Chapter 6: School Daze

“MOM, I NEED NEW CLOTHES for school!” I said as we left the building after registering Kat and me for classes. Thank heavens school didn’t start for almost a month. I was not ready for this.

In my book, it had been a disastrous day. We’d gone to the school with Mom to register for fall classes that would start the day after Labor Day. Classes themselves were pretty standard for juniors. I had English, US History, Algebra II, Biology, Speech, and Spanish I. I hadn’t taken any language in Calumet City and they said I needed two years if I wanted to get into college.

Alternatively, they wanted to put me in a shop class. Word of my refinishing a couple of bicycles and a motorcycle had gotten around the community, but I wanted to take an art class. They pooh poohed that idea as being worthless for my future, which meant my one elective would be either chorus or physical education. Like those would be a great benefit to me in college or life. I couldn’t sing a note, so I took PE. What a waste.

We toured the whole building so Kat could see where she’d have her classes in sixth grade. I could see her getting ready to throw a tantrum. This was an old school building, built near the turn of the century. The floors creaked, the steps were worn in grooves, the desks were some pre-war vintage that actually had holes for inkpots. One of the things about Calumet was that the elementary school was pretty new—as in less than ten years. This was going to be a real step backward in Kat’s mind.

The elementary school, junior high, and high school were all in the same building. High school was on the top floor, junior high on the second floor, and elementary on the first floor. The guidance counselor assigned me a locker that smelled like spoiled milk. She said maintenance would be through to clean all the lockers before school started. Poor guys. I had to acquire and bring my own combination lock and was required to leave the combination at the desk on the first day of school. They did random locker checks and advised me that I should be sure no contraband was in my locker at any time.

I really didn’t know what they expected to find.

Then we got to the dress code. This school was rigid. First of all, we weren’t allowed to wear blue jeans or athletic shoes in the school except in gym. No T-shirts could be worn alone, but boys were required to wear them or undershirts under their regular shirts. All shirts had to have a collar. Man! I wondered how Tony was going to dress for school on his motorcycle. Girls had to wear dresses or skirts and blouses. Skirts had to touch the floor when the girl was on her knees. This would get laughed out of the building in the city. The miniskirt rage had hit and a lot of girls wore skirts that barely made it halfway down their thighs.

And I’d need a haircut. The rules indicated no ‘mop-top or Beatles’ hairstyles. Boys’ hair had to be off the forehead and above the ear. I was not enthused.

Worst of all, the dress code meant that I needed new clothes. Or at least new to me clothes. I’d been dressing in hand-me-downs from neighbors and Goodwill clothes, for years. We usually got something new on birthdays and at Christmas. That was fine in a city where the clothes could have come from anywhere. Getting clothes at Goodwill out here meant that any given day I might meet someone who said, “Oh, I wore that shirt when it was new last year.” Just great!

“Don’t worry, Nate,” Mom soothed me. “We’ll make a trip into the city next week and get you what you need. I’m sure you’ll need notebooks and gym clothes, too. I want your shoes looked at. They’re getting pretty worn.”

My feet had grown along with the rest of me. I admitted that my shoes were all uncomfortable. I just wasn’t looking forward to this at all. But at least we’d get to visit the city. I was hoping I’d get a chance to stop at Camera Warehouse and get some more chemicals for my new darkroom.

The darkroom was coming together. Dad helped me build it and we painted the inside black. I had to deal with how to have a door and keep light out.

The answer turned out to be in the room itself. Mr. Barkley not only kept stuff from his own store up there, but occasionally he ‘rescued’ things from other places. I guess at one time or another, the Catholic church had heavy dark drapes that surrounded their chancel area. Behind the drapes, they hid all kinds of stuff that was only needed occasionally. They had a lectern, baptismal font, various communion services, and a bunch of other things. Right after the war, they remodeled the area and the drapes were removed. Rather than throwing them out, Mr. Barkley rescued them. I checked with him and he gave me permission to use them for a door to my darkroom and to hang the heavy drapes in front of the windows in the room. They effectively blacked out all light in the room and cut the need for the lamps to be burning all night in the windows.

Dad helped me buy the materials for the room and build it. I think he was really happy to be able to use some of the tools he’d bought through the years and never used. It took us nearly to the end of the month to get it finished.

On Monday the week after we registered for school, we took off for the city. Much to my disappointment, we weren’t going to Chicago. Dubuque was only an hour away, instead of three plus to Chicago. What was better was that we didn’t go straight to Goodwill. Mom took Kat and me to JC Penney. She sent me to look at teen boys’ wear and dragged Kat to the girls’ department.

I knew there was a method. She needed to watch over Kat and control both the style of clothes she was permitted and the amount she could spend. I had the dress code and a budget. She’d approve each item before she paid for it, but I’d be responsible for getting the biggest bang for the buck. I couldn’t believe I was being turned loose in JC Penney with that much to spend. Preaching must pay pretty well.

