This piece first appeared here on 12/14/14 and there's nothing to update in it…
I attended Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. Somewhere on this blog, I've doubtlessly used the joke I used all through my time there: That I was the only person on campus who knew who Ralph Waldo Emerson was. The principal thought he made radios.
There were things I liked about being at Emerson…and if I could think of one just now, I'd lead off with it. Mostly, I view my three years there as a waste of time, at least in the classrooms. Outside the classrooms, one could do a certain amount of the kind of growing-up you have to do at that age, learning (somewhat) how to get along with others. But inside the classrooms…well, I can't remember a whole lot that went in one ear and didn't trickle quickly out the other. Oddly enough, I may have gained the most valuable "taught" knowledge (as opposed to the self-taught kind) in a group of classes I absolutely hated at the time.
Students were required then to take half a semester of Wood Shop, half a semester of Electronics, half a semester of Metal Shop and half a semester of Drafting. That's if the students were male. The female ones took classes in Homemaking and Cooking and things like that. This was, of course, back when the best thing a female could aspire to be was a wife and mother. It did not escape me even then that boys could stand to learn some things the girls were studying and vice-versa. I still don't know how to sew a button on a shirt and I seem to have passed the age where that's learnable.
My problems at Emerson were not so much the classes as the teachers. Metal Shop was taught by Mr. Delak who was also a gym teacher and who talked like a prize fighter who'd taken one too many to the head. He talked in halting phrases and rarely employed a word with more syllables than letters. He was okay, I guess. My problem there was that I can't think of too many skills I've ever been less likely to need in my life than riveting.
Less okay was Mr. Platt, who taught Electronics and explained things with a thick Southern accent. He kept talking about "sotta" and I wasn't the only student who took half a semester to figure out he was referring to "solder." I had other problems with him but I had them all on a grander scale with Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. Mitchell, who taught the Drafting class and Wood Shop, was the least okay. Both he and Mr. Platt had this fixed idea of what a guy was supposed to like and be like. He was supposed to revel in the shop classes and there was something wrong with any male who didn't love that stuff. Their attitude was along the lines of "A man builds things with his hands" and you could detect the subtle insinuation that if you didn't run a drill press once a week, you were probably queer. (I typed that sentence before I realized how phallic it sounds…)
Mr. Mitchell took an instant dislike to me and I, therefore, took one to him. He obviously thought I was a smartass…which was probably true but I still think that's not necessarily a bad thing to be when you're 13. If you think you know better than everyone else at that age, there's a good chance you do…and if you don't, well, that's a good time to learn you don't.
I got through Drafting class with Mr. Mitchell and may even have shown a teensy flair for it. It was, after all, drawing of a sort and I had some interest in drawing. Also, I was the best letterer he'd seen in years. Well, why not? I'd learned from the masters, not of Architecture but comic books. At any rate, my lettering impressed him and I didn't broadcast the fact that I had zero interest in a career doing what he was teaching us.
It was when we got to the Wood Shop class that things splintered. Mr. Mitchell treated woodwork as some sort of sacred male ritual. I was not able to hide how silly I thought a lot of it was. What he taught was, to me, a potentially useful skill, not a rite of male passage and a future profession.
And yes, I know woodwork can also be an art and a very fine one…but not at the level Mr. Mitchell taught it. Over the course of our ten weeks, we were to build three items: A key rack, a memo pad holder and one project of our own choosing from a catalog of plans he had. Our grades were based not on how creative we were but on how precisely what we made adhered to the diagrams we were given.
My key rack got a "D," not because it didn't look nice or hold keys but because it didn't look exactly like everyone else's. And he further marked me down as a problem student because I couldn't hide my disinterest in Wood Shop. "We need to work on that attitude of yours," he'd say to me, once while he was holding a circular saw. It felt…threatening. My memo pad holder notched a "C-minus" and the less said about my elective project, the better. By that point, Mr. Mitchell thought I was the worst student he'd seen in years.
He reached that view about four weeks into the ten-week course. One evening, Emerson had this ghastly event called "Parents Go To School Night," designed to promote better teacher-parent communication. One or both of each pupil's parents would show up at Emerson that evening, hear an address from the principal in the auditorium, then go from classroom to classroom in a compressed version of their child's daily schedule. Instead of an hour, they'd spent fifteen minutes in each classroom listening to the teacher discuss the curriculum and then answer questions.
It made sense on paper, I guess, but whoever made up the timetable gave the parents the same barely-sufficient seven minutes we had between periods to get from classroom to classroom. We could do that each day because we knew where we were going and also, it wasn't nighttime on the campus when we were there, plus we were young enough to walk up and down stairs and between buildings that were often far apart.
My father had the fine sense not to go at all. My mother, like all those parents who did attend, got repeatedly lost and was late for most "classes." She missed one entirely because even with a huge map, she and many others couldn't find Bungalow B-22. I had a class in the well-hidden Bungalow B-22 and I thought you should have received an "A" in any course taught in it if you could locate it.
Alas, she was able to make it to the Wood Shop where she listened to ten minutes of Mr. Mitchell bragging how he taught the most important class at the school…the one that made capital-M Men out of small-b boys and gave them a profession that would serve them well in later life.
