in the middle way only fight to recover what has been lost and found
East Coker, V (last section):
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate—but there is no competition— There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
From Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), (Harcourt, Brace & Company: New York, 1943) by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965).
I was out walking today in the low country South Carolina town of Bluffton.
Bluffton is part of the reason that this part of South Carolina is showing the fastest growth of almost anywhere in the United States.
Its a small town that back in 1990 had less than 900 people and now has over 40,000.
Things are coming to town like stoplights and roundabouts and sidewalks.
All things going modern and very fast.
Yet, as I walked down the sidewalk I noticed the east west straight line path of the sidewalk took a big loop that was out of line.
See, someone on the town planning commission noticed that make a nice, straight sidewalk, the city would have to take down a long leaf pine tree.
There are two types of pine trees that grow in the low country.
The lob lolly pine, the lumbermans delight, is fast-growing, especially in its first 50 years. Because of this, it’s heavily used in timber and pulpwood plantations where trees are typically harvested at 25–35 years old.
The long leaf pine can is much slower to mature. In its “grass stage,” it may stay low to the ground for up to 5–7 years, putting energy into its root system before shooting upward.
These trees can stick around for 250 to 300 years and some have been documented to have lived 400 years.
In an age when you can’t fight city hall, someone decided this tree which was here before we were and will most likely be here when we are gone, was worth making the effort to make a loop in a stretch of sidewalk.
For some reason, I found comfort in this.
For some reason, I found confidence that there is something here worth the fight.
the greatest moment in sports history and I … was there to see it
I am NOT the world’s biggest sports fan.
I know there are those who might argue that, and to those I respond that if anyone think’s that I am a big sports fan … has never met a big sports fan.
Sure I like Michigan sports but regular readers will know that its a family thing going back over 100 years so I come by it honestly.
Sure I have a lot of Michigan emblazoned stuff, but most of it was gifts so again, I come by it honestly.
Yes, I did just order myself a M Football Jersey for this year’s #42 but then this year, Michigan player wearing #42 happens to be named Jalen Hoffman so I can get a personalized jersey without ordering a personalized jersey so I come by it honestly.
The CEO of the company I used to work for was fond of saying, “33% of Americans love sports. 100% of American’s who love sports think EVERYONE loves sports.
I can agree with that.
I can also agree with the great sportswriter (and stepson of EB White) Roger Angell when he wrote …
“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable.
Almost.
What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives.
And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved.
Naïveté — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
With that in mind, I have witnessed a couple of great moments in sports.
Along with my good friend, Doug, I witnessesed what was billed as a double header between The Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers at Comiskey Park back in 1979.
The 2nd game of the double header was never played as between games a riot took place when 8,000 fans rushed the field to take part in what was called Disco Demolition.
It might not have been sports but it has gone down in history as the world’s WORST sports promotion of all time.
And I was there.
Also with Doug, I witnessed Anthony Carter score a touchdown to beat Indiana with no time on the clock in Michigan Stadium.
Also in Michigan Stadium, I saw Desmond Howard fly 20 yards horizontally over the field for a touchdown to beat Notre Dame and win the Heisman Trophy.
I saw Willie Horton hit a pinch hit home run to beat Texas and give Mark Fidrych another win in Tiger Stadium.
But the greatest moment in sports I ever saw happened in the gym at Crestview Elementary School in Grand Rapids, Michigan when I was in 4th grade.
Grand Rapids Crestview Elementary – The Gym was the two story structure on the Left – That round cornered room was ‘my’ library – the doorway to the right of the library led to a flight of stairs down to my safety corner where Crestview students exchanged pleasantries with the kids on the Blessed Sacrament Bus which, I as the safety did nothing to suppress.
Back then, we didn’t have Phys Ed or a regular gym class but every other week or so, a Gym Teacher assigned to our school would show up and we would change into out gym shoes that hung on the back of our chairs, and file down to the gym for some directed physical activity.
(BTW to this day it is ingrained in me to ‘respect the hardwood’ and I cringe when I see people in street shoes out on a court but I digress.)
