ODE TO A WRESTLER

I started reading an online book of poetry for something different to pass the time ( I have seen most of the streaming movies during my time of pandemic isolation)...and then I thought of my own poetry and the wrestler…

I was a different kind of kid than my friends in high school. I went to sleep listening to classical music at 33 ⅓ RPM on my stereo, not rock and roll on a pocket radio under my pillow.  I like to read, paint, draw. I secretly read poetry in study hall while my buddy Bub devoured the sports pages. However, I never shared my taste for “the finer things”, that my mother called "my interests".  I feared my football friends and baseball buddies would razz all year in the halls of MHS.  So, it remained a secret until my junior year when by chance...or fate...or my art muse changed everything the day my English teacher called in sick. 

Covering her class Mr. Jurick; a teacher who was a very scary guy.  I never had him as teacher or coach, but I saw him in the locker room many times.  He was our school’s varsity wrestling coach and he was built as they say.  Wrestling, a sport I tried once in gym class and vowed never tried again - it was really much harder than it looked (and sweaty too)!  I knew that coach Jurick was a champion college All-American wrestler and almost an Olympian. My friend Rodger, one of his middle weight proteges, told me that he wrestled every player at every practice and pinned most of them time and time again. 

I chatted with Bub as we waited for class to begin. Mr. Jurick called our bedlam to order  and said, “Mrs. D. planned to begin a unit on appreciating poetry today...so I’m going to read you some poetry.”  There were giggles until his stern look turned them off like a faucet - “You find that funny…?”  No one replied.

He read from a small book.  And I saw his demeanor change instantly. It turned from hard-nosed jock to something totally different. Words of love...the beauty of a summer breeze...the ideas flowed naturally from him as the class sat in rapt attention.  When the bell rang all seemed surprised that the period was up. No one moved for a moment then everyone applauded. A couple of girls were crying. And I almost did too.

I stayed behind until the room emptied and said, “Coach I love poetry... I want to write about the stuff I feel...but...well...a - he finished my sentence, “But you think your friends will not understand and call you a sissy or worse, right?”  I said, “ yep! He continued, “I’m a serious and fairly tough athlete but that doesn’t mean I can’t be serious about good writing. I appreciate what others have felt about life and I have some things to say too. All I can tell you is if you need to say something, say it... write it...don’t give a damn what others think. Be true to yourself...as Shakespeare once said", and we both laughed.  Before he walked away I asked, “Whose poetry were you reading to us today?  I like to read it. He smiled and said, “Why, mine of course! A copy of my book is in the Millville library.”

From that day forward, I knew it was going to be a writer. That I could be manly and still be mindful.  I began to write instead of read in study hall. I shared some of my poems with my English teacher and said they were good and suggested I submit some I thought best to several high school writing contests. "See what others who don't know you think about them," she said, I was not optimistic but to my surprise that both my submissions were selected to appear in two national poetry anthologies - I was a published poet

After my teacher shared this recognition at a teacher's meeting, the principal put an announcement in our local paper and asked me to read the winners to thw whole school during his daily homeroom announcements on the PA system. My voice echoed throughout the school one morning.. as I read...

Autumn by Calvin Iszard

What is the fall?

Just an encore of summer’s call,

An usher of the cold

When the leaves turn red and gold

‘Tis but a final show

As the summer seems to go,

And with the Autumn moon

Winter comes so very soon.

The trees now not so bright

Tell the tale of a chilly night,

Turning to a crispy brown

A thousand leaves come gliding down.

The wispy smoke of Autumn’s fire

Seems to be Fall’s funeral pyre

As the leaves burn away

So comes the end of Autumn’s stay.

On spring morning - I was now out of the "poetry closet" and not one friend kidded me about it - thanks to a wrestler!

A BOUFFANT TRAGEDY

All week I have been seeing prom pictures on Facebook and thinking wow we didn’t show that much skin on the beach…and then I see a Mother’s Day wish and think of mom and the dress…“Mom they need chaperones for the 8th grade Spring Ball, which is semi-formal,” I yell as she entered the door from work. 

“Oh, really that’s nice,” she replied (the reply she always made when I said something about school).  “Yeah nice, but I want you to be one of them, Please!”  “Oh Calvin I...a...I have nothing to wear,” she peeped.  “Yes, you do,” I retorted. (Her closet was jammed with clothes)

“I have nice dresses, but nothing ‘semi-formal’- I have had nothing like that since you were born!” she countered.

