Locked in the 60s Tonight

This past Saturday I took the opportunity to finally a attend a high school reunion. It was not a milestone gathering, like what would have been last year's 50th anniversary, held at a restaurant for a ridiculous price of $150, ($120 if you acted early) that I passed on, but a more reasonably priced gathering at the "new" school, with tours of the building by this year's seniors.

I say "new" school, despite the fact it was opened in 1992, a gem of a building built on Battery Park City landfill at Chambers and West Street. The old 1904 building, at 345 East 15th Street is still used for education, being the venue for three separate public schools under one roof.

The $20 on Saturday got you a nice T-shirt that I didn't have to run 10K for, a lunch, a tour, and some presentations by keynote speakers, including the current principal, Eric Contreras.

Since 2017 is the 51st anniversary of my 1966 Stuyvesant High School graduation, I was placed in a 60s state of mind. As of course were the few others who I met from my era, but not my class year.

One fellow from the class of 1965 recalled with me the 2:00 o'clock or so dismissal we got on the Friday that President Kennedy was assassinated, November 22,1963. No reason was given for the exodus, and most of us believed it had to do with the earlier enthusiasm that played out in front of the school in the morning for the upcoming Saturday football game against the dreaded rival, now in the Bronx, DeWitt Clinton High School.

The current school building is its own treasure. Ten stories, with elevators, escalators and wide hallways and staircases. The cafeteria has an unobstructed view of the Hudson River. Subjects are grouped on certain floors. I forget what floor was devoted to history, but there was a plaque I spotted for my history teacher Marjorie S. Tallman, 1907-2000. She apparently was the first female faculty member of the school, and there was appropriately a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt on the plaque.

As I got older I began to think of which teachers I had that might have been born in the 1890s. I may not have had any, but obviously some were close to being born at the turn of two centuries ago. My father went to Stuyvesant as well, class of 1932, I believe. When I got there in September 1963 his chemistry teacher was still on the faculty, Mr. Lieberman. I didn't get Mr. Lieberman for chemistry, and he likely retired soon after I arrived, but he surely was born in the 1890s.

I had Miss ( I think, Miss) Tallman for a double period of of history, probably American history in my junior year. She was an animated character, and like all the teachers whose classes I was in, were devoted to their craft and good at it. They were great teachers.

I will forever remember Miss Tallman for providing the mnemonic to remember the difference between Bull and Bear trading. Whatever the reason the subject came up, she physically demonstrated being a bull, using her hands to point up alongside her head, as bull horns did, and telling us that "up" meant buying, and therefore a good market, a Bull market.

She then became a bear by using both hands again and making a downward sweeping motion of a bear on their hind legs, pawing at something, hopefully not you. This downward motion, indicated selling, and therefore was called a Bear market. I can still this woman doing this. If only I had an English teacher who animated when to use effect and affect I would have been spared years of indecision.

Last year, one of my classmates came over the house with his wife and we had dinner. Of course lots of conversation of filling in the years, but also one in which Miss Tallman came up. My friend Izzy apparently had Miss Tallman in another history period and for some reason she demonstrated something by standing on the desk.

Izzy had no memory of what point she was trying to convey, but if I were to guess I would think she was doing an imitation of William Jennings Bryan, since she seemed to always be teaching American History.

I didn't spot any more plaques, but that didn't mean I didn't remember some more people. Like our English teacher, Peter Wozniak, who also taught the Creative Writing course that the Pulitzer-winning writer Frank McCourt later taught.

Mr. Wozniak, like all male teachers, wore a jacket and tie, and was always somewhat nattily dressed. His speech was slow and measured. I'm sure there were those of us who probably thought he was gay, but that was something we didn't really pay much attention to, and anyone who was stayed in the closet in the 60s.

I will forever remember Mr. Wozniak for one day in class announcing, in a bit of a wispy voice, that the "cut" rate in his class had reached "epic proportions" and he was prepared to take action on it.

For myself, I was surprised, because I knew what cutting a class was, but I didn't know anyone who did it. I never cut a class. We weren't supposed to leave the building until afternoon dismal, even for lunch, so where did you go if you cut class? It never occurred to me that anything could be gained.

From some source my classmate Izzy told me the story of Mr. Wozniak at some point coming out of the closet and pulling up to school's 15th Street sidewalk on a Harley, dressed in biker leather with an earring in one ear and sporting spiked hair. I don't know if he revealed any tattoos.

And although I wasn't there when Frank McCourt was the son-to-be celebrity author, I do have a Frank McCourt story my wife was told when two young fellows came to the house years and years ago to install an air conditioner we bought from P.C. Richards.

It seems one of the fellows had gone to Stuyvesant and had Frank McCourt for a teacher. He mentioned this to my wife when he spotted a copy of Mr. McCourt's best-seller and Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 'Angela's Ashes' on my daughter's desk.

It seems one day Mr. McCourt came to class with an obvious shiner and a bedraggled look. Being a writer it seems he told the class of being punched by his girlfriend's former boyfriend. A Stuyvesant education gives people a lot of  memories. The fighting Irishman.

The trip down 60s Memory Lane didn't end at the school. I got home and read a story in the Times filed by Emma G. Fitzsimmons, the paper's mass transit beat reporter. I love to repeat that Ms. Fitzsimmons is from Texas, where we might assume mass transit is a stampede of cattle, Just like here.

I've commented before on how Ms. Fitzsimmons is a young lady from Texas who gets to prowl around backstage and underground, reporting on what makes the city move. She and her editors seem to be on a bit of crusade on reporting how the subway system's delays have soared and their ripple effect on the lives of New Yorkers.

The second paragraph of the piece on delays goes: Signal problems in Queens. Reports of a sick passenger in the Bronx. A train breakdown in Manhattan.

I'm certain unbeknownst to Ms. Fitszimmons she has channeled the lyrics to the 'Car 54 Where Are You?' theme song from the 1960s

You have be be a about a decade away from being shoved into a nursing home to remember 'Car 54 Where Are You?' an especially silly sitcom about a pair of New York City police officers, in patrol Car 54 from the 53rd Precinct, starring Fred Gwynne (before 'The Munsters' and 'My Cousin Vinny') and Joe E. Ross (in between lunch and dinner, probably).

The theme is as infectious as the one from Gilligan's Island, and goes:

There's a holdup in the Bronx, 
Brooklyn's broken out in fights,
There's a traffic jam in Harlem
That's backed up to Jackson Heights.
There's a scout troop short a child,
Khrushchev's due at Idlewild. (now JFK airport),
Car 54
Where are you?

There is a link to YouTube for your listening pleasure.

And to close out the day, as if my memory circuits weren't already nearly fried, there was the NHL televised playoff game between the Ottawa Senators and the Pittsburgh Penguins, opening in Pittsburgh.

The center ice logo has a huge 50 as part of its design. Fifty what? you might ask. Well 50 years of Pittsburgh being in the league. Fifty years since the NHL went from six teams to 12 teams by adding: Pittsburgh Penguins, Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Los Angeles Kings and California Seals (Oakland).

And then it hit me. The kids I saw giving tours today at Suyvesant weren't even born when the Rangers last won the Stanley Cup in 1994. Sam Rosen, a 1964 graduate of Stuyvesant and long-time Ranger announcer, who when the Rangers finally did win the Cup after 54 years, intoned that "the waiting is over," is, along with me, watching whole new sets of generations who are alive without seeing the Ranger win the Stanley Cup. (And it is not happening this year, either.)

Thanks goodness for a life expectancy that goes into seven decades.

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