Aside from that, we would go the gym when our teacher needed a break or when she sensed we had a lot of pent up energy, like before Christmas when emotions ran high.
Without the Gym Teacher, it was up to our regular teacher to come up with something easy to do in the gym.
And the easiest thing to do in the gym was to get out a bunch of those big red rubber four square balls … and play dodge ball.
My 4th grade class met the usual demographics for 4th grade.
It was around 30 kids, half girls and half boys with some big kids and lots of little kids.
There were always a few kids who were born late in the year and started late and were ahead of the rest of us physically.
And then there was Cookie.
Cookie was the nicest kid, always had a big smile and a laugh.
He was just … big.
And he loved to play dodgeball.
When it came to dodgeball, he didn’t see the rest of us as kids but as targets.
Cookie didn’t just play dodgeball with us.
He played with us, playing dodgeball.
Ever see those videos of dogs herding sheep or maybe better, jackals circling a herd of water buffalo?
We would get to the gym and our teacher would go into the storage closet and toss out those rubber balls.
You remember those red rubber balls, don’t you?
The were red.
The were rubber.
And the surface was roughed up so you could get a grip on one.
The rough surface also had a way of grabbing onto you if thrown hard enough, and taking most of the skin off wherever it hit.
With the balls out on the gym floor, our teacher would get out of the way and Cookie would take over.
Cookie was such a master at this game that when word went out that the 4th grade and Cookie were playing dodgeball in the gym, other teachers realized they needed to go to the office for something and leave their classrooms to stand in the gym doorway and watch.
There would be a mad rush to start as we tried to survive.
The girls would usually pick up a ball and toss it at another girl to get out quickly.
I not too proud to admit, the boys would do the same thing.
But to get out quickly just delayed the inevitable since when who ever got you out, got out, you were back in.
The only way to the sidelines and safety was to let Cookie get you and get it over with.
Cookie playing dodgeball was art in motion.
He could throw and throw hard.
He could catch.
And he could dodge anything.
He once set his sites on me so I stood behind a friend of mine for safety.
Cookie flexed his fingers as he threw and that ball spun and curved in flight right around my friend and smacked me in the face.
Like I said, Cookie was the nicest kid.
He took it easy on the girls.
There was an unspoked agreement and the girls could run at Cookie and throw a ball at him which he would catch and the girl could go safely to the sidelines.
If I would stand up straight in the middle of the gym floor, Cookie would have mercy and finish me off with a nice easy throw that if it hit me on a bare arm, would leave a mark only for a day or two and I could walk off.
But show detemination?
Show courage?
Make an effort to get Cookie out?
And you were doomed.
Unless you had a plan.
For a long time, the third-baseman-playing-close-to-close-the-cone theory made popular by Graig Nettles of the New York Yankees stuck in my mind.
I thought about dodgeball late at night and I had figured that if I ran in close to Cookie and closed the cone, I would decrease the amount of time the ball had to pick up speed, and maybe I would have a reasonable chance to catch the ball and put Cookie out.
It might have worked for Graig Nettles but I doubt it and it didn’t work for me.
Let me tell you though, if Graig Nettles had been with us in that gym and been hit with a Cookie fastball, he would have given up on the idea, like I did.
All the time the game was going on, balls flying, kids flying, kids screaming, Cookie waded through the battle with his big smile on his and slowly but surely, knocked everyone in class out, every time we played.
Understand, Cookie played without malice but with a joy for the game and the fact that he played dodgeball so well.
Then came the day.
As I remember it for the sake of this story, it was a gray rainy Michigan day which meant no recess and our teacher went to the office to reserve the gym for our class.
When she came she announced no outside recess and to change into our gym shoes.
“Let’s play …”, and she paused, “dodgeball.”
The room took on the feeling of an NFL locker room for a team about to play the ’85 Chicago Bears.
We all changed into our gym shoes in silence while Cookie smiled his smile.
As always there were a couple of boys who were up for the game.
