Wallace and Ladmo 51 PERFORMING ARTS and CULTURE in the MODERN ERA 54 a MORNING ROUTE 58 the GOLDEN AGE of KITCHEN APPLIANCES 59

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Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

L-R Pat holding Baby Billy, Michael and Anthony. Akron, Ohio 1945

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

These are not short stories. They are essays, ninety-five percent of which are ninety-five percent true.

Introduction 6 HEADING WEST 7 ON THE STREET WHERE YOU DON‘T LIVE 8 A SIGN IN THE DESERT… 9 LIFE IN TISDALE TERRACE 12 CRIME and PUNISHMENT 17 PAINLESS BENNY 19 DUCK ‘N COVER 23 SALMON PATTIES 27 THE GREEN GABLES 29 THOSE GODDAM WINDOWS 32 A MAN OF MEANS 34 APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR 35 WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION 37

THE COMMUNICATIONS AGE 39 THE AD-GAME HALL OF FAME 39 ARIZONA RADIO DAYS 41 A Little Show Biz 43 Pathways To Politics 45 ARIZONA TELEVISION DAYS 46 The Big Broadcast 46 The First Federal Rangers 48 Other Stars 49 Wallace and Ladmo 51 PERFORMING ARTS AND CULTURE IN THE MODERN ERA 54 A MORNING ROUTE 58 THE GOLDEN AGE OF KITCHEN APPLIANCES 59

HOPES, FEARS AND RITES OF PASSAGE 62 THE GANG AND COMPANY 62 WINNIE RUTH JUDD HAS ESCAPED AGAIN! 66 BULL HEAD - And the Rites of Passage 68 CELEBRITIES 71 A CHRISTMAS SALE 73 WHEN ―COACH MEANT TEACHER 74

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

CRITICAL THINKING IN THE B.S.A. 76 THE GREAT GOODYEAR STRIKE 79 GUNS AND BLUBBER 81 Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. 84 PHOTO PAGES 86 - 93 THE LAST GOOD WAR 94 THE WAR 94 A SOLDIER UNKNOWN - June 6, 1944 99 MAJ. RICHARD CHARLES of Her Majesty‘s Royal Engineers 102 THE GRAVEYARD 105 THE BOMBING OF PHOENIX 109 SATURDAY NOON 109 THE BOMB 110 A FEW WORDS ABOUT RACE 112 SEGREGATING FOR GOOD HEALTH 112 ARE YOU PROUD OF YOUR SCHOOL COLORS? 113 BROTHERHOOD WEEK 116 GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL 120 HIGH SCHOOL 120 Pond Scum 120 Indoctrination 121 Illusive Paths to Glory 122 The Student Government Cartel 123 The Protocols of Public Life 124 Lesser Offices 127 The Candidate 128 SLIDE-RULE BOYS 130 Slide-rule Boys X and Y (Insecurity and Lunch) 132 ADVENTURES IN SARTORIAL SPLENDOR (or ―Tracking The Illusive Dress Code.) 134 YOU ARE WHAT YOU DRIVE 138 AUTO ACCIDENT 140

Ahh SPORTS… 142 DRIBBLING WITH A DREAM (Waiting for Saint Jude) 142 GRID, GRIT, GUTS AND GLORY 146 Determining One’s Station 147 Cheese and Crackers 149 The Big Game 150 THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE JOCKSTRAP 154 GODABOBS 156 THE KNEES KNOW 158 SELLING SHOES 159

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

OUT IN THE REAL WORLD 163 THE PHANTOM OF THE HIGH SCHOOL 163 JUSTICE DELAYED CAN BE SWEET 164 MAKING THE FLAG WAVE 169 PRISON STORIES 173 A DECISION TO REST 175 MIND YOUR P's and Q's 176 HAPPY DAYS - A DISSENTING OPINION 177 FORTUNATE SON 180 ONE NATION 182

Dedicated to the memory of Harry Golden

May 6, 1902 – October 2, 1981 Publisher of The Carolina Israelite newspaper. One of our finest essayists, humorists, crusaders, and writers of life in the early to mid American 20th Century. As the title of his largest bestselling book implies, he saw that the best things happen ONLY IN AMERICA

Introduction Here at the beginning of the 21st century, everyone is talking about the great events of the past hundred years: the wars, The Bomb, the movements, the “isms.” But somewhere, lower down the ladder of human events, in a wee corner of the twentieth century, in a place called Tisdale Terrace, there was another American history. That is this memoir. On the surface, it may appear to be a collection of humorous - and sometimes poignant - essays, written by a kid, forty or fifty years after the fact. And it is. But it is also an examination - at the family, school-yard and street corner levels - of feelings and perspectives; the American experience in post-World War Two suburbia. Some Americans yearn for those times. Television called it Happy Days. And, perhaps, compared to the challenges of today‘s youngsters, they were happier. But I think being a kid is being a kid. Even in those simpler, more innocent times, the insecurities and uncertainties of youth were very real; and it seems, were no different than they are a half century later. Bill McCune, Phoenix

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Heading West Seventy-five years earlier they had come in covered wagons, but their excitement in blazing a trail and opening a new frontier couldn't have been any greater than mine. My conveyance was a big red and white Continental Trailways bus that swayed as it rolled along, and jolted from the woosh of wind as we met oncoming trucks along the two lanes of old Route 66. Like those who landed at Ellis Island, (as did my maternal grandparents) our purpose was to start a new life in a new land. Like many of them, my father had gone ahead to a foothold, then sent for the wife and family. Like everyone who has ever pulled up stakes and moved to someplace they had never been before, my imagination raced with images of what I would find when I got there. It was 1951. We were moving from Ohio to Arizona and I was six years old. Before we left Akron, my brothers and I had begun to enjoy a certain status in the old neighborhood. It took a special kind of kid to give up all the luxuries of civilized Midwestern living. Arizona - it was well known - was a land without paved roads, electricity and indoor toilets. Likely we would be riding horses to school, witnessing shoot- outs at the corral, and living in fear of raids by “bands of marauding Apaches on the warpath of death.” It took a special kind of kid. I remember the first Indians I ever saw. It was somewhere along Route 66 near Monument Valley. The driver pulled the crowded bus off the highway to pick them up. There was a middle aged woman and her ten-year old son. She wore a long deep purple skirt with a large silver Concho belt at the waist. Her blouse was a burgundy color, and around her neck was a turquoise and silver squash blossom necklace. The boy, I was disappointed to note, wore blue jeans, tennis shoes and a T-shirt - just like me. Today I would know that they were Navajos. But at that time and place I knew that they were murderous Apaches - a scouting party who would report back to Cochise, personally, and help plan the big ambush. I wondered how I could get to the cap gun I had stowed in my suitcase.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

One can imagine the apprehension we felt when the Indian boy confronted my twelve-year-old brother, Pat. I knew he was about to pull a tomahawk from under his T-shirt. I knew the arrows were about to start flying. I knew we were about to be on the bleeding side of a massacre. What I wasn't prepared for was what this blood-thirsty warrior said to Pat, “Would you please put your little baby brother on your lap so my mother can sit down?'' I guess I was relieved that we weren't going to get killed, but I sure wasn't thrilled with that “little baby brother crack”.

On the Street Where You Don’t Live We had all seen the street in a hundred cowboy movies. There was certainly no pavement and no streetlights. The sidewalks were made of wood planks, and every fifty feet or so there was a hitching post. Cowboys rode by on their quarter horses; farmers in their wagons; perhaps a lady in buckboard. There was a saloon, a general store, a dress shop run by the Widow Brown, and down at the end of the street, a wood framed church with bell tower and steeple. It was exactly what we expected our new home in the west to be. It was exactly nothing like what we found. I remember my father meeting us at the bus station in downtown Phoenix. Certainly it was not the urban setting of Grand Central Station in New York, but it was surrounded by concrete and traffic. I was shocked to see such structures as the Luhrs Building and the Westward Ho Hotel, each of which was at least a dozen stories tall. If these discoveries were disquieting, they paled in comparison to the utter disappointment I felt as we were ushered into the same old 1941 DeSoto my dad drove in Ohio. Surely, I felt, at minimum, living out west should mean that each of us would have our own pony. I'm certain I didn't know the word “betrayal'' in the summer between the first and second grades, but I knew the feeling. I had

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

convinced myself that it was going to be something akin to Gene Autry's Melody Ranch movies . What I got was Andy Hardy's Carville, USA. If there were saving graces that day, they came as we drove across town to the house my dad had rented on 16th Avenue. I saw things I had never seen before: My first Saguaro cactus, standing twenty feet tall with arms reaching toward the sky. My dad told us that southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico were the only places in the world that had them. That seemed pretty special. And I saw a mountain shaped like a sleeping camel, right on the edge of town. This wasn't a sissy little hill like they had back in Ohio. It was a real mountain, rugged and rocky and red. I figured I'd probably run over and climb to its summit, just as soon as we got home and unpacked.

A Sign in The Desert… It took a while to adjust to the idea that I wasn't going to be bedding down in the bunkhouse of a working cattle ranch. I couldn't quite understand how my parents could be so unimaginative as to insist that we live in a city that in all its essential characteristics was no different from Akron, Ohio. Then there was the final insult: They had decided to buy a regular house in a regular neighborhood. Regular bedrooms, regular plumbing; a regular yard. No corral, no barn, no watering hole. Needless to say, no cattle, no horses, no cavalry post just across the bluff. In short, it was a house that was much like each of the other houses in a new subdivision on the western outskirts of town. I don't know who told me, nor where they got their information, but it seems I always knew there were about two hundred fifty houses in the development, or as we came to term it, “in the tract”. I admit I never actually made a count. My guess was that we were about the two hundred forty-ninth family to move in. I say this for two reasons. First, I know that we paid about $1,000 less for our house - perhaps in a close-out sale - than did some neighbors for their identical houses. They had three bedrooms, one bath, a living room, small dining room, kitchen, single sized carport and a small utility

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

room. It totaled about twelve hundred square feet. The lot, by today's standards, would be considered quite large. The price, by today's standards, would be considered impossible: $8,675.xx!! The second reason I suspected we were among the last to buy was based on something I saw: A week or two after we moved in - but before the furniture arrived from Ohio—I found myself playing in a vacant lot down at the far end of the tract. It was about a half mile from our house on 25th Drive. I was with some new-found friends learning the fine art of throwing dirt clods. My eyes followed one of these missiles as it arched through the air targeting some stray canine who was so unfortunate as to have wandered across our path. The mutt was never in any danger and it seemed to know that, as it rather casually stretched its legs and took a few precautionary steps further down range. The dirt clod landed a bit to the left of where the dog has been. That I had missed was to be expected. But what was surprising—and intriguing—was the sound produced by the clod hitting the ground. Instead of a dull thud, there was a hollow, reverberating, "BOING!'' Rushing over to investigate, we found a rusting four foot by eight foot rectangle of sheet metal, laying flat on the ground, half covered with dirt. Our imaginations raced with a simultaneous fantasy: This was the camouflage covering of the entrance to a majestic cavern that would wind and fork for miles beneath the surface of the earth. We would get torches and explore its depths, and in the very last chamber, just beyond the raging underground river, we would find the chest overflowing with pirates gold and jewels! Never mind that pirates had never really worked that particular portion of the Arizona desert. We had our minds made up. Cautiously we eased our fingers under the wide edge of the metal. We knew we were breaking one of the cardinal rules of living in the desert: Don't put your fingers in places you can't see. At the count of two, we heaved the sheet upward. In other locales, one might count to three. But a piece of metal lying in the July Arizona sun probably has a surface temperature of 190 degrees. Touching it for three seconds guarantees that your fingerprints will be permanently etched there for future generations to examine.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Our discovery awaited. Up and over came the sheet metal with a crash. But we were silenced by our collective disappointment as a colony of little gray Water bugs paused from their labors and looked up at us. Obviously we had destroyed the environment of their shaded enclave. There was no cavern, no pirates treasure, no adventure. Just bugs. Given no prospects for excitement, the group consensus was that it was time to go home. But as we were about to leave, something caught my eye. It was on the sheet metal; on the side that had been lying face to the ground. Through the dirt and the grime and a bit of corrosion, I could see the faint remains of paint, letters; words; eroded hints of blue and red. It was trying to say something to us. A message. Maybe a secret message. A clue, perhaps, that would lead us to the underground cavern and the gold and the jewels. With spit and bare hands to hot metal we began to rub and scrape and chip the hardened clay. Paint smudges took the shape of letters. Letters began to form words. Our adrenaline surged. We could taste the wealth that seemed only a clue away. Finally the surface was cleaned and we stepped back for a wider view. "What does it say?'' I asked, demurring to the older guys who would be going into third grade. "Shit,'' came the reply. It seemed strange to me that someone would go to the trouble to paint such a big sign that only said a cuss word. I looked at the lettering more carefully, trying to recognize some of the words. "It doesn't say shit,'' I protested. "That's right,'' he responded. "It says, ‘Welcome to Tisdale Terrace’''. I paused and pondered. Finally I said, "I thought we moved to Phoenix, Arizona.'' "Yeah, yeah,'' he explained with the tone that is reserved for talking down to dumb little kids. "But the tract is called Tisdale Terrace. At least it used to be when they had the sales office open,'' he added. Welcome to Tisdale Terrace, I read on my own, now that I knew what it said. "Welcome to Tisdale Terrace.''

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

It would be many years before I understood the mixed feelings I felt at that moment. Once, perhaps a year earlier, the sign had stood bright and shiny for all the world to see. It offered a welcome, and a promise that you weren't just buying a house. You were buying into a community. It would be as if they had taken that small hometown you had known in the Midwest, picked it up with all its history and heritage and sense of belonging, and set it down two thousand miles away. It was a promise of instant roots in a place with a built-in identity that was as pastoral and comforting and American as Walden Pond. What bothered me, and perhaps bothers me still, is that a year later, when the houses were all sold, when the sales office was closed and the bunting pulled down, then - in a real sense - it wasn't Tisdale Terrace anymore. As families came and went, and as the city grew up around it, fewer and fewer people even remembered the name. The promise had been disposable, just like the sign we dug out of the dirt. In the big scheme of things, I guess that's all right. It's how you sell houses. Other people bought into Greenway Terrace or Madison Meadows or Foothills Village, or any of a thousand other names that people had been paid to think up. I realize that fifty years later these names are still part of the legal descriptions of the houses - along with the plat and the section and the lot number. It would be interesting to compile a list of all the instant communities that were created, then discarded, as metropolitan Phoenix grew from 90,000 to more than four million people over the decades. It might be even more interesting to see how few of the homeowners can remember, or ever knew, those names

Life in Tisdale Terrace

Tisdale Terrace was not a hotbed of the Junior League. The Spring Cotillion was not the high point of the social season, and almost no one belonged to the country club. In short, it was about as middle-middle class as a neighborhood could be.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Day to day, life was lived by day to day people, virtually all of whom came from someplace else. The kids and the families I grew up with were transplants: The Keagles from Oregon; Mulligans from Omaha; Bennets from Washington, D.C.; Roberts from Pennsylvania. I think the Pooles were from Oklahoma. There were others from Chicago. And, of course, Ohio. There was always people from "back in Ohio.'' For the most part they were traditional families in a time before "traditional'' had a connotation of meaning out of date. The dads went to work; the moms did not hesitate to say they were housewives. The men were not an entrepreneurial lot. The focus was on having a good job and car-pooling to "the plant.'' This mode of transportation was popular not because of oil embargoes, government pressure nor preferred parking spaces but because it made sense, and helped to stretch the budget. Many of the dads worked for companies which at the time were part of what was called the "aircraft industry.'' Later the terms would be modernized to "aerospace and electronics.'' Later yet, they would be known as "high-tech'' operations. Other dads worked in sales or middle management positions with distributors and wholesalers of the exploding post-war consumer products industry: Appliances; Automobiles; Furniture. And, typical of any town where growth was the major industry, there were always dads working in construction. It was the kind of neighborhood where recreation was simple, and not often expensive. Folks didn't summer at La Jolla nor ski at Vail. But there were a lot of camping and fishing trips. And hunting! Many times my family ate venison steaks, as those lucky enough to bag a deer would tend to share their good fortune with friends and neighbors. Unfortunate- ly, good marksmanship did not guarantee the ability to properly dress the carcass. Until I was an adult, I thought venison was supposed to have that gamy, cod liver oil taste. Tupperware parties were popular with moms; bowling teams were an escape for dads; and card parties—Canasta, Crazy-Eights and Hearts—were big with moms and dads. Another staple of grown up entertainment was called, “just coming over to visit.'' The living room got picked up and vacuumed; the mom

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

baked coffee cakes or date nut bread; they'd perk a big pot of Maxwell House—and they'd talk. Little kids always wanted to stay and listen - something that was usually permitted as long as they kept quiet. It used to be called the fine art of conversation: Discussions of grocery prices and fashion trends; the new car styles; vacation travels, past and future; and what was happening at the plant - the new government contract, the recent layoff or the talk of a strike. If the two or three couples had migrated from the same place, there was always some nostalgia about "back home.'' Probably ninety percent of the dads were veterans and, often as not, there would be some mention of “when-I-was overseas” which meant during World War Two. I don't remember a single instance when politics or religion were discussed. It was neither an activist nor an evangelical time in America, and bringing up those topics was not considered appropriate nor polite when you were coming over to visit. By today's standards, it might seem boring. But those moms and dads did not grow up with our mind-numbing bombardment of electronic communications, with its instant analyses and pre-packaged ideological labels. They talked about what was happening in their lives. And if the pace was a bit slower, it might have been because they took the time to listen to each other. And to us kids, listening-in was a great opportunity to pretend we were adults too. And whether we realized it or not, it was an opportunity to develop our values. * * * * * * * * * Little league baseball was a big thing. Certainly today it is an institution taken for granted, but back then it was a brand new phenomenon. The idea of being on a team and wearing uniforms just like the pro's was thrilling. Unfortunately, even in its infancy, little league suffered the same maladies it has today with too many amateur coaches and too many amateur parents living vicariously through their kids. Pop Warner football—where the parents really act like spoiled children—didn't come along until a decade later. (The only time in my

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

life I ever saw two adult women have a fist fight was at a Pop Warner football game.) Organized soccer which, in America at least, seems to have its values in place, wasn't heard of and would not be for another twenty years. But the kids did play touch and flag football. Kickball was like soccer but without the rules. And the blacktop basketball courts at the school yard were always busy, as were the hoops in the backyards and over the carports. And, of course, there were school dances on Friday night; a large outdoor roller-skating rink in the early 1950s and a large indoor rink a few years later. The teenagers had the Indian Drive-In Theatre. (It was sometimes suggested that this Drive-In theatre contributed significantly to the great population boom during that decade. But who really knows?) In another part of town, there was the Cinema Park Drive-in. Then there was the back-to-back two screen drive-in, The Silver Dollar on one side and The Peso the other, which you might have guessed was also the price of admission per car. The Peso, of course, featured Spanish language films. And somewhere in town there was the Rodeo Drive-in theatre, but I don’t remember where it was. After all, I didn’t have a driver’s license in those days. Holidays were celebrated pretty much as they are today: Fireworks on the Fourth of July; egg hunts on Easter; and the absolute obligation to give a valentine to every kid in your class, even if you couldn't stand a particular him or her. And of course there was Christmas. The trappings were the same, but not as materialistic as it would become later. And a final memory of recreation - the summer months were especially fun for the kids as we would often as not sleep out in the back yard on war surplus army cots. The element of adventure was secondary, actually, to the necessity of finding a cool place to sleep in those days before refrigerated air conditioning. *** * * * Tisdale Terrace was not a prestigious neighborhood. I don't think homebuilders started selling prestige until a few years later. It was, again, what I would call middle-middle-class. By today's more

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

sophisticated standards, it did not offer the amenities discriminating young upwardly mobile professionals would pay extra for. But in another sense, it had some advantages people today would pay any price to get: There was quite simply no drug abuse. There were no gangs—although there was a neighborhood bully for a while. His name was Duke. There was next to no crime. I honestly cannot remember a single burglary during my childhood—except when two hubcaps were stolen off my dad's car. And during the first eight or ten years we lived there, my parents never even locked the door at night. I'm sure there were people suffering from the disease of alcohol- ism - but alcohol consumption did not permeate everyday life as it often does today. Dads drank a beer when they wanted one, but they didn't feel naked without a beer can in their hand. Wine was on the table for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, but that was it. Mixed drinks were reserved for New Years Eve. At least, those are my memories. If the description of Tisdale Terrace sounds a bit like Ward and June and Wally and the Beaver without the laugh track, it was. But in retrospect, I can see that it was also somewhat naive - just as America in the early 1950s was somewhat naïve: We were largely oblivious to problems of poverty and racial bigotry. Those issues would attack America's consciousness and conscience soon enough. But as young kids, we never gave a passing thought to the fact that there were no Blacks or Hispanics in Tisdale Terrace. In a perfect world, our lives would have been richer if there had been. I never thought of my family as being poor - and we weren't. But I grew up knowing that there wasn't a lot of money for throwing around. I had friends whose homes were a lot larger and fancier than mine, and whereas I might have envied them their swimming pool, or their having their own bedroom, I never saw my world in terms of class distinction. Such awareness came later in life. But in those early days, other peoples' material wealth served as an incentive to make something of one's self. In a real sense, we were quite upwardly mobile—but we didn't know it in those terms. And what of our parents? What were their dreams? What did they want out of life? I imagine they could have named possessions and

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

travels to go on a wish list. But in another sense, it is important to keep their lives, and place in history, in perspective. Theirs was the generation of Americans born and raised in the Great Depression; baptized with the anxiety and suffering of World War Two. The early '50s was the first time in their lives when they were not being thrown into the face of a calamity that was not of their own making. Certainly, on behalf of their children the dream was a college education: A dream based on the belief that a four year degree was tantamount to prosperity and security; a guarantee that the kids would never have to suffer as they had during the 1930s. The dream was a good one, as dreams go. As for themselves, perhaps the dreams were pretty basic: Little more than to be allowed to live a life without a war, without a depression; to have a job and a car - maybe two; to own a house with a yard where the kids could play and grow up safely; in a neighborhood where you could go to bed at night without ever having to worry about locking the door. Not a bad dream. Not bad at all. And it seems that maybe for at least a few years in the early and mid 1950s, that's what we had, there in Tisdale Terrace.