I followed the outline that Mom worked out after we looked at my closet. I’d returned my clothes to the closet and she inspected what was hung, making me try on several things and putting things that didn’t fit in a bag. Recycle, she said. We take things to Goodwill for others and then go in and buy other people’s castoffs for ourselves.

I know when Naomi was in school, she was forced to wear the clothes that Deborah outgrew until Naomi got bigger than Deborah. She was pretty miserable about it, too. At least it had been so long since Deborah and Naomi left home that there were no clothes of theirs left that Kat had to wear. She didn’t get all new, but at least it wasn’t family hand-me-downs.

I was five-eleven and change now and was sure I was going to top six foot—I knew. Unfortunately, that meant all my pants were up above my ankles. Most of my shirts still fit, though some of the sleeves felt tight.

I chose two pairs of slacks and two button-down shirts, underwear, and socks. Then I chose a sweater. I knew it would be cold this winter and I wasn’t sure how well the school was heated. When Mom caught up to me, Kat was dejectedly dragging a shopping bag along, obviously dissatisfied with the result of her shopping spree. Mom looked at what I’d chosen, confirmed that it fit, and paid for my stuff in about ten minutes.

Then we went to a sporting goods store and got the regulation gym shorts, T-shirt, and jock strap for me, and gym clothes for Kat. It was embarrassing to have my mother ask if the strap was the right size. I just said, “Yeah, it’s fine.” I glanced at the package and noted it was a Large. At least I hadn’t grabbed an Extra-Large or a Small. How the heck do they size these things anyway?

Our final stop was a discount shoe store where I got a pair of plain-toe black work shoes and a pair of high-top basketball shoes for gym. Kat got a pretty pair of pink shoes, a nice-looking pair of saddle shoes, and a pair of tennis shoes for her gym classes.

We stopped at a diner to eat a late lunch and then headed back to Tenbrook.

I really wanted to get my darkroom setup finished so I could start working. Of course, there were other responsibilities to take care of, too. Like laundry. Mom insisted that all our new stuff be washed and ironed before we could wear it. Guess who got to babysit the laundry in the laundromat Wednesday. Yours truly.

Mom got back to the laundromat just as I finished folding the last of the clothes. Then I had to take them home and iron them. I know that sounds like a dumb job for a guy to have, but I really didn’t mind most of the time. I sprayed the shirts down with starch and pressed them neatly, then hung them on hangers. I quickly figured out that you need to iron corduroy on the wrong side. My new slacks had a small patch on the inside of the left cuff where the cord was flattened out. Not noticeable and it would fluff out the next time it was washed. I ironed Kat’s skirts and blouses, all Dad’s and my handkerchiefs, and our napkins. By the time I was finished, it was dinner time and I knew I wasn’t going to finish the work in the darkroom tonight. Tomorrow, I’d be able to start taking my equipment over.

Mom wanted to see my setup, which was natural, I guess. She volunteered to drive over to the back of the Center Marketplace with my boxes and bottles of chemicals. She even carried a box up the four flights of stairs outside the building to the top floor. With the blackout curtains up, the room was really dark until I turned on a light. This had always been a storage area, so the lighting wasn’t as great as the fluorescents in the main part of the store on the first three floors. Mom looked around the room after she’d examined the darkroom itself. I moved the boxes into the darkroom and planned to start assembling things as soon as she left. I turned to find her sitting on a little bench kind of thing that used to be in the shoe department, I guess.

“Well, this is very cozy,” she said.

“I guess it would be if there was some comfortable furniture. I’m not going to live here, though. It’s just a work space,” I answered.

“And what kind of work do you plan to do?” she asked. That was dumb. I had my darkroom.

“Well, it’s got good light control for the darkroom, so I figure I can develop and print photos. Mr. Barkley said that I could use anything up here as a prop for photo shoots if I get inspired. That’s all.”

“That’s probably enough to get you in trouble.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I can smell cigarette smoke.”

“Mr. Barkley has a chair one floor down where he sits and smokes when he thinks Mrs. Barkley won’t find out,” I laughed. “You don’t think I’m smoking, do you?”

“Well, after seeing your photos at the fair, I was a little concerned.”

“Oh. The girls didn’t really smoke the cigarettes. They just used them as a prop to get in the pose I wanted. Mom, I’m not into booze, drugs, or cigarettes. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“There are other things.”

“Like?”

“Oh, I wish I could depend on your father to have this talk. He means well, but he’s not very good at it. Did you know that your older sisters weren’t allowed to date until they were seventeen and then they had a hard and fast nine o’clock curfew? That was your father’s solution to giving them the facts of life.”

“I’ll be seventeen next month and I haven’t been out on a date yet,” I snorted.