Walking down the hall to the Gym, Cal and Sylvester and Edward and some others would be trash talking Cookie.
“Today’s the day, Cookie!”
“You going down, Cook!” … and other such phrases.
Years later when people complained about the Fab Five Michigan Basketball team and their trash talking, I told folks, they hadn’t heard anything like my 4th grade class.
Tension and excitement built up down that long walk to the gym.
Once inside the gym, we scattered but there is no place to hide on a gym floor.
I can hear the sound those bouncing red rubber balls made when our Teacher tossed them out onto the gym floor.
She looked around, counted one … two … three and blew her whistle.
And the game was on.
Get Cookieearly was the strategy, when the early melee was starting, filled with confusion.
But even if someone did get a chance to get a throw at Cookie, he would catch any ball like an all pro wide reviver.
Cookie was so quick and he got one of two of balls early and started picking us off, one by one.
Within five minutes, half the class was the sidelines.
As the sidelines crowd grew, so did the ohhhsssssss and ahhhhhs like what you hear at the 4th of July fireworks as one kid after another was blasted out of the game.
There would be an occasional burst of action when someone who had managed to get other kids out, got out themselves and those kids had to get back in the game.
Soon it was down to 6 kids then 5 then 4 and then all that was left was Cookie, Cal and little Stevie.
Stevie was one of those kids who always had a smile on his face no matter what.
Stevie was quiet but always gave 100% no matter what the class was doing and he was always up for any game in the gym.
Now Stevie and Cal faced off with Cookie
Luck was with them and they had all the rubber balls and Cal and Stevie were able to work Cookie into a corner.
Cal motioned to Stevie and they both approached Cookie at the same time along opposite walls with a ball ready to throw.
Great strategy!
I can still see Cal staring straight ahead at Cookie while he gestured to Stevie to move in along the other wall.
They got to within 20 feet when Cal nodded at Stevie and they both threw as hard as the could at Cookie at the same time.
Cookie jumped to one side and caught Cal’s throw one handed.
Cal was out.
Stevie’s throw missed.
Cookie stood up and smiled.
Stevie ran for the other two balls which he threw as he ran and Cookie dodged easily.
Now Cookie held one ball and all three other balls were behind him.
Stevie stood alone in the center of the gym.
And they stared at each other.
Then Cookie taunted Stevie and he rolled the other balls out, daring Stevie to make a move to get one.
Stevie didn’t move.
Cookie took a step or two closer and faked a throw.
Stevie didn’t flinch.
Then Cookie stared at Stevie, drew a bead, as they say, on him and fired off the single hardest throw in dodgeball history.
Faster than a bullet, it hit Stevie full in the chest with a loud red rubber ball WHUMP and knocked him off his feet into the air and back about 5 yards.
I want to say it knocked Stevie out of his shoes, into the air and he fell hard, flat on on his back and then slid about 20 feet on the polished hardwood.
No one made a sound.
Stevie laid there on the gym floor.
We first thought he was dead.
Little Stevie just laid there.
When the ball hit him, his whole body had kind of crumpled up, arms and legs, in a tangle and Stevie just laid there.
Stevie just laid there and there, against his chest, under his arms and legs … was the ball.
The gym was silent.
We looked and looked again.
Cookie looked and looked again and then looked down.
Yessir, Stevie had wrapped himself around the ball and landed on his back!
It had happened!
Little Stevie had caught the ball!
Cookie was out!
Cookie for a second stopped smiling then he nodded with appreciation at what had just happened and smiled.
Stevie got to his feet, his arms still wrapped around the ball like he was never going to let go and his face was one big smile.
The Gym exploded with that the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball.
It was the greatest thing in Sports I had ever seen and will ever see.
night sunrise daylight sunset nautical twilight astronomical!
There are a lot things that someone who spent the first 50 years of their life in the Great Lakes state of Michigan has to adjust if they move south.
A lot of things, LET ME TELL YOU!
You do adjust.
