Stories I'd Tell My Children (But Maybe Not Until They're Adults). Michael N. Marcus
stumps over broken glass” to read it. She had a very strange obsession with the Civil War Battle of Chickamauga, and often read about it and talked about it.
Hillhouse High School had a central courtyard with a few benches, bushes and scraggly trees. One tree, the foof-tree, was favored by Frehse. A lot of our class time was spent looking at, and at Frehse’s command, waving and purring at and talking to the damned tree.
Frehse punished some students by commanding them to water the foof-tree. Some students kissed Frehse’s ass by voluntarily watering the foof-tree. Many students wanted to chop down or burn down the fucking foof-tree.
We never knew what to expect when we entered foof-land.
Sometimes as we marched in, a student would be pinched on the shoulder and commanded to go to the blackboard and “write ten beautiful words,” or “write 200 words about tobogganing,” or “explain why striped cats are superior to spotted dogs” or “list 500 reasons why Elvis should be president.”
Our English teacher used her classroom power to defend “The King” from showbiz competition. Frehse once caught a girl with a picture of singer Pat Boone in her notebook, and gave her double F’s on a homework assignment. The quick-thinking girl instantly flipped the page to reveal a picture of Elvis, and the lunatic changed her mark from abject failure to double A’s.
One time, a class was ordered to write 500 words on “how Capri pants have been the downfall of western civilization.” (Girls couldn’t wear pants to our school.)
As we sat at our desks writing either ludicrous compositions or serious exams, Frehse would scurry around, purring like a damned cat, and sticking a pin into our arms and shoulders. Fortunately, this was before HIV.
One regular classroom activity was centered on a grammar workbook developed at Manter Hall School in Massachusetts.
Frehse’s “Manter Hall Day” was like a perverted TV game show, and could have been invented by Monty Hall—or Monty Python.
One third of the class would be seated in chairs spread in an arc across the front of the room, with titles like Number Boy, Card Girl, Question Girl, and Third Assistant Alternate Score Keeper. They administered the quiz to the rest of the class.
Frehse was emcee, seated in the middle of the stage.
The only relief was to sneak into Frehse’s room, and steal the card with your name on it. Yes, I confess that I did it. I was also half of a two-man commando team that stole the door knocker from her house. Alan Disler was the other half.
Our exploit was too good a story to keep to ourselves, and we could not resist displaying our shiny trophy at school. Word traveled fast and we were quickly confronted by the indignant cat lady. We went back to her house and replaced the knocker. At least we weren’t arrested.
Getting a bad mark from Frehse was no reason to be upset, unless you wanted to satisfy your parents or get into college.
In a strange effort to make failures feel better, she claimed that “an F is the mark of true genius,” and often said, “I only flunk my brightest students.” Unfortunately, very few college admissions officers knew that Frehse’s F was the equivalent of another teacher’s A.
The girl who got double F’s for liking Pat Boone must have been a future Nobel Prize winner.
Frehse lost an exam of mine during the first marking period. Despite contrary attendance documentation, she accused me of playing hooky that day and failed me for several months’ work.
The next term I earned an apparently indisputable A average, but Frehse gave me a C.
The orange-haired cat lady said that she knew I deserved an A, but it was “too great a jump to go from an F to an A,” so I was stuck with the mediocre C.
This was during our vital junior year in high school, when our marks would affect college admissions and influence the course of the rest of our lives.
In my yearbook, the crazy cat lady wrote that I was “a wonderful person,” and maybe I should be pleased that I had an F on my report card to prove that I was one of her brightest students.
One even brighter Frehse failure skipped a couple of grades and went to Yale.
Chapter 5
Drugging Miss Daisy
It was a huge self-service store with a gigantic sign that proudly proclaimed “2 Pairs for $5.”
If you needed only one pair, you paid $2.99, but hardly anyone ever bought just one.
If someone did need just one, she’d hang around the store and partner with someone else who needed one, so they could share the five-buck deal.
Five bucks paid for style, but not much quality.
These shoes were made of plastic, cardboard, glue and staples. If you wanted footwear constructed with thread and the skin of a cow or a pig, you had to shell out the big bucks at PairAway, at least $5.99 per pair. Few of the expensive shoes were sold, except for prom shoes and the $8.99 steel-toe work shoes that were necessary to protect steelworkers’ lower extremities.
I was vastly overqualified for a self-service shoe joint because I had experience working in a real shoe store and actually knew how to measure feet and judge if shoes fit. But they needed an employee and I needed a job, so a deal was done.
The store manager was Davey, who had recently returned from a few years soldiering in Viet Nam. He was aware of my anti-war politics and agreed with them.
Second in command was Daisy, the wife of a Marine then in Viet Nam. Daisy was still in the “my country, right or wrong” state of mind, but never argued about the war with Davey or me, She just wanted her husband to come back, whole and healthy.
Miss Daisy drove a bright red fastback Chevy Impala with a USMC decal on the rear window and a noisy exhaust system. The car looked like it was 40 feet long. She drove it very fast and got a lot of tickets. The cops couldn’t miss a loud and long bright red Impala.
Daisy’s sister, Janie, worked at the nearby Just Born candy factory, and often brought Daisy bags of chocolate-and-molasses- coated Peanut Chews, which Daisy eagerly scarfed down, apparently to compensate for the absence of her husband and high school sweetheart, Gary.
Thanks to the Peanut Chews, and a daily Whopper-With-Cheese from the nearby Burger King, Daisy put on about 20 pounds in two months. Then she panicked when she learned that Gary would be coming home for some unanticipated “R&R” (rest and recreation).
Not wanting to scare him away, she determined to quickly shed the effects of the excess eating and regain the body she had on their honeymoon. She made an appointment with a “diet doctor,” who sent her home with a supply of Dexedrine brand amphetamine diet pills, known outside the doctor’s office as speed. “Dex” is a powerful psycho-stimulant that increases wakefulness, energy and confidence while decreasing fatigue and appetite.
Davey and I were amazed at the effect the Dexedrine had on Daisy. Not only were the pounds evaporating, but she was absolutely energized. She started coming to work earlier than she had to, and working later than she had to, and was actually waiting on our customers instead of just sitting behind the cash register. The combination of drugs and increased physical activity gave Daisy an amazing body sculpting, and she was HOT. Male customers ogled her and tried ineffective pickup lines. Daisy looked so good that Davey said