I missed writing about this because of my trip outta town but fifty years plus one week ago today, I graduated from University High School in West Los Angeles. It was June 19, 1969, a date I thought would never come. Couldn't wait to get outta there.
To me, school was something you just had to get through. At the time, I thought I'd learned very little there and in terms of Math, Science, Foreign Languages and other subjects like those, I was right. What I did learn in those areas, I retained only long enough to pass the necessary tests, after which a little "You'll Never Need To Know That" filter in my brain released that information into the wild. I learned a few lasting things about English and History but a lot more from my outside reading and the watching of documentaries and such.
But from the awesome vantage point of hindsight, I later realized that I learned much that was of value at Uni. Most of it had to do with interacting with other human beings: How to get along with them, how to minimize contact with those you simply couldn't get along with, how to treat others, etc. One nice thing about high school is that you can make a fool of yourself before everyone and then, once Graduation Day is over, you have a kind of fresh start. You never have to see those people again.
There were however several classmates I very much wanted to see again…a few male friends and three young ladies on whom I had what one might politely call "crushes." The part of this story that involves them will have to wait for the second part of this tale which I will post tomorrow. Right now, lemme tell you about the graduation ceremony…
That grand event was directed/choreographed by Mr. Rudoff, who was the boy's vice-principal. Mr. Rudoff was a nice, long-suffering administrator but he wasn't the swiftest adult on campus. He proved to be a lot more competent at sending students to detention and expelling them than he was at supervising the big show.
Our graduation exercises took place on a big athletic field and thousands of folding chairs were rented and set up for us and our families to sit in. On the north side of this field, there were some raised areas like steps but with dirt and grass in them. Our chairs were placed along them, facing south. Our families and guests were in rows facing us to form the audience. The podium from which various speeches would be made was at the center of the "stage" facing the audience so we mostly saw the speakers' backs.
Mr. Rudoff concerned himself primarily with us making our entrance, which was a long process since there were close to six hundred of us. It had been decided for some reason that we should march in in size-place, shortest kid in the front, tallest kid at the end. Half of a full rehearsal day was taken up just with figuring out who was in what position and we all could have thought of about eighty more efficient and quicker ways to do this than the way we did it.
He more or less had us all line up figuring out for ourselves where we should be — and that alone took half-an-hour. Then he went up and down the line saying, "No, she should be ahead of you…no, you should be back about ten places…no, he should be ahead of you…" The line was so long that at times, he had to use one of those electronic bullhorns to address us all: "Kid in the blue plaid shirt, you should be ahead of the girl in the pink top…"
Once we were all in line, each of us was assigned a number ranging from #1 (the shortest) to #585 (the tallest). Naturally, the front of the line was mostly girls and the end of the line was mostly boys. I felt sorry for one poor girl who was a hair over 6-feet tall and very self-conscious about it. She was pretty darned embarrassed to be #555 when everyone else in the last three-fifths of the line was male.
Mr. Rudoff reminded us about three times a minute for the rest of the day: "Make sure you remember your number!" I did. I still do. Being 6'2" (I would later grow another inch), I was #572 — and isn't it amazing that half a century later, I still recall that? I don't recall one thing that I learned in Chemistry other than that I hated Chemistry but I remember I was #572 at the graduation ceremony. I guess that filter in my brain decided that fact might prove useful eventually…say, when I wrote this article fifty years later.
We all filled out and handed in cards with our names and numbers. That was so our diplomas could be put in the proper sequence for us to each be handed ours as we filed out in the same order we'd filed in. If they'd just marched us in as per alphabetical order, someone would not have had to spend hours arranging the diploma piles.
The chairs were set up in six rows of 100 each and they were all numbered on little strips of tape someone had affixed to them. As we rehearsed filing in, the first kid in line took Chair #1, the next took Chair #2 and so on. Mr. Rudoff told the kids with #101, #201, #301, #401 and #501 to remember to start a new row, I guess he assumed that they wouldn't know to do that after the kid ahead of them took the last seat in his or her row.