I once went to a company breakfast, got a bowl, broke a biscuit in half and put it in the bowl, put some sausage patties on the biscuits, covered the sausage with scrambled eggs, added some grits on top of the eggs and covered it all with sausage gravy … and never thought nothing about it.
But I digress.
Something no one ever mentioned to me is what happens to twilight when you move south.
I now live in Bluffton, SC which is almost 1,000 miles south or 10 degrees of latitude (32°14′14″N to 42°57′48″N) south of Grand Rapids, where I grew up.
Look out the window and you see the orange sky of sunset.
Put on your shoes and go outside and by the time your get outside, its dark.
Using the wonderful calculator at https://suncalc.net/, I learned that in Grand Rapids, the difference between official SUNSET and NIGHT is 110 minutes while in Bluffton, due to curvature and angle of the earth, it is only 86 minutes.
This is defined using the wonderful delimiters of sunrise, sunset, daylight, night along with civil twilight, nautical twilight, astronomical twilight.
24 minutes may not seem like a lot but when it gets dark down here, someone hits a switch and it’s dark!
There is none of the lingering twilight that I remember as a kid growing up when the twilight went on forever.
Garrison Keillor once wrote (or said) that … “kids didn’t need a watch; they could tell time by the sun. Noon was when your shadow was shortest.”
I know what Mr. Keillor means.
Growing up I never wore a watch but always seemed to know what time it was.
Seems to me that the rule was to be inside “when the street lights came on” and with the lingering twilight of Western Michigan, we could be outside for a long time.
The City of Grand Rapids had a moment of wisdom somewhere in its history and the city officially adhered to what was the called the CITY SCHOOL/CITY PARK PLAN.
This plan called for large public parks to be built up around public schools so that neighborhoods got fields and playgrounds that the kids used for recess during the school year.
Schools weren’t surrounded by businesses or factories, but by a ball field and a black top and playground equipment and some woods if possible.
In our neighbor, the school was Crestview Elementary.
It was built during the baby boom expansion of the North End of Grand Rapids.
It was U shaped with the main entrance, which kids never used, at the outside top of the U and a blacktop connecting the two arms of the U.
The black top had a basketball court painted in thick yellow lines along with more yellow lines for hopscotch and four square.
Across the black top was our playground.
It was a square, surrounded by a chain link fence with gates at the bottom and on the right, if you had your back to the school.
It had a merry go round of heavy, thick rusted metal that screamed “get a cut, get tetanus” and it was on some sort of spindle that groaned and moaned as it spun over a concrete base with space just wide enough to stick your arm under and get it sliced off with no trouble if you weren’t careful.
Every once in a while, the mechanism got lubricated or something and with a couple of kids pushing, you could reach g forces that rivaled a NASA centrifuge and if you weren’t careful, you could let go and fly across the playground.
A few rides on the merry go ground and you were also ready to lose your lunch if you didn’t sit down for a while.
Across from the merry Go round were the blocks and barrels.
The blocks were big concrete blocks with letters about 3 feet wide on each side and must have weighed a ton each.
The were piled up for us to climb on and crawl over.
The barrels where sections of giant water pipe at least 4 feet in diameter as when we were in the lower grades, we could walk through them standing up.
Little kids walked through them.
Bigger kids ran and jumped to sit on top which was no easy feat as there was nothing to grab on top so you could go up and right over and right over and down head first.
The biggest kids and the dare devils would stand on the barrels and run and jump from barrel to barrel.
As I remember, there where five barrels in a line that was slightly curved and they were spaced further and further apart so you had to get your speed up to make that last jump as well as keep your footing on the very top of the barrel and since they weren’t lined up the chances of landing off center and losing your footing was very real.
Did I mention these barrels were also made of concrete?
Thank goodness for sneakers!
In the corner of the playground, opposite the merry go round was the monkey bars.
This was a scaffolding type arrangement of polished slippery pipe, in the circular shape of rocket and must have been about 20 feet high OR almost two stories!
You could climb and jump off or climb and hang down from the top INSIDE the monkey bars and drop.
