The brutal desert Santa Ana winds blew in and the temperature soared to 115 degrees (Fahrenheit). It stayed that way for nearly a week.

Dale Junior High as it looks today.
There were absolutely no trees around when I attended school there - only a few palm trees across the street.

 

Back then in ancient times, nobody catered to kids. Despite the searing heat, the schools never shut down. I had to walk over two miles (one way) to school. No buses on my route. No rides. 

The heat was so intense that we really didn't have any constructive classes. There was no air-conditioning. Our teachers would open the doors and all the windows and turn out the lights. We'd swelter in a dark classroom, using wet paper towels to try to keep cool.

I think walking home was the worst part. I was so desperately dehydrated that I nearly passed out. If you think 100 degrees is hot, you should experience 115 on a long walk when you're eleven years old.

Come to think of it - during all my school years, I never rode the bus. I always walked - from second grade through my senior year.

Change of subject, sort of

I also never ate in the school cafeteria, not once. I always brought my lunch. In second grade I had a "farmer" lunch pail. It was shaped like a barn. Later I progressed to a Flintstones lunch box (heaven help us). After that, my mind's a blank. I think I brought all subsequent lunches in a brown paper bag.

A rather unflattering photo of me, probably age six, in Glendora, California -  showing off my new barnyard lunch pail (was my hair really that light?).

I didn't look like a child when I was six. I resembled a CEO or something. The children at Rutgers Prep in NJ were dressed meticulously. In California it was  more casual.....

....but Dale Junior High had a strict dress code when I was there.

Years later, when I was a student piano teacher in behalf of Cypress College, two of my young pupils were brothers who attended Dale Junior High. The crime in that school was so rampant that their mother removed them from Dale JH and placed them in a Catholic school.

Nowadays anything goes. Kids show up in schools with tattoos, nose rings, tattered jeans - - and that's just the girls.

Civil society has diminished into absolute trash.

Jon 💚  yearning for the old days

Afterthought

Ever since I (erroneously) announced that my blog would be discontinued, readership dwindled. The general consensus was that I'd croak and be done with.

My blog post reruns (like this one) seem to inspire even more of a mass exodus.

But I plan to remain, eternally bewitching you with my mesmeric magic.

I can't resist.

 

ALMOST WORKING FOR DISNEY

My parents first moved to Anaheim, California when I was eleven and I attended junior high school there. Then we moved to a different town in a rural area where I went to high school.
After I graduated at sixteen, we moved back to Anaheim and I was delighted.


At that time, Anaheim (in Orange County) was a fantastic and thriving place to live, with lots of opportunities.
Huntington Beach was only about six miles away from my parent's home. Knott's Berry Farm (in Buena Park) was two miles away.
Disneyland was five miles.

On summer evenings I often walked to Knott's Berry Farm - just to hang out, watch the tourists, and smoke cigarettes. I started (secretly) smoking at sixteen because I thought it made me look cool and tough. It probably only made me look trashy - but that was close enough.

Every summer night at exactly 9:00 p.m. Disneyland would shoot off a display of fireworks. We never got tired of watching the fireworks from our back yard.


Knott's and Disney were undoubtedly the biggest attractions in Orange County at that time, and getting a job at either place was a prestigious endeavor. 
Naturally, I eventually applied for work at both places (at different times, of course). And I was hired at both places. But neither job worked out.

Knott's hired me as a cook in their famous chicken dinner restaurant. The problem is - as a new employee (and a very young one) I didn't have regular hours. They kept me "on call".

Sometimes I had to work in the afternoon. Sometimes it was evenings. Often it was on weekends. Occasionally week days. The inconsistencies infuriated me beyond redemption. I finally told them to put their chicken where the sun don't shine and I quit.

I admittedly didn't know much about working for Disneyland. I did know a gay "reindeer" who was in the Disneyland Christmas Parade - but that's another story for another time.
No - I'm not kidding.

Becoming a member of the "Disney Family" was like being recruited into the CIA. There were more Disney rules than the rules God had in the Old Testament.

For my initial interview, I was interrogated by a gigantic, rotund black man wearing Uganda attire. I knew this was simply a ploy to see how I would react (Disney employees have to deal with all types of foreigners and ethnicities). I got along good with the guy. No problem.
I was hired as a ride operator.

My enthusiasm for joining the Disney clan began to rapidly diminish when I was presented with all the rules and regulations of how I should behave, act, dress, and look. 

I had the "cute", wholesome blonde blue-eyed appearance that exemplified the Disney image - - but in my rebellious youth I wasn't about to be transformed into a plastic Ken doll.

They scrutinized everything from your hair and clothing to shoes and fingernails. 

I'm not sure if this photo will be readable, but it's a letter concerning their shoe policy:

With each new rule my panic increased, until I decided that I was going to be transformed into a Nazi. I balked and backed out.

In retrospect - a thousand years later - I regret my rash decision. I think working for Disney would have been a positive and interesting experience.

I would have never thought about this, but yesterday I was going through an old plastic storage container and found all of my Disneyland rule and regulation books.

 

 The male employees were called "hosts" and the females were "hostesses"

These aren't readable on the blurry photos, but I thought I'd include them anyway.