“Oh? How about all the times you were out with Nancy Hargrove?”

“We weren’t dating. We just met up at school dances and stuff.”

“I see. Those weren’t dates. Nonetheless, I was glad when you stopped meeting her ‘at dances and stuff’ because it made it easier to tell you we were moving,” Mom said. “I can’t say you broke up because you weren’t dating. Right?”

“Right. It turned out that she mostly just wanted me to take pictures of her and give her prints. I didn’t mind much because I wanted to take pictures of her. But I guess she got her portfolio filled and didn’t need me anymore.” It also turned out that she didn’t want me to kiss her, but I didn’t tell Mom that.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Mr. Barkley said you could use things up here for props in a photo shoot. I’m guessing you don’t plan to take a lot of still lifes, though I think there are some interesting things you could arrange for them.”

“Um ... I did think I’d do a few.”

“And then that you’d have models who posed with or among things up here for you to photograph.”

“Uh ... I guess,” I said slowly. “I could have used some of this stuff when I was posing Judy and Janice. And, Mom, Patricia is an absolute natural at modeling. She has ideas about how to move and then she moves and freezes, moves and freezes, so I have an opportunity to capture the next pose. Of course, the only prop we needed for her was the motorcycle.”

“That was a rather provocative pose,” she said.

“She wanted that to give to her boyfriend. Then they suggested I show it. It’s really a good picture,” I defended myself.

“I am not criticizing, Nate. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m trying very hard not to be judgmental about things. Professor Cassel at Garrett counseled our class regarding assuming that because we were ministers, we were also appointed judges. I’ve been called to minister, not to judge. So, what I have to say is not directed in suspicion about any one or all of the girls you have photographed, be it Nancy, or Judy, or Janice, or Patricia. I’m concerned about you being up here alone with any of them.”

“I’m not going to bring girls up here to make out with, Mom. Mr. Barkley kind of talked to me about that, too. It would be against our understanding on the use of this space,” I said.

“I’m glad you take your understanding seriously. I was told, however, that last year at camp, you refused to sign the pledge.”

That kind of pissed me off. A preacher at camp had given us a long lecture about how terrible and disrespectful sex was and pressured everyone to sign a pledge of abstinence until marriage.

“Mom, I don’t plan to get married for a long time. At least until I’m out of college and maybe a long time after that. I don’t think that a fifteen-year-old should be coerced into signing a pledge about something they really have no understanding of. It wasn’t because I planned to go out and start having sex right away. It was because I didn’t like being guilted and bullied into committing to something for when I’m an adult when I was still a child.”

“I’m proud of you,” she said, cooling my heating temper with her calmness. “You’ve always been pretty level-headed. It’s not you or your behavior that I’m directly concerned about. It’s others who you might ask to ... uh ... model for you. They might have different expectations.”

Mom fidgeted around on the bench in a way very unlike her kind of stiff religious persona. She continued.

“Photographers, musicians, theatre people, and probably sports stars all have a more open view about what might be acceptable behavior between the sexes. In private, a girl might allow herself to be freer in what she does and how she poses for a photographer. She might believe that freedom is because there is something special between the two of you. Even if she doesn’t suggest sex or even appear to make herself available for it, she might be thinking that it would be a good opportunity with a nice guy to try out more than just having a photo taken. It is a situation rife with possibilities for misinterpretation and hurt feelings. She might justify her poses, like Patricia did, as something she’d only do for her boyfriend. Only, unlike Patricia, she might be thinking you were going to be her boyfriend.”

“Wow, Mom. Do you really think Judy or Janice would be like that? They dress up in costumes all the time. Taking a picture of them is just a natural extension of their costume play.”

“I’m not making a judgment on any of your models, Nate. I’m warning you to be watchful and cautious that you are not making an unspoken contract that you will regret in the future. I’m not unaware of changing moral values. It seems to be cyclic. My mother in the early twenties had far more liberal morals than I did growing up in the thirties. I have no doubt, seeing the news of the hippies and war protesters and civil rights protesters, that we are shifting the other way again. Who am I to decide that one is wrong simply because it wasn’t the way I behaved? And I can’t even say that my own behavior was always stellar. But I believed, and I convinced your father, that our behavior implied a long-term commitment and that we would get married. I guess it is my own behavior I am warning you about in others.”

I did not know what to do with the information I’d just been given. I just stood there in silence.

“Well, I’ll get back home and start dinner preparations. I know you want to get started putting your equipment together. Just remember that if there is ever a time you want to ask something, please do. I will continue to try my best to be non-judgmental.”

“Um ... Mom? Next weekend the State Fair starts and runs until Labor Day. I know it’s a long way to Springfield, but is there a chance we could go one day? I’d really like to see how my photos do in the broader competition and would like to see what kind of photos are being exhibited by others.”