Or you could climb and be pushed.
There was also a set of three sliders.
Two were about 10 feet high and then there was THE BIG SLIDER.
It also must have been about 20 feet high.
For a little kid, it was a vertical climb up a steel ladder to a 2 foot square platform with low rails.
It was better than any Cedar Point thrill ride and the threat of death was real!
There were teeter totters, horse swings and little kid swings.
All made made with heavy duty lumber and rusted metals with lots of sharp edges and splinters.
Across from this playground were the BIG SWINGS which were in there own chain link space and were supposed to be just for the upper elementary kids.
As I remember there was also an argument of morning recess vs afternoon recess and if the swings where reserved as BOY SWINGS or GIRL SWINGS.
Seems like no one ever knew, but you called if for your gender if you wanted to swing but for the most part swings were not much noticed but the big kids.
Past the playground was our field.
It had a pretty sad baseball diamond but it was huge expanse that went on forever.
It also had some steep hills were we would go sledding in Winter time but we couldn’t bring our sleds to school so me made slides on the hill that we slide in on in our snow boots.
Also in winter, the field was were we would have snow ball fights, usually the 6th grade boys against everyone else.
This was against the rules and every once in awhile participants would be marched off for a talk with the Principal but the snowball fights were always part winter recess.
It was as if the school and the Board of Education provided all this equipment and parkland to enougrage us to go out and get killed or at least maimed for life.
And here’s the thing.
I don’t remember one time when anyone was badly hurt or that an ambulance had to be called.
Today, schools would have an ambulance parked at the playground entrance.
Oh sure, the rumor flew around once that Timmy Sugiyama slipped jumping barrels and ‘CRACKED HIS HEAD OPEN’ and we came running to see.
I expected to see Timmy lying there with his skull cracked like an egg with his brain all over like a broke yolk but he was gone by the time I got there and Timmy later showed up with a big bandaid on his forehead and that was that.
This was during school mind you.
During the school day.
When school was out of it was summer time, this was out neighborhood park and often you would find your way to the park and just as often, friends from school would be there.
Back then kids didn’t need a watch; they could tell time by the sun. Noon was when your shadow was shortest.
And twilight was when you met your friends at the park.
Because in Michigan, twilight went on forever.
the blocks of Crestview Elementary – How a red and gray O was allowed I do not know
high school I went to does not exist any more … but it is still there
Grand Rapids Creston – 1968? (note the Christmas Tree Lot)
Came across this old photo and as I remember it, Grand Rapids Creston High School was built in 1927 as the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, spread north and started to wrap around the far away from downtown, Kent Country Club.
Enough families now lived north of Leonard Street a new high school was needed.
A community effort was made to choose a suitable mascot for the new high school and as it was on the North End of the city, the community picked out Polar Bears and the Creston Polar Bears joined the Grand Rapids City League Athletic Conference.
When opened, there were classes from 7th to 12th grade in the new high school.
My Dad grew up on the North End and graduated from Creston in 1936.
He had been bumped up two grades along the way at Plainfield Elementary and was only 16 years old and had been moved up into the same class has his sister, Marion.
For the rest of his life, my Dad was against any kid being bumped up a grade or two.
For sure, it guaranteed he was the smallest kid in class, which was something most of us Hoffmans did not need any help understanding.
But it also meant that he graduated from Dental School in Ann Arbor in the Spring of 1942 (he was on a fast track of two years at Grand Rapids Junior College and then three years in Dental School without needing an undergraduate degree).
Which made him available for service in the Army of the United States.
He always thought that had he not been bumped ahead in elementary school, he might have been allowed a deferent to finish Dental school and entered the army later or maybe have missed all of WW2 which would have suited him just fine.
My Dad had a pretty good WW2, being the Dental Officer in a headquarters unit in Europe for 3 years but for the rest of his life, camping or spending time in a tent held no attraction for him.
After the war, my Dad returned to the North End, moved his practice from Leonard Street, to Plainfield Ave. and set up housekeeping with my Mom just east of Riverside Park.