Crime and Punishment (With Apologies to Feodor Mikkhailovich Dostoevski) The late, great comedian Johnny Carson and I had something in common. I could say each of us once had our own television program. But that would be like my dad saying that he and General Eisenhower were in the service together during the war. No, the experience Carson and I share is that each of us, as kids, got caught stealing a bean shooter from a five-and-dime store. His life of crime began and ended in Nebraska. Mine in Arizona. As he tells the story, the sales clerk who was an eyewitness called for Johnny's dad, whose office was just around the corner. I got off easier. The sales lady who caught me in the act merely chewed me out, made me feel guilty (which I was,) threatened to call my father, and scared the hell out of me - for awhile. It is my understanding that Carson

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

went straight after his encounter. It took me a couple more trips down corruption's trail before I learned that crime does not pay. My second foray came when I was about nine. The State Fair is held in November in Arizona. We lived about two miles from the fairgrounds so it didn't take long for the guys in the neighborhood to walk down there. On that particular day I came under the influence of a gang of older, tougher, more hardened individuals: They were probably twelve or thirteen. "We're goin' to the fair. Wanna come?'' they asked. "I don't have any money,'' I responded. "Money!?'' the biggest kid in the gang exclaimed, "You don't need no money. We're gonna sneak in.'' "Don't worry,'' he added, "We do it all the time.'' Well, who was I to argue? I didn't know of such worldly things. They were older, wiser; more experienced. In those days the fairgrounds were surrounded, at least along 19th Avenue and Encanto Boulevard, by an 8-foot high adobe wall. Arriving on the scene, my mentors explained and demonstrated the simple criminal process of boosting each conspirator to the top of the wall. The last guy in the chain had to be big enough to jump and get a grip so the others could pull him up and over. One by one we cleared the barrier, lowering ourselves into a corral. This was pretty easy, I remember thinking. And I didn't even need the 50-cent price of admission. If a criminal thought he was going to get caught he would never commit a crime. It is that very human failure - or refusal - to view the world realistically that keeps the jails full. And I guess we were no exception. For the bit of reality we failed to recognize was that the corral we stood in was not built for horses. It was build for kids like us, climbing over the wall. And it was surrounded by Sheriff's deputies stationed there to greet us. The bigger boys were escorted to a small adobe structure that looked exactly like the jailhouse in a hundred old cowboy movies. Those who resisted or caused any trouble were written up on a delinquency report, which meant their parents would find out about everything.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

As for me, I must have presented a sympathetic - or maybe just pathetic - picture to the old deputy who was my captor. I was a head shorter than the others; a skinny little kid, scared and probably shaking. He took me firmly, but gently, by the arm and walked me to a narrow arched gate opening to 19th Avenue and freedom. "Go home, kid,'' he said. And I did. Believe me, I did. My final larcenous experience was when I was about fifteen. It was another one of those "I don't have any money'' situations. This time the destination was the old Indian Drive-In Theatre, up on 27th Avenue. "You don't need no money,'' he said - me forgetting the fairgrounds lesson of several years earlier. "You just get in the trunk of the car and ten minutes after the show starts we'll sneak around and let you out,'' he promised, adding, "I even unhooked the light in the trunk so we won't get caught.'' Being in the trunk of a car was not my idea of a good time. I was hesitant, but agreed to the plan when he said those magically convincing words, "Don't worry. We do it all the time!'' I prefer this episode be made short. It's not a fond memory. They didn't open the trunk until intermission, and the attendant had been watching the whole time. We all got thrown out. It's been about forty years now since I have knowingly faced a clear choice between the straight and narrow or the old wide and crooked. Oh, sure, I remember one occasion when the IRS was kind enough to point out a mathematical error or two. But I don‘t think that really counts.

Painless Benny Pain was never my long suit. As a kid I always felt this put me at a disadvantage when it came to performing certain courageous stunts, and I think it contributed to a mild sense of awe with which I held some of the other kids in the old neighborhood, Tisdale Terrace. I remember a kid named Benny. (That isn't his real name, but I'll spare his elderly parents the humiliation of a more exact identification.) Benny didn't feel pain. It didn't matter what foreign object came

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

into contact with his body, Benny didn't feel pain. And having discovered this peculiar trait at a fairly young age, he developed a wide inventory of ways to exploit it. Unfortunately for Benny, none of these exploitations were designed to make him rich or famous. They all fell directly into the category of proving to the rest of us, again and again, that Benny was tough - as if jumping off the roof of the house hadn't made the point. There was one occasion in particular that is indelibly memorable: At Maie Bartlett Heard Elementary School, Coach Lyrch had recently taught us the finer points of high-jumping. My probably less than five- foot stature dictated that this, too, was not one of my successful fifth grade endeavors. Benny wasn't that much taller, but he had a quality that allowed him to do something quite unforgettable in the annals of high- jumping history. The big event came on a Saturday morning - not at a city-wide grade school track meet, but on Falkner's farm, in the cow pasture which is now a chunk of the Black Canyon Freeway (I-17) near Osborn Road. It wasn't much of a pasture - full of Johnson grass and bullheads - and I never saw more than two or three cows grazing there. But its one distinguishing characteristic was that it was surrounded by a five-foot- high barbed wire fence. Commonly on a Saturday morning we would climb through the strands of barbed wire to try to stampede the usually sleeping old Herefords; or to bombard with dirt clods the large red ant hills which were abundant in that field. In that occasionally one might rip a shirt or scrape a back on the barbs while squeezing through the fence, some boys preferred to climb the barrier like a ladder; then leap down. But on one particular Saturday morning, Benny made history when he said, "I'll betcha I can high-jump over that fence!" It's funny how identical thoughts can pass through several individual minds at the same moment: We all knew he could not high- jump over the top of that five-foot barbed wire fence. We all knew there would be some bloodshed. We knew that his dad would blister his butt if he tore his clothes. In short, we knew Benny was stupid. But most of all, we knew Benny was going to do it regardless of the consequences.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

"What do you wanna bet?" we responded in unison. In that nobody had anything of value to wager, a "gentleman's bet" was agreed to. This meant that if Benny succeeded, he again proved to all of us that he was tough. And, if Benny tried but failed, he again proved to all of us that he was tough. To Benny it was a no-lose situation. To us, it was a morning's entertainment. He backed up to a point about twenty yards from the ominous hurdle and taking a spit-coated index finger from his mouth, held it high to check the wind. This was a standard dramatic preliminary designed to build suspense, and to imply that Benny possessed the knowledge of certain scientific techniques that would maximize his chances of success. The little kids believed all of this. The rest of us humored him. Then, without further ado, he took off running toward the focal point of the latest in a long string of exercises in stupidity. Now, giving credit where credit is due, Benny was a pretty fast runner. And on that particular morning - perhaps realizing what was at stake - he got up an impressive head of steam. As he reached the target and threw his right leg into the air, his form was something Coach Lyrch would have been proud of: "kick high and lift off with your whole body; lay out in a horizontal position; now roll…up and over the bar." For a moment I actually thought he was going to make it. That powerful right leg cleared, by two full inches, the top wire. His head and shoulders, as well, seemed to have found the other side. It was the front middle area—those body parts that lie between the belly button and the upper thigh that caused the problem. They seemed to lack lift. It takes a lot of force to rip and shred a fairly new pair of Levi- Strauss blue denim jeans—especially in the area of the fly where everything is reinforced, double-stitched and containing brass rivets. But that jagged, ice-pick sharp barb pointing upward from the top wire just happened to be in the right place at the right moment. For about one second it was a text book example of suspended animation. Certainly his mind had pulled off the stunt and arched and rolled triumphantly to the soft pasture floor below. But his body was delayed.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

It is hard to know which sounds were the ripping of denim and which were flesh. That the latter occurred was first made apparent by the sudden change of expression on Benny's face. It was that look of a sinking feeling you get when you first realize something is terribly wrong. Only moments later it would be confirmed by a glance at the button fly that would never again be secured; and the blood that began to turn that very private area into a blotter. As the weight of his body tore free, the wire sprung and twanged like an un-tuned guitar string. Benny hit the ground like a side of beef, but quickly rolled over and sprung to his feet - his personal carnage now on display for the world to see. "It doesn't hurt," he was heard to say. Most of us didn't believe him, but with Benny you couldn't be sure. "It doesn't hurt," he repeated. And he added victoriously, "I told ya I could make it." None could argue. He had, after a fashion, high-jumped up and over the barbed wire fence. He won the "gentleman's bet." He proved again that he was tough. And if, in fact, he didn't feel the pain from that awful and strategically located violation of his body - well the rest of us did, just thinking about it. Nobody hung around. Benny hobbled home and was not seen for a few days. I think he missed school on Monday. There was a rumor that he had to have a few stitches in a most delicate locale. He would neither confirm nor deny - and God knows none of us ever asked to be shown. Such events in childhood become the fodder of bar room stories later in life. I never shared that episode over a glass of beer. There was always something too discomforting about the memory. But I should add that being an eye-witness had a certain influence on the rest of my childhood: whereas I never did become a Benny - a soul seemingly impervious to pain - I did try harder to accept it as a normal, albeit, unpleasant part of life. I tried to be brave when my cut fingers or scraped knees were daubed with stingy Methiolade instead of painless Mercurochrome. Of course my courage and self control continued to draw the line if somebody pulled out a bottle of Iodine.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Duck ‘N Cover There has always been something about being a ten-year old that is, if not the worst of times, at least the most non-descript. You are not particularly cute like you were at five. You have your two front adult teeth by then, and parents tend to interpret that to mean that you should have wisdom and judgment. They think you should be developing some ideas about what you are going to do with your life. In the classroom, at that age, life can be pretty miserable. Teachers think you should be interested in what they're saying, even if it's not very entertaining. They also have the notion that you should be able to sit still, stop squirming, keep your hands to yourself and be quiet. In general, life at age ten is a jungle; a real pressure-cooker. In 1954 it was even worse. For it was that generation of ten-year olds who were the first to be exposed and imposed with an additional new pressure: The paralyzing fear of nuclear annihilation! I don't recall specifically whether it was in the classroom, or at a school assembly in the cafeteria, when we saw one of those scratchy black and white educational films with the warbling sound track that first brought us the message. I think it was in class. But I remember the essence of the presentation. It went something like this: The Russians, who were also known as the dirty rotten Commies, somehow had their spies steal America's most guarded secrets and they had now built an atomic bomb of their own. This, it was explained, meant that on any given day a Soviet bomber could fly over our school and drop a couple mega-tons of Big Bertha somewhere between the swings and the teeter-totter. We'd all seen the newsreels of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we knew what it meant. It was further explained that even if the atomic payload missed our playground and landed over in the little town of Scottsdale (about ten miles to the east), we were still doomed. That's when we first learned

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

about radioactive fallout. I remember the film had a cartoon segment showing how the wind would pick up all the contaminated dirt and scatter it over a fifty mile radius. This guaranteed that everyone in the entire county was going to get killed - just that some would get it slower than others. You can imagine the disquieting effect these messages had on such an assembled group of ten year olds. Some kids tended to get depressed. Others suddenly became religious. A few adopted an existential outlook - bemoaning the futility of such concepts as delayed gratification. Or stated more simply, "Why bother with homework if we're all gonna die, anyway?'' I had generally been taking that attitude all along, so this new threat of impending doom didn't influence my studies one way or the other. Still, for all concerned it was a memorably discouraging set of messages we received that day. Now, I figure that someone at the School Board offices had anticipated the chilling effect this information was going to have on us, and concluded they should do something to ease our anxiety. The logical tool, it must have seemed, was hope. "Give the little buggers a reason to believe they might have some chance of surviving the mushroom cloud!'' It was at that point that someone - probably a consultant - came up with a strategy called “Duck 'n cover.” It was an idea which, in retrospect, I can see was distinguished by its simplicity, its ingenuity, its futility, and stupidity. The next week we were again assembled to watch another scratchy, black and white educational film. (It strikes me odd that in those days even brand new educational films were scratchy.) This feature presentation was entitled (you guessed it) DUCK 'N COVER. On the screen we saw ten-year old, cute little blond headed Johnnie and ten-year old, cute little blond headed Mary in their classroom with twenty-five or thirty of their cute little blond headed classmates. The kids in those old educational films always had blond hair. So Johnnie and Mary, dressed more for Sunday School than for Thursday afternoon, are sitting there listening attentively to their teacher's lecture on Beowulf. Suddenly, the school principal - dressed appropriately in a dark suit and wearing a wide, hand-painted, flowered

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

tie - enters the room to personally deliver a message of the utmost importance: "Our nation's enemies have slipped past the coastal defenses and are expected, within fifteen minutes, to be dropping an atomic bomb on our school.'' I wondered what that school had, to make it such a primary target. They never said. Meanwhile, back on the screen, Johnnie and Mary were setting a good example. They closed their notebooks, screwed the caps on their Schaffer-snorkel fountain pens and placed everything neatly inside their desks. (I'll observe that the insides of their desks were so neat, orderly, and sanitary as to make me wonder if this was a special school for Anal- retentive kids.) Having secured their desktops, Johnnie and Mary - and all the other cute little Blondie kids - looked to their teacher for guidance. It is worth noting at this point that there is no panic in the room. Did I say "...no panic?'' Why, there isn't even a faint glimmer of anxiety on anyone's face. A couple of the kids in the background look absolutely bored. It's like they don't seem to understand the roles they've been cast in. I mean, this is a story line where there is a high probability that everyone gets killed in the end, and Central Casting sends over a gang of automatons. Well, anyway, the focus now shifts to the teacher, who is attractive, perhaps twenty-seven years old and appropriately blond. Her name is Miss Jones. We know this because there is a name plate on her desk - something I don't remember ever seeing in a real life classroom. Miss Jones prepares to deliver her single but well rehearsed line. She rises from her chair and stands straight. There's no reason to neglect our posture just because we're about to be transformed into radioactive isotopes. Miss Jones surveys the shining faces of her students as she gives them a reassuring smile. Here we see a couple of quick cutaway shots: Close ups of ten-year-old faces smiling back. One of the youngsters, using a bit of creative license raises a single eyebrow. It helps convey the message that in the face of an atomic attack we should turn all the thinking over to a higher authority, in this case, Miss Jones.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Back in my real-life classroom the kids are really getting sucked into the suspense on the screen. We all scoot to the edges of our desk seats. The girls are worried about what's going to happen to that blond “Johnnie Dream Boat,” who they've already become so attached to. The boys are hoping we'll get to see Miss Jones and the whole sissy lot of them vaporized before our very eyes. Comes Miss Jones' big line, “And now, children, it's time to duck 'n cover.” With this, the focus shifts back to Johnnie and Mary there in the front row - there to set a good example. They look at each other and exchange determined smiles. What they were determined about I couldn't figure. But then I was only ten and this was high drama, and I assumed there were messages and meanings I wasn't supposed to understand. Anyway, the blond duo, like a couple of synchronized swimmers gracefully kneel beside their desks. They're gonna start praying, I think. Is that what this is all about? Is that what they're telling us? When the air raid siren sounds you'd better start praying? They didn't need to make a movie to tell us that! But that wasn't it. From their knees, the kids then glided on down to the floor, assumed a prenatal position and scooted under their respective desks. Thus having appropriately ducked, they were ready to cover. This was accomplished by bending the elbows and raising the arms up to the head in a protective manner. Even the slowest kid in our class understood: In the face of hostile, uncontrolled nuclear fission raining down on our particular generation of ten-year-olds, America's best piece of advice was to get under your desk and curl up in a ball. And that is precisely where the movie ended: Johnnie and Mary somewhat side by side under their desks. How long did they lay there I wondered. What did they think about as they waited for the blinding flash? Did they ever express any anxiety? Were they concerned about getting their clothes dirty? Personally, I was hoping for a peek at Mary's panties! I mean, the position they were in...

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

And what did Miss Jones and the principal do? They never answered any of these questions. I guess we weren't supposed to wonder. Actually, as time went on, we got the answers to those questions, and more. For at least once a month during the next few years the exploits of little Johnnie and Mary were re-enacted, live, on the floor of our classrooms: The emergency bell would ring. Our teacher would tell us whether it was a fire drill or a nuclear air raid, and we would either head out to the playground or we'd duck 'n cover. Looking back I know that my school never caught on fire. And to the best of my memory there was never a nuclear attack, either. They still have fire drills, or so I'm told. But duck 'n cover was phased out over the years, but I don't think it had anything to do with finally recognizing the futility associated with an atom bomb landing in the school yard. I think it had more to do with a committee of angry mothers at a PTA meeting demanding to know where their daughters and the little boys in the neighborhood had learned this popular new, turn down the lights party game called Duck 'n Cover!

Salmon Patties “Flush twice. It’s a long way to the cafeteria!!” It was the first bit of graffiti I even read that was not obscene; that I understood, and that I thought was funny. It was penciled on a wall in the boys bathroom when I was in third or fourth grade. It is as American as hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet that school kids complain about the food in the cafeteria. I don't know the history of the hot lunch program in the nation's elementary and high schools. That's probably the subject of speeches at the national dietitians convention. But I remember how far it had progressed by the 1950s, because during those years it was a significant part of my daily life. As an adult, I know that the school lunch is critically important to both the physical and intellectual well-being of the student. As kids, however, we viewed it with mixed feelings. Certainly, by noon we were

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

starving. Just as certainly, we would groan and complain when the home-room teacher would announce the daily menu. Now, I understand that in these more modern times - at least in the more progressive school districts - the youngsters are actually given a choice of entrees, side dishes and desserts. And that in certain ultra- modern schools, those on the edge of subversive, there are contractual agreements with fast food chains to prepare the noon selections. In my day, there were no choices. What we ate for lunch was determined by some anonymous District Food Czar whom we were convinced hated kids, had lost her sense of taste, and was conducting experiments in toxicology. The daily reading of the menu seemed akin to standing before a judge and hearing yourself sentenced to some uncertain fate. I don't think it was really like that. I didn't even think so, then. But there are certain social conventions that a kid has to adhere to, lest they be deemed an outcast and shunned by the entire student body. Can you imagine the annual essay assembly where some seventh grader reads his composition, titled, "Our School Cafeteria: It Makes Life Worth Living!?” Oh, sure, he would have won the faculty's coveted Kiss-Ass award. But it would have been thirty years before any of us spoke with him again. So every Monday through Friday included the mid-day ritual of moving in a line down a long, water-spraying, hand-washing trough. I still think it was a converted, war surplus, army barracks group urinal. We'd make a quick stab at drying our hands with a rip from a roll of that old brown non-absorbent paper toweling that you'd crank out of a dispenser on the wall. Then, in to the cafeteria, or more correctly, the café-torium. You'd take a tray from the stack and slide it down the stainless steel runners of the serving line. The Lunchroom Ladies, as they were called (my mother did this for several years,) would scoop the various delicacies into the three or four divided sections of your beige-colored, hard plastic, dishwasher safe, stackable cafeteria plate, and set it on your tray. You'd grab a carton of milk and a straw. They'd make you take a napkin.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Down the rows of the convertible, combination cafeteria tale/auditorium benches you would look for the right combination of friends - always of the same gender - to sit with. Having accomplished this, you had only the additional obligation to offer a loud disparaging remark about the "slop'' on your tray. Then you could eat. By this time, of course, you were really starving, the food tasted better than expected (something you didn't admit,) and you usually cleaned your plate and often went back for seconds, making lots of noise throughout. This entire process took place under the watchful eyes of one, sometimes two, teachers who had the misfortune of drawing "lunchroom duty'' in the faculty rotation on non-classroom responsibilities. I understand that in later years, "lunchroom duty'' became the focus of serious and angry negotiations in the teachers' collective bargaining sessions. I think they wanted combat pay but settled for something less. Well, I considered including here an item by item evaluation of what we were served in those days. But I'm not a restaurant critic. And besides, I'm sure that the anonymous District Food Czar has, by now, gone to her well-deserved reward. She's answering to a higher authority—and probably has a lot of explaining to do! But, if there were a way that I could meet her face to face, there is one question I'd like to have answered: What in hell was the stuff you mooshed together and fed us under the name of Salmon Patties?

The Green Gables It was one of those restaurants my family never visited in the early to mid-1950s. Today they would call it up-scale. In those days, my parents called it too expensive. The Green Gables - a name that captured the theme and ambiance of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Knights of the Round Table replete with their suits of shining armor, jousting lances in hand, sitting atop beautiful white horses at the gated entrance to the walled parking lot.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

I never heard a critique of the food at The Green Gables. In my youth, eight or nine year old kids didn't think in those terms. Anytime you were taken out to eat at a restaurant the excitement of the occasion – indeed, the novelty of it - superseded any thoughts of evaluating the chef. A waitress - or if it was really fancy, a waiter - brought your food artistically displayed on attractive dish wear. They filled your water glass for you, asked if you'd like another Coke, helped you decide which of the multiple forks to use for what, and best of all, discussed the choice of desserts. There was another feature of The Green Gables that set it apart from any restaurant I knew then, or since. They had little mementos of your visit - something akin to the giveaways (or sell-aways) at modern fast food restaurants. But The Green Gables went beyond today's trinkets, although at the time, the owners may have thought that was exactly what they were offering. The item was a knight in armor, pointing his jousting lance while seated on a sturdy horse. My memory is that the figurine stood, perhaps, three inches high and was three or four inches long and hand-painted in authentic colors. Now let me clarify: These were neither plastic, nor made in Hong Kong. They were lead - in the manner of leaded toy soldiers common and collected for a century or more before World War Two, but rare and valuable since then. I remember classmates in the third or fourth grade coming to school with their Knights carefully protected in tissue paper, to be unwrapped with great ceremony and shown, as proof of the previous evening's visit to The Green Gables. I don't know whether the restaurant gave these leaded warriors to every kid who had dinner there, or if mom and dad had to purchase them at some gift counter near the door. If the latter, the price might have been a buck. Nothing these days, but a substantial amount back when a soda cost a nickel. To me, however, in those times of simple multiplication tables, Cub Scouts and cowboy heroes, the unveiling of another Knight in Armor by another proud and slightly haughty third-grader, always had a

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

particular emotional impact. Or, should I say an impact that involved particular emotions - including jealousy and envy (I guess those are not emotions, but reactions.) I wasn't jealous of the little statue, but of what it represented. The ability to be taken to such swell places as The Green Gables. It was about status. It was about the perception of wealth, or at least well-off. The few lucky kids who went to the Green Gables were somehow upper class, and the rest of us were "just regular". Now there was nothing wrong with being "just regular", I knew. There was plenty of company. But inside, I found myself feeling that it would be nice to be something more than that. Well, that's the end of the story: the third grader standing there thinking it would be nice to be able to go places like The Green Gables; imagining that someday he would. But, there is a thought or two about which I would be remiss if I didn't add. In my family and the families of most of the other third graders at that time, there was a desire to improve one's "lot in life." And there was a very strong belief that this was possible - even probable - with effort. It's called the "work ethic." Each day, week, month and year building on the last to accomplish goals; to realize dreams. Sometimes success, or at least progress, was measured year to year. Sometimes generation to generation. The keys were to keep plugging and not give up. Today psychologists call this the principle of delayed gratification. I can think of old classmates born into little, who are quite successful today. I mention this because of what I see too much of today -- the opposing principle of instant gratification. I am concerned that our prisons are full, our drug dealers are busy, and a lot of peoples' lives amount to little because they don't understand, or have never been taught, or have given up on the belief that success comes to he who has a goal and sticks with it. Ignorance of this is the malady that keeps some people stuck in an under-class, and puts others into a spiral of downward mobility. As for me, I did eventually eat at The Green Gables. Sure it was thirty years later. And they didn't have the horse-mounted parking lot

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

attendant any more. Or the little statues. But I ate there several times. Of course, I used my VISA card to pay for it.

Those Goddam Windows I don't know if there was a formal, copyrighted, brand name for them, but I know that they were sometimes referred to as - those Goddam windows.‖ Today I live in a neighborhood that has houses built anywhere from the 1920s to the 1960s. With a little bit of observation and training, one can tell the age of a house by its windows. The twenties and thirties saw the use of large wood frames. The boards are quite wide. They were heavy and raised vertically with the help of ropes and pulleys and weights. The windows built in the 1940s are also wood frame, but not so large. Maybe they were conserving wood and glass for the war effort. The fact is there weren't all that many houses built in the '40s. Now if you jump up to the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, the windows tend to have aluminum frames that slide open horizontally. I always thought they seemed sort of flimsy, and I'm sure any journeyman suburban burglar would attest to that. But it is the 1950s that I'm thinking of—the heyday of those - Goddam windows. During the post-war housing boom, some architect or designer sat at his drawing board and said, “Let's design a window frame that can be prefabricated from steel.” The idea might have actually come from the steel companies as a substitute for building ships and tanks and cannons. Then some other designer said, “Let's do away with this old back- breaking practice of raising windows. Let's invent a little crank that will swing them open.” Keep in mind that the early 1950s was when America developed its love affair with the gadget, the push-button, the labor-saving device. Well, the engineers and the architects went to work and quick as you could say Baby Boom, five million tract houses sprung up, sporting fifty million GDWs. (That would mean Goddam Windows).

