Growing up on High Point Drive in Springfield, the first ten feet of our property along the western property line of Casa Del Vecchio were in Mountainside. So of course that meant that I should change schools several times before I got to High School. After making friends in kindergarten at the Edward V. Walton School in Springfield, it was decided that we would attend Our Lady of Lourdes in Mountainside, since it was closer to our house than the catholic school in Springfield where we all went to church every Sunday. I stayed at Our Lady of Lourdes until 4th grade, or just long enough so that I could once again be the new kid at school when I went back to Walton in Springfield. Our uniforms at Our Lady of Lourdes had a patch on the pocket of our navy blue blazer that said OLL. We told everyone that it stood for Old Ladies Locker-room. I met some really great people there from 1st grade until 4th, and then met them again at Jonathan Dayton High School where students from both Springfield and Mountainside attended. But one of my favorite stories is the one about the time when the entire student body of Old Ladies Locker-room was involved in making an Imperial margarine commercial in Echo Lake Park. Someones dad mustve been a TV commercial producer who was wiling to make a small donation to the school for our unpaid child labor. But, Wow! How could a day in the park not be better than sitting in a one-story school while some nun taught me that life was about good penmanship and knowing how to change the cartridge in a fountain pen? (This was years before I grew to appreciate, as an architect, the flow of ink onto paper that one can only get from using a fountain pen. I remember that we had to use blue-black ink. I guess a nice solid black line was way too subversive for the Catholic church despite all the sweeping changes made as a result of Vatican II.) Now, I dont remember exactly how we all got to the park on the day of the big shoot, but I do remember that after much lining up in straight fire drill lines followed by much haranguing about how we all had better behave, or else, we were lined up (nuns liked the order and control of making young children stand in a straight line. I spent a few years staring at the back of John McCarthys head) in a serpentine line on a side of a grassy hill, holding a slice of white bread which we were admonished not to eat until we were told it was okay to do so. We we directed, by a guy that I can only assume was the director of this tour-de-force of cinematic majesty, to change positions on the hill side several times (I think it was filmed in an area that is now a dog park. Those dogs had more freedom than we ever did that day) so that with some creative editing, it would look like we were moving toward some imaginary goal because, after all, we just couldnt wait to chow down on that delicious fake butter on a slice of white bread. I think the nuns got a kick out of making us stand in line all day while standing in the middle of a green meadow in a beautiful verdant park on a sunny Spring day. By the way, have you ever given a hungry kid a piece of food and then told them not to eat it? And after a few minutes, that slice of bread looked like filet mignon with a big hunk of fois gras on top. This very special day was the one and only day in all four years I spent at that school when we were allowed to wear jeans and other casual clothes to school, but my Mom apparently missed that memo and she sent me to school in my school uniform. (I was also the only person not wearing a stitch of green clothing on St. Patricks Day and was sent to school wearing a bright orange tie. Apparently wearing orange is an insult to some folks of Irish descent. To this day, I dont know exactly why. Maybe they thought I was a Protestant. But what did we know? My dad was Italian and my Mom was German / Swedish. We knew nothing of color customs among our Celtic friends.) Anyway, rather than not participating at all in this masterpiece, once-in-a-lifetime, fifteen minutes of fame, event because I wasnt wearing my play clothes like the all the other 250 students standing in line on a grassy meadow in the middle of a park on a sunny day in Spring (did I mention that we were all standing in line?), it was decided that if I took off my blue blazer and clip-on bow tie, I would fit in with the rest of the kids and merely look like that one kid that everyone knows who never wore blue jeans. Things were going fine for a while. I was standing in line on that hill, holding my piece of Wonder bread, staring at the back of John McCarthys head, and rocking those gray flannel pants and that bow-tie-less white short sleeve permanent press dress shirt, looking like a fashion model for Dad and Lad clothing. Going fine, that is, until I split the seam running up the back of my pants while running from one serpentine line to the next, and I was side-lined for the rest of the day, with nothing to do except watch all of the other kids get their fifteen minutes of fame standing in line with a slice of Wonder bread and Imperial margarine smeared on it. I got to sit out all the action standing next to a nun with my underwear hanging out and with my blazer wrapped around my waist. I never did get to eat that friggin slice of Wonder with the Imperial margarine smeared on it. Ah! The formative years!
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:08:37 +0000
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