They had 11 kids and all of us went to Creston.
By the time I started at Creston, it was a HIGH school of 10th to 12th grade and there were four city high schools, Central, Creston, Ottawa and Union, in Grand Rapids.
My Dad’s office was just down the street so we had a ride to school but a long walk home.
I remember once being in the car with my sister, Lisa, with my Dad driving and he says all of sudden to my sister, “Is it your birthday?”
Lisa said yes it was.
Dad then said, “The sun was in my eyes just like this that day when I drove Mom to the hospital when you were born.“
As little kids we would go to events at Creston starring our big brothers and sisters in plays and choir concerts, so we were familiar with the building.
Most of my brothers and sisters where in the Creston Choir or Madrigals and back then, the thing to do was make a record that they could sell to raise money for who knows what.
I remember this as we at least two of each album in our stacks of records because we usually had at least two kids in the choir at any time so my Mom had to buy two albums.
Every Christmas, a forest appeared in front of the high school for the Athletic Club Christmas Tree Sale fund raiser.
We got our Christmas trees there for years and as a little kid, I thought they grew there.
Creston was a building built like they built buildings in 1927.
Designed to be bright inside, there were lots of windows in the classrooms and hallways.
Tall, tall ceilings in the hall ways.
Tall, tall wood framed windows that magically slid in and up and over so that the top and bottom of the windows were open for air flow.
The floors were hardwood and each room had a built in closet for the teacher.
Some rooms had little platforms for the teachers desks.
By the time I got there I knew my way around pretty good but I learned more.
In my junior year I was on the school paper but due to scheduling conflict, Mr. Eikenhout, the teacher in charge, let me work by myself during 1st hour, in the newspaper office while the rest of the class met during 4th hour.
I would often have to seek him out before class and find him in the teachers lounge and he would throw me his keys and I would let myself in.
So there I was with keys and all by myself.
I took it upon myself to really search out Creston High School.
I found my way into the 4th floor attic.
I found my way into the storage rooms behind the auditorium stage that could only be reached by a ladder bolted to the wall that went past interior windows on the air shaft so I could look down in the metal shop.
I found my way into the old coal bins under the gym and back parking lot from the days when Creston had a coal fired furnace.
I ran around so much that a security guard grabbed me one day and asked, “Just who are you anyway?”
I even got an A in Newspaper.
I was smart enough to not do anything stupid.
Well, too stupid anyway.
I admit dumping the bucket of water out the third floor window when the band was marching up the driveway was stupid.
Especially 5 minutes later when the Band teacher kicked the door of the Newspaper room open and demanded to know who did that … and I was the only one in there.
The gym was small and cramped and had to be shared between boys and girls.
The gym was so small that league basketball games were played at North East Jr. High.
The locker rooms were small and cramped (about 7 feet of brick vaulted clearance as I remember.
And there was no swimming pool for athletics.
Back then, the folks of the North End had some clout and the decision was to modernize and enlarge Creston.
A new gym and pool complex was planned and the old neighborhood next door was bought out and demolished.
One of my odder assignments came when I was called into the Principals office along with Mr. Eikenhout and I was told to go through the old neighbor and take photographs to show what it looked like.
With the Principals assignment in my pocket, I walked through the now abandoned neighborhood and went in and out of all those homes and took several rolls of film of streets and rooms and views out windows.
I gave the film to the Principal and never saw them again.
Years later, married with children, I moved back to the North End.
My oldest two boys went to Creston.
There were a little bit surprised how well I knew my way around.
But it wasn’t the same.
Sure there was the huge gym and pool but there were other changes.
Due to risk of fire, the big stairwells were all enclosed with fire doors.
The ceilings in the hallways had been lowered and most of the light from the interior air shafts was cut off making the hallways gloomy.
The floors were all carpeted and you couldn’t run and slide in your socks any more.
Instead of smelling of floor wax, the rooms and halls smelled of carpet disinfectant.
