Contraband

My mother tried to scare me with the threat of military school which included her taking me to see the new movie, Taps. Either she didn’t know anything about the movie or was totally clueless as to how it would affect me. I loved it. Military school sounded and looked awesome.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is toward the beginning when Timothy Hutton is walking through the dorm and here’s the sounds of a TV coming from one of the rooms. He enters, a group of very young cadets jump to attention, one of them kicking a footlocker so it slams shut hiding a TV. Hutton very coolly looks around the room, checks for dust on the bedframe with his white glove, comments about the folding of some t-shirts, says “As you were, gentlemen” and leaves.

Very cool, very classy. They knew he knew and he gave them an unspoken warning: “I won’t say anything, but I don’t want to hear it again.”

This gave me an idea. Once you’re accepted at Howe, you get a list of things to bring – just like Hogwarts. A stereo was not on that list. I don’t remember how I convinced my Mom after my first weekend home (once a month, I think, “open weekends” arrived when you could go home if you and your parents chose) that I could take a stereo.

As soon as I returned, I put the turntable in the footlocker, laid the speakers on either side on their backs, and covered it with … I don’t know … stuff … Then, at night, with the volume turned very, very low … I could listen to Alice Cooper and Kiss records. I remember also getting Ozzy Osbourne and Rod Stewart records from my big sister.

Eventually, Captain Musolff walked by while I was playing a record in broad daylight. He walked into my room and I felt exactly like those younglings in Taps. It certainly wasn’t blaring but its very existence wasn’t allowed. He bent over, looked at it, looked at me and asked how long I’d had it. I told him several weeks.

“I haven’t heard it until now. If it stays that way, you can keep it.”

Score one for Rock and Roll.

Late one night, another cadet – one of Captain Musolff’s favorites if I remember correctly – had been lent an album by the good Captain. He crept down to my room and said, “You have to hear this.” and I heard “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo Guthrie for the very first time.

God’s Glory

In the summer, chapel was served outside. I never noticed this chapel had a name until I looked at the photo just now – St. Francis, apparently. I can remember Father Minnix leading – nothing specific, but I remember sitting (they set up benches just like regular pews) there listening.

I had no affection for God when I arrived at camp and only a growing curiosity when I left, but I did think it unassailably cool that people would think to worship God outside amidst the nature He created.

I also remember walking with Fr. Minnix by a stream but I don’t remember why or what we talked about. Other cadets may or may not have been with us. I don’t know if it was a class, activity, or if I was in trouble and was told to “Go talk to Fr. Minnix.”

Old Guard Pond

Old Guard pond is the hour-glass shaped pond shown in the previous post. I love the “Off Limits” sign shown below – very Winnie the Pooh. I wonder exactly what is off limits? Swimming, of course – no one dared when I attended (not for recreation anyway). Walking across the bridge? Sitting by the water?

It is bottomless. I know this because when I was “fishing” using a stick, some string, and a frog as bait, it seemed more creatures rose to the near surface from its depths than I would have thought a small pond could hold. So many it actually scared me. This must have been after I fell in it. I don’t think I would have risked falling in had I known Cthulu himself lived in the darkness below. Seriously, just look at the tree across the pond – it looks straight out of a haunted forest as if it’s just waiting for some unsuspecting cadet to be walking across the campus some night to grab him or her and hold them under the water until they die or some monster reaches up and pulls them under.

You can see the Masters’ houses in the background. I loved just sitting by the water. It wasn’t exactly a popular spot – perhaps that’s what made it nice & peaceful. Like many other spots on campus, I could sit there for hours and imagine the people & ghosts from a century before walking around, wondering what they talked and thought about.

On the wish list for Howe Military School, you’ll find a fountain you can purchase if you have a spare $8,000. That would look nice, wouldn’t it? I wonder if I’d like that change in the atmosphere – adding something modern like that. It would be great for the overall look of the campus from everywhere within eyeshot and I’m only there once every few years anyway so, you know, do whatever you want with your $8,000.

During the try-outs for Rangers, a rope connected trees on either side of the pond and Ranger-hopefuls had to cross the rope. Easy enough. Until current Ranger(s) told you to let go. Ew – but then that was the point. I made it through all the tryouts until the very last bit … get up on a Saturday morning and do the minimum pushups, run a mile or few, etc.

Getting up in the morning has never been my strong point and I missed my chance to get a black beret. I was very sad during the parade where the new Rangers got theirs. Still am.

Campus from the Sky

This is the whole campus courtesy of Google Maps and Photoshop.

 

The top half with no buildings is the athletic areas: tennis courts, baseball diamond, track and soccer field.

The Howe Military Summer Camp is a few miles away.

M Company

M stands for Micah. Lower school is comprised of two companies that had a rivalry way worse than the upper school dorms. Micah and Lima. Of course, upper school had three companies to compete, we only had two so that hate was concentrated on one enemy. The building is an “H” or “I” shape depending on where you’re facing:

The gray building immediately to the North is the lower school academic building. 

A. Picture A is the view from my room seen in the previous post.
B. The doorway below.

I’ll refer to this map in other posts as well.