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

That the crank handles were very small and provided a minimum of leverage was a problem. You would hurt your wrist and bruise your knuckles in the best of circumstances. Let a few years pass. Let the cranking mechanism get clogged with dust and dirt. Let the lubricating oil dry out. And the windows would hardly open at all. But, relatively speaking, these were minor problems; irritations really. Nothing that seriously threatened the health, safety or sanctity of the American family. No, that very real, clear and present danger was reserved for the moment you stepped outside of the house. It is just not natural to have a sharp edged, potentially lethal, fourteen inch wide steel structure protruding perpendicularly from the outer walls of your house. As a booby trap to ward off terrorist attacks, they would have been great. But to the homeowner, and to the homeowner's eight year old kids whose heads reached just to the lower edge of the steel frame, they were the source of bloody scalps, first stitches and black eyes. Also, they were the direct cause of American children learning to cuss prematurely. Bend over to pick up a piece of paper from the flower bed that was invariably located against the house. As you raised yourself up, the window frame would—with conscious evil intent—position itself just over your head. Whap! ―Ohh! Goddam windows! Play a game that required running in the yard. Zip around the corner of the house and the window, sensing your approach, would auto kinetically crank itself open. Slam! ―Ohh! Goddam windows! It didn't matter how many years you lived in the house. It didn't matter how big you got, how old you got, nor how educated you got. It didn't matter what methods you employed to train yourself to remember the danger that lurked there. At least once every summer, like clockwork, you'd hear the sound and feel the sharp disabling violation of your skull. Crack! ―Ohh! Goddam windows!‖ Years later, I discovered what I think was the only redeeming social value of the GDWs. I was watching a Roadrunner cartoon. And I noticed that about every thirty seconds, the coyote would get smashed on the head. And each time this happened, the animator would come up with a new sound to depict the impact and a new grimace of pain for the

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

fox's face. The creative well seemed bottomless. And immediately I knew that the cartoonist was working from personal experience; that he, like me, had grown up in a house with those Goddam windows!

A Man Of Means “You are not a man until you can smoke a pipe and jingle coins in your pocket”— Grandma Forest I don't know that I ever heard my mother's mother really say that, but I think I remember my mother saying her mother said that. Grandma Forest was born in Germany and came to America sometime before 1910. Some of her thinking might have been of the old world, although the logic of her alleged quote makes perfect sense. A kid, or even a youngish man, looks sort of, well, out of character smoking a pipe. I mean, can you picture a scene from the movies: The young looking juvenile delinquent (think young Marlin Brando) roars up on his motorcycle and instead of having a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt, he pulls out a curved Sherlock Holmes pipe, leather tobacco pouch and butane lighter? Does it work for you? It doesn't work for me. The part about jingling coins in your pocket is pretty basic. An able-bodied man has to be willing to work and earn a living. All of this is by way of introducing a brief story having to do with money: We were on vacation visiting the family in Ohio. I remember, specifically, I was eight years old. I had six shiny new quarters my Aunt Maxine had given to me. I hadn't done anything to earn them but I had just discovered a wonderful new part of life. It was called: People giving me money, for nothing. I thought it was great. It was the kind of thing maiden aunts came up with, and I didn't know why my mom and dad hadn't thought of doing it first. After all, I had lived with them since I was born. They had had eight years! So anyway, I figured that if Aunt Maxine knew about giving me money for nothing maybe I should tell my dad about it, then he could do it too. I waited for the right opportunity to share this great new idea

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

with him. It came in the afternoon, in the dining room of my Aunt's house. My dad and I were alone. I displayed the coins on the dining room table and said, ―Look, I have six quarters.‖ Now, I was about to say, “Aunt Maxine gave them to me.” Then, I figured, my dad would say something like, “Oh gee! That was nice of her. Let me give you six more quarters for doing nothing, then you'll have twelve quarters. Then, I figured, he would reach into his pocket and give the money to me. And then I'd go looking for my mom. But it didn't work out that way. When I said, “Look, I have six quarters…”, but before I could say anything else, he said, “Good. You're solvent!” I'm sure I said something like, “Huh??” That translates to What the hell does that mean? He said being solvent means you have more money than you owe. At the time it wasn't what I was looking for. But if I had a shiny new quarter for every time I've thought about that and wished I had taken his comment to heart, I might be solvent today. My economic goal for the coming year or two is to have a net worth equal to what it was the day I graduated from high school.

Appropriate Behavior Schools used to publish handbooks for rules of behavior. At the beginning of each academic year, every student was handed one of these mimeographed, folded and stapled tomes so they would have no excuse for violating the system of law-and-order. Some elementary and high school principals must have been lawyers or legislators in their previous lives. They thrived on writing elaborate quasi-judicial codes of conduct. Often, the statutes were enforced with the use of demerits. A small infraction earned you five demerits. Something more serious rated ten, and so on. In my high school, twenty demerits got you sent to the office, and twenty-five got your mom or dad over for a chat. In four years of high

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

school, I got a total of five demerits. Of course, I didn't have any fun in high school either. The particular rule which each September we kids always checked the handbook for -- to see if it was still there -- was titled, Undue Familiarity. Now, in these more modern times, a violation of the "Undue Familiarity" rule would be something like the football team's star quarterback and the head cheerleader spending lunch period having sex on the Principal's desk, and not using a condom. (It's the condom part that gets them the demerits.) But in the early 1960s, "Undue Familiarity" meant such public displays of affection as kissing, cuddling or generally making out. A few of the more prim and proper teachers might nail you for holding hands, but the Dean would usually deep-six those demerit slips. No student could ever honestly claim ignorance of the "Undue Familiarity" rule. It was the subject of continuous comment, joking and fantasy. Indeed, ninety percent of the guys and maybe ten percent of the girls would have deemed it an honor to have been busted on that particular charge. But, I honestly cannot remember a single case. There is, however, indelible in my memory an instance that was without question a gross violation of the rule as written. It took place in a classroom before at least thirty-five impressionable young eyewitnesses - me being one of them. Had it happened under any other circumstance, there would have been hell to pay. In fact, if not for certain extraordinary factors, our teacher would have been fired that very day for letting it happen at all. But then, who was going to issue demerits when it was the teacher herself standing at the front of the class embracing a man and locked in a long passionate kiss, the likes of which most of us kids had never seen before. We didn't know much of such emotional encounters yet, because this didn't happen in high school. It was years earlier in the third grade - 1953. What we did know was that our teacher's husband had spent an entire year in combat in the Korean War. And when he was finally given leave, he hitched a lift on an Air Force transport plane headed to one of

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

the training bases in Arizona. Making it to Phoenix, and across town to our school and classroom, he wasn't about to wait until after class to do what he and she had been dreaming of for a tremendously frightening, long year. Even though we thirty-five assembled nine-year-olds were pretty unsophisticated (as nine-year-olds were in those days,) there was not a single snicker or immature remark. We knew the circumstances and, I guess, we understood and appreciated the moment. When they finally broke their embrace, realized where they were and turned red-faced toward us, the entire class burst into spontaneous applause -- not to tease -- but in celebration of his safe return.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation I was watching one of those early morning network television shows the other day when between the segment where the actor promoted his latest fifty-million dollar movie, and the weatherman‘s segment promoting a list of charities, there was an interview with two sociologists. These scholars were actually a married couple who had authored a book explaining to parents the fine points of planning the activities of their children’s summer vacations. It was quite a well thought out program they presented there: A detailed discussion of all the summer camp options, ranging from eight hundred dollars per session to eight thousand; an evaluation of several daytime educational programs including seminars on computer programming, urban planning and nuclear disarmament; and of course, a variety of masters classes with the string section of the New York Philharmonic orchestra. The common theme running through the discussion was that we, as parents, have a holy obligation to make sure that little Jonnie and Mary learn and grow from each day of summer; that it all be wholesome, parent-approved fare; and above all that they never be idle or bored. As I watched and listened I could not help but allow my mind to drift to the days of summer vacation back when I was kid, and to remember how my parents in the 1950s had a lot of the same concerns expressed by those two sociologists.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

“Go outside and play”, said my mother. “Aw, there‘s nothin’ t’do,” I‘d complain “There‘s plenty to do. Why don‘t you go clean out the utility room?” she would suggest. “I‘ll go out and play,” I‘d respond, quickly. Then my friends and I would sit outside in the shade and complain amongst ourselves that there was nothing to do. On other occasions, when we had a little bit of money, we might go to the public swimming pool at Encanto park, or downtown to the Fox or the Paramount theatre to see a double feature with three or four cartoons, and the latest chapter of a serial. I won‘t talk about the prices for these amusements because it would just make me sound very old. Actually, when you adjust for inflation, the cost of admission then was probably about the same as it is today. That is how we spent our summers - trying to figure out what to do when there was nothing to do. In time we got to be pretty creative about it. But somewhere along about the middle of August the limits of our imagination had been stretched as far as was possible. The reservoirs of our minds were drained. The well was dry. Plug in your own metaphor. We were, at that point, hopelessly bored and destine to stay so - which is exactly what our parents not only knew would happen, but had relied on. The advent of this phenomenon was also known by, and a critical element in the operation of, our teachers, the Principal, and the school board. For having the period from mid August to the first of September reserved for us kids to be so bored that we might actually utter the words, “I can‘t wait for school to start!” was understood by adults as part of God‘s annual plan for the smooth transition out of vacation and back to our education. “It worked amazingly well. And to imagine that for generations it was done successfully without eight-thousand dollar summer camps, or consulting sociologists.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

THE COMMUNICATIONS AGE Historians like to view world history in terms of “Ages.” There was the Ice Age and the Paleo-something Age; the Iron Age and the Industrial Age. Near the end of the 20th century, they started saying we are now in the Communications or Information Age. And given the development of video tape, satellite dishes, computers, the Internet, Entertainment Tonight, and nation-wide home delivery of the New York Times, that’s probably a pretty good name for it. But it is important to remember that no “Age” just happens in a vacuum. The modern high-tech developments in advertising, radio, television, arts, culture, publishing and invention each had their roots in earlier times and places. The following is an examination of the foundation of the Communication/Information Age as it developed in the 1950s, in and around Tisdale Terraces, and hundreds of other little out of the way places.

The Ad-Game Hall Of Fame I think it was Apple Computers, or some other high-tech firm, that pulled off what they claimed was a major advertising coup several years ago. In the middle of the Super Bowl football game broadcast, they ran a special commercial. It was either one or two minutes long, and featured a bunch of Orwellian-looking characters with blank stares on their faces. There was a long line of men dressed in drab-gray fatigues (they looked like prisoners,) and one-by-one they stepped off the edge of a cliff, presumably, to their deaths. This macabre scene was played to the tune of morose, eerie, mournful chanting. The press release boasted that the commercial (if one could really call it that,) cost something like two-million dollars to produce and about that much more to broadcast. The logic of this endeavor, “brilliant logic” according to the publicists, was that the one-hundred-million person audience watching the Super Bowl should receive the maximum impact. If you can produce a commercial weird enough to make people talk about it, it would translate into great business success. I don't know if the company was happy with the outcome, or not. But they did succeed in making people talk about it. The most frequently

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uttered comment I recall was, "What the hell was that stupid thing supposed to be about?" I wonder how many college scholarships could have been funded for even half of the dollars expended on that great advertising coup? Remembering that story makes me realize just how far we have come in the field of producing television commercials. Perhaps more accurately, it demonstrates the extent to which preoccupied corporate executives have allowed supposedly high-powered advertising agencies to go, in selling them a bill of goods. The logic is that if you pay an agency ten times more than the commercial is worth, it must be good. If the agency's posh offices occupy three floors atop the Ritzy Towers, that's even better. And, if the agency is located in another state so they can Lear-Jet-in to “take a meeting,” then the corporate chief knows he's playing in the right league. The problem with this equation is that each side has forgotten something. The corporate leader (the guy who is supposed to have the stockholders' interests at heart) forgets that the Ad Man's most creative talents are supposed to persuade the customer, not the client. The Ad Man forgets that underlying all his esoteric creativity is supposed to be the objective of selling a product to you and me. All of this causes my mind to wander back thirty-five years or so, to the Golden Age of using television to sell products. John Cameron Swayze wanted to sell Timex-brand watches. He never hinted that a beautiful model would find you irresistible if you wore a Timex. He only said they were tough and waterproof. To prove the point - on live network television - he strapped the watch to the propeller of a motorboat engine, put it in the water and let it rip. "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking." He showed you. Timex sold a lot of watches. I remember when beer commercials used to advertise that their brew tasted good. What a naive concept! Of course that was before beer made all the men muscular and handsome; and the women beautiful and shapely. My favorite commercials were the ones that aired live on local television, particularly those in which the merchant appeared as the on-

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

camera talent. I recall these advertising "stars" of Phoenix television, but without question there were identical efforts in every American city that had a fledgling station: There was the man with the strong German accent who owned a chain of carpet stores. His product could withstand wear and tear he assured us, by raking a presumably razor-sharp carpenter's saw across the rugs. The used car dealers were nightly fare. They'd have a half a dozen old DeSotos, Nashes and Hudsons - engines running - before a live camera in the alley behind the television station. "Drive it on up, Louie," the car-dealer-turned-TV-star would yell as the clattering `52 Packard Clipper was driven to Center Stage. The dealer would quote a bargain price and brag that the radio worked like new, as Louie popped the clutch and exited screen right in a cloud of blue smoke. They sold a lot of cars that way. There are so many to remember, some enterprising historian or archivist should gather them together in a Hall of Fame. The problem is that the Golden Age was before the development of video tape. The spots were all done live. Perhaps old black and white photographs exist. Or, maybe a taxidermist of questionable repute could be employed to monitor the obituary pages and create a monument like that which Roy Rogers did for his horse, Trigger. I'm not sure how best to honor those pioneer video pitchmen, but I know there are a few who would likely resist the honor. Most notable is the fellow who was, in fact, my favorite. And whom, for the sake of everyone involved, will here be given an assumed identity. We'll call him "Wilbur," the owner, spokesman and driving force behind a company we will call Crummy Furniture Distributors. I can picture him now on the old black-and-white TV screen. He sits behind a desk with an American flag and bookcase in the background. Invariably, he wore a plaid sports coat and a clashing plaid tie, never quite knotted straight. He would tell of the heartbreaking circumstances under which some furniture dealer in Texas or Oklahoma suffered a tragic business loss. Wiped him out! But there was always a silver lining. “For, out of this other fellow's misfortune comes a great opportunity, for you, my

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

television friends, to buy an entire room of furniture for pennies on the dollar.” It was always a masterful performance. I don't know exactly what happened to Wilbur. But, I understand Crummy Furniture Distributors went out of business shortly after it was learned some of those “tragic business losses” suffered by furniture dealers in Texas and Oklahoma were being planned in advance by Wilbur and his friends in Arizona.

Arizona Radio Days Woody Allen wrote a movie called Radio Days, based on his childhood memories of the “big broadcasts” that came out of New York City in the 1930s and 40s. I remember hearing a few of those shows that survived into the early 1950s. We had a big floor model radio in our living room in Ohio. A real piece of furniture. It made the move to Phoenix in 1951, but ended up at the city dump six or seven years later. I thought it was an especially magical and mysterious device. It had short-wave bands on which we would tune into transmissions from Eastern and Central Europe, and Morse code from ships at sea. My family didn't speak Bulgarian, nor high speed Morse code, so we never knew what was being said. But just listening was exotic and exciting. I always anticipated hearing "dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot- dot-dot" - the international distress signal. I never did. Even if I had, I wouldn't have known who was in distress, nor whom to call. I was six years old with a big imagination. Television took those things away - most all of the radio thrills, and some of the imagination. Radio didn't go away in the early to mid 1950s; it just underwent a change from a national medium back to a local one, which is where it started. In Phoenix, legend has it the first real radio disc jockey, back in the early 1920s, was a teenager named Barry Goldwater. I understand it was pretty much an amateur or experimental effort.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

The first professional radio stations in town were KFAD and KFCB, inaugurated in 1923. Later they became KTAR and KOY. Of course there was no FM dial in those days. The decade after World War Two brought with it a device that would forever change our lives: the inexpensive portable radio. They were just beginning to be transistorized and fit in a shirt pocket. But most ranged in size from that of a cigar box to half again bigger. They gave kids the freedom to tune-in long after mom and dad had sent them to bed. Of course much of this was done on the sly, under the covers with the volume low. Given that most of these radios had to be plugged into the wall, there was a mortal danger of electrocution if the kid happened to wet the bed. I never heard of any such fatalities reported in the press. If there were, and if it had made front page news, I'm certain that the youthful victim would have been glad he suffered only death, as compared to the level of humiliation associated with public knowledge of the cause of death.

A Little Show Biz I am aware that television personality Steve Allen began his career on KOY radio in Phoenix sometime in the late-1940s, and that The Lew King Ranger Show, popular on early Phoenix television, was originally a radio program. But these were before my family arrived in 1951. My memories of radio under the covers range from the end of the big band era to the beginnings of rock n' roll. The earliest music program I remember - probably 1953 - was called Lucky Lager Dance Time. I think it was on KTAR, but it was not local. I don't know if they got it from some kind of network “hook-up,” or broadcast it from playing big disks called “transcription records”. But it was on every night at 9:00 p.m., playing the older records from the big bands, and the current hits from singers like Patti Page and Gogi Grant. Between the songs they plugged Lucky Lager beer, and I used to think to myself that when I grew up I'd be sure to drink Lucky Lager. Their claim to fame was that each label bore the exact date on

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

which that particular bottle was filled. That information, I was convinced, somehow made this the best beer to buy. I think, now, that their advertising was aimed at adults with the intelligence of nine-year olds. They sold a lot of beer. Bob Capps was always my dad's favorite disc jockey. He was on KOY from midnight until six or seven in the morning, and also did what was probably a pre-recorded show for an hour in the late afternoon. It was called Father At Five. Capps was sort of laid back and very funny. He told jokes and stories. Dad liked him also because he'd play a lot of Dixieland jazz. This was decades before the development of what we know as “talk radio”, but he used to take listeners' calls on the air. You felt like you knew him and liked him. Several years later, in the '60s, when I was in high school, I got to know Bob Capps a bit. I'd go down to the KOY studios at Central Avenue and Roosevelt Street after midnight and ring the buzzer at the back door. He'd let me in and we'd shoot the bull while the records were playing. Those visits always made me feel like I had a real connection to show business. Capps was on the air for many years and never changed. Never arrogant nor self-important like some broadcast personalities today; always like a favorite uncle. When he finally hung up his microphone in the late 1970s or early '80s, he went to work selling new cars for Lou Grubb Chevrolet. I would bet he was successful, especially among customers who had earlier been his fans. Bob Capps died, I believe from a heart attack, in the mid 1980s. Going back to the 1950s, there was one program I'll never forget because it was years ahead of its time. It was called The Fence Sitters. A guy named Jack Carney created the show every week night on KPHO radio (910 AM). Carney did play records, although they were mostly parodies and novelties from people like Spike Jones. (Younger readers should be aware that Spike Jones was to the '40s and '50s what Weird Al Yankovich was in the '80s and '90s. Next to nothing in life is original.) But Carney's real forte was comedy. He would do shtick and radio

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

skits in which he would play all the parts and do all the voices. He had a few regular characters like Snuffy Smith (unabashedly stolen from the old comic strip) and a street-smart woman named Prunella. These two characters would get into very funny arguments, with Carney in the middle. I didn't believe it at first when my brother Pat told me it was Carney playing all the roles. It had to be ninety percent ad-lib, but he could change characters and voices instantly from Snuffy to Prunella to Jack, and never slip. I say he was ahead of his time because the show was something like Saturday Night Live. Not political, but satirical. Carney also put telephone calls on the air - and this was before the seven-second-delay equipment was in use. The callers were primarily high school kids who would have conversations and create shtick not only with Carney, but with his various characters. Sometimes the kids would create their own characters who would do comedy with Carney's characters. Yes it was all very schizophrenic, but very funny. It was an early exercise in improvisational humor. I don‘t know what became of Jack Carney. I wish I did.

Pathways To Politics There are a couple of other radio people from the early years who deserve mention, but they weren't disc jockeys. I do not remember ever actually hearing Howard Pyle on the radio until the mid to late 1980s. That was a few years before he died, when he was the spokesman for Monte’s La Casa Viejas restaurant in Tempe. But his real radio career was in the 1940s as a war correspondent. He broadcast live from the deck of the USS Missouri as the Japanese signed the surrender documents ending World War Two. Later, in Phoenix, he was a commentator. With a soothing voice and a bit of a western accent, he would tell stories and anecdotes about current events. He was probably the kind of broadcast personality in whom listeners felt a great sense of trust. It worked well for him, as he was elected Governor of Arizona in 1950.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

But the other fellow, who I heard many times, and later knew well, was Jack Williams. Like Howard Pyle, Williams was also elected Governor (in 1966) and had served as Mayor of Phoenix in the mid 1950s. If you asked him which career he viewed as his life's work, I'm sure he would pick not politics, but broadcasting. Jack Williams was associated with KOY radio from some time in the late 1920s. Ultimately he was part owner the station, and it's likely that over the years he did every job a radio station has to offer. But I remember him best for his easy-going commentaries. They were not commentaries in the sense of hard-hitting editorials. In fact, he seldom addressed political or controversial issues. He would just talk for perhaps fifteen minutes a day about “this and that” - his words. Sometimes he would just read and respond to letters from listeners. Sometimes he told stories of the early days in Phoenix and Arizona. And on occasion he would describe trips that he and his wife Vera would take around the state, the United States, or overseas. It was not heady stuff. And he never seemed to have hidden editorial agendas as is common today. I think if I had to put my finger on what Jack Williams had that made him so easy to listen to, I'd say it was his comfortable mastery of the English language. I know he had only a year or two of higher education at Phoenix College. He often told of how the Great Depression cut short his college career. But Jack Williams was one of the best writers, and, to borrow a word from the Reagan era, one of the best communicators to ever sit before a microphone. Indeed, it is inadequate to write essays about such talents. One had to have been there, and to have heard him. Many a local old timer would remember what I'm talking about. And Jack Williams, the broadcaster and the writer, did another thing I shall never forget. It was something, which, from today's more erudite, sophisticated, cosmopolitan perspective, probably seems quite small-town-ish or chamber-of-commerce-ish. But it was something that hundreds of thousands of Eastern and Midwestern transplants to Arizona could relate to, and appreciate: He began every broadcast, rain or shine,

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

with the literary signature, “And now let me say it's another beautiful day in Arizona… Suggest, leave us all enjoy it!” And, in those Arizona radio days of the 1950s, just hearing him say those words somehow reassured us that we were all so much luckier, and so much smarter, than our cousins who were still shoveling snow in Ohio.