The rooms had modern tables and teachers had been supplied with new cabinets that, sadly, were made of particle board and most were chipped with doors hanging at odd angles.
The windows were sealed as a modern HVAC system had been installed.
They had modernized all the charm, for what it was, out of the place.
Just a few years later, as online education came into play and more and more people moved out the North End and the City overall, Grand Rapids no longer needed 4 high schools and the decision was made to close Creston High School.
The building and grounds had somewhat of a re-birth as Grand Rapids City High and Middle School but Polar Bears no longer.
But the name lives on.
A few years ago I was locked out of my online banking and I called customer service to restore access.
“No problem”, she said, “just let me ask you a few security questions.”
“What was your high school mascot?”
“POLAR BEARS,” I answered proudly.
There was a long pause.
“I don’t think I ever heard that one before,” she said.
that’s just an excuse to cover up history not to share the truth
“That’s just an excuse not to share the truth, to cover up history. But I believe that history is sacred – that none of us should have the right to change or alter history in any way.”
Ms. Bridges was talking about how books and movies about her experience in school, growing up in the 1960’s in New Orleans were being added to the ‘Banned List’ by parents who were concerned that the story might make their children feel bad about themselves.
And what did Ms. Bridges experience in school, growing up in the 1960’s in New Orleans you might ask?
You might not remember the name, but I hope you remember the picture.
Nothing special, says Ms. Bridges, for a six year old.
Ms. Bridges relates that she was told she would be going to new school and they might be some commotion.
Ms. Bridges says that she had grown up in New Orleans and went to Madri Gras celebrations so the idea of a ‘commotion’ didn’t make much of impression.
But at some point, that this wasn’t normal, had to sink in.
Maybe when a package of new school clothes arrived (paid for by the family of a psychiatrist who volunteered to be available when Ms. Bridges started school).
Maybe when she arrived at her first day of school and there was an angry mob on hand to voice their opinion that Ms. Bridges should not be allowed to go to that school.
Maybe when Ms. Bridges was escorted into the building that day and for many days afterward, by US Marshall’s that looked more like the starting offensive line for the Chicago Bears.
Maybe when Ms. Bridges got to her room and found that her teacher was the ONLY teacher on the school faculty who would take the her class.
Maybe when Ms. Bridges got to her room and found she was the only student in her class and would be the ONLY student in her class the rest of the year.
Maybe when she left that day and her hulking guards and the angry mob was still there.
At some point, it had to sink in.
Still, Ms. Bridges came back the next day.
And the next and the next and the next.
Her parents lost their jobs over the publicity.
And she came back the next day.
Some Mom stood outside that school each morning and each afternoon holding up a small coffin and doll that was black.
And she came back the next day.
Ruby Bridges was 6 years old.
Growing up on the North End of Grand Rapids, Michigan, I did not know many black people.
Being ignorant, I accepted that ‘White Kids” and “Black Kids” were compound nouns.
When I was in 3rd grade, my elementary school, Grand Rapids Crestview, was integrated.
So far as I know, and I was 7, it wasn’t ‘busing’ as ‘busing’ is understood but I may be wrong.
What it was was that the population of the North End of Grand Rapids exploded after WW2 and several new elementary schools, Riverside, Crestview and Wellerwood, had to be built to handle all the kids.
But the folks who moved into these neighborhoods, all stayed put in these neighborhoods and the families aged out and there weren’t enough students to keep all these elementary schools open.
At the same time, elementary schools on the South End, like Sigsbee, were overcrowded.
The solution that the Grand Rapids Board of Education came up with was to send a bus load of kids to Crestview.
It was 1967 and all at once Crestview, that had been nothing but white kids, was integrated.
I can guess that there was some ‘concerns’ but I do not recall anything happening those first days.
What happened to me is that I realized that ‘Kids’ was the noun all by itself and words like ‘white’ and ‘black’ were nothing but adjectives.
We were all kids.
And about all we thought being was being kids.
I think about that as I think about Ruby Bridges.
I never thought about what the kids, who happened to be black, felt when they were told they would be going to Crestview.
