A Pilgramage is Overdue

I think I shall return for Alumni Weekend this year. I could reserve a rental this early for less than $15 I think. If I picked the car up at 3 PM, I could be in Howe, Indiana in time for Evensong at St. James Chapel at 6 PM.

If I left campus the next day immediately following lunch in the Major Merritt Dining Hall I remember so fondly, I could return the car within 24 hours. My trip would cost me only that $15 and a tank of gas. I’m pretty frugal. Cheap, if you must.

The Episcopal Church

Howe Military School has been inseparable from the Episcopal Church since it was created. Students attend chapel four times a week. Three out of the four times is awesome – it is held in St. James Chapel which is easily the most beautiful church on the face of the Earth. On Sunday it is, unfortunately, held in the airplane hangar across the street. Most unfair was the fact that the Episcopalians in the public real world had their Sunday morning services in St. James. I always wondered if the services were different and deeper for them than they were for us.

Movies

Before the advent of VCRs and videocassette rentals, we watched one movie a month in Bouton (I think that was the name) auditorium. It was awesome. Our own private theater. And … AND … one of the reasons I am so very cool to this day is they showed THX-1138 one month. How freaking awesome is that?! I am sure I am one of the blessed few… small handful of people who can say they got to see that on the big screen.

The Rangers would repel off the top of the Bouton Auditorium as well as the water tower. I can’t believe no one has ever climbed that water tower and spray-painted anything on it. Bouton is also where plays, concerts, ceremonies, registration and such took place.

Not Quite a Warrior Poet

But not exactly a dumb jock, either.

At some point, Howe Military School gave up the idea of having a (American) football team. From what I gather, we hadn’t won a football game in 30 or 40 years – or at least it seemed that way. Difficult to believe given the football coach was a former professional football player. Easy to believe given we were a boarding school and our students were still at home when other area schools had been having football practice for God knows how many weeks by the time we got to campus.

So we started having soccer (real football – another way to attract international students!). I don’t know how or if we overcame the whole no summer practice thing but anyway …

This football coach was also the Algebra teacher. And a good one, too. I didn’t like him, personally, because he did that whole peer instruction thing which I couldn’t stand but for the kids who needed the most help, he was an awesome teacher.

I took his algebra class during Summer Camp (the Howe Military summer camp also has summer school classes) between my sophomore and junior years.

In public school, I’d failed out of

1. Algebra
2. Basic Algebra
3. Remedial Math

That summer, this Math Teacher/Football Coach helped me climb the mathematical ladder to the top of the class so the following year I was in geometry and was encouraged to enroll in Calculus. I declined. Calculus would require real work. I dropped out of Physics for the same reason. Why work for a grade when I could get A’s in all my other classes without really trying?

Musolff

Captain Musolff, tactical officer of Micah company, was universally worshiped by every young man in lower school. He was the perfect balance of tough and fair. He’d listen and be your friend but he was also unmistakably your superior and leader. You’d live for his approval and fear his discipline. He hated more than any other person in history to have his picture taken. As tempting as it is to put one up, I still have too much respect for him.

Just Say No

Nancy Reagan was still First Lady.

There was a brief period when marijuana use seemed to be pretty rampant but the administration took some serious action and it ended fairly quickly. There were drug tests and dismissals.

Colonel Merritt, the brand-spankin’ new superintendent whose arrival on campus was … seen, heard and felt with a great deal of shock and awe touched every area of our lives. It ended a period of great turmoil and confusion in the life and soul of the campus. His recent death saddened me a great deal. Especially since the schools heart and soul seem to have shriveled and blackened since then.

Posters

After much lobbying on behalf of a very small group of students, Colonel Merritt granted us permission to hang one poster in our room. The students appealed to him with things like motivational and inspirational posters. I think those two students actually did hang up something like “soar high” or whatever but most of us put up girls and rock stars.

There was this hard core group of rockers in Delta company that were into AOR from the 60’s and 70’s – Led Zeppelin in particular. Our company commander had a huge Zeppelin tapestry on his dorm room wall. He was, I think, from the Detroit area so he may have gotten it from the same head shop I got my gigantic Ted Nugent poster that took up just about every square inch from floor to ceiling.

My Nugent wallpaper didn’t impress our tactical officer but it was “one” poster, so it got to stay.

This same company commander installed an extremely powerful antenna on the roof of the dorm so he could get WRIF, the major Detroit rock station for the last century, which was over 160 miles away.

I certainly wasn’t part of this clique of rockers. Not only were they seniors but they were far, far cooler than I. How quickly things change, though. These seniors quoted Led Zeppelin in their yearbook and others got high in their rooms listening to Cream but the next year when I mentioned Led Zeppelin, I was told “Zeppelin is for losers like [name removed to protect the innocent].”

Clean Your Room

I think my obsessive-compulsive neat-freak roots began at Howe Military School. Our rooms were inspected each day. On Saturdays, the entire  battalion stood for the hours between breakfast and lunch to have the rooms, bathrooms, floors, bathrooms, nooks & crannies, bed springs and bookshelves checked for dust and wrinkles.