25 years before MP3 players, even before the Walk-Man (“What’s a Walk-Man?”) you might have walked around with a tape recorder. Not even a boom box – a tape recorder. I wasn’t the only one to set the tape recorder up next to the TV during a cool movie or TV show so you could listen to it later!

I can remember Flesch with his tape recorder dragging it across the concrete outside this door and playing it back. It sounded thunderous. Like an earthquake or the entire redwood forest falling down.

I also remember standing at Dress-Right-Dress for a long time because we – the platoon or the whole company – were screwing up somehow. Such techniques are now a thing of the past, I’m sure. If students can’t even be forced to do pushups, I’m sure this procedure would be compared with water-boarding!

I can remember getting a lecture from Captain Musolff about what arrogant brats we were. It’s the only time I can remember him showing anger.

Walking through the above door (you know, before the “Do Not Enter” sign was posted):

My room was down on the left. After you pass my room and the others I mentioned, you’d see the hallway into the Lower School Academic building on your left. This is where the clash of titans happened. The “titans” being me and Cadet Hamilton. A whole bunch of people swarmed around us, of course, somebody even bringing a boom box and blasting the Rocky theme.

I’d like to mention that no one had doors in my day. There were one or two kids whose parents paid to have doors installed but those were rich little spoiled brats that no one liked.

We’ll go down that hallway later. Continuing through the dorm, you get to an intersection where you’re facing East and the hallway to Lima Company is to your left. The doorway on the left of this image is to the T.O. quarters (that would be Captain Musolff in 82/83). The doorway on the right that a leg is stepping out of is the T.O.’s office. Center stag is the C.Q. desk. “CQ” is Charge of Quarters. That’s the person who … is basically the hall monitor.

Here’s that same intersection from the other direction. This location is worth noting because this guy … maybe he was X.O. or platoon leader … made me stand at attention with my nose against the wall forever. When my time was finally up, he said, “Wait, I have to check something…” and measured the angle of my feet with a protractor. Of course they weren’t 90 degrees or whatever so my time started over. Someday I’m going to find him and he isn’t going to like it.

Turning to your right you’re peering down into the ghetto, or “Lima Company” with the entrance into the common area halfway down the hall. Those are the chairs for those unfortunate enough to be waiting outside the T.O.’s office.

Picture “C” is the East side (facing Highway 9) of the lower school dorms. The double doors lead into the Common Area that L and M shared.

I have two memories of this little courtyard. The memory from lower school is of the three Mexican students who lived across the hall from me (so their windows faced this courtyard) very excited at seeing “snow” for the first time when they woke up the morning of the first frost of the season.

Picture “D” below is the opposite side of the building. This is the stairway to the basement where – most important to me - we stored our bicycles. My bike was my best friend as a kid.

My Room But Not My Room

This room is where I lived in 8th grade. If this room had looked like this when I lived in it – I can’t imagine the unspeakable horrors that would have been unleashed on me by my peers, squad leader, platoon leader, company commander, etc.

And if an alumnus saw it in such condition? Well, I don’t think anyone would have thought any cadet capable of such an abominable atrocity.

What’s worse is, there were lower school rooms in far worse condition that day. I don’t know what these kids faced that day but I can assure you that in 82/83 this room (let alone anything worse) would have at least lost this cadet any privileges that involved leaving the dorm.

The setup of this room is exactly as it was for every lower school room in my day – except for the two-cadet rooms. Footlocker to the left (you can see it behind the door under a laundry bag), bed and desk to the right.

I was really lucky. My Dad could build or restore anything and he bought and refinished an antique footlocker for me so I didn’t have the same cheap looking ones everyone else did. I supposed they weren’t cheap looking … just compared to mine.

Those rooms look so small now.

Here’s the view from “my” window:

It’s blurry because of the screen on the window. The building isn’t actually that blurry in real life. The building in question is the Lower School Academic Building. Note the railing the right of the door – that’s a stairway to the study hall and downstairs classroom.

Facing the room from this POV, if you went to the next room to your right, that would have been Cadet Strong’s room – he was the first cadet I ever spoke with at Howe other than the two I mentioned in My First Day At Howe. Next was Cadet Gross (yes, these are real names) and, last but not least, Cadet Flesch. I’m trying to figure out where Forbes-Watkins lived. Maybe … he switched with Gross at some point. And I thought that Hamilton lived between me and the hallway to the academic building, too, but there were only like three rooms between me and that hallway.

Both Hamilton and Flesch had older brothers at Howe in the upper school. I seem to have a vivid memory of Hamilton’s older brother giving him a hard time about something.

I’ve never won a fight in my life. In public school, I got bullied all the time – I was that kid … the one bullies gravitate toward and find via a sixth-bully-sense … maybe it’s not a sixth sense … maybe it makes up for the other senses they lack … anyway … somehow, I got into a fight with Hamilton while he had a broken arm in a cast … and I still lost.  It’s worth mentioning that in my three years at Howe, I never witnessed any … ANY … cliques or bullying. You had your dorm cultures, athletic teams, and such … but nothing exclusive or abusive. There was authority and respect but, again, nothing that was actually abusive or harmful.

The Varsity H club and the Rangers were considered elite and involved a lot of initiation, etc. but they didn’t treat others badly. They were proud to be a part of their groups, to be sure, but all that crap that goes on in other schools simply didn’t happen at Howe.