I didn’t press the issue but I didn’t give up either and after many “discussions” about the merits of being a chaperone and how this was a civic duty and how it would help me with my final grades before high school and how much I would appreciate it and how I would be so proud that the kids would see my mom…she relented.  But said we needed to shop on Saturday for a proper dress  – and I had to help – “I know nothing about what’s in style; I haven’t been to a dance in years,” she said.  And as always when she reminisced – she got misty-eyed.

Saturday, we went to the best ladies store in town Prince’s?  Time seems to have erased the sign over the two large windows filled with mannequins in the outfits of the best dressed Millvillvians.  My mother looked and looked.  She tried on at least a dozen while I sat in a very hard chair.  This was not like we men shop.  Try it on…it fits…that was it.  “Do you like this one? she asked with a look of dismay all over her face.  “Yes, if you are going to a funeral,” I replied. (My mother always thought she was ancient and had to dress like a matron.  In fact she was one of the youngest moms of all my friends.

I had had it.  “For once why not get something in style?  The clerk interjected – “We have many of the new bouffant styles Margaret".  But not here.  They are over here in the younger section of the store.”  (Mom always looked in the plus-size section even though she only weighed in at about 115) Note: The clerk told us that one of the most fashionable Bouffant styles of 1958 was the “balloon dress” – a long shirt, narrow at the waist and then wide as it ended four or five inches below the knee.  Mom tried one in a shiny silky pink and it looked great.  “I could never wear this, it's far too too young for me!” she whimpered.  “YES, YOU COULD” – both the clerk and I blurted in unison.  It's the style!"

And after a half hour of pressure and that’s why we came – mom to my surprise (and to her too) said, “ Put this expensive dress on ‘my charge’ – as we left the shop she warned, “If I look silly it is all your fault!”  “You will look great,”  I said and I meant it.  For once mom was going to look her age instead of like my grandmother.

The big night arrived and I had a new plaid sport coat that set mom back a week’s pay.  Grey and blue and very soft - Frank of Frank’s Men & Boys told me it was called vicuna wool.  Mom surprised me with a real gardenia for my lapel – her favorite flower.  Mom took more time than I could ever remember getting ready.  She even put on eye shadow which I had never seen her wear.  And when we were ready my dad drove us to the ball.  We both sat in the back seat and adhe pretended to be our chauffeur and even popped out of the car to open our door and did a bow..

The Bacon School had a gym that doubled as our auditorium and it us was festooned in streamers and balloons, thanks to our PTA.  Mom stayed at the top of the stairs as I looked for my “date” – Billy Bailey, my latest heartthrob. (Her real name was Bertha)

And then it happened.  As my great looking mom got compliments from many of the other parents and teachers on the stairs, their perfect chaperoning perch – a classmate arrived to my mother’s horror.  Mom spotted her and immediately ran up the stairs - her face white as a sheet.  I excused myself right in the middle of a dance and followed.  “Mom are you sick?  What’s wrong?  Why are you so upset?”  “Calvin this is all your fault!”  “Me, what…why...what did I do” ?

“AN EIGHTH GRADER JUST CAME WEARING MY DRESS, THE SAME COLOR, THE VERY SAME DRESS.”   “Well, that’s great, I told you it was the latest style,” I said trying to keep her from crying.  Then mom whispered,  “I can’t embarrass her…she mustn’t see me…some old lady wearing her gown… I have to hide...I have to!” (Later in life I would learn that this was not bazaar – just a law for all females carried  in their genes and the main reason it took them so long to actually pick out a new frock)

Mom waited over an hour  in the dark hallway until the final dance and decided we should walk home.  Our “Cinderella Ball” did not end like a fairy tale....

Over the years this disaster became a family legend and the story grew with each telling. 

My mom never did try wearing another  "stylish" dress again and stuck to her plain dresses, - usually from the “last season sale” rack nor did I ever suggest a dress for her again. Many years later I bought her some outfits for Christmas, that I never saw on her....Oh well...that was mom.

But there was one positive outcome – even though she may have been tempted, she never said to me... “I told you so!”