Friday nights were a campus-wide cleaning party.

Humility and Passion

I think his name was Jeff Schillinger, a graduate of Wayne State University. He was my history teacher. This was my first time back at Howe Military School after two years of exile in public school hell. My mother had asked me after two years of misery if I wanted to return to Howe. I gave an enthusiastic yes.

After the first six-week grading period I was struggling to maintain a D in history. Many teachers, I think, wouldn’t have cared and just written me off. Schillinger, however, did some research.

When parent-teacher conferences came around he said to my parents, “Your son is getting As and Bs in all his other classes. Can you tell me what it is I might be doing wrong?”

Great question. Rather hard on himself but I wish more teachers were.

Some teachers are great and you still don’t learn anything. Some teachers are horrible at teaching but you love them so you try harder and you manage to perform well. As for me and history, I just have a particular learning style when it comes to that subject and I didn’t find teachers who matched it until college.

When I found history teachers who were storytellers at Washtenaw Community College and Hillsdale College I finally got it. The way most history teachers “teach” is like this:

“On December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor was bombed. You will be tested on this. “

A different way to teach World War 2, for example, would be to explain what was happening and why the bombing of Pearl Harbor was significant so it has a point of reference and some context. Also, a little action and romance never hurt. WCC and Hillsdale had profs who knew that. Explain, history teachers, that Germany got their ass kicked in WWI so they were kind of bitter and made the Jews scapegoats. Explain that the USA was going through a depression as well and need a reason to enter the war that everyone else wished they could stay out of as well.

I don’t remember a single thing Schillinger discussed concerning history. I couldn’t even tell you if it was American or World History or Western Civ. I do remember it was obvious he cared about his students and he treated us well. With respect. He was approachable and responsive. A good guy.

He lived in an apartment above the wood/metal shop building with his wife.

Bus Rides from Home

Approximately once a month, you spent a weekend at home. For some cadets, this was what they waited four weeks for. For others, it was the longest two days of every month as they waited to return to campus.

In 8th grade, there was a cadet whose parent(s) owned a limousine service. Groups of students would chip in and take limousines to and from home on Open Weekends. Every Friday of an open weekend Senior Circle would be surrounded by limousines waiting for these students to climb in and be taken to Chicago or Detroit. The types of students who took limousines were not the types of students I wanted to be in close quarters with for three hours even if my family could afford limousine service.

For students like myself, there was a bus that would drive to Ann Arbor or Dearborn, Michigan (there was also a bus that went toward Chicago) where parents would pick us up and then drop us off the following Sunday.

I think I can vividly remember each of those bus trips. I can remember them so vividly because of two things: the music and the temperature. The heater for the bus was in the back so unless you were in the back two seats or you were the driver, you were freezing your ass off. If you were in the back two seats you were begging the driver to turn off the heat and stripping off your clothes it was so hot. That was still better than being bundled in seventeen layers of clothing and still being freezing, however.

Seniors got the back seats. So you spent your underclassmen years freezing and wishing you were in the back so that those last few trips you could spend sweating profusely with your head out the window begging for relief.

Then, there was the music. The bus stop in Ann Arbor was at Briarwood Mall. So if my parents dropped me off there early or I’d been dropped off at the Henry Ford Library in Dearborn, I’d rush into the mall to buy cassettes and listen to them on the way back to school.

I’d ride, looking out the window, watching the stars and spare lights of the country roads at night while listening to the new Lizzy Borden or Doors tapes I’d bought.

Daily Alone Time

It was required that you be on a sports team – or participate in intramural (IM) sports. I agonized over this. I am not a team player. Wasn’t then and I’m still not. In the Fall of my junior year I chose Cross Country. The first coach we had actually made us do sprints and other crap. Together. But then … with Track in the Spring and the following year the new C.C. coach … all I had to do was run. Cross Country is a … I think 3.2 mile race and for track I ran the 2-mile.

So every day after classes, I’d change into my sneaks, shorts and t-shirt and grab my walk-man. I’d throw in a 90 minute tape. An album on each side. I’d run out into the country for 45 minutes, flip the cassette over, turn around and come back. Ten miles a day five days a week.

I couldn’t run fast, but I did win a few ribbons for something to do with athletics. I even won Most Improved my junior year and somehow Most Valuable my senior year. Pretty good for someone whose only experience with athletics in public school was getting beaten up by the jocks.

Those afternoons running through the corn fields are some great memories. Even the trips to CC and track meets had their good points. To this day, I love that “farm” or “country” smell. Running, running, running past farm after farm, running by John Pagin’s house, racing the Amish buggies, miles and miles of corn. Howe, Indiana was a mystical place suspended in its own time.

The best was getting back from my solitary “practice” and taking a shower before everyone else got back from their practice or IM with the rest of the dorm empty. I can’t tell you how much I have always hated showering with other people.