Chapter 1

Quotation

“That’s the way it happened, give or take a lie or two.”

James Garner as Wyatt Earp describing the gunfight at the OK Corral in the movie Sunset.

We were back at school on Monday the fifth of January. Before the Christmas vacation started it seemed like it would be a long time. Now that it was finished it seemed to have gone too fast or was too short. The only good thing about being back in school was that we could see each other’s new clothes. We were all about the same age and growing, so ninety percent of our presents were clothes.

It wasn’t so critical for the guys. Girls needed to stay in the mainstream of fashion or they were whatever girls were when their clothes weren’t the current styles ... frumpy, odd, or weird. I don’t know. Having heard enough giggling over the years I knew that it could be a social disaster to have the wrong clothes. No matter how new the clothes were.

Guy’s clothes didn’t change that much, so it wasn’t the same problem. Jeans were jeans; khakis were khakis, the brand name didn’t matter.

With guys what mattered was your haircut. The jocks wore a flattop. A college cut was required for those having thoughts of advanced education or trying to look preppy. Rebel types wore their hair the same as Elvis, heavy on the grease, long sideburns and ducktails, at least until the Army drafted him.

The last haircut you wanted was a pineapple. This was a lock of hair left in front and the rest cut down with a number two guard on the clippers. At the start of summer, this is the haircut parents would get their small kids to last the season. Melvins, dorks, and nerds kept their hair this way.

Then, of course, it needed to be kept trimmed, so there was the Saturday ritual, of a trip to the barbershop. We didn’t think or talk about it, we just did it. You had to keep it above your ears in what was called a whitewall. If you wore glasses the last thing you wanted was the hair to go over the sidebars. They had raised the cost of a haircut to fifty cents last year so this was serious upkeep.

I kept my college cut trimmed every Saturday if I could. If I let it go two weeks Mum would tell me I needed a dog license. If I missed a Saturday I almost always went on Monday and never past Tuesday.

The most interesting girls were those who switched to a new bra style. The ones that stuck out a lot were called ‘Nose Cones.’ That or ‘Headlights.’ Of course, any bra was also called an over the shoulder boulder holder. Yes, we freshmen had a lot of class.

Boy’s heavy sweaters with reindeer were the in thing this year. I didn’t have one but thought they were okay.

Restarting classes was the usual commotion. It was like we had never been to school before. Two weeks off and we had forgotten everything we had learned this year. We were into the fourth week of this six weeks grading period. In two weeks the first semester exams would start, so next week teachers would be starting to review for the tests.

I have been carrying straight A’s so it wasn’t a dreadful prospect, but I was still going to be prepared. I had already gone over the material that would be presented this week, so I started my own review a week early. This should give me a firm foundation for taking the tests.

At lunchtime, the usual gang was at our table. We all shared what we got for Christmas. Tom Wilson told us about an Aunt that had knitted him a sweater. The only problem was that one arm was about two inches longer than the other. His Mom forced him to wear it when his Aunt visited. It isn’t that funny really, but the way Tom described it we were all in stitches.