Arizona Television Days The Big Broadcast It seemed like a Friday night ritual at our house on 25th Drive, and it was one that I liked. Dad would come home at about 4:00, paycheck in hand. We'd go to the A. J. Bayless market at 19th Avenue and Osborn Road, where at early 1950's prices, my mother could buy two weeks’ groceries for about forty dollars. (And that was for a family of six!) By the time everything was home and put away, we were starved. So, the standard dinner of convenience was hot dogs, baked beans and potato chips. In those days before fast-food pollution, an eight year old viewed such a dinner as a trip to heaven. Those Friday nights had another ritual: As we sat down to eat, Dad would turn on the G.E., black and white television, with the big 12- inch screen, to Channel 5, KPHO, and we'd watch a live, locally produced western music program called The O.S. Stapley Western Caravan. It was hosted by Joe Dana. The shows were primitive and unsophisticated by today's standards. There was a three or four piece cowboy band - including a steel guitar, acoustical rhythm guitar, standup bass and sometimes a piano. Joe Dana would sing a song. Maybe a guest vocalist would sing a song. The late Country-western star, Marty Robbins got his first television exposure there. Occasionally there would be a comedian or some humorous repartee with the host, and that was it. The commercials were usually delivered by the host, holding a product up to the camera. There was no "squeeze zoom'' or "digital effects,'' nor any of the electronic wizardry we now use to enlarge the viewers' ever shrinking

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

attention span. Rather, it was a basic case of putting on a show before a small but enthusiastic studio audience, and letting the cameras capture it. To the kids gathered around the Friday night dinner table during those early days of television, it seemed every bit as much a "big broadcast'' as anything the Dumont Network offered from New York City.

The First Federal Rangers The boy had not yet reached his teen years. That he was a little bit chubby didn't really distract from the neat appearance of his fringed, green and gold cowboy suit. Actually, it wasn't just any cowboy suit: The gold star pinned over his heart was the necessary credential of an official First Federal Ranger uniform. It was a club like no other. Being a First Federal Ranger was more than being a mere cub scout. It had status. The uniforms mirrored the garb of our Saturday matinee heroes from the Stetson to the boots, to the matching six shooters. And a gold star to boot! Being a Ranger was to be part of a club that had its own weekly television show, hosted by the head Ranger, Lew King. Any kid could tune in on Saturday night, but to actually be a Ranger was special. It was like money in the bank. In fact, that's exactly what it took to be a Ranger - money in the bank! Opening a savings account at First Federal Savings and Loan qualified you for official membership. A basic deposit, compounding at two or three percent interest, earned the rank of Private. Some higher balance promoted you to Corporal. A prudent savings habit could get you Sergeant stripes. Dedicated regular depositors (kids with paper routes) made it to the officer corps—Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant. There might have been a handful of Captains, and rumor had it that one kid made Major. Let's face it, it was an unabashed system of buying rank. But we didn't care. Being a Ranger was to be special; to flaunt your status by wearing your uniform (sans six shooters) to school on special occasions. Being a Ranger was to be part of the live studio audience at the weekly broadcast.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

I, personally, never was a Ranger. So like 99.9 percent of the other little kids in town, my involvement was limited to tuning to Channel 5 on Saturday night. All of which brings me back to the chubby little kid in the Ranger uniform. His name was Gary Peter Klahr and in the very early '50s, at the age of nine, he was better known, locally, than the Mayor. Have a parade or a supermarket opening and he'd be there contributing a touch of celebrity. Years later, Klahr reminded me that at the time there was only one television station and that everyone was watching whatever was being broadcast. They had a 100 percent rating! Of course, like all personalities of the day, he had an on-the-air signature to be remembered long years after the studio lights were dimmed: In full Ranger regalia, an animated chubby image of green and gold; right arm swinging in a circle like the overstated windup of a major league pitcher; and with a slight lisp that became more pronounced as the excitement rose, little Gary Peter Klahr opened each show bellowing the introduction, "And here he is: Wooooo King!!!'' For a decade or so, Lew King's Rangers graced the suburban airwaves. It changed stations at one point, jumping from Channel 5 to Channel 10, and of course sponsors came and went. Gary Peter Klahr outgrew his Ranger uniform and went on to law school. He was replaced by Little Larry John, and there was someone else after him. The show was durable entertainment featuring an endless parade of talented local kids. Of course the greatest success story among these was the singing and guitar picking duo billed as The Rascals in Rhythm, featuring Jerry and his little brother, Wayne Newton.

Other Stars There were other stars in those days of local productions: Sergeant Jack Ashley of the Phoenix Police Department hosted a show called Wanted, in which he profiled bad guys being sought by the forces of law and order. It was just like America’s Most Wanted, but forty years earlier. Ruth Dunlop had a daily afternoon cooking show which

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

traditional 1950s-style Phoenix housewives watched while preparing meals for their own families. And there was Romper Room. Local versions of this program aired in many cities. But the Phoenix edition gained some special notoriety as the host, Miss Sherry, hit the national news when it was disclosed that she went to Sweden for an abortion. Newscasters in those days didn't make the big bucks they do now, but still they were definite celebrities. I remember Jack Murphy's, News in Focus. The broadcast opened with an out-of-focus close up of Murphy's horn-rimmed glasses sitting on the desk. The shot was brought into focus as he picked them up, put them on, and proceeded to read the teletype copy that he held in his hand. This was, of course, before the days of Tele-prompters, special effects or video tape. Stories from reporters in the field, if they had them at all, were shot on silent 16mm film and narrated live, by the newscaster in the studio. Jack Murphy later went to Washington, D.C., where he was with the United States Information Service, which was the nation's main foreign propaganda vehicle during the cold war years. Other popular newscasters of the day included Tom Sherlock who continued on the air until 1989. Jack Ware was popular. Shirley Clum, a very debonair man with a most uncommon first name, was over on Channel 3; as was Don Tutt. A few years later, in the early '60s, my brother Michael was one of the news anchors at that station as well. Channel 12, for many years, featured Ray Thompson, with the Valley National News, sponsored of course by Valley National Bank. And one more to be mentioned was Channel 5's weatherman Art Brock. A bit rotund, and sporting a blond (later gray) crew cut, Brock seemed the local answer to comedian George Gobel. His sense of humor and chuckling voice gave viewers the feeling that he would be the perfect next door neighbor. Art Brock later ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Governor. He wouldn't have been any worse than some other Governors we've had, but the same folks who loved him on the weather report just didn't translate that image into the credibility for high public office. This was, of course, long before the world knew of Jesse (The Body) Ventura.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Wallace and Ladmo It would take endless pages to mention all the early television personalities we can remember. Perhaps another time. But the most significant of them all must not be overlooked. The team of Wallace and Ladmo came to the airwaves in 1954. It really began a year or so earlier when Ken Kennedy created, for KPHO, the character of an old prospector named Golddust Charley. It was a typically simple format. "Uncle Golddust'' hosted the children’s show from the general store. Tell a joke, plug a sponsor and roll a cowboy movie. Bill Thompson was Channel 5's 23-year-old art director at the time. I don't know if Thompson was a star-struck kid waiting in the wings, or if he just got thrust into it, but on a given afternoon he found himself in front of the cameras in the role of Wallace Sneed, Uncle Gold dust's favorite nephew. The skits he wrote and executed were an immediate hit with the kids. Years later he told me that Oliver Hardy was his comedic model. But Wallace was more physical, often taking a pratfall, or having the shelves in the general store come crashing down on him. As was the habit in early television, management quickly gave Thompson his own show, which he titled, It's Wallace. A loyal following of the grade school crowd came with it. Still, something was missing. A one-man cast put severe limitations on the range of possibilities for humor. Wallace needed a sidekick; someone to play off of. Enter Ladamier Kwiatkowski, soon to be known (in fact, he legally changed his name) as Ladmo. The lanky, rubber-faced 25-year old, who had turned down a baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians farm team, was a studio cameraman at KPHO. But once in front of the cameras, he shined in the role of his lovable, childlike character. Soon a system was devised whereby Ladmo would lock his camera in place, run on to the set, participate in the sketch, then exit back to the technical side of the camera while Wallace introduced the next cartoon, or did a commercial.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

The team was born. Ratings soared. It is said that local companies had to go on a waiting list to buy commercials in the show. I don't know if that is true. But I do remember the fan clubs, the personal appearances and the stage shows. Wallace and Ladmo, as the show was retitled, was a major phenomenon. And, as Channel 5's signal reached everywhere in Arizona, (except Tucson) as well as western New Mexico and eastern California, the young stars were recognized and in demand wherever they went. There would be one more major change in the program. His name was Pat McMahon. From a show business family, and fresh out of Arizona State University, McMahon was first seen on Channel 5 around 1960 as a news reporter. But his natural comedic ability looking for an outlet soon drew him to the Wallace and Ladmo set. I remember a newspaper feature article at the time described him a "raw glittering talent'' - an accurate observation. Over the years, McMahon created and played numerous regular characters on the show: geriatric Aunt Maude; Captain Super; Marshall Good; Boffo the Clown, and others. The common thread among the roles was that none was played straight. Aunt Maude was a horney old woman; Captain Super, a phony and sometimes cowardly imitation of Superman; Marshall Good, a law man unabashedly on the take; Boffo the Clown hated kids and always seemed a bit hung-over. What McMahon added was brilliant social and often political satire as the sketches made fun of politicians, news events and cultural trends. This element also added to the show, a significant adult audience. Airing at 7:00 AM, thousands of grown-ups tuned in as they got ready for work. Take your shower during the seven minute Popeye cartoon so one could catch the Aunt Maude routine scheduled to follow it. Of course, McMahon's most notorious character was the wealthy, snobbish, culturally sophisticated twelve-year old boy named Gerald. Presumably the nephew of the station's General Manager, Gerald wore a red velvet Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, large owl-like horn-rimmed glasses, and a blond Little Dutch Boy wig. He was a caustic, arrogant

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

monster who insulted the kids in the studio audience and those at home, calling them "public school brats,'' "ignorant little cretins,'' and other such insulting epithets. It was the perfect example of a character everyone loved to hate. So effective was the portrayal that when playing the role at personal appearances and live stage shows (of which there were several each weekend,) McMahon had to have bodyguards, lest the local eight- year olds take advantage of the opportunity to kill Gerald once and for all. Occasionally they tried. Wallace relates a story from the early 1970s when, from a stage show audience of several hundred people, a youngster slipped past the security guards and rushed up to Gerald in the middle of a skit. At first it appeared to be a baseball bat in the kid's hand. But before the cast and crew could get close enough to protect McMahon's skull, it became apparent that the weapon was, in fact, a large crucifix. The totally sincere little boy, obviously motivated by the recent hit movie, The Exorcist, had taken it upon himself to drive the demons out of Gerald's soul. I was told that McMahon, rather than allow it to become an ugly incident, had his Gerald character play along with it, ad-libbing the rest of the routine. The audience loved it. And most probably went home that day thinking it was all part of the script. Wallace and Ladmo and Pat McMahon and talented Cathy Dresbach, who joined the cast with a variety of female characters in later years, were a near perfect repertoire company of comedic actors. The show became an institution. Even Hollywood's biggest movie producer, Stephen Spielberg, who grew up in Phoenix, credits Wallace and Ladmo with stimulating some of his early interest in show business. Finally on December 29, 1989, after 35-and-one-half years and something like 10,000 daily shows, Wallace decided it was time to retire. It was the longest running, same cast, television program in American history. In all those years, Bill Thompson never took a vacation. And I believe he may have never taken a sick day. He took to heart the tradition that "the show must go on.'' And when it was finally over, it was truly the end of an era.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Performing Arts and Culture in The Modern Era At The Millennium A Yuppie couple on a first date sit in an upscale restaurant, sip white Zinfandel and bemoan the current state of affairs: "You know, Brad,'' says she, "it is simply dreadful that this city is such a cultural desert.'' "Oh, Myrna,'' says he, "I couldn't agree with you more. One would think that a venue of this scale - a veritable metroplex - would have done more to nurture the arts. Personally, I hope to move a more cosmopolitan setting—Sheboygan, perhaps!''

1952 The auditorium at Grand Avenue School was not very big - about the size of two classrooms. It was built in the 1940s. But to the kids in Mrs. Jesse Taylor's second grade class it was always a magical place. It was where we got our first exposure to the performing arts. It was perhaps once a month that the tedium of the classroom would be interrupted by the announcement that we were on “Assembly Schedule.” Class time would be shorter and lunch time would be earlier - not to accommodate some awful national testing requirement, but to make time for an assembly: The performing arts, live on stage, right there in our school. There were certain annual programs like the Christmas Pageant, and Spring Recital by the school orchestra. They were okay. And most years there was the All-School Talent Show. That was fun, especially when someone got stage fright and froze up. Or the time a girl forgot the ending to her piano piece and kept repeating the middle part until a teacher had to go up and escort her off the stage, crying. But the ultimate assembly - the one that we awaited each year - was the visit by Sergeant Jack Ashley of the Phoenix Police Department accompanied, of course, by his sidekick, Officer Pat Holden. Their appearance was to us as momentous as would have been a visit from the Lone Ranger and Tonto, the Cisco Kid and Pancho, or the Range Rider

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

and sidekick Dick West. Those men were all actors. But Jack Ashley was a real police sergeant. Pat Holden was a real cop. Their program was designed to instill in us, knowledge and acceptance of the rules that would help to guarantee our personal safety. “Don't play in irrigation ditches.” “Don't swim in the canals.” “Look both ways before crossing the street.” The great appeal to this safety lesson was not the wisdom of the messages. It was the medium through which they were presented. It was magic. Literally! Sergeant Ashley and Officer Holden gave us a thirty to forty minute program of magic tricks and illusions, each designed to teach valuable lessons to willing first, second and third graders. “Don't accept rides from strangers.” “Don't fly kites around power lines.” Of course the presentation was laced with jokes and one-liners. There was always a routine or two requiring a volunteer from the audience. And, as with all magicians, they had their own special magic words which the kids would be asked to bellow on cue, “Riding double is double trouble!” a bicycle safety rule we all knew but sometimes chose to forget. During the 1950s and through the 1960s, Sergeant Jack Ashley visited hundreds of schools and put on thousands of shows. When he retired from the police department, the electric utility, Arizona Public Service, had him continue the work in the role of “Sergeant Safety”. An entire generation of youngsters - certainly measured in the hundreds of thousands - survived the dangers of suburban childhood, in large part, because of his efforts. And in my case, and I'm sure that of others, there was the added gift of an introduction to the enchanting world of performance, live on stage. It is important to remember that in those days and even on through the decade of the 1960s, Phoenix was a much smaller place than it later became. Performing artists came to town for concerts, but we weren't on what you'd call the “A” tour schedule.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

1956 There were a few exceptions: Somewhere around 1957, The King himself, Elvis Presley, performed a concert at the old racetrack grandstands at the State Fair Grounds. I didn't get to go, but I read all the press accounts in the next morning's Arizona Republic. It was obvious at a glance that the reviewer was one of those fellows advocating the burning of books and the smashing of rock ‘n roll records. He never actually critiqued Elvis' performance. But he did offer his account of how disgusting, decadent, and depraved our idol was. The Phoenix Gazette noted that, “…a year from now no-one will remember this belly dancing exponent of rock and roll music.” And the writer ended with the rather politically incorrect statement, “A naked savage beating a tom-tom sounds like Beethoven when measured against Presley‘s hot-breath grunting.” I'm sure readers thrilled at the story of how the cute but misguided 13-year-old little Mary Margaret McFeeney, President of the local Elvis fan club, approached the star and presented him with her group's welcoming gift: A beautiful wristwatch. Rude and ungrateful, the singer ripped open the wrapping, saw that it had no gold or diamonds, grunted; grunted again, then threw the offering into a nearby trash barrel. It's surprising that the writer didn't have him miss the trash barrel and nail him for being a filthy, rotten litterbug as well. Perhaps it is needless to say that Phoenix got a reputation for tough reviews. In the mid 1960s, comedian Jerry Lewis - or a group of investors wearing his name - opened a nightclub in Scottsdale. The idea was that it would be a first class joint with a healthy cover charge and high priced drinks. The attraction, it was implied, was to be a weekly rotation of really big name headliners—Sinatra, Tormé, Clooney! Maybe Jerry himself from time to time. Neither the stars nor the customers showed. The place went under. I think it was the advent of folk music in the coffee houses that got at least my generation into the habit of seeking out live performances. It was the time of the Kingston Trio, the Limelighters, the Smothers Brothers, and the New Christy Minstrels. Coffee houses featuring non-

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

alcoholic beverages and simple cabaret acts sprung up in the empty storefronts of every small shopping center. There was the Bobaquevarie (named after a mountain,) The Mews (named after something Shakespearean,) and the Blue Goat (allegedly named after someone's ex- wife.) The big time, nationally known acts didn't play these rooms, but a lot of local facsimiles and later-to-be stars did. Dolan Ellis was by far the most popular, and most talented, of these. Before long he became a founding member of the New Christy Minstrels. Dolan - after a couple of years on the road, numerous appearances on national television, and a few gold albums - returned to Phoenix and opened his own place called Dolan's. He tells the story of paying a young friend $175 per week to sing there. The friend's name was John Denver. I guess I could recite a litany of every theatrical development over a thirty or forty year period, but I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that as the metropolitan area grew, so grew the variety and frequency of the offerings. At the risk of sounding like a shill for the Chamber of Commerce, I'll observe that the city and the area today has more culture than it knows how to appreciate: Not only a major symphony orchestra but two or three others in the suburbs. There is an Opera Company and a Ballet; a great deal of theatre, and numerous museums and galleries. In short, it is the nature of what Americans want their communities to offer. Of course it is a constant struggle to fund the more high-brow of the fine arts. They've never been big box office. Pushing the arts is not a game for the faint-hearted. And all of this brings me back to the Yuppie couple who sip pink wine at upscale saloons and complain about having to live in a "cultural desert.'' What do you say to people like that? What can you say? You just think back to times much earlier in life, when you were happy and excited just to be on Assembly Schedule.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

A Morning Route I heard every sales pitch and argument they ever thought of, but I never had the slightest temptation to be a morning paper boy. The Arizona Republic was clever and creative beyond belief in the persuasive efforts aimed at the likes of me. I was ten or eleven and owned a bicycle. I met all the qualifications for this exciting career. If I would just sign up, as the recruiter urged, my future would be assured. The campaigns they undertook pulled out all the stops. Full page ads in the Republic's front section featured photographs of the city's wealthiest men - the captains of business and industry who had started on the road to success, tossing the paper. They had learned responsibility and thrift. They enjoyed the camaraderie of their fellow carriers. They won prizes: portable radios, ball gloves, even bicycles. They went on picnics hosted by Eugene C. Pulliam himself, the newspaper's owner and publisher. They won college scholarships. They won trips to that new amusement park in California, Disneyland. I'm sure, if they thought they could have gotten away with it, they would have promised passage on the first flight to the moon - which was still a dozen years away. But, I wasn't convinced. I do not dispute any of the success stories they told then. And I'm sure there are plenty of moguls and stock market manipulators today who started with those canvas bags on their handlebars. But for me, at that time and place in my personal growth and development, it was going to take more than a two-cent per paper profit to entice me out of a warm bed at 4:30 on a cold winter morning. Bundling up like an Eskimo and suffering a sub-freezing wind chill factor as I peddled my bike around Tisdale Terrace just wasn't my idea of how to start the day. Even now I stand by that decision. The wisdom of my youthful thinking was dramatically confirmed many years later when my son was a paper boy and I had the occasion to ask myself, “Why the hell am I out here at five o‘clock in the morning delivering these goddam Sunday papers?”

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

The Golden Age of Kitchen Appliances Fresh hot bread straight out of the oven! From pioneer women on the frontier to Yuppified gourmet men in their condos, baking the perfect loaf has been a goal of discerning, sophisticated individuals for hundreds of years. Today, with the help of modern, computer-age technology, the challenge has been met. There is a new item on the market called The Bread Machine. It does it all. You simply pour the ingredients in one end and three hours later, a perfect loaf of Pumpernickel or Rye comes out the other. You don't have to touch a thing. The retail price for this revolutionary new miracle device is one-hundred-fifty dollars, plus tax. Given the average American's proclivity for getting bored with new toys, I figure the typical bread-buyer turned baker will end up paying thirty dollars per loaf. The introduction of such consumer items is nothing new. A few years ago, it was an elaborate food processor that could slice a carrot faster than you could take a knife from the drawer. Of course, cleaning the thing and putting it away took fifteen minutes. Retail price: about $89.95 plus tax. As long as there are television images of the ideal American kitchen, we will be buying these dubious labor-saving devices. It seems to me, however, that the challenge faced by inventors and marketers of such items gets harder and harder because most of the really saleable contraptions have already been thrust upon us. They came during the years when I was a kid. I like to think of it as the Golden Age of Kitchen Appliances. It probably started back before World War Two with the waffle iron. Then there were those big white portable ovens that were called Roasters. Everyone's Grandmother owned one but used it only for cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. The rest of the year it sat in a corner of the kitchen gathering dust. Those are a couple of early “must haves.” They whetted the appetite; got people in the mood for what was to come. The Golden Age hit between 1955 and 1960. I think the first real block-buster was the device folks still talk about but almost no one owns

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

anymore. It was the Veg-a-matic, and amazingly didn't even required electricity. Years later we would realize that the design of NASA‘s Lunar Lander was stolen from the Veg-a-matic. There were a variety of disk-like blades that were inserted just below a hand-crank. One for slicing, another for "hash browning,"- as in potatoes. I have no doubt they sold ten million Veg-a-matics. That instant success story sent engineers to the drawing board, and marketing executives to the airwaves with an onslaught of fast-talking prime time pitch men demonstrating the latest answers in kitchen convenience. We could no longer live without electric can openers, multipurpose toaster ovens, hand held soap spraying dish washing devices, water softeners and of course, garbage disposals. In regard to this last item, there was an interesting, albeit, macabre twist to the sales efforts. The authorized advertising told how garbage disposals were more convenient and sanitary than slopping leftovers into a bucket. But separately, there was a sensational rumor campaign to the effect that garbage disposals had been deemed illegal in that much maligned Mecca of crime, New York City. The story was that lots of people there were getting away with murder by putting their victim's bodies - piece by grisly piece - down the garbage disposal. To all of us civilized folks who lived anywhere other than the Big Apple, the story was taken as gospel. To this day I don't know if it was true or not. But the result was amazing and somewhat surprising. Rather than viewing the garbage disposal as a tool of the devil, folks concluded that if it could do the dirty work for those big city reprobates, it could handle an unwanted quart of mom's inedible Chicken Cacciatore. For a while, the garbage disposal was the hottest item on the market. Today they come standard with new homes and nobody gives them a second thought. There is one more item to be singled out. An item that more than any other deserves a Lifetime Achievement Award among kitchen appliances. The blender - a tall cup with sharp, spinning blades at its bottom. Set it on the drive gear connected to a high-speed electric motor, put on the lid, hit the button and it is guaranteed to turn any semi-solid

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

organic substance into a refreshing, healthy drink. Or so said the advertising. I will admit that some vanilla ice cream, a little chocolate syrup, a splash of milk and maybe a banana blends into a wonderful treat. In fact, that is about the only recipe I use a blender for today. But the mid-fifties were a different time. People didn't think in terms of aerobics and cholesterol counts and jogging and Nautilus and Stairmaster machines. Medical doctors were still seen on television endorsing Camel cigarettes. They didn't know all the neat things about health and fitness we know today. Nonetheless they were susceptible to a pitch promising strength, energy, long life and nice skin at the push of a button. Enter the blender. "Take all those old, left over vegetables out of the frig and blend them up," nutritionists in white lab coats would instruct. "That limp old stock of celery. That wilted lettuce - don't dump it; drink it! Sure, pour in that left over sauerkraut - it's good for your hearing. And, don't forget the carrots - lots of carrots. You'll be seeing in the dark!" It didn't matter what you had in the refrigerator or pantry, it was sure to be the perfect ingredient for a refreshing, health-infested drink. Medically and scientifically, I'm sure many of the claims and promises were medically and scientifically valid. If those blends could have been ingested intravenously, or through a gastrointestinal tube, all would have been fine. But the consequences of allowing such mixtures to pass over your taste buds was a trauma that stayed in one's memory for decades to come. Eating the end-product of a New York garbage disposal might get you close to the taste. A maintenance job at a sewage treatment plant captures the fragrance. On his worst day, the devil himself couldn't conjure up a penance equal to downing a glass of vegetable blender drink. They still sell blenders in America. Probably lots of them. But they don't talk about healthy concoctions any more. That all went away sometime in the 1960s when an enterprising young chemist accidentally used his laboratory blender to mix a potent of grapefruit juice, lime, salt, ice and tequila -- and naming it after his girlfriend, Margarita. Viva Margarita! Long live the blender!