We spent what now seems like many hours practicing our entrance. Things kept getting bollixed-up well ahead of me but finally, there were two runthroughs in a row where my ass wound up on Chair #572. Since everyone else ended up in the proper seat too, Mr. Rudoff pronounced us sufficiently rehearsed on entering. We then practiced exiting, which was a lot easier. On cue, Student #1 would get up and walk to where the Principal would be standing at a table with someone handing him envelopes, each with a student's name and number on the outside and the correct (it was hoped) diploma inside.
Student #2 would be right behind Student #1 and Student #3 would be right behind Student #2 and so on. How could that possibly go wrong? Just you wait. Just you wait.
Each of us would be handed the proper envelope (maybe) and then we were free to march over to our friends 'n' family in the audience and disperse forever from there. An announcement was made that some students would not have diplomas in their envelopes. Instead, there would a letter stating that weren't really being graduated that day. They had one or more make-up classes to pass or some other problem to fix before that could happen.
On Graduation Day, three things went seriously wrong with all this…
Seriously Wrong Thing #1: No one had turned off the automatic sprinkler system so overnight, it had watered the folding chairs. A crew had rushed in with towels to wipe them down but when the ceremony commenced, some of them were still damp and the athletic field was somewhat muddy.
Seriously Wrong Thing #2: At the last minute, it was decided that thirty or so students would not participate in the ceremony. I don't know if those were the aforementioned students who wouldn't be receiving their diplomas or if there was some other criteria. Whatever it was, it created around 30 holes in the lineup. Mr. Rudoff (I guess) decided that they didn't want those empty seats and it was too late to renumber from scratch…so the last thirty of us were reassigned to those places in line.
I was still #572 but now #572 came between #32 and #33. both of whom were girls who were each 5'3". It wasn't as bad as it could be. When we took our seats, my weight and the muddiness of the ground caused my chair to sink about an inch-and-a-half into the mud and bad posture lowered me an inch or two more. I still felt like Gulliver seated among the Lilliputians but I didn't tower over those around me as much as I might have.
Which brings us to Seriously Wrong Thing #3: The overnight sprinklers had not only moistened the chairs but knocked a lot of them over. Whoever set them all back up apparently had heard that we'd lost thirty graduaters (if that wasn't a word before, it is now) and they decided that while they were at it, they might as well rearrange so the last row wouldn't be half-empty. Instead of six rows of 100, we now had five rows of 111, so all that concern about which students would start a new row was out the window —
— and I just remembered a Seriously Wrong Thing #4: At the last minute, someone ruled that twelve or so of those who'd been told they couldn't be in the ceremony had to be in the ceremony. The grounds crew people scurried out to get a dozen chairs off the truck and then they had to figure out where to put them and how to get those twelve last minute additions into them…
That plus Seriously Wrong Thing #2 meant that when you got to the spot where the principal would hand you your diploma, the diplomas were not in quite the right order and…oh, it was a mess.
But we didn't care. At least, I didn't. I was finally getting out of high school!
The speeches were deadly dull…a few of my fellow students and a couple of administrators, all talking about Tomorrow and The World Ahead Of Us and The Future Being Ours and How We Owe It All To University High School and I didn't care because I was finally getting out of high school!
The main oration came from Tom Bradley, who in June of 1969 was the former track star, L.A. police officer and city councilman who had recently been defeated in his first attempt to unseat Sam Yorty as the Mayor of Los Angeles. A few years later, Mr. Bradley defeated Yorty in a rematch to become the only African-American Mayor of Los Angeles and the longest-serving Mayor of the city. But that day, a lot of my fellow students remarked that it said something about our graduating class that we were being addressed by a loser.
What did he say in his speech on my graduation day? I haven't the foggiest. I wasn't paying attention and why should I? All that mattered was that I was finally getting out of high school!
Plus, most of my attention was focused on my immediate, post-ceremony mission. I'll tell you how that turned out in the second part of my Graduation Day Memories, which will be posted on this blog tomorrow.