"QUO AGIS MANE"

The teacher entered and uttered her daily welcome, “Quo agis mane, class”, and we came to attention .  Latin 1, why in the world did we have to learn Latin?   A “dead” language and especially deceased at 8:10 on a Monday morning with the toughest teacher in the school, Dr. Ruth in a classroom so small there was no place to hide.  Latin 101, I had been at it for a week and at this point not sure if I would or could master it - even though I was a very distant descendant from Romans!

She continued, (with her slight remnant of a German accent…I wondered why she didn’t teach that living language, instead of teaching a language nobody wanted to learn).  “Class please open to page 22”, and now we all came to the feared part. She was going to call on a student to translate the first paragraph into our native tongue – Milvillian.   Now the Millvillian patois was a language that sounded like a mix of South Carolinian twang, with the drawn out diphthongs of Philadelphia and it didn’t particularly lend itself to Latin words.  But most of us tried.  And all of us feared having to  stand and translate while our classmates listened with baited breath for our first mistake.  I tried not to think of the horror of being called on first …oh no she was looking my way.  I tried to be as small as possible.  It did not work.not.

“Mr. Iszard”.  She always used our last names.  “Translate the first paragraph please.”  (How did she know I hadn’t studied over the weekend?  But she always knew who wasn’t prepared.  I blurted “I’m sorry Dr. Munser, but I broke my glasses and won’t be able to read today.  (Gads I didn’t even wear glasses and I pulled a last resort excuse much too early in the year) Using this dodge was a costly mistake which I would learn later when I would really need it.  “Oh, I am indeed so sorry to hear that…Mr. Iszard.”  Then she trumped my trump card, “You won’t need your glasses to conjugate the verb ‘I love’ as memorizing it was part of the homework assigned?  She Nailed me!  And now I faced the consequences for not reading a few pages – a task that seemed akin to climbing Everest for me, a master at procrastinating.  I stumbled through the litany with just one whispered prompt on the last one from Mary Jane, a gal pal next to me.  Dr. Munser, an ordained doctor of philosophy was tougher than a gladiator who didn’t a sword to bring down the mighty and the pompous - just a cold stare.  “You may be seated, Mr. Iszard” and I was dismissed - but not for the last time that year.  Next she called on the class Latin shark who would graduate Cum Laude (a very fitting label) and in later life write prescriptions in Latin so trusting surgical patients wouldn’t know that they were just taking vitamin B+ once a day by mouth.

Tonight as I drift off to dreamland  I say to the darkness just like it was yesterday  amō…amās… amat… amāmus… amatis… amant – and I snooze until the alarm once again rings me a good morning...but this time in Latin...quo agis manti”.

THE NEXT DANCE

My granddaughter Violete asked me – “Were there oldies music when you were growing up, grandpa”?  And I replied “Honey…the oldies were new-ies when I was your age.  And then  it’s Saturday night in the basement of the YMCA in the "stag line". 

I’m wearing my new plaid jacket with the zoot suit shoulder pads.  All my guys are standing in a group near a wall.  The girls are sitting across from them mostly chatting and waiting…and waiting.  I say to my pal Jim, “Next slow one I am going and I going to ask VS to dance.” He says “go ahead but I bet she says no thank you.”  And my Y-Dance Russian Roulette began.

 I start to sweat and hope my generous dousing of Old Spice will supplement my 24 hour guaranteed Right Guard deodorant, as hawked on TV.  The next 45 RPM drops on the RCA player supervised by Allen the student DJ – Poison Ivy – much too fast.  Nextm  Look In My Eyes – I don’t like this one either, not much of a beat and gosh knows I need a beat to help my feet – as I sometimes forget to listen to and concentrate on my steps in the middle of a song.   Angel Baby – Not a favorite.  Does the beat really matter? The voice in my head whispers, “Oh Calvin, you are just afraid to pull the trigger, you’re a big overgrown coward…what’s the worst that could happen?

Time marches on.  My chance to dance is fading with each tune.  "Well", says Jim, “I knew you wouldn't dance?  I replied, “Next one for sure buddy”. 

Little did we know that the gals across the way were wishing we would just get up and ask them to dance because they all looked so disinterested.  Now I know that they had just as much angst caused by this age old rite of passage as we did.  But I didn't learn that until I was older but still not wiser.   I took a deep breath and conjured up some courage. “Here I go”, the voice echoed in my skull.  I was committed to dance to this song - whatever it was.  The music started.  I started with it walking the long walk to the girls domain.   I felt a tad dizzy.  I made fleeting eye contact with Vicki.  

And I kept walking.  I race up the stairs to the lobby and make a promise to my inner voice.  “Next week I am going to ask her… I promise…Next week… for sure".  I got a cup of Hires Root Beer from the soda machine for a quarter and walked home to South Millville.

THE FIRST DAY

Mom and I had made our school clothes pilgrimage to High Street for a new pair of chinos from the chubby rack at Franks’ Men and Boys and then a madras short sleeve shirt from Jules Men Shop.  And finally a pair of Bass cordovan penny loafers at Freedman’s shoe store to start my first high school year – one shoe  had a maddening squeak when I walked and I knew I had to try to break them in before Monday or face a blister or two. 

The first day at Millville Memorial High, after homeroom, we reported to an assembly told by the President of the Senior class that we were to make a sign to wear on our backs that proclaimed – ‘I AM A LOWLY FRESHMAN” and wear all week or be forever shunned.  Our mission was to get as many seniors as we could to sign it during this week of Freshman Daze.  She added that great prizes from the Student Store awaited the students who got the most autographs.   And then she added that we had to perform a task to earn these coveted signatures.  Plus, we had to wear orange and blue for a week.  And last but not least was the hardest part of the mandate.  We could be ordered to not only sing the chorus of our alma mater but also the verse which was a lyrical ode that made no sense to me – something about where the Union spreads its valley??  It certainly wasn’t Rock Around the Clock – that was for sure.

I exited the bus the next morning and met not, one but two upper class folks in waiting for a fresh frosh – Nancy W, who I knew already and her football star beau Bob  – they made me sing the whole damn Alma Mater and laughed a lot and were the first to sign my poster hanging on some orange yarn.   Next I meet Jimmy Biggs (by the way a person one would never imagine to later become a Methodist minister – he was a “red ass” as my grandmother Ethel would say)  He made me carry about six dozen books to his second floor homeroom – a trek akin to a Mount Everest expedition. I sang. He signed.  And so it went for a week of secret fun (we all pretended it was awful but in reality it was great fun and to my knowledge no one was ruined for life by this bit of healthy hazing).  The week was filled with whoops in the halls between classes.  Small dramas were played out with senior boys and withering frosh gals.  I heard one athlete mutter – “A new crop, not bad, not bad…” Halfway through the week I asked Ms. Hoffman in the front office how many seniors there were.  “320 or so,” she responded.  Yikes, I had only met 137…I did get some more but not enough to win a prize, a paperback book.  The lucky winners got to pick any one from a wall of shelves in the student store – I figured I would have enough reading now to keep me busy and didn’t need some extra.

The week ended without any major incidents.  A couple of the shop boys, as they were called, (incidentally they all wore black jeans and white undershirts with a pack of Lucky’s rolled in the sleeve) refused to participate and they continued that attitude for the next four years tinkering away their school hours in the mysterious industrial arts shops – now a major career path long gone from most schools.   

But for most this experience was a needed rite of passage that introduced us to the pecking order of the high school world and it helped us grow up  - and for some of us, the shy ones, it forced them to relax and make friendships that would last forever

“Hail, hail to old Millville…all hail to the Orange and the Blue…