Finally, Mr. Mitchell took questions and my mother — and this will explain a lot about me to my friends — asked, "What do you do when you have a student who hates the whole idea of woodworking and is only in this class because it's required?"
When she got home, she told me, "The minute I said that, Mark, I knew I'd gotten you into trouble. He scowled, jotted down my last name and said, 'If your son feels that way, ma'am, I think you have the problem, not me.'"
The next day, Mr. Mitchell called me over to his desk. "Evner," he barked — he always called us by our last names and mispronounced mine — I met your mother last night." Only Mr. Mitchell could make the word "mother" sound like an insult. "She said you hate the whole idea of woodworking. What are you doing in my class if you hate it?"
I said, "They make me take it. I don't like doing push-ups either but they make me take gym, too."
Once again, he told me "we" needed to work on my attitude. "I teach woodworking but I also teach discipline and learning to follow instructions." He then assigned me the messiest job he had during the clean-up session at the end of class: The paint locker. You had to be real careful not to get smears of flat gloss multi-hued latex all over your jeans. As I did it, I just told myself, "Well, if I do, my mother's the one who's going to have to get it off or buy me new pants. And it'll be her fault."
For the rest of the term, Mr. Mitchell snapped at me, snarled at me and generally acted like a bad actor playing "Sarge" in one of those Marine Corps movies about making life hell for the new recruit. And the less I cared about it — and I really didn't — the nastier he got.
I had a friend named Dave who was a year ahead of me at Emerson and one day, we got to talking about Mr. Mitchell. "Has he put you in charge of the tool inventory yet?" Dave asked. I told him he hadn't. "Well, he will," Dave explained. "And when he does, here's what he'll probably do to you…"
Sure enough, a week later, I was put in charge of the tool inventory. It was getting near the end of class and I think he thought this was his last chance to make me suffer for the sins of my mother.
When you were in charge of tool inventory, you had to check the cabinet at the end of clean-up and make sure it held the right number of hammers and screwdrivers and levels and scratch awls and such. Then you had to report to Mr. Mitchell that every tool was in its proper place. If it wasn't, everyone in the class was in trouble but you especially were. No one could be dismissed to go to their next class if even one tool was missing.
The guy in my position was in charge of finding it…and responsible if it was not located. And like I said, no one could leave even if it meant they'd all be marked tardy or A.W.O.L. for their next class or miss their bus home. Legend had it that Mr. Mitchell had once made an entire class sit there during their lunch hour because of a missing chisel.
As an alternative, he also had a piece of paper that the person in my appointed position could sign. On it, I would admit I was responsible for the lost tool and I would promise to pay the full cost of replacing it. Another legend had it that a couple of students over the years had had to cough up the cost of a hammer or two.
But Dave had warned me of how this game was played. The day I was placed in charge of tool inventory, I never took my eye off the cabinet. I wasn't watching my fellow students so much as I was watching Mr. Mitchell. And sure enough, at a moment when he thought no one would notice, Mr. Mitchell slithered over to the cabinet, took a screwdriver and one of those long metal files with a wooden handle, then put them in his bottom desk drawer. Dave had told me he'd do something like that.
Clean-up that day proceeded apace. When we'd all put our stuff away, all the other students took their seats in the classroom area to await my inspection, my report to Mr. Mitchell and then their dismissal. I marched up to him and in front of the class proclaimed, "All of the tools are present or accounted for, sir." The other students, assuming they were about to be released, gathered up their books and got ready to stand and go.
"Not so fast," Mr. Mitchell told everyone. He marched over to the tool cabinet, peeked in and then returned to his desk where I was waiting. "Evner," he said. "There's a screwdriver and a file missing and you're responsible for them. No one's leaving — do you hear me? No one! — until you either find them or pay for them!"
I opened my notebook and showed him a page on which I'd written, "Mr. Mitchell's lower desk drawer: 1 screwdriver, 1 file." Then I added, "They've been accounted for, sir. You have them."
He yanked open the drawer, pulled them out and turned to the class, accusingly: "Who put these in there?"
I said, "You did, sir. At 11:44."
Mr. Mitchell glared at me. Then he glared at the students, all of whom wanted to laugh and cheer but knew enough not to do that until they were at least a hundred yards from that building. Then he chuckled like he was pleased I'd outfoxed him (he wasn't) and said, "Class dismissed."
I tried to follow them out but he motioned for me to stay. When everyone else had gone, he said to me, "You know, learning to make things and work with tools can be a very valuable skill. Now, get out of here." I got out of there.
And y'know, he was right. In the half-century since I took his class, I have occasionally had to do things I learned how to do in his class. I can't say that for Chemistry or the Anthropology courses I took later at U.C.L.A. or even for Mr. Delak's Metal Shop class at Emerson. But I do occasionally have to do something with a hammer or a saw and I know better how to use them because of Mr. Mitchell. That doesn't make up for the hard time he gave me, quite unnecessarily. It's just something worth noting.
He never apologized to me or admitted he was wrong and I never did either of those things to him. He did give me a "D" in Wood Shop, the only one I ever got in any class. When my mother saw it on my report card, she said, "Son, I'm very proud of you…but why couldn't you have gotten that horrible man to give you an "F"?
I told her, "I'll try to do better next time."