School of Thought

In case you can’t tell, Dear Readers, this is me. And I’m acting out a scene from a recurring nightmare I had for years.

In my dream, I’m standing in front of my high school locker and for the life of me, I can’t remember the combination.

And then I won’t be able to get my books.

Or do my homework.

And I won’t graduate.

I can’t tell you how many years I had this dream.  I’d wake up shaking.

Eventually it went away.  Time, distance and a high school diploma finally eased my mind.

Until I went back to the scene of the crime.

New Trier High School, Winnetka, Illinois.

Although I have officially exited Illinois and am now residing in North Carolina…

WAIT!! WHAT?? HUH?? Don’t worry Dear Readers, you didn’t miss anything. You’ll learn a bit more about my heading for the coast in the next blog.

… A three day combination retirement extravaganza-symposium-lovefest for my fearless leader in the tricky world of crossword construction, University of Minnesota Chemistry professor George Barany, recently brought me to Rosemont, Illinois.

In the last few years, I had heard wondrous things about a facelift on New Trier. So while I was more or less back in town, I thought I’d go back and see what marvelous renovations had been done to it.

I also thought I’d have more fun if I booked a tour and invited another Class of ’67 alum, Jack.

Sidebar about Jack.  Even at thirteen, Jack had ALL the tools.  Smart, handsome, steadfast, determined- he knew where he was heading in Life.  He was the guy you would have voted “Most Likely To Succeed- In Everything.”

And sixty years on, he has.

I, on the other hand, thought of high school as a romp, a sandbox, a place to have fun.  I didn’t wise up and get serious about my work or my grades or my life or my career or my future until…

Um…never?

I’m still goofing around.

Anyhow, I had heard that you couldn’t just walk in and see the school.  Those days vanished in 1988 with a tragic local school shooting.  Horrible.

So I pestered the principal’s secretary who (unluckily for her) happened to answer the  phone. I won the day with persistence- and the fact that I flaunted Jack’s real cred and inflated my own.

Finally she caved and set up an official guided tour.

Mission accomplished, I emailed Jack and gave him the deets about how to see our old stomping grounds- Beta Version.

So on a beautiful almost-summer Thursday afternoon, we showed up, signed in through the strict security and waited for our guide to escort down the new hallowed halls.

Here’s what met us.

Wow.

Where I used to take Driver’s Ed with Mr. Schneider- the basketball coach from southern Illinois who looked like Clint Eastwood and sounded like Chet Atkins- he was always talking about the POH-lice and IN-surance- there was a brand new, shiny SCHOOL built on to our old one.

Jack and I were dumbfounded.

In awe, we gazed around at our new New Trier.

Enter Denise.  Our tour guide.

Adorable, bright, knowledgeable, enthusiastic- and looking young enough to be a junior- Denise started our tour with a bang.

She took us to the new dining hall experience.

What Jack and I had so casually called “the Cafeteria” in 1963 had been transmogrified.

Now it was three (?) glamorous dining spaces fit for vegans, vegetarians, gourmands and the most sophisticated of palates.

My mother had neither ever cooked (or shopped for groceries) in her life.  Thus I “bought.”  I had Sloppy Joes when I got lucky and drank the little cartons of lemonade for FOUR YEARS.

Not only did I now spot Coke machines glistening in the halls along with shiny vending machines chock filled with unhealthy salty snacks, but when Denise casually mentioned the sushi bar, I blacked out.

A sushi bar?

And that didn’t include a deluxe place for the teachers now to partake.

Back in the Stone Age (make that Alex and Donna Stone) all that our poor teachers had was an unseen- and I’m sure lousy- teacher’s lounge in which to chill- and escape us.

I picture dingy formica and one rusted coffee pot with a can of non dairy creamer and a couple of chipped mugs.

Now I think they swan about eating in something like this.

The tour continued in the same vein.

I had vaguely remembered “Shop.”

Maybe a vise, one lathe, an old car tire and a cracked engine block if you were mechanically inclined.  My first hint that things had changed came here.

Holy Bauhaus, Batman!

On the top floor of a gigantic glass addition that Walter Gropius would have been proud to call his own, there were drafting ROOMS and architectural CAD computers and enough room for Henry Ford to build another assembly line.  There was EVERYTHING an aspiring young Mies would need to set him on the right blueprint for Life.

Or were you drama, dance or songbird-oriented when you were fifteen?

Denise pointed out theaters – including a black box if you were avant garde- and enough rehearsal space for a roadshow company of Cats.

New Trier was always a pacesetter in the world of the Arts.  In our day, Dr. Peterman and later, Dennis Moreen, set the bar for excellence.

If any of you remember Dennis, please take a look at this.  It’s outstanding, of course, and it will give you an idea of the quality of the teacher and the product we kids could turn out when inspired by brilliance.

And when you made it big on Broadway or became a pop idol, there was now (befittingly) a New Trier Swag Store.

Run by a bonzer Aussie lady. I’m sorry that I’ve forgotten her name but we laughed and laughed as we quoted lines from one of my all time FAVE movies- The Castle.

Denise’s tour was likewise fabulous.  In between being gobsmacked, Jack and I  bombarded her with hilariously funny (to us only) reminiscences as we endeavored to explain how much those years had shaped both of us.

And we VEHEMENTLY declaimed why we would always be New Trier Indians.

Never Trevians.

The natatorium smelled exactly the same, btw.

As we made our way to the rotunda- the agora of the our old New Trier- we noticed some other things.

And the kids themselves looked shiny and new.

School was still in session and we saw purple-haired, tye-dyed, tattooed boys and girls- bright-eyed, engaged and purposeful as they dodged us in the halls.

Now this might be the time to say that I know that high school was not the be all and end all for everyone.  New Trier in our day- with its 4600 students and tough competition- was probably a nightmare for many teenagers.

If you were too shy or too tall or too short or weren’t interested in “The Waning of the Middle Ages” or “The Brothers Karamazov” (two books I particularly loathe to this day) New Trier was probably a nuisance or an anathema- depending on how sensitive you were.

But then and now, maybe high school is the last time in ALL of our lives where anything is possible.

The real world of college admissions and job searches and mortgage payments and health insurance and child support has not reared its ugly head yet. Responsibilities, gray hair, fatal illnesses, addiction issues – these are all in the future.

New Trier- and all her sister high schools schools- might have been the best of times and the worst of times but for me, it will now and forever be my field of dreams.

Dream on, Cowboys and Indians.

Dream on.