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

HOPE, FEARS AND RITES OF PASSAGE Between the ages of five and fifty, life is full of little lessons and surprises. If that continues after fifty, it means you haven’t been listening!

The Gang and Company Mike Kellogg was the strongest kid in the seventh grade. He was built like a tank. Not to be confused with some others who could not walk past a jelly doughnut, Mike carried no fat. Just muscle. He would hold his arm straight out to the side while other kids would do chin-ups on it. He was strong. Without doubt, Mike Kellogg could have been the most feared young man for miles around. But he wasn‘t. In fact, he was one of the friendliest in the schoolyard. And at a certain point in my life it struck me strange that this tremendous potential for destruction, intimidation, meanness and bullying at its best was totally harnessed into such civility and gentleness. It seemed like such a waste. Years later, studying psychology at the university, I came to realize that my seventh grade perspective on the admirability of violent unleashed Darwinism was a phase that sets in for about three months, just before the explosion of puberty. It’s a hormonal thing. It may have been that I sensed that I was not going to be very good at puberty, so I exhibited great determination to be a success at this tough-guy thing. My challenge, however, lay in a cluster of stumbling blocks: I was little and sort of skinny. I was not tough. I was not mean. And, no one feared me. I don‘t think there was even the potential of anyone fearing me. Still, I was determined. And tenacity led me to the next best alternative which took the form of an apprenticeship with a local aggregation of adolescent hoodlums. They preferred the diminutive, “hoods”. My dad would have called them “punks”, had he met them -

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

which he did not. But regardless of title, they were known in and around the schoolyard as a group to approach cautiously. Now let me make clear that by today‘s standards this gang might well be nominated for the Mayor‘s Citizenship Award. They carried no guns. They did no crime. They owned no spray paint (I‘m not sure it was invented yet.) I witnessed only one fight - a rather clean two punch affair - that involved no clubs or chains or knives. What they did do was wear black leather motorcycle jackets (Well, one of them did) and low slung Levis. They sported D.A.s (literally, Duck‘s ass) or ducktail haircuts. They swilled warm beer, confiscated from their fathers’ stashes. And they hung out in an old junk filled garage located at the rear of one fellow‘s back yard. Pretty harmless stuff, really. But in the context of its time it represented a certain teetering on the cusp of ruin and degradation. To me it was exciting: a real opportunity to be all that I could be in my quest for a lower brand of reputation. There were really only three regulars in the gang but for those of us who hung around seeking acceptance, the trio provided the entire range of necessary role models: Gary had cast himself as the leader or boss. Bigger than the others, stronger; certainly tougher. My guess is that he viewed himself as a steel coil ready to spring. He had a demeanor that was quiet, yet intense. I was always in awe of his aunxt” - and that was decades before I knew what aunxt was. (And I still don’t know how to spell it.) Upon reflection, I can see that to Gary, Gary was James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. It was, after all, Gary who owned the black leather jacket. At the time, however, I didn‘t make the connection. One other thing about Gary: He had a habit of - quite unexpectedly, and apparently stimulated by nothing - uttering little pearls of wisdom like, “Someday they‘ll find out. And won‘t that be a day!?” I never had the foggiest idea of what he was talking about. But at that time and place it was enough for me just to be there in the presence of the head hood, soaking it all in. The second in command - maybe he was Vice Hood - was Buddy.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

I have no doubt that Buddy was tough, but in the quest for leadership his gene pool was working against him. He was a head shorter than Gary, and he wore glasses. On the other hand, in the quest for more mundane pursuits such as success in adult life, his gene pool was exceptional. Buddy probably had an IQ of 140. Also, despite his stature, Buddy was quite an assertive and accomplished basketball player - something that gained him a certain amount of non-hood-generated respect from the boys in the school. But the important characteristic in describing Buddy is that he was quietly intelligent. If the Gang had in fact been a high stakes criminal organization, Buddy would have been the one planning the intricately timed international jewel heists. But, as I said, that wasn‘t their thing. The third full time member of the gang was Pee Wee, who might have been either the least dangerous or the most dangerous of the three - depending on the position of the moon. There was a tendency, upon meeting Pee Wee, to think of him as being there for comic relief. He was not a tough guy. He was quite small, weighing less than eighty pounds. In the presence of the others he always seemed less equal on every plane, including intelligence. It was as if he was a permanent member of the cast, playing the role of the hanger-on dumb guy; there to allow everyone else the luxury of feeling superior to somebody. That was Pee Wee. Well, such was the common perception of PeeWee. But I always thought there was a much different PeeWee lurking beneath the surface. That other PeeWee was the semi-psychotic little elf who in later decades might lust over his collection of fully automatic assault rifles and rocket launchers; who might rise in the ranks of the local paranoid, secret militia group; and who would dream of going out in a blaze of glory and a hail of bullets defending his God-given right to be paranoid; and to use his God-given intellect to interpret the U.S. Constitution as his paranoia saw fit. That was the other PeeWee. But then I might have been wrong. My apprenticeship with the gang only lasted a month or two. It wasn‘t that I passed the course, graduated the Academy and got sworn in as a full-fledged hood. I just quickly drifted out of the lifestyle. I may

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

have come face to face with reality and acknowledged my inadequate physical and tough-guy qualifications. And, to that point, PeeWee already had the job of skinny-little-comic-relief guy. If I’d have wanted that position I would have had to fight him for it; and well, who knows, maybe that psycho part of him would have come to the fore in a real confrontation. Why take unnecessary chances, I figured. Me and the Gang parted on good terms. I wouldn‘t say we continued to be great friends or anything like that. But, to use a sports metaphor, let me say they let me out of my contract and I became a free agent. Upon reflection, I think the overriding cause of my departure was the onset of full blown puberty. With that affliction, I didn‘t need a gang. I needed a girl - a quest that would last for the next several painful years. It is interesting to note that at the outset of that quest I felt supremely confident, owing to the fact that the guys in the gang had taught me everything I needed to know about girls: What constituted a desirable one; how to get them; and what to do with them when you got one. Much later it became painfully apparent that their crash course in Conquest and Exploitation served to delay my romantic fulfillment by several years. And who knows - that was probably for the best. Thinking about that brief flirtation with the tough guy world of the late 1950s, it brings to mind a few other local individuals of that era and genre. I remember a guy named Walter who was about three slices short of a loaf, and whose DNA did not include a gene for feeling pain. He could have played pro Hockey without pads and helmet, but in those days in the Arizona desert we had never heard of hockey. I remember Rick, a guy who just loved to fight. It didn‘t matter who or how big. Provocation was not essential. I‘m not sure that he even cared about winning (though he always did.) He just loved the combat. There was a guy I only knew of named Henry, who enjoyed such a reputation for being tough that he probably never had to fight. He was the personification of intimidation. Years later, as adults, we met face to face and I was delighted and relieved to find him a mild mannered, very

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

friendly sort of guy. Maybe that was the real Henry. Or maybe he had spent the intervening years in psychotherapy. I don‘t know. But he seemed totally non-threatening to me. I remember this little Italian-American guy, but I don‘t remember his name. He was a seriously nasty incarnation of The Fonze, about twenty years before Happy Days hit the tube. He was a character out of the fifties movie, Blackboard Jungle, complete with a small entourage of toadies; the black leather jacket; the DA haircut; the leaded and lowered 1949 Hudson. He had all the accouterments of the role. He was the quintessential Hood - until one afternoon when he played the role with a bit too much gusto. His attempt at threatening, intimidating and challenging to fight the thirty-something, mild mannered proprietor of the neighborhood miniature golf and pinball arcade was a serious miscalculation. The old man behind the counter still remembered much of what he had learned a dozen years earlier in World War Two, as a marine fighting through the various Pacific islands. The fight was short, bloody, and one-sided. The tough guy and his toadies probably moved on to more fruitful, and peaceful careers. I know I never again saw them together as a group. And finally I remember, by reputation at least, a guy named Nick. Nick not only played the role of tough guy, but tried to play the role of smart guy in some business transactions with folks who later would become known as Wiseguys. He just wasn‘t as tough or as smart as he thought he was, and not nearly as prudent as he should have been. In short, Nick failed to recognize his limitations. After a long, noticeable absence Nick‘s body was found in a shallow grave somewhere out in the Arizona desert.

Winnie Ruth Judd Has Escaped. Again!! There was only one thing scarier than the words “Winnie Ruth Judd.” That was in the sentence, “Winnie Ruth Judd has escaped again!” It was 1952 and every kid in the second grade at Grand Avenue School knew who Winnie Ruth Judd was. The grown-ups called her a

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

trunk murderer because she hacked people up and put the pieces of their bodies in those big suitcases that were called trunks. She was a “prisoner” out at the state mental hospital; which among Phoenix locals in those days was euphemistically known as “24th Street and Van Buren.” Apparently, Winnie was the kind of woman you just couldn't keep tied down. Over the years - time and time again - she would slip the bonds of state supervision and grant herself a furlough among the good folks of Phoenix. Of course whenever this occurred, The Arizona Republic dutifully carried the story on the front page, thereby setting off a panic among second graders throughout the city. This was serious stuff. To the last kid, we knew that Winnie Ruth, the insane trunk murderer, was prowling the streets, trying to decide which second grader she would grab, hack up and stuff, piece by piece, into a suitcase. So chilling was the specter of this notorious woman that, as a kid, and for a number of years thereafter, I thought the word “Winnie” was an adjective, a pejorative, that meant crazy. I didn't realize it was her first name. These were the facts as I knew them: The perspective of an impressionable, frightened seven year old. The official story wasn't very much different. Winnie Ruth Judd- more commonly known as Ruth, was an attractive young Phoenix woman in the early 1930s. It was alleged that there was some kind of love triangle, or maybe it was a quadrangle, involving Ruth and a man who I believe was a doctor, and some other woman or women. Forgive the vague account but this wasn't the part a second grader paid much attention to. Anyway, the story went that Ruth murdered these two other women, cut their bodies in pieces, stuffed them into steamer trunks, then shipped them by train to San Diego. It wasn't keen detective work that revealed the ill deed - it was sloppy packing. It seems that sitting on a loading dock in San Diego, one of the trunks began to leak, not to mention smell. When the police lifted the lids, the reporters' description of choice was ‘grisly discovery’. Well somehow Judd was linked to it and arrested, and there was the beginning of a spectacular trial. Newspapers from all over the

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

country sent correspondents. The eastern press began to call her the “Tiger Woman”. It was hot news. The end result was that Winnie Ruth ended up at 24th Street and Van Buren, where it was assumed she would spend the rest of her life. And those of us who were at Grand Avenue School some fifteen or twenty years after her incarceration, truly wished she had been content to do that. I have not done any serious research on the Winnie Ruth Judd case but I always felt there was someone else involved. Maybe it was the man in the presumed love triangle or quadrangle, and in the ultimate romantic-horror scenario Winnie Ruth Judd kept mum, took the rap for her man, and was willing to face the gallows before she'd tell. But what do I know? Winnie Ruth Judd did not die at 24th Street and Van Buren. In fact, she lived well in to her nineties. She spent a good thirty years in confinement, having ceased her habit of escaping. In the late 1960s, her sentence was commuted to time served, Governor Jack Williams acting hesitantly on the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. The fact that they ultimately released her furthers my feeling that she wasn't singularly guilty. I remember the day she walked. The papers carried the photo of this matronly old lady tasting real freedom for the first time in three decades. Ruth left Arizona for San Francisco where she lived and worked as a housekeeper for a family which had somehow befriended her during the years of confinement. I thought about the terror of my early childhood imagination and couldn't help thinking it was ironic that I was glad they let her go.

Bull Head -And the Rites of Passage The world knows the silhouette of the giant Saguaro cactus. They can be found only in the Sonoran Desert. Surrounding them is a wide variety of flora unique to the region - Prickly Pear, Yucca, Ocotillo, Palo Verde and more. Living among these are hundreds of species of birds, mammals and reptiles surviving in a delicate ecological balance.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Of course this lesson in Desert Studies is leading to something. A question: Why did they have to go messing around with the Bull Heads? No, they did more than mess with them. It was floral genocide on the surface of the Sonoran Desert. What in hell is a Bull Head? you ask. A Bull Head was a plant. It was more like a ground cover that grew in large carpet-like patches. Very flat. Very small little leaves. Seasonal. Gone in the winter. Appeared in early spring. By June a patch might be a dozen feet in diameter and covered with thousands of tiny red and yellow flowers about the size of Baby's Breath. They were beautiful but painfully deceptive because hidden beneath the beauty was a weapon that could bring down a two-hundred pound man. The weapon was called a Bull Head. Picture the kind of a mine that navies float in the water to blow up enemy ships. It's a round affair with spikes sticking out in all directions. That's what a Bull Head looked like. Now imagine this about an eighth to a quarter-inch in size. And know that the spikes were as pointed as a needle at the tip, but cone-like so they really punched a hole as they pierced. Now picture yourself bare-footed, stepping on one. Aahhh!!! One other thing to know: The bottom surface of a bare foot could not step on a patch without picking up at least two or three Bull Heads at the same time. Aaaahhhhggg!!!! The scream was invariably followed by obscenities. It’s certainly how I learned to cuss. A truly insidious part of it was that you were usually in the middle of the patch before you took the hit. Then you were trapped. You knew you had to balance on one foot while you pulled the little devils out of the other. Of course this shifting of weight drove them deeper into the weight bearing foot. But maybe the worst part was the psychological torture. Even after you had painfully extracted the monsters from both feet, you were very much aware of the fact that you were still standing in the middle of the patch, knowing you would go through that torturous process again before you reached the outer edge and freedom. As kids we may have viewed the Bull Head patch as a dreaded enemy, but it also served a very useful purpose: It was the role it played

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

in the Rite of Passage. Kids in the neighborhood - especially the boys - did not wear shoes during the summer. Maybe you did if you were going to church or something like that, but the typical day to day choice was bare-footed-ness. Great pride was taken in how tough, how leather-like the bottom of your feet could be. The calluses were cultivated and nurtured. In a city where the summer temperature was 110 in the shade, it was 130 in the sun. The surface of a sidewalk or, worse yet, the blacktop streets reached temperatures that would fry an egg—something a reporter would do once each summer on a slow news day. Any kid worth his salt had to be able to walk barefoot on these plains. In retrospect I realize how stupid this was. But at the time it was a critical part of the revised, modernized code of the West. Well, you know where I'm going with this. The Bull Head patch was a convenient testing ground for one's feet, character and courage. When you could walk undaunted, unflinching across a fifteen foot expanse of those things, you knew you were accepted into society and prepared to survive in that most challenging environment. You won't find Bull Heads in Arizona today. Oh, maybe you‘ll see the odd patch here and there. But it's not at all like the good old days. But be aware that they didn't just naturally come to the end of their botanical era. They didn't fall victim to some ecological breakdown of the food chain. No, they were killed back in the 60s. Some called it cold blooded murder—and I tend to agree. The story goes that a Blue Ribbon Task Force on Bull Heads was appointed to get rid of the critters. Someone in the group learned that Bull Heads were the favorite meal of a sub-species of the Japanese Beetle. From there it required little more than to import several million of the tiny critters (sterile so they couldn't reproduce) who, hungry after their long trip from the Orient, wasted no time in picking clean the state's Bull Head crop. Say good-bye to another piece of Arizona's heritage; not to mention an important chunk of the Sonoran desert. There is one post-script to the story, and it offers some consolation. The lowly Bull Head might be gone but it will never be forgotten. For,

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

about the time the Japanese beetles were finishing their dirty work, a group of Arizonans with the pioneering spirit were carving a new settlement out of the high desert, on the banks of the Colorado River in Mohave County. Their town would be modern and forward looking, to be sure. Still, they felt it should reflect a bit of the history, tradition and grit that made Arizona what it is. And so, of course, they named the place Bull Head City. And you can visit there 365 days a year.

Celebrities Sociologists and psychologists have written books about why Americans view celebrities as larger-than-life. It's interesting. Sometimes the celebrity is famous only for being a celebrity. There was a time when a lot of TV games show panelists were known for this. As a kid I sometimes elevated a celebrity to hero status. My favorite in the 1950s was an actor named Rod Cameron. I saw all his movies. He played cowboys and soldiers - nothing else I can recall. He appeared in B-movies and admittedly, today I probably wouldn't make it to the third reel. But back then, Rod Cameron showed me some certain quality that made him special. Over the years I have seen a number of celebrities. Many were political figures, including Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Robert Kennedy. I try to picture such people as if they were not famous - working at the corner gas station. This practice serves to safeguard us from blindly following some dangerous, charismatic leader. It also helps us to respect those individuals not for who they are, but for what they've made of their lives. I have had brief conversations with Jimmy Carter, astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn, and the Olympic hero, Jesse Owens. Carter - and this was before he was President - was very likable and seemed almost shy. I was impressed by John Glenn, as much for my memories of him as an astronaut, as a Senator. And I was in awe of Jesse Owens. There was a real American hero.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

I've done television interviews with some others including diplomat, Henry Kissenger; comedian-writer, Steve Allen; and the author of Roots, the late Alex Haley. Asking a person questions for thirty or forty minutes is a pretty good way to develop a sense of what they are all about. These are three men of immense talent and depth. Kissenger is intimidating. Steve Allen, I am convinced, operates with two brains; it's the only way a person could be so creative. Alex Haley, however, was the most special. He was a gentle soul whose literary contributions capture the resiliency of the human spirit. His work will continue to be important after we're all gone. Among the individuals I would really like to meet and talk with are Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower, but of course, they all are gone. There are others who are still possibilities. The list includes Woody Allen, but then I think there is a long list of people who would like to interview him. The late humorists Jean Shepard (author of the movie A Christmas Story); as well as poet and author Shel Silverstein (Where the Sidewalk Ends // A Boy Named Sue) would have been fun. My list includes virtually no politicians. I've spent most of my life talking with them, and have learned that one seldom gets intelligent conversation. Heaven only knows what famous person I may yet run in to. But I think no future experience could ever burn itself into my memory as the image of one of my earliest encounters. I was ten or eleven years old when a movie company came to town to film some scenes for a picture called, Bus Stop. I was sitting with a few thousand other people at the old grandstands at the State Fairgrounds when I saw a fantasy in a green dress. She wasn't all that close to me. She didn't even know I was there. But when the director called, "Action!" and she walked at profile before the crowd, I felt the sizzle as my cerebral cortex was etched forever with the image of Marilyn Monroe. Now there was more than just a celebrity -- there was talent!

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

A Christmas Sale The front door was standing open on that typically mild Arizona December day. The girl ringing the bell was Hispanic, pre-teen and the slightest bit round. In her left hand: a large plastic bag.

I knew she was there to sell me something. It's a rite of passage: Kids going door-to-door selling raffle chances or chocolate bars: efforts to finance class trips or to buy new band uniforms. Thirty-odd years before, my high school walked the neighborhoods pushing magazine subscriptions to build a swimming pool. And it was built – but long after I was gone. The kid knocking on your door is to be encouraged! They choose to be part of society. They don't have to spend their afternoon that way. A kid selling magazines likely isn't selling drugs - which would definitely have a higher profit margin. They‘re paying their dues; establishing their roots in the community. The image of that young Chicana on my front porch sparked an old memory: I was taken back forty years to the old neighborhood. There was a Mexican family that lived - not in one of our postwar-boom-years tract homes, but across Osborn Road; across the big field on the other side of the canal, in a little house that was built long before there were building codes. My brothers and I didn't know them. They went to a different school. But in my mind's eye, I can see them as clearly as if we had been best friends. Once a week they came knocking at the door. They offered no magazines, nor raffle tickets. They were selling homemade tamales; from their mother's kitchen to ours; a bit of enterprise to keep their family ship afloat. As I greeted the girl at my door, I wondered if her bag carried tamales. Given that she held no order form and pencil I knew she wasn't there for her school. Oranges. Grapefruits maybe. Those, kids also sell from bags. But no. She smiled at me. "Would you like to buy a shower head?" A new twist on an old story.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

"Shower head!?" I asked. "My mother works at a hotel," she explained as professionally as any salesman I'd ever encountered. "Once a year they replace all the shower heads. They let us have the old ones to sell. It's how we earn money to buy Christmas presents. "People always need shower heads," she added. "They're only fifty cents." Well, who among us, with any appreciation for the innocence of childhood, and with any sense of respect for the honest efforts of people to better themselves . . . who among us could not buy a Christmas shower head? Certainly not I. And I am pleased to report that, aided by a piece of wire, it hangs each year, in a place of honor, on my Christmas tree.

