Post date: May 4, 2010 4:46:12 AM
~ Carole Kaplan-Cohen
Mrs. Miller's homeroom in the auditorium singing a duet with Larry House---'There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza'; trying to find a swim suit that was not toooooo stretched out (or thin); skirt check on the cold hallway floor (did the hem touch the ground?); singing lessons with Mrs. Mack in a tiny hole at the back of the school with a handful of other students; breaking my finger playing captain basketball in gym class and the teacher who swivelled it around because she didn’t believe it was 'really' broken (she will remain nameless); Carl's Hot Dogs on a poppy seed bun with oodles of greasy fries and Mel Markon's with the buckets hanging from the ceiling to catch the leaking roof drips; the crewcut history teacher who relished describing --- in great detail --- how people were impaled; cold Mrs. Stanek who preferred her stewardess weekend job to teaching English; Eddie Schwartz, just beginning as a DJ and AZA/BBG mixers; drama club skit of 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown' with Denise Hirsch, I tripped and sank, she was great! Horseback riding in the forest preserve. The Hot Dog Pit. Gayety. Goldblatt's. Local bands. …. and homework (I still don't see any use for the math I took --- other than the late night bonding experience it provided for my father and me). My cousins in Munster, Ind. calling themselves Southsiders. (Huh!). I remember songs, and hugs, and laughter, and, most of all the friendships. Then there was the other side: someone crashing into Madame Rosenblum's French class, dazed, telling us that Kennedy had been shot. We yelled at him …that it was 'a bad practical joke.' The there were the eight nurses killed by Richard Speck; the Black Panther movement and CVS; our house with the 'safe house' sign in the window. Our class size dropped dramatically as people fled to other places. Gone was the neighbor with the unicycle and pet duck. Gone was the school spirit rally in front of the school where everyone sang---and some even remembering the words. Gone were the walks to a friend's house late afternoon. Gone was the sense of community, safety, neighborhood; the sense that we were cocooned from the rest of the world.