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…