When “Coach” Meant Teacher Millions of dollars change hands in the machinations of the owners, players, boosters, broadcasters and host cities of professional sports franchises. Blue ribbon committees haggle over stadium deals. People become obsessed. Radio stations and cable television networks structure their formats around it. Careers succeed or fail; fortunes are made and lost. And, God forbid there should be a player strike. I'm not bemoaning any of this because I choose to ignore it. I will make two observations: The first is that amid the chaos of corporate sports mania we forget that the original idea was supposed to be a relaxing, entertaining past time. And, second, football‘s ultimate final championship known as the Super Bowl is, often as not, the most boring game of the season. So much for the corporate sports world. But I remember a time when athletic competition was a more righteous institution; when players had heart and gave their all for the love of the game and the glory of victory; when coaches focused on fundamentals and instilled courage, determination, grit, positive values and above all, good sportsmanship. Winning was important. But it wasn't the only thing. Said differently, the word “coach” was a verb. It meant, “to teach.” For in that

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

far off and naive time that I think of as the Golden Era of Sports, there still existed an ability - a mandate really - to keep life in perspective and remember that a game was only a game. Albeit, of course, a game we took damned seriously! It was 1957, give or take a year. The West High School “Thunder- birds” were a formidable foe on the gridiron. Me and my friends from Tisdale Terrace, and the surrounding neighborhoods, were in awe - as only seventh grade boys can be - when it came to the “T-Birds” football heroes. But that we would have studied our lessons as we studied the tactics and strategies of that team! The head coach, Vern Braasch and his able assistant, Bud Robinson, were as famous to us then as Vince Lombardi would be later. Players became legends in their own time: “Jumbo Jim” Mason was probably the best high school quarterback in a generation. The Walker Brothers, Larry and Jim, were halfbacks to behold - speed and movements that provided the daydreams for their seventh grade worshippers. Of course, the seasons I remember were a decade before the first Super Bowl. Professional football was still relatively unsophisticated. I doubt the salary of the biggest star exceeded $50,000. And college football in the mid 1950s was more steeped in tradition than in empire building. The concept of football-as-big-business was not quite upon us. Still, there was a fervor; a local loyalty that translated to 5,000 Friday night fans at a high school stadium. It was as if it were a training ground for the football fanaticism that would grip the country fifteen years later. It was a different time. Kids became heroes with touchdown passes. That part is still the same. But the stakes were different. Athletic accomplishments on an autumn day could pave the way for a date with the cutest cheerleader. Or possibly a political career as Student Body President. Later, such innocent ambitions were replaced by the “national letter of intent,” recruiting junkets, and long range dreams of being an early draft pick. Yes, it's a different day. The exceptional athlete has the keys to the kingdom. And we shouldn't begrudge them that. But still I wonder if in the process of building empires; of creating bureaucratic quasi-judicial

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

sports governing bodies; of specialized high-tech training methods; of delineations between “revenue sports” and “minor sports”; of negotiated exclusive broadcast rights; and of orchestrated publicity campaigns on behalf of 19-year old Heisman Trophy candidates - if we haven't lost a little something. Certainly our innocence. Maybe our perspective. Yet, there is hope. I see it in a story played out in the late 1980s at a Catholic high school in Phoenix: Two boys were among the best on the football team. They enjoyed the game but viewed their coach as someone trying to live out fantasies of being the famous collegiate coach “Bear Bryant”. The psychologist would have said there was a failure to communicate. Missing was the esprit de corps; the motivation; the leadership; the coaching as a verb; the teacher. For the boys, the season, the team and the experience ceased to be meaningful or fun. If the coach had lost his perspective, the boys did not. They quit! They hung up their helmets and spent that season and the next, contributing to their school in a different way - on the cheerleading squad! And they were pretty darned good!

Critical Thinking in The Boy Scouts of America The Boys Scouts of America is a fine organization to be sure: a trainer of men, a teacher of surviving adversity, a maker of leaders. I know. I was one. And it‘s important to note that many of the nation's great historical heroes began their hikes to heroism by fording rivers, and doing other neat wildlife things - all the healthy red-blooded behaviors illustrated in the Scout‘s official training guide, The Handbook For Boys. My dog-eared copy, presented to me more than forty years ago, still holds a place of honor on my bookshelf. And as I leafed through it recently, I couldn't help but be struck by its wholesomeness - especially typified by that kid who is captured in illustration on every other page. It's not the fact that he, and every other likeness represented in the book, is whiter than white that I notice. (My text is a 1956 edition.) It's

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

not that he is always dressed in the complete and correct, perfectly pressed and starched uniform that I notice. It's not even that he miraculously has accomplished every task, met every challenge and earned every merit badge that amazes me. No, indeed. I am perfectly willing to accept that there was then, and is now, a whole cadre of little buggers out there who are perfectly willing to forsake all other worldly pleasure for the sake of badges, ribbons, and other paramilitary honors. I truly don't have a problem with that. But what jumps off those old yellowed pages and hits me in the face is that the kid is chronically smiling! As I said, I too was a Boy Scout: Troop 106, Roosevelt Council (that's Teddy Roosevelt) Phoenix, Arizona. I think I even won a merit badge somewhere along the line. In all honesty, I choose not to remember my highest achieved rank. It was someplace between Tenderfoot and Eagle - closer to the former, I'm sure. Much closer. I do remember the pomp, the ceremony, and the occasional sense of accomplishment. I do remember having a great time. But I must add for the historical record that our scouting experience in Troop 106 was nothing like those idealized illustrations in the Handbook For Boys. We did not build thirty foot tall lookout towers of stripped logs. We did not relay messages from mountain top to mountain top with semaphore flags. And we did not swim two mile courses across crystal lakes with rapturous smiles pasted on our faces. We had a different kind of Boy Scout experience. I remember a night as dark as dark can be only when the moon is a sliver and the black murky clouds are hanging no more than two or three hundred feet above the ground. It had rained hard that day and continued to drizzle. It was colder than the freezers of hell - an especially wicked place a mile south of Dante's inferno. It was wet. Obviously, having rained all day it would be wet. But I mean it was wet-wet. Everything was wet. Pine branches get wet with a spring shower, but that night the trunk bark was soaked. The Scout Master‘s cigarettes got wet (remember, it was the 50‘s) and God knows that didn‘t help any at all. The dirt was mud. Rabbits were hopping around looking like oversized white rats, so soaked were they.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

And all of those wonderful, officially sanctioned trappings - the equipment and paraphernalia that transforms a scrawny suburban adolescent into a Boy Scout - all those trappings were soaked. Indeed, our packs contained no dry change of socks, underwear, nor anything else. The walls of the U.S. Infantry, World War Two surplus pup-tents that were guaranteed waterproof a decade earlier on the battlefields of Europe, were no match for the rains of the Tonto National Forest of north central Arizona. The Handbook For Boys had been explicit: “Amid a rainstorm do not touch the inside of the pup-tent, lest you disturb the special waterproof coating.” Any hint of waterproof coating had long since vanished in a litany of earlier happy campers rubbing the canvas, just to test the warning. And there was the soggy kapok. Kapok: that wonderful, miracle substance - whatever the hell it was - advertised as the ultimate filler of sleeping bags; guaranteed to keep a Scout toasty warm and free of frostbite when camping in the Antarctic (as illustrated on page 225.) Soggy Kapok - a condition which on an otherwise dry camping trip would be the cause of social ostracism and humiliation. But on that particular starless, starless night, soggy Kapok was the universal rule. No exception. No explanation nor excuse expected or offered. We had dug the regulation, six-inch rain trench around our tents. Under normal circumstances they would have diverted the water away from our bunks: kept us regulation, kept us dry! This night was not normal. Rather it was akin to opening the gates of Hoover Dam. The trenches were fully submerged. Indeed the firm soil into which we had driven our tent stakes had turned to muck, as a wall of paperbacks books and Kapok, canteens and toilet paper, playing card and contraband girlie magazines washed down the mountainside, leaving a company of decidedly unhappy campers. Shivering, defeated, despondent, we gathered around the ring of rocks that had once been the troop fire. Half burned logs floated and drifted on a pond of murky water. The cold, huddled throng stood in silence, staring downward but seeing none of the amber images and fantasies associated with a roaring, crackling blaze. We sang no

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

rollicking songs. We told no ghost stories, as none could compare with the nightmare we were living. We stood in silence and listened to and felt the cold rain as it continued to fall. Finally, as the reality of the situation became apparent, one lone scout - it wasn't me - did something that should have earned for him every honor in the book; won him a battlefield commission; prompted immediate promotion to the rank of Eagle. It did none of these, but did win for him the eternal gratitude of all his assembled comrades. He looked up at the Scout Master and somewhat timidly asked, "Sir, do you think maybe we could all just go home?" It wasn't what the starched-shorted Scout in the Handbook For Boys illustrations would have done. And I imagine some of the more famous former Eagle Scouts like John Glenn and Gerald Ford would have viewed it as a cop-out. But for those of us that night, somewhere below the Mogollon Rim, it was a wonderful example of critical thinking. And there should a merit badge for that, too.

The Great Goodyear Strike In 1980, my father retired from the Goodyear Corporation, after twenty-nine years of service. At that time, the subsidiary he worked for was called Goodyear Aerospace and he was a Plant Engineer. I think it is noteworthy that he was one of the last - if not the very last - such engineers in America to come up through the ranks without the benefit of a college degree. He would be the first to acknowledge that you just can't do that anymore. The technical knowledge demanded of engineers today is more sophisticated than the science fiction stories of a decade ago. When he completed his tenure as the local chapter President of the American Society of Plant Engineers, it was like the end of an era. It is also pertinent to report that during those years in engineering he wore neckties to work and was a registered Republican. But if you were to back up twenty-five years earlier, to the mid- 1950s, you would have found my dad driving to the same plant every morning - but with a few differences:

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

The company was called Goodyear Aircraft; he wasn't wearing a necktie; he was a union electrician represented by and paying dues to the International Association of Machinists (IAM Local 763), and he was a registered Democrat. I remember those union days - probably about 1954 - and the time the IAM went on strike at the Goodyear plant. I have no memory now, and had no knowledge then of what the issues were. My guess is that it was about wages. The aircraft industry was doing pretty well developing and building the fighters and the bombers and the missiles that kept the Cold War going. Profits were up and the workers likely were after their piece of the pie. But I don't know that for sure. What I do know is that we were on strike - not just my dad and his co-workers - but my whole family. Day-to-day life was suddenly very different. Over the course of all his years with Goodyear, from 1951 to 1980, my dad was up and gone early every morning. He was not one to ever be late for work. If he ever missed a day to illness, it would have had to have been damned near life-threatening. In other words, seeing my dad at home during the work week, was something that just didn't happen - except during the strike. And, I should add, whereas I don't remember specifically, he probably used that windfall of strike-related free time to paint the house or something. There was no shortage of the work ethic on 25th Drive. Being on strike carried with it a responsibility to help “man” the picket line. It was all very well organized. Each union member was scheduled to take a shift marching in a big circle in front of the main entrance to the plant. Now I've seen plenty of old newsreels and videotape of hostile labor disputes. We conjure images of unruly mobs tearing down factory gates and throwing rocks through office windows. We think of gangs of strikebreakers, known as "Goon Squads," swinging billy-clubs and lobbing tear-gas into the crowd of disgruntled workers. Visions of chaos and destruction! Our strike was nothing like that. In fact, as a reward for doing some chore, or perhaps for being good, I got to go with Dad to picket the plant.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

I thought they had a marvelous system. At the outer edge of the main picketing area were a couple of long tables manned by the strikers’ wives. (In those days the skilled trades were almost exclusively male institutions.) These women controlled what seemed like an endless supply of jelly doughnuts, baloney sandwiches, boiled eggs, pickles, coffee and Kool-Aid. It was operated on the barter system with the medium of exchange being laps marched on the line. Coffee cost five revolutions, a sandwich was ten, and so forth. I don't remember the price of a jelly doughnut, but I know I was willing to keep the strike going and the picket line moving just as long as all that great food lasted. Eventually the negotiators came to terms and a new contract was signed. Labor went back to work and I'm sure management got a raise, too. Profits continued to be realized as the wheels of industry rolled out new generations of fighters and bombers and missiles. Life got back to normal as the Cold War continued for another thirty-five years. I don't know if there was ever another strike at the Goodyear plant. If so, it might have been after my dad went into engineering and no longer belonged to the union. Or, it could have happened after I grew up and no longer lived with my parents. Maybe it never happened again. But I recall an occasion a year or so after that original dispute. I was thinking about those jelly doughnuts and the festive mood associated with picketing the plant. And, I remember asking dad with a certain sense of anticipation, when they were going to have another strike. I couldn't hear what he answered because he was sort of muttering and shaking his head as he walked away.

Guns and Blubber It isn‘t the kind of childhood experience one likes to remember, much less talk about in public. These days kids end up in adult court; in adult prison for the same or similar actions. That didn‘t happen to me but for that time and place, my consequences were more than I would have ever wanted. I knew that I wasn‘t supposed to be playing with the rifle. It had been drummed into my head. But you know how kids are; especially

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

boys in that ten-year-old range. I could handle it. I knew what I was doing. Well, maybe I didn‘t but that combination of show off and macho-boy got the best of me. I‘d impress the neighborhood kids. They‘d see me with the rifle and know I was pretty hot stuff. Dale was about two years younger than I. He lived down on the corner of 25th Drive and Mulberry. Blond hair. Not very big; but in his own way probably as much a show-off as I was. He was a nice enough kid. We got along okay, so it wasn‘t really some “fightin’ words” kind of thing when he started mouthing off about me acting like a “big man”, swinging the rifle around in the front yard. But there I was with the gun, playing the role, and it just wouldn‘t do to have some little kid like Dale ridiculing me in front of everyone. After all, I had the gun and, logically, his role should have been to be scared. But he wasn‘t. He just stood there mouthing off and challenging my…my right to have a sense of fulfillment in the role of the guy with the gun. I could say that I don‘t know what came over me, but in reality the previous paragraph captures quite clearly what came over me. Dale Wright just plain pissed me off. And he did it effectively enough to make me forget, for a critical moment, everything I had ever been taught; and to disregard any mental images of consequences to be suffered for my actions. So without further ado I put the rifle to my shoulder, took aim and pulled the trigger. The sound rang in my ear. I heard the projectile hit him in the arm. I heard him scream. I saw him hit the ground, hard! For the briefest of moments the world fell silent. But it was quickly broken by Dale‘s painful moaning. Then a strange feeling and an even stranger observation passed through my brain, “Gee, I didn‘t know a B.B. gun could knock somebody down like that. My brother shot me with this B.B. gun before, and it never knocked me down!” By now Dale was crying and running toward his house. And then another thought - a realization, really - passed through my brain, “Oh God, am I in trouble now!” And I was right. Dale‘s dad and my dad worked together at the Goodyear Aircraft plant. They got home at 4:30 in the afternoon. By 4:40, Dale and his dad

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

were entering my front yard where I was so unfortunate as to be standing in the presence of my dad. “Your boy shot my boy with a B.B. gun”, he said calmly, holding Dale‘s arm out to display the unmistakable round welt of a B.B. wound. My dad looked carefully at the arm, now slightly swollen and looking something akin to a serious mosquito bite. I said nothing. For that matter, neither did my dad. There was no interrogation; no demand of an explanation; no Judge Hardy to Andy Hardy, father-to-son talk. He just picked me up, swung me across his knee (even though he was standing) and proceeded to spank me, hard, with no concern for the potential of damaging either my psyche or my butt. Our neighbor seemed satisfied. He shook my dad‘s hand, then took his son by the hand and walked home. For Dale‘s part, I have to give him credit. He never said anything taunting to me or anyone about watching me get it good, there in the front yard. I guess it was part of the unwritten code of being a neighborhood kid: You never laughed or made fun about another neighborhood kid getting a spanking; even if it was administered as punishment for your transgression. There was solidarity among kids when it came to getting spankings. And besides, the B.B. welt on Dales arm was worn as a badge of distinction in the schoolyard the next day. “Sure I got shot in the arm, but I just shook it off,” he was probably heard to say. Shook it off, my butt - the little cry baby! As for me, I guess I learned my lesson from that quick administration of measured justice and public humiliation. I do know I never shot anyone else. I doubt that I ever even pointed a gun at anyone again. It was a perfect example of a successful 1950’s style object lesson. But the retelling of this story leaves me with one very serious regret: I‘m really sad that I no longer own that old, Daisy, lever action, wood stock, full length B.B. gun. As a collectible, forty-five years later, it would be worth a fortune!

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. I remember asking one of my brothers what a “Reg. US Pat Off.” was. I could read well enough to sound it out. This was despite having learned to read by sight rather than phonics - a topic of discussion and debate in every American home of the 1950s. Yes, I could sound out the words, “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” But they weren't words that I understood, even though I found them printed, stamped or embossed on virtually every household item I laid my hands on. I knew that “U.S.” was where we lived. I knew I had a brother named Pat. I knew that “Off” meant not to get on something. But “Reg.” had no meaning whatsoever. Put them all together as in “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” and as close as I could come was something about my brother having to get off the country. Another one was “Made in USA. It was written all over everything, too. This I understood. They were saying that the item in question had been made in our country. What I didn't understand was why they were always making a big deal out of it. I remember that some of the stuff so marked was really pretty junky. Certainly nothing to brag about Later, the word spread that “Made in USA” translated to, “This thing was not made in Japan.” The Japanese, in those days, had quite a reputation as copy cats. It had something do with them losing the war and us teaching them how to be more like Americans. It's been argued that, ultimately, we taught them that lesson too well. There was a rumor that the Japanese - not to be outsmarted - decided to rename Tokyo, and started called it “USA.” Then they started marking things “Made in USA”. The counter-rumor was that things that were really made in our country would be marked “Made in U.S.A.” with a period after each letter. My friends and I would strain our eyes looking for the microscopic little periods that were supposed to be stamped between microscopic little letters on our microscopic plastic toys.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

Times have changed and things have gotten easier. Today I have no trouble at reading the letters S-O-N-Y that are stamped on everything in America. But there is one similar practice in these more modern times that continues to irritate me: It's the overstated use of the letters TM. For the sake of those not educated in the field of sophisticated business techniques, TM stands for Trade Mark. It means that a company name or a product name or an artistic logo design has been registered with some bureaucracy in Washington, and that no one else has the right to use that exact name or design. It's like the restaurant that comes up with a special secret recipe and markets it as a “McAwfulburger”. Now, they can't patent or copyright the recipe, but they can protect the name. At the top corporate levels it becomes the highest priority to see that no other greasy spoon in the world tries to sell imitation “McAwful-burgers”

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Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

“THE LAST GOOD WAR” Some say World War Two was “the last good war”: Total victory. Good triumphing over evil. It was the largest war in world history; the most significant event of the 20th century. The World War Two experience - for those who lived it, and for those of us who were children during the ten years following - absolutely permeated our daily lives.

The War “This weeks gift cartons of Camel cigarettes are going to our boys in VA hospitals in Charlotte, North Carolina; Omaha, Nebraska; and Phoenix, Arizona.” (Public relations announcement at the end of The Camel News Caravan, America‘s first television news program, hosted by John Cameron Swayze in the early 1950s.)

Five years after World War II had ended, there were still daily reminders of it. Even during the Korean “police action” in which 50,000 Americans died, it was the Big War we heard about. “Jimmy's real dad was killed in the war.” “I remember, back during the war . . .” “You couldn't get that during the war . . .” Us kids knew of the war. It permeated our lives. To my foreign counterparts, the kids of England and France, Moscow and Leningrad, and of course, Japan and Germany, the postwar years must have had more vivid reminders. Rubble, refugee camps, severe shortages, missing relatives, and general uncertainty was the norm. And we knew that. We saw it in movies and on the photo pages of Life and Look magazines. What did we think of it? We thought of it in black and white: Germany and Japan had been the bad guys so we didn't care about them. To us kids, they deserved what they got.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

England and France had been our heroic allies. In school the Red Cross sold little feathers, dyed red, to finance relief efforts. And there were organizations of every Allied nationality raising money to help rebuild their homelands. Supporting these causes was the right thing to do. It was the American way. The question of having sympathy for the Soviet Union was at best confusing. We knew the Russians had been in the war. And we sort of knew they were on our side. But we didn't quite understand it. There were plenty of movies about Yanks and Aussies and Canadians and Brits and the French Resistance - don't forget the French Resistance. All of these were seen on the movie screens triumphantly outsmarting and over-running the Nazis or the Japanese. But the Russians, it appeared, never seemed to show up to be in those movies. On the other hand, if you were inclined to read a newspaper, listen to the radio, or watch the television news (as most fourth or fifth graders were not so inclined,) you gained a healthy fear that the “Reds,” as they were called, were just about to invade the good old U.S. of A. I remember asking my father once, why, if the Russians were our enemies, did we let them be on our side during the war. "At the time, they were the lesser of two evils,'' he said. It seemed to satisfy me. I remember thinking how smart my father was.

Like kids everywhere during the Pre-Microchip Era, we played games that involved other kids. Of course there was baseball, football and basketball. Soccer hadn't been invented (or, more correctly, imported) yet. There were the more primitive competitions like Kick the Can, Hide and Seek, and occasionally a baby game like Mother May I? Needless to say, there was Cops and Robbers, and, Cowboys and Indians. But the call that always got the greatest response, at least from the boys, was "Let's play war!''

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

It was our chance to be John Wayne or Randolph Scott, two of Hollywood's most decorated actors; or Audie Murphy, America's most decorated real war hero who, by the 1950s, had himself gone to Hollywood and was never decorated again. But in playing war, we took our choice of characters very seriously; often influenced by which one of the 1943, RKO, or Republic Pictures, black and white, 30-day- production-schedule, heroic, win-the-war propaganda films we had most recently seen rerun on Channel 5. I didn't have a special Hollywood favorite. My character was the fictitious, smart, good looking, muscular, always brave, often wounded but never killed, always lucky, Captain Black. He didn't have a first name but he always had an imaginary squad of Privates following him around, waiting for orders and carrying out his brilliant tactical plans. About half of the squad could be counted on to die heroically in any given battle. Captain Black usually got a nick in the arm - but it never hurt much. Did I mention that Captain Black was also a time traveler? Yes, by all means. On any given day, he was just as likely to show up as Captain Black of the 7th Cavalry matching wits with such Apaches as Cochise or Mangus Colorado in Arizona Territory. But that's another story. I had a lot invested in my Captain Black character but still gave deferential treatment to one of my comrades-in-arms, Joey Mulligan who lived next door. His dad had been a real Major in the real army in the real war and had been in real combat and was really wounded - but was okay now. When Joey Mulligan played war, his character was - you guessed it - Major Mulligan. I wouldn't even try to compete with that! If there was some contemplation about what character we portrayed, there was no hesitation about which army we were: We were the Americans. Always. After all, how would you feel if someone said, "Okay, it's your turn to be the Nazi!''? And, of course, there was enough benign racism afoot that no one ever thought in terms of expecting someone to be a "Jap.'' No, we were all, always, the Americans. Usually, we fought as one army against enemies who could not be seen, except in the mind's eye. Among other things, this prevented disagreements and guaranteed the

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

97 perfection of our marksmanship. Surely we wiped them out by the thousands! "Blam, blam, I got him!'' Could you imagine a buddy saying, "No, I think you missed!‖ No, we were the victorious Americans always and forever. Even on those rare occasions when we divided into two sides and fought each other, both sides were the Americans, and both other sides were the Nazis. Our wars and our battles were always fought with the conveniences and benefits of youthful imagination. Watching television today, one might see elaborate commercials hawking Mattel's latest all-plastic facsimile tools of war. Those moms and dads who haven't yet joined the World Peace Movement find themselves paying upwards of $50 to assure that little Johnnie is properly outfitted with the latest urban guerrilla weapon of choice. When my father was a child, I am told, they used rifle-like pieces of wood for this purpose. But I was a child during that once-in-a- millennium window of opportunity. The entire world had just spent the better part of eight years fighting a war that had claimed, quite literally, fifty-million lives. If there was one commodity in surplus, it was the accouterments of combat. We fought our imaginary battles holding the very rifles and wearing the very gear that had been used in the fields of Europe and on the islands of the South Pacific. M-1 carbines, hand grenades and 18- inch bayonets; combat helmets (at least the liners), canvas-covered steel canteens, ammo belts, back packs, shelter halves (two of which made a pup tent,) and GI cots. It sounds bizarre, but it's true. War surplus stores were big business and you could buy, for what seemed like pennies on the dollar, almost anything a field commander might want. Of course, there was this caveat: The weapons were for the most part rendered harmless. The rifle barrels were plugged and firing pins removed. The hand grenades were in fact the solid steel dummies used in basic training. The bayonets were a different story. Admittedly, the blades were dulled, but that was easy to fix, and the points were plenty sharp. I remember many an hour spent perfecting our skill at throwing a bayonet

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

98 twenty-five feet to the side of the cottonwood trees that used to line the banks of the irrigation ditches. In retrospect, I can only say it was an absolute miracle that we didn't kill each other, nor any innocent non- combatant who happened to be passing by. There has always been and will always be a debate on the question of whether or not playing war jades your sensitivities toward humanity. Some say it produces war mongers. I doubt that. Kids grow up and move away. I don't know what has become of the old battalion. I know that none of them have become famous, or infamous, as revolutionaries. I haven't heard of any being arrested for murder. And I don't know if any of them went to Viet Nam. I did not. But I did have some experiences later, as a young adult, that could as easily have occurred under military circumstances. I'll always remember the night when a friend shot himself in the head and died in my arms. It was truly like the scenes in a dozen old war movies, except that it had the sinking feeling of helplessness that you can't capture on film. And then there was another time, with another friend, just after dawn, stupidly driving through the rubble of a burned-out section of a city. It was eerie. Some buildings were still on fire. Soldiers in full combat gear, live ammunition in their automatic weapons, followed our movements with suspicion from partially concealed positions. A tank lumbered up the street - denting the pavement as it came - to block our path. We had already concluded that we ought to have been someplace else. A young Lieutenant, cradling an M-16, cautiously approached the car and very courteously informed us that there were still snipers in the area and it would be wise if we would get out of there - now. And we did! That was in Kansas City in 1968, the morning after the first of perhaps three nights of riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King. I remember hearing later that day - not on television, but with my own ears - what sounded like real machine guns firing at real targets.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

And although I was not directly in any danger, I remember the sickening feeling, and the fear. And that, too, was something Hollywood never has been able to capture.