I never thought about what the kids, who happened to be black, experienced when they got to Crestview.
I lived at the bottom of the hill from school and could hear the first bell and run out the door still eating a pop tart and make it to school by the time the doors opened.
I didn’t have to make it to a bus stop and ride for an hour on a bus before and after school.
I went home for lunch.
I didn’t eat lunch in the Art Room because Crestview had no lunch room because when it was built, there were no plans for students eating lunch at school.
Life went on for all us I guess.
For myself, I appreciate what I learned and I appreciate that I had time to learn it.
Did it have a lasting impact?
For me it did.
I knew forever after, that kids were kids.
I knew forever after, that people were people.
Any other words added to those nouns were just adjectives.
Years later when my wife and I started the adoption process we had to have one-on-one interviews with the social worker.
She looks at me and asks, “What kid of child are you hoping to adopt?”
I looks her in the eye and I say, “What’cha got?“
She smiled and made a note on her pad and I said, “Hey wait, what are you writing down? What do other people answer to that question?“
“In your case“, she said, I would have expected, “Blond hair, blue eyes, someone who looks like me …”
“What happens to those people?”
“Well, that’s why they wait 2 or 3 or more years.”
Seven kids later, I would still answer the same thing.
My Mom and our 4 younger kids in the house where I grew up when I went to Crestview
BUT I DIGRESS.
The question I have is why would kids feel guilty reading the Ruby Bridges story?
Is there a story of anyone, let alone a six year old, filled with more courage, more grit, more heart, more hope or more of the eternal struggle of right over wrong then the Ruby Bridges story?
But the parents worry their kids feel guilty?
On that, Ms. Bridges said in the NBC interview, “All of the letters, all of the mail, I have little girls from all walks of life, different nationalities that dress up like Ruby Bridges, I found through … traveling that they resonate with the loneliness, probably the pain that I felt. There’s all sorts of reasons that they are drawn to my story. So I would have to disagree.“
Maybe it’s not the kids.
Maybe its the parents who worry, not about their kids, but that THEY feel guilty.
I did just say that this was a story of the eternal struggle of right over wrong.
Maybe if someone somehow lined up on the wrong side of the story, you might feel guilty.
But who wants to line up against Atticus Finch?*
But who wants to line with the Major Strassers,** the Mr. Potters of this world?***
As Huck Finn said, “… right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”
If you know better and persist in doing wrong, I bet you end up, I hope you end up, feeling guilty.
And what to do if the Ruby Bridges story makes you feel guilty?
Well, stop telling the Ruby Bridges story of course.
And force the book and the story out of libraries.
Yep that will do it, Boy Howdy!!!!
“That’s just an excuse not to share the truth, to cover up history,” Ms. Bridges said. “But I believe that history is sacred – that none of us should have the right to change or alter history in any way.”
I embrace the story of Ruby Bridges.
The story was captured by local low country artist Lisa Rivers.
You can tell a Lisa Rivers painting by her visible signature, she always paints the soles of shoes red.
It’s a story of courage, grit, heart, hope in the eternal struggle of right over wrong.
I think Ruby Bridges is a hero.
Mr. Shakespeare writes in his play, Henry V, “This story shall the good man teach his son.”
We have a print of this painting by Lisa Rivers and we have it hanging on our wall in our home.
In my book, those kids who came to Crestview are part of the same story.
To paraphrase that line from the end of the HBO series, ‘Band of Brothers’, if my Grandkids ask me if I was a hero in grade school, I can say, “No, I wasn’t a hero, but I went to school with some.
Crestview Elementary 5th grade – 1970 – me in the lower right between Steve and Cal … and sneaking a peace sign into the picture
*Atticus Finch: The Father in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, played by Gregory Peck
** Major Strasser: Evil bad guy played by Conrad Veidt opposite Richard Blaine played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie Casablanca
*** All around bad crabby old man played by Lionel Barrymore opposite George Bailey played by James Stewart in the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life
No Haiku For You 