A Soldier Unknown June 6, 1944 I watched all the special television broadcasts surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Europe. I felt an emotional tie with the participants in events that took place five months before I was born. The first ten years of my life were completely immersed in that war. By contrast, my two older children, born in 1972 and 1973, would never feel the same connection to the Viet Nam War. A child born during the Persian Gulf War may grow up never even realizing that fact. But for my generation, the aftermath, the scars, the recovery, the history, the image and the sense of pride carried after World War Two, permeated our lives. We knew that Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier and we all had read his autobiography, To Hell and Back. Some of us even read General Eisenhower‘s memoirs, Crusade in Europe. At one time, I could name, in correct chronological sequence, every major campaign of the war - from Operation Torch (the invasion of North Africa) to entering Hitler‘s bunker in Berlin; and from Pearl Harbor to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. World War Two was fought in black-and-white. We re-lived the war on the screen in narrow frame, black-and-white film, shot by Army and Navy and Coast Guard cinematographers who were being shot at while they captured their footage. During the war itself, this film was closely held and censored. The conventional wisdom was that the American public would not be well served by graphic views of wounded and dead soldiers. During the Viet Nam War, the media adopted a nearly opposite approach, the effect and impact of which is the topic of an on- going debate. But during those post-World War Two years, my adolescent friends and I became intimately familiar with the military

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

100 footage released first and most extensively in the television documentary series, Victory at Sea. Several clips became indelible in our minds: the attack on Pearl Harbor; gun camera footage from dog-fights showing enemy fighter planes exploding as hot tracer bullets hit their fuel tanks; the view from the B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, as the first and second atomic bombs exploded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and of course, the most enraging scenes shot at the liberation of the Nazi death camps. Years later when certain neo-Nazi types claimed that the Holocaust was a fake and that film of Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald had been staged, I wondered where one could find so many actors who were five feet ten inches tall, and who weighed only seventy pounds. But there was another famous film clip that takes us back to the beaches of Normandy. It is used in almost every documentary done on World War II. During that fiftieth anniversary week I saw it at least a half dozen times. And I admit, as a television documentary producer I have used the scene myself, having “bootlegged” it from an old episode of Victory at Sea. The camera man is perhaps thirty yards up the beach, his lens aimed back at the water‘s edge. It is a wide shot. Three, maybe four soldiers are running, rifles in their hands, out of the surf. They are heavily weighted with backpacks and equipment. We can see that they are expending maximum energy to move toward their objective. Perhaps they see something ahead that will provide cover, but the combination of deep sand and military gear makes their running a trudging effort. The soldier in front gets almost past the camera‘s frame. Behind him, back fifteen or twenty yards, three more soldiers are beside each other five yards apart. Suddenly the fellow on the left goes down. He doesn’t throw his rifle, nor sprawl backward as might be later depicted in movies. He just falls forward as if with a thud. For a moment one gets the impression that he tripped, or maybe threw himself down for cover. Maybe, in fact, he did. For another fraction of a second his body seems to rock from head to toe. We are struck with the thought, the hope, that he is about to get up again. Then he doesn‘t. The clip runs no more than two or three seconds longer. The

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

101 soldier to his left seems to hesitate for the briefest moment as the shot cuts to another scene. In less than ten seconds we see the entire story. The setting. The establishment of characters. The direction. The conflict. The fall. The hope of recovery. The concern of a friend. The futility. The despair. And the acceptance, as the story presumably moves on up the beach. The end. But every time I see it, I entertain the same child-like hope: maybe this time it will be different. He‘ll get up. But he doesn‘t. And every time I see it, I am haunted by the same questions: Who is he? Where was he from? How old was he? What was his name? And, did the movie photographer know any of those answers, or find out. Or did the photographer himself live through the morning. Unknown. Unknown. Unknown. I have stood in Washington, D.C., at Arlington National Cemetery and watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. It is a solemn, moving experience. One cannot witness that ceremony without at once feeling humility and pride, and gratitude. And yet, for me, that old ten-second film clip from a beach at Normandy defines even better, in terms more poignant, the debt a country owes to those young men and women willing to even be there amid the terror, the chaos and the horrible memories.

Note: About ten years after writing this book I discovered a documentary about the combat photographers of WWII. It was produced by Stephen Spielberg and his best friend Tom Hanks. They learned that in the Normandy invasion, specifically on Omaha Beach there were several cinematographers shooting film all day. The plan was that in the very late afternoon, an officer from one of the ships off-shore would go down the beach and collect all the film that had been shot that day, and put the canisters in a big satchel he carried. Then he would return the footage to the ship for processing.

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Unfortunately, when climbing up the rope latter on the port side of the ship he dropped the satchel into the sea. It sunk like a rock. Gone. The entire invasion of Omaha Beach Gone. That evening it was discovered that one - and only one - Coast Guard cinematographer had failed to link up to give his film to the Naval officer. So the reason we see the same few shots of Omaha Beach over and over again is simple: That’s all the footage that survived.

Major Richard Charles of Her Majesty’s Royal Engineers They say St. George's Tavern is one of the oldest pubs in London. The people who said that to me were the regulars who hang out there so I don't know if it's really true. I discovered the place as I wandered the sidewalk in the area of Victoria Station, during mid-1988. I had never been to England and was particularly anxious to learn what I could learn about the British experience during World War Two. Perhaps I expected to find the rubble of bombed out buildings, still there forty-odd years after the German surrender. If there are any, I didn't see them. But my search bore fruit in a chance meeting at St. George's Tavern. He did not speak at first. Older Englishmen are very proper, and would not dream of imposing themselves on someone they do not know. I sat down on the stool beside his, careful not to disturb the cane he had hanging on the edge of the bar. His blue blazer, short-cropped white hair and mustache gave him the appearance of the arch-typical upper-class British gentleman; the type who sit in huge leather chairs sipping sherry. Major Richard Charles, late of Her Majesty's Royal Engineers was, as he put it, about to commence his seventy-fifth year. His professional life had not been spent entirely with the military, only the several years of the war. But the British carry that military mantle with great pride. If his service to His Majesty, then Her Majesty, was not the bulk of his life, it was to him, the very best of his life. At first I had some difficulty adjusting to his thick accent, and his decidedly upper crust British mannerisms. Once when I made a joke, he

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

103 didn't laugh. Rather he gave me a manly pat on the shoulder and said, "Heartiest congratulations!!" But Pub talk was not the Major's stock in trade. On more than one occasion I saw him sitting quietly at the bar, preferring, I assumed, the memories of other times and places. I wanted to share in some of those memories, and he did not view that as an invasion of his privacy. In fact, it turned out he had his own reason for seizing the opportunity to tell his stories. When Americans envision the events of World War Two, we picture scenes of troops on foreign soil. Major Charles never left his nation during the war. Nor did he need to. Others brought the war to him. He told no stories of personal heroics, although he did mention the time a German bomb just missed his barracks in the south of England. The telling of that story seemed more a commentary that each of us has at least one experience in life that reminds us of our own mortality. In war, that lesson comes young. Mostly, he talked of others - of the dear friends who were lost over Berlin: a shell had found its way into the fully loaded bomb bay of their Lancaster-B. "Those chaps," the Major said, "just disappeared into thin air. In an instant they were gone." And he spoke of the Americans. “Our Brigadier had issued strict orders that the Yanks were not to be entertained in our club. It was nothing personal, you understand, but they tended to become boisterous and rowdy. He'd have none of it!" Then with a smile the Major added, "Of course our Brigadier happened to be up in London that night. It got quite raucous. There was an altercation or two; some furniture broken. But all in all, it was a smashing evening. Smashing!" The Major paused and took a slow drink from his glass. "The next morning, about ten," he continued, "in came a young American Captain with whom I had had a nice conversation the previous evening.

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"He was very upset. While he had overslept, his unit had been given its orders, were loaded and gone. Shipped up! He had to find them. "Well, I knew how to arrange a Jeep for him, and told him I would be delighted to help." The major's eyes took on a sad gaze. "Later that day, in the early evening, it was reported to me that this young American Captain - and he was young, no more than twenty years old - had died. “Trying to catch up with his unit, driving very fast, the jeep went off the road. Hit a tree, I believe. Died right there." Major Charles didn't look at me. He stared into the past. And when he spoke again, it seemed that he was speaking to the past. "There were so many. So many Americans who came over here to die. I had the honor of meeting and knowing so many. They died in bombers. They died in invasions. And they died in car crashes racing off to die. But they all shared something in common: They didn't have to be here. "Certainly they had their orders. But I mean that America didn't have to be here. America chose to be here. We . . . England was in such desperate straits. Hitler would have paid a hell of a price had he invaded, but I'm not at all certain we could have survived it alone. And many of us expected it every day. "So many American families sacrificed so much, to help us. Then he continued, "I wonder. I wonder, if when those American families thought about their husbands and sons; brothers and fathers dying in the war, if they ever thought of them dying for England? Probably not. In their minds, I imagine, they died for America. But in my mind, they died for England - and I shall be eternally grateful." He paused for a brief sip of his beer, then added, "You know, Bill, if they had not died, today they would be old pensioners like me. But, if they had not died . . . well, there might not be any old pensioners." I have never read prose nor poetry that affected me as his words did that moment. For perhaps a minute we sat in silence. Then he turned

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

105 and asked how old my parents were, and I answered they were about five years younger than he. He nodded his head, "Yes. Yes, theirs is the generation I knew." The Major's very pensive mood turned to a smile as he asked, "Bill, please, will you do a favor for me? When you go home, see your parents. Tell them 'Hello,' for me. Tell them that Major Richard Charles of Her Majesty's Royal Engineers, and a person of their generation sends his warmest regards, heartfelt and sincerely offered. And tell them . . . tell them, I said, "Thank you!"

The Graveyard There was big excitement up on 27th Avenue, south of the Indian Drive-In Theatre, across the street from the old Air Haven Air Park. That area is completely different today. The theatre is gone. The airport is gone. The row of rundown clapboard houses just below Indian School Road is gone. Traffic flies by at fifty miles an hour. Nobody notices anything. But there was big excitement that day in the summer of 1952. A single engine airplane had taken off from the dirt strip at Air Haven, headed east. It rose off the ground, above the field of cantaloupe, and past the irrigation ditch. It got over 27th Avenue, then there was a problem - not quite enough lift. The fixed landing gear (the wheels) hit the power line at the top of the telephone poles. The plane jolted, turned nose down and crashed into the roof of one of the old houses. “A Piper Cub crashed into one of those houses up there!” my brother yelled. It was a half mile away but every kid in our neighborhood covered the distance, barefoot, in record time. It was a sight that made our summer. An airplane, its tail pointing skyward, sticking out of the roof of a house. Police cars, fire trucks, newspaper photographers, barricades for crowd control—it had all the elements of a first class disaster. I figured we'd make the newsreels for sure. As it turned out, the pilot wasn't injured. The house didn't burn down. I think the Phoenix Gazette ran a photo in the second section but that's as far as it went.

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I can't say that airplanes played an important role in my youth. The fact is that I was seventeen before I ever even flew in one. But they were always a subject of fascination to me. Many times I watched with amazement and fear as the crop dusters whizzed across the fields pulling up just in time to miss the telephone lines. During the Korean War I stood often in my back yard, looking up at the stratosphere to see formations of eighteen; twenty-four; or thirty-six jet fighters passing as if in review. Luke Air Force Base was the training center for the combat pilots of that conflict, and western Maricopa County was their aerial playground. And then there was Air Haven, just a half mile away. I could always wander down there and hang around the planes, up close. Those are all vivid pictures in my mind. But they pale in comparison to the memory of a drive past the place we called “the graveyard.” During World War II the Army Air Corps discovered Arizona. The central and southern regions boasted more days of sunshine, annually, than any other place in the country - more days to fly, to train pilots. Air bases popped up everywhere; five or six in the Phoenix area: Luke, Williams, Falcon and others. More were located along the road to, and in Yuma. Others near Tucson. If flyable days was the main objective, there was a bonus as well. The dry desert climate - the mere seven inches of rainfall per year - was kind to the aircraft. Rust, rot and deterioration were virtually non-existent. When the war ended in the Spring and Summer of 1945, the United States had an armada of 80,000 military aircraft scattered all over the world. They had been the object of tremendous production quotas at scores of defense plants. Money was no object, overtime was abundant. We were at war with the Luftwaffe and the Japanese Imperial Air Force (I assume it was called.) America and the Allies needed planes! And the home front responded as hundreds of thousands of aircraft workers drove millions of rivets. That a majority of these craftsmen were women led to the legend of ”Rosie the Riveter”. The experience of those women in the labor force also led to some new ideas after the war - but that's a different story.

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America built its planes and after victories in Europe and Japan were won, an awful lot of them were left over. Nobody was complaining about it, really, but there was the problem of what to do with them. We couldn't keep them in service very long because the Air Force and the flight wings of the other military branches were already switching over to jets. Yet they were perfectly good, fully operational, high-powered, propeller driven, combat-ready aircraft. They weren't something you could just throw away. And they were just a bit expensive for selling at the corner war-surplus store - although some went that way. Actually you could have bought one reasonably enough but the fuel consumption was measured in gallons per mile. The solution was to store them until we figured out what to do with them, or until we needed them for something. Obviously the logical storage place was the Arizona desert - more specifically, the Litchfield- Goodyear area just south and west of the old Goodyear Aircraft Plant. It had to have been hundreds and hundreds of acres extending one, maybe two, miles along the north side of Buckeye Road. Month after month after month during the late 1940s, pilots and crews ferried them in from virtually every Allied airfield around the world. I imagine that some dust covered file cabinet in the Pentagon basement contains a record of the exact number. My guess would be - at a minimum - ten thousand. It could have been fifty thousand. I only know for certain that when we would drive out there to look at them, the array was literally longer and wider than my eight or nine year old eyes could see. And for a kid already enamored of the romanticism and heroics of the World War II fighter pilots, a trip to the "graveyard" was very special. There were scores and scores of almost every type and model. A cluster of Corsairs over here. There were Curtis P-40 Warhawks over there. We saw the Northrop P-61 Black Widows and the Republic P-47 Thunderbolts. There was North American's P-51 Mustang, and of course, my favorite, the P-38 Lightnings with the twin tails. The World War II fighter planes all had the letter P which means pursuit. When the jets came along, they changed it to “F” for fighter.

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Then there were the bombers. The very ones that had flattened Axis Europe and carried out the saturation raids over the mainland of Japan. We could take our pick: North American's B-26 Mitchell, named after General Billy Mitchell; the Douglas A-20G Attack Bomber; and the Martin B-26 Marauder. And there were the three most significant: the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress; the Boeing B-24 Liberator of which more than 18,000 copies saw service; and, of course, the ultimate bomber of the era, the B-29 Super Fortress, the plane that dropped "The Bomb" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The planes are gone now. Most finally went to scrap. The odd one might be found at Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson. Some were sold or given to developing friendly countries - some of whom stayed friendly. And a few were later refitted with more modern armaments and electronics and put into very specialized service in Viet Nam. Today, nearly 40 years later, there are a few places around the country where a tourist can still catch a glimpse of some of these machines. There is a good beginning of an air museum thirty-five miles across the desert in Mesa, Arizona. The big museum is at Wright- Patterson AFB in Ohio. I think there are a few at the Smithsonian in Washington. I saw a British Spitfire hanging by wires from the ceiling of the Imperial War Museum in London. And there is an organization of well-to-do enthusiasts called The Confederate Air Force. They restore such aircraft and keep them operational. In some cases, their members own the last existing copy of a given plane. It is good that those will remain for future generations to see and hear and touch. But still, it's not the same. There was something very special about being in the presence of that armada, there at the graveyard. Knowing that the most recent flight of each ship had brought it from the theatre of its missions. Knowing that each silently held hundreds of individual's stories of the heroics and fears of nineteen year old boys hoping to live long enough to come home. The planes there were not restored and shiny. In fact, they were dingy and pocked with the scars of war. We could count the patched

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109 bullet holes and flak wounds. We could spot the stenciled enemy flags counting missions or kills. And we could see the fuselage paintings of half-naked ladies, artistic symbols, slogans and women‘s names. There was always something eerie about just standing there quietly looking through the high chain-link fence. It was as if we expected the planes to tell us their stories. And, in a way, they did.

The Bombing of Phoenix I was about seven. The Korean war was raging and large formations of jet fighters from Luke Air Force Base would fly low over our house on training exercises. High in the stratosphere we often saw the contrails of B-47 bombers. “They‘re going to bomb Phoenix tonight”, I heard my dad say in passing. What he meant was that, in a training mission, the air force would use Phoenix as a mock target. What I thought he said was that the North Koreans were going to bomb us into oblivion. Why was everyone so calm, I wondered - watching television as if nothing was wrong! Didn‘t they know we were all going to die? I was petrified. In the middle of the sleepless night, as I crept through the house listening for the air raid sirens, I must have awakened my visiting aunt Marie, asleep on the couch. She jumped up with a yell and scared me to death! I screamed the scream of a panic-stricken child. The lights came on and the whole family rushed to the living room - and had a good laugh at my expense. Of course, if there had been an air raid that night, I‘d have been a hero!

Saturday Noon Back in the 1950s we all knew that if the Soviet Union (which was more commonly known, then, as the “Dirty Rotten Commies”) was ever going to attack the United States with atomic bombs, it would do so on a Saturday, precisely at twelve o‘clock noon.

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The rationale for this assumption was simple: At twelve noon every Saturday the Civil Defense Board set off all of the city‘s air raid sirens as a test of the system. Every kid in the school yard realized the strategic stupidity of this totally predictable schedule, and there was general concern about the potential consequences. Then one day in the third grade the subject of civil defense came up in class and several of us were quick to point out to our teacher, Mrs. Sonnenberg, how our civil defense shield had a big hole in it. She listened attentively to our explanation and noted the sincerity of our concern. Mrs. Sonnenberg had been teaching a good many years and had, I believe, three kids of her own. She recognized the importance of coming back to her youngsters with something plausible and reassuring. And she did, suggesting that everyone of us take a pledge that we would never write a letter or make a telephone call, or in any other way communicate with the Soviet Union as to what we had figured out. We all took the pledge. And it would seem after all these years that everyone in the class kept his or her word. For it is a fact of history that the Russians never did bomb us on a Saturday at twelve o‘clock noon.

The Bomb There are not very many Americans alive today who have personally witnessed an atomic bomb blast. Let's take that a step further. There are not very many living people in the world today - or people who ever have lived—who personally witnessed an atomic bomb blast. I pray no more ever do. But I have! At least twice, maybe three times. I'm not sure. I got bored with it. I stopped counting. Besides, it was cold. I was not at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I wasn't a year old when they went down. But in the very early 1950s I was in Phoenix which was, and still is, 250 or 300 miles south and east of the old above-ground nuclear test site in Nevada. My dad must have had a certain appreciation of history because he made me and my brothers watch.

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The scheduling of these tests was not some kind of national security secret. I assume it must have been announced in the papers and on the radio just like space shots would be ten or fifteen years later. The atomic blasts I saw took place just before the light of dawn. I remember my dad waking us early. We'd throw on some clothes and go out into the night; scale the redwood basket-weave fence, climb to the top of the carport and then to the roof of our house on 25th Drive in Tisdale Terrace. We would sit down and wait, facing north. Phoenix was perhaps one-thirtieth the size it is today. And on the western outskirts of town, there were very few street lights. It was dark. "It'll be in about three minutes," dad would say, studying his watch. We looked toward the northern sky. And waited. "It'll be in about two minutes," dad would say. Maybe I was sort of a dumb kid. But, the first time we did this I thought it was my dad who was going to push the button that set off the bomb. I figured that was why he was counting us down with his watch "It'll be about one minute." I got a bit scared. Like all little kids of that era, I had seen the newsreels of how atomic bombs had totally destroyed those places in Japan. I wasn't sure how close or far we actually were from "ground zero." I think I also wondered why we were dropping bombs on those people in Nevada. I always thought Nevada was on our side. "Any second now. Any second." Then it happened. The entire northern horizon lit up. It was very much like what we called "summer heat lightening." Not a bolt. But a broad flash. The difference is that lightening is gone in an instant. The atomic bomb light was more lasting - three, maybe four seconds. It appeared. It seemed to build in intensity, then faded back to darkness. At the time I thought I heard the explosion. But dad explained that at the speed of sound it would take a good twenty minutes for the vibrations to reach Phoenix - and we weren't likely to hear them. That was all a long time ago and I was very young. But I remember thinking, as I watched the northern horizon light up, what an unbelievably powerful bomb that must be if I could see it with my own eyes 250 or 300 miles away. What an unbelievably powerful bomb!

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A FEW WORDS ABOUT RACE “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. “With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” Martin Luther King I Have A Dream speech Segregating For Good Health (A BIT OF HISTORY) It is a fact that Arizona desegregated its schools a year before the famous Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954. But also notable was the battle against segregation in the first place. In 1909 the Territorial legislature passed a bill allowing separate schools for the “African race.” Governor Joseph Kibby issued a veto which was promptly over-ridden by the lawmakers. The next year, no longer Governor, private attorney Joseph Kibby represented in Territorial court, one Sam Bayless - “a Negro”. The Bayless children, who lived across the street from their old school, were now told to walk a mile and cross a railroad track to their new “Negro” school. Lawyer Kibby was persuasive at trial, and for a time succeeded in overturning the segregation law. But in 1912, the new State Supreme Court ruled the other way: One Justice offered the opinion that the mile walk would do the Bayless children good; adding that crossing the railroad tracks was less dangerous than crossing their street - what with these new-fangled automobiles and all.

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Are You Proud of Your School Colors? There are a lot of things in your life as a kid that you don’t know about until you are an adult. Some are significant. Some are not. For example from the third through the eighth grades I attended the Maie Bartlett Heard School at 23rd Avenue and West Thomas Road. It was a good school. It was brand new in September of 1952 when I started there. Obviously it was named after a woman named Maie Bartlett Heard who had recently died. Years later I learned she had been a community leader and noted philanthropist. She underwrote many worthwhile efforts from Girl Scouts to the now famous Heard Museum of Southwestern Anthropology in Phoenix. She was worthy of the honor of her name on an institution of public education. But as an eight year old I thought it was a pretty dumb name for a school. I wondered who thought it up. I had no idea that Heard was a person. It thought it was named after a bunch of cattle. Sort of a cowboy name. To the best of my memory, never during the six years that I was there did anybody ever tell us anything about Maie Bartlett Heard. (My old teachers dispute this—third graders, they say, don‘t listen very well.) There was something else about that school that I never gave a thought to at the time: It was all white. I've run through a mental image of every class I was ever in; the kids on the playground, the best athletes, the members of the band and the mixed chorus. With an average enrollment of about 500, I can not conjure up a single black face. Nor do I remember any Hispanics - except maybe during half of the seventh grade there was a kid named Raul. He was either big for his age or older than the rest of us. We all wanted him on our lunchtime football teams. I don't know what Raul's gene pool included. But I do know that the guys all thought he was an Indian of some tribe or another. No one ever asked. I guess if you looked at it with a fine tooth comb (if I may mix my metaphors) in terms of students who were in any way different from the healthy white Anglo-Saxon Protestant or Catholic mold, you could find only a few. There were three or four Jewish families; there was one boy

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114 who had been a victim of Polio and therefore had braces on his legs and walked with crutches; and there was one Chinese family. The faculty was all white. Later at West High School, with three or four thousand students, similarly there were no blacks and perhaps only a half dozen Hispanics. The result of this experience was not that I grew up disliking other races. Rather it was almost that I didn't know other races existed. I mean, I knew they existed, theoretically. I had seen them on television, or from a distance when I was in the car with my parents. And in high school the other schools' athletic teams sometimes had "Negroes'' or "Mexicans.'' But I never knew any up close and personal. I should note here that ours was not a wealthy nor exclusive part of town. It was your basic middle-class, post-war, VA loan, sprawling suburban tract housing. But, of course, in those days the real estate signs did not have the little symbol of a house with an equal sign inside, over the words: "Equal Housing Opportunity''. In those days, by an unwritten and generally unspoken gentlemen‘s agreement, housing opportunities were often anything but equal. "Negroes'' and "Mexicans'' were encouraged to live "in their own part of town where they would be happier living with their own kind.'' Their part of town was generally considered to be anything south of Van Buren Street. As I think of those days which were six or seven years prior to the highly visible American civil rights movement, two memories come back to me: It was a tradition at our school that the fourth grade plant a vegetable garden. We were told that a group of students from another school would come to show us pictures of various vegetables and sell us the seeds. The kids who arrived were from what later would be called an inner-city school. They were black. I think I had never been in the same room with black children before. It seemed a bit strange to me. And even my relatively unsophisticated nine-year old mind could perceive that they were uncomfortable as well. It may have been the first time they had been in a room full of white people. In one sense it was a positive interracial contact - an opportunity for each to see that the other was just a kid like himself. But that was

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115 never allowed to happen. Rather, they were just paraded in to do their presentation, then paraded out, and back to their school - presumably south of Van Buren Street. Later in the school yard, not surprisingly, I heard a kid saying, "Did you see those niggers a little while ago?'' The words of the father spoken by the son, to be sure. The other memory is of an incident perhaps five years later. I'm not absolutely certain of the details, but this is how I recall my older brothers telling of it: It was somewhere around 1958 and Dick Clark's American Bandstand was a nationally popular television show among teenagers. Not surprisingly, stations around the country created their own versions of the program. In Phoenix it was called Arizona Bandstand and was broadcast live from local station KTVK, Channel 3. Every afternoon, Monday through Friday, thirty or forty teenagers, (those lucky enough to get tickets,) crowded into the studio and danced to the latest records spun by a local facsimile of Dick Clark. (I think it was radio DJ Jonnie McKenney, but I’m not sure) There were fast and slow numbers, ladies' choices, dance contests, and panels of teen judges voting "a hit'' or "a miss'' on new releases. Sometimes a singing star - usually of the local variety - would make a guest appearance to lip sync their latest record. In short, it was a carbon copy of American Bandstand. It was very popular. It had plenty of sponsors. For at least several months kids rushed home from school to watch it. Some of the regulars in the studio started to become local celebrities. It was fun. Everyone was happy. Then the bottom dropped out. The show, with not even a day's notice, was canceled. Why? There was no incident of a fist fight on live television. Nobody mooned the camera. The host never slipped and said an obscene word. The Legion of Decency never complained about the rock n' roll music (keep in mind that conservative preachers were burning Elvis Presley records in those days.)

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What happened must have been considered far worse: A cute, little, white teenage girl had the audacity to be seen on television dancing with, a "Negro'' teenage boy! (The term "Black'' didn't come into common usage for another ten years.) I can imagine how the switchboard must have lit up. I can imagine how certain local sponsors might have threatened to boycott the station. I can imagine how the station management must have hated to cancel such a popular, revenue producing program. What I know for certain is that teenagers throughout the city were very unhappy. And I also know that in its own way this incident actually furthered the cause of racial tolerance and civil rights. Because anywhere you turned that week you could find a youngster declaring, in no uncertain terms, how unfair and how stupid it was to cancel Bandstand just because a white girl danced with some "colored kid.''

Brotherhood Week In the early 1960s, Congress and the real estate profession had not yet come to terms with the issue of racial discrimination in the sale or rental of homes. In Phoenix, African Americans and Hispanics seldom ever lived north of Van Buren street. High schools had fairly strict geographic feeder area boundaries. West High School was two miles north of Van Buren and therefore, quite logically, was an almost all white institution. I say almost because of a very few exceptions. But before I get to that let me add a little story that is absolutely true – as attested to by several retired teachers, on camera, in one of my television documentaries produced almost three decades later: In the 1950s Mexican American teachers were also not very welcomed north of Van Buren Street. So what many creative Mexican-American educators did was to enter on their job applications that despite a Mexican sounding name, they swore that their family roots were from Portugal, or Italy, or Spain, or other such more exotic sounding places

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117 than from dusty old Mexico to the south. And they all got away with it, and served long careers with the Phoenix Union High School District.

The rare exception - “Junior” Espejo was a young man of color; an exceptional athlete, although not large. He was very friendly as I recall. Junior was not what most students would have thought of as a “Negro,” as in living south of Van Buren. He was from somewhere in the Caribbean (and spoke with such an accent). And even among the more bigoted of our numbers, that seemed to make him okay. It reminds me of the stories that during the early 20th century an African visiting the United States and wearing traditional African garb would be a welcomed guest at the same hotels that would not even consider admitting an African-American. There were a few Mexican-Americans in the school, but in those days before the more activist civil rights movement; before there was much broad encouragement of cultural awareness, they seemed to stay on the periphery of things. There were several Asian families; and a considerable Jewish population. And lots of Mormons. The rest of us were the usual assortment of Protestants and Catholics of European origin. This discussion of race and religion is pertinent to the recollection of an annual event called Brotherhood Week. It was only six or seven years earlier that Arizona‘s school had been desegregated de jure, a full year prior to the famous Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision. It had been only five or six years since Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama city bus. And it had been only three or four years since President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to protect black students integrating Central High School. In short, it was the beginning of the civil rights movement in America and to its credit, West High would do its part. I don‘t know who first came up with the idea of Brotherhood Week but as the name implies, the purpose was to foster good feelings and, well, brotherhood between the various races, religions and ethnicities. I think there might have been a Brotherhood Club or something that coordinated things.

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Now West High had a big problem in fostering brotherhood - especially between the races. It was that we didn‘t have any diverse races available to foster. The immediate dilemma, of course, was how to fill Brotherhood Week with appropriate, instructional and meaningful inter-racial activities. Suggestions were solicited from the student body. Some felt we should import a few Negro kids from Phoenix Union High School (which was located on Van Burin Street) to participate in a panel discussion on the evils of de facto segregation. The Administration thought about that one for a day or so before exercising its veto. The more radical liberals wanted to write and stage a kind of modern day, Evils-of-Racism passion play; featuring life in a slave cabin, and a mock lynching. Strangely enough - and I assume they had their own reasons - the few avowed campus racists thought this was a pretty good idea. I don‘t know if the Administration thought the concept was too inflammatory, or if it was the old problem of having no Negros to portray the roles of the slaves and the lynchee. They sure as hell were not going to have white kids play those parts in black-face, as someone suggested. Regardless of their reason, they vetoed this one in a matter of minutes. Finally, it was decided that the main activity for the week would be a Brotherhood Assembly on Friday morning in the auditorium. The chorus sang a few songs like Let There Be Peace On Earth and maybe Cumbiah (a little ditty that never made any sense to me). There were no Negros imported from other schools. The Youth Minister from a local Presbyterian church gave a humorous talk - yes, he was a white man. And the featured speaker was Rabbi Albert Plotkin of Temple Beth Israel. I want no one to get the impression that any of this was a letdown. Indeed not - especially the participation of Rabbi Plotkin, a special person. He is one of the very few (maybe the only) Rabbi in America who is an alumni of Notre Dame, of all places; and who had the talent, and some offers, for a successful career on Broadway before chucking it all to enter rabbinical school. He certainly knew how to hold an audience and deliver a message to those of us gathered in the auditorium.

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I can‘t quote from his speech after all these years, but I do know the message; his very simple message: All of humanity is one. Whether black or brown or yellow or white or red; Jew or gentile or something else; rich or poor, we all breathe and bleed and hurt and cry and laugh and care about our children the same way. And when you hate someone or ridicule someone who is different from you because they are different from you, it is the same as hating yourself. And besides, it is wrong! It seems today as it seemed then, a fundamental standard - a moral imperative, as the philosophers would say. And if the substance of the message was valuable, then there was equal or greater value in the fact that it was delivered at all! Somebody. An adult. A person who was respected for his lifetime of good works - not merely famous in some sense of artificial celebrity - stood up and delivered a message about what is right and what is wrong. Certainly it sounds simplistic. And it was. But it is the most tried and true method of teaching good values to a younger generation - an approach public schools today sometimes avoid, for fear of being sued by some irate parent. We live in an ultra-modern world. Science and technology have taken us to the stars; given us inventions and tools beyond the imagination of even the science fiction writers of a few generations ago. We control the earth. We have it all at the touch of a keyboard. But still, at times, we seem so lost; groping… to solve the one puzzle; to find that one formula that will allow us - mankind - to simply survive on this planet that we supposedly control. Well I know the answer. It was given to me free of charge, attached only to the condition that it be shared with any and all who would accept it. It was given me by a Rabbi from Notre Dame, forty-odd years ago during something called Brotherhood Week.

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GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL High school is an American institution that remained essentially unchanged during the twentieth century. They continue to play football, basketball and baseball; have beautiful cheerleader girls; hold student elections; and go to Proms. Young fellows still enter as insecure little freshmen, and leave as confident men, ready to face the world. Well, that’s what we used to see in the old Andy Hardy movies. High school is a time of self-discovery. It’s just that some of what you discover is not what you thought it would be.

High School Pond Scum Can you sum up high school in a few thousand words? One part of my brain says, “Sure! I can do it in a sentence: I hated it!” That is the part of the brain that was actually in high school, four decades ago. But being a bit of a revisionist historian offers the advantage of a second part of the brain – the part that wasn‘t yet developed in the early 1960s. It is the “middle aged” lobe that autokineticly engages the Perspective Filter, a blob of gray matter there to remind you that your perception of the quality of the experiences of your youth improves one percent with each passing year. A careful reading of the Bible would likely indicate that Methuselah spent his final days happily remembering his high school career. My memories of high school really began with the year prior. It was a time of great anticipation, based on a false premise. You see, in the seventh and eighth grades I always felt like a complete dolt. In retrospect I can see that I probably was a complete dolt - younger than most classmates; smaller than most of the other guys (and all of the girls) and decidedly immature. Those were the facts. The false premise was that in moving from Maie Bartlett Heard elementary school to West High School, God would decide to transform me into Ricky Nelson or Wally Cleaver or James Dean or Elvis Presley. Suffice it to say, this did not happen.

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So there in September of 1958 I found myself lost amid a mass of 3,000 West High “Thunderbirds” confused and bewildered, wondering constantly if I would ever stop feeling like pond scum. Eventually I would, but truly it had more to do with the passage of years than with any plan I employed. And it certainly was not associated with divine intervention.

Indoctrination Today it would sound campy to use the phrase, “my high school career.” And I can‘t say it was a common expression in the late fifties and early sixties. But it at least leans in the direction of expressing an attitude or a consciousness that was predominant then but, I fear, is less influential now. The perception was not simply that you were in high school. Rather, you saw yourself as part of and belonging. It was a total identity with your particular school, as represented by your school mascot: The West High Thunderbirds, the Central High Bobcats, the North High Mustangs, the Phoenix Union Coyotes, the Camelback High Spartans, and others - including the South Mountain High Rebels. South Mountain High warrants a special comment. Their mascot seemed perfectly logical: The Rebels, as in Civil War Confederate soldiers. School colors were red and gray – gray as in the confederate army uniforms were gray. South…Rebels…Gray. To me it made sense; perfectly harmless sense, for thirty-odd years. Then in a momentary stumble into political correctness in the 1990s, someone decided that the Rebel mascot implied an endorsement of slavery - 130 years after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. Go figure. I don‘t recall what the new mascot is but I‘m sure it is politically correct; something like Feta cheese, I imagine. But I digress… This business of identifying yourself with your school was a very real factor in our lives, and in retrospect I think it was a good thing. I guess you‘d call it school spirit - but it was more, really. Political leftist intellectuals probably saw it as the root indoctrination for nationalistic

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122 jingoism. Normal people, if they thought about it at all, would have seen it as a first hands-on experience at taking pride in a history and heritage. In either case, in those days before satellite dishes, MTV and the Internet, the high school provided the parameters of our interests. It was a cluster of microcosmic institutions sharing a fifty-odd acre campus that became the community of our daily lives.

Illusive Paths to Glory Most freshman boys of that era envisioned their deliverance coming on the fields of athletic glory. Why should I have been any different? I had witnessed the fawning that beautiful and shapely cheerleader girls reserved for muscular football stars. I appreciated and held proper respect for the status of a bemedaled letterman‘s sweater. Indeed, why shouldn‘t athletic skill provide my personal pathway up and out of the depths of doltism. The fact that I stood five-feet-nothing-inches tall and weighed ninety-five pounds presented at least a minor stumbling block. I knew, or at least I hoped, that eventually I would grow. But there, at the bulletin board bearing the sign-up sheet for freshman football tryouts, I caught one of my first glimpses of something often identified as ugly: It was called reality. Chuck Lichte was not ugly. But at six foot-something in height, and two-hundred something in weight - later to be twice the State Champion Heavyweight high school wrestler, and I think also twice the first string All American high school football center - he did represent the reality of what would be falling on me, should I choose to pursue this football fantasy. Perhaps it would be wise to wait until I broke the hundred pound barrier before offering my services to the squad, I thought. And then, despite my youth, I had my first exercise in critical thinking, and recorded my earliest conscious demonstration of wisdom: I walked over to the sheet marked CROSS COUNTRY, and signed my name.

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Now, cross country has it merits - the only one, in retrospect, that comes to mind, however, was that Chuck Lichte wasn‘t falling on me. Beyond that, what I remember most was that it was unbelievably boring. The concept was simple enough - you ran until you got stink-dripping with sweat. If you were lucky you would pass out early. But usually, you kept running and sweating and stinking until Coach Torrence blew his whistle and sent you to the showers. I recall that we never had squad meetings after the workout. In fact, it was noteworthy that Coach Torrence always stayed up-wind from us after the workout. I did stick out the season and earned my freshman letter despite the fact that the cheerleaders never pulled themselves away from the football scrimmage field. I ran and ran, and sweated and sweated, and stunk and stunk. And as I think back on it, I conclude that the only redeeming value of the season was the fact that all the time alone running gave me a lot of opportunity to plot and plan and contemplate other pathways to glory.

The Student Government Cartel A community must have some vehicle for maintaining order. In America we have what is called the rule of law. This implies the existence of entities to make and enforce those laws, i.e. government. Now, at West High School government took the form of a benign dictatorship owned and operated by the school administration. It was, in fact, a dictatorial oligarchy in that there were several deans and assistant principals exercising power. I call it “benign” because (A) there were no summary executions, and (B) they let the student body think it had some self determination via a puppet process called student government. Intellectual honesty compels me to acknowledge that these somewhat cynical observations are being made many decades after the fact. Back in my days as a loyal West High Thunderbird I demonstrated normative behavior. In other words, the administration had me fooled into believing that student government governed the students. Well, there is actually an even more intellectually honest statement I should make: I didn‘t give a damn whether student government had

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124 any authority or not. But if there was no glory, nor beautiful cheerleader girls to be found in running Cross Country, there was a certain amount of status - not to mention beautiful student government girls - in student government. Indeed, what could be a more direct pathway up and out of doltism than politics? You didn‘t have to have muscles. You didn‘t have to sweat. You didn‘t have to stink. How hard could it be? Politics is a game of decision making. And at that time and place the decisions involved were few and fundamental. At first it seemed there was only one bit of critical thinking that had to be employed: Figure out which political promises would guarantee electoral victory? The operative logic was that the bigger the promise, the bigger the margin of victory. Later, in college, studying Social Psychology, I learned that this scenario lacked the element of a causal relationship. But it was much later that I learned that.

The Protocols of Public Life Having decided to enter the exciting and rewarding world of high school politics, there was a fundamental decision to be made: Which office should I run for? This may seem like a simple question, as in - run for whatever office you want. But it wasn‘t simple. In fact, there were rigid protocols to be observed. As a freshman you could run only for Freshman Class offices. That made sense in that the Student Body officers had been elected the previous Spring. But that isn‘t what I mean by “protocols.” Protocols, in this case were a series of “understandings” or unwritten rules that determined who could seek, and who could hold, certain offices. It was a kind of mid-twentieth century cast system. Actually, one of these unwritten rules was, in fact, written - so let’s deal with it first: The various student body and class constitutions clearly stated that the office of President could be held by, “any qualified boy.” That meant that you could aspire to that high office as long as you maintained a “C” grade average, stayed out of trouble in the discipline department, and had a penis.

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I never ran for president in high school so I don‘t know if the Elections Commissioner had an actual method for confirming that third qualification. But I can say that during my years at the school everyone who ever held the office of president offered at least the outward appearance of being a boy. But then, I wasn‘t the Elections Commissioner. Now, as for the unwritten protocols, they touched the presidency as well. You see, to be Class President or Student Body President a boy had to fall into one of two categories. Either he was the star quarterback/captain of the football team, or he was the “President type.” Defining the first category is pretty easy. He was the star quarterback and captain of the football team. Such guys were elected president about one time in four. This relatively infrequent success was attributable to the jealousy factor. To wit: Most male voters figured that a guy who was already the star quarterback and captain of the football team, indeed already had enough glory for one lifetime. Add to this the fact that such as their ilk invariably had no zits, and went steady with the beautiful head cheerleader, was enough to make this guy political dead meat. Those few who overcame the jealousy factor probably had that extra special attribute of also being a man‘s man - although I have never quite figured out what that means. The far more successful aspirant was what I call the “President type.” This guy had, typically, been president of his seventh grade class, and Student Body President in eighth grade. Arriving at the high school it somehow seemed preordained that he would be proclaimed President of the Freshman Class. What did he have that guaranteed such political success? In a word - Everything: wit, charm, and good looks, but not enough to make the other guys‘ jealousy factor kick in. It was sort of like being the kind of older brother everyone wished they had. (This is, of course, in comparison to the older brothers they actually did have.) Among these “President types” it was not uncommon that such a fellow was consecutively elected president of the freshman, sophomore and junior class, then crowned Student Body President for his senior year.

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This multi-term phenomenon brings to mind the case of Charl Riggs (Yes, his name is Charl, not Charles) of the Class of 1961. He certainly fit the mold of the president type – really a nice guy who, I believe, was an actual bona fide Eagle Scout. Charl was an active and faithful Mormon in the 10th Ward of Phoenix - a fact that translated into a reasonable amount of political clout at West High. And he was a varsity basketball player. In short, Charl Riggs was the president type, a fact manifested by his subsequent elections as Freshman, Sophomore and Junior Class Presidents. His ordination as Student Body President in the Spring of 1960 was a foregone conclusion. Not quite. Enter, Bob Mugot. Now I never really knew Bob Mugot. In fact, I had never even heard of him until that Spring election. But as we were soon to learn, Bob was a guy who made good grades and was active in the Key Club, which was the high school version of Kiwanis. I guess he was well liked by the folks who knew him, but he wasn‘t what you would think of as a campus celebrity. Well the election process began and hopefuls were out circulating their nominating petitions. I think you had to get thirty students to sign, vouching that you were neither a pervert nor a Communist. Remember, this was at the height of the Cold War. Charl Riggs, running for Student Body President of course, quickly gathered his thirty signatures - he probably didn‘t have to go outside of his family; a decided advantage of being a Mormon. He filed the petition with the appropriate office of campus bureaucracy, and for all practical purposes the election was over. Or so we thought. The deadline for filing was four o‘clock Friday. At four o‘clock on Thursday, Riggs was still running unopposed. I think a committee had been appointed to plan the coronation. But apparently, something about the situation got stuck in Bob Mugot’s craw. I could drag this out but I won‘t. Friday morning, Mugot not only circulated his nominating petition but also a flier voicing a passionate argument that it just wasn‘t right that the same old people get to hold office every time. The flier did not call the rut un-American, but it might

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127 as well have. Word of the challenge spread like wildfire. It was an instant populist movement with a level of momentum that years later Ross Perot would have envied. Needless to say, Mugot was elected Student Body President that Spring. And I‘m sure he did a fine job “governing” the students. I do not know if he or Charl Riggs ever did anything in politics after that. If they did, I never heard about it.

Lesser Offices Back to the protocols. The office of Vice President was usually, but not always, reserved for a girl. All of which made me wonder if the President - a boy -were assassinated, or had to resign for some reason, would there have been a constitutional crisis in having a female Vice President move up the ladder? I never saw it happen. But it is worth noting, after all these years, that in the Riggs-Mugot battle the truly best candidate for President would have been Patty Kurtz who of course couldn‘t run, but was a shoo-in for Vice President. A few years later she was elected Student Body President of Phoenix College where they weren‘t so hung up about penises. The office of Secretary was a girl thing. Remember, in the late 1950s and early 1960s such skills as taking notes (especially in shorthand) and typing on a typewriter were exclusively female behaviors. Perhaps for the sake of my youngest daughter who will grow to adulthood in the first year or two of the 21st century, I should explain the old gender protocols of life in the mid 20th century: “Men were the bosses, the leaders, the thinkers and all other roles of significance. Women were the housewives and the secretaries.” In some cases, these were more than traditions. They were laws. All of this changed, of course, one day in about 1972 when a bunch of women burned their bras in a bonfire. I think it was in New York City or Washington, DC. It doesn‘t matter where. What did matter was that from that day foreword Secretaries became known as Administrative

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Assistants, and men became known as sensitive. In short, it was a whole new world. So much for the office of Secretary. The final office was that of Treasurer - the person who allegedly kept track of the revenues from the bake sales and car washes. This person also, allegedly, kept track of any expenditures. I say allegedly because as with most other student government functions the real control was held by someone at the Administration Office. The school district public relations department was not about to risk a scandal wherein some student absconded with $895 in class funds and was later arrested by the Mexican Federalies at the Blue Fox cabaret in Nogales. That such an incident might just happen with the adult bookkeeper from the Administration Office was somehow more tolerable. But it was not going to happen with the duly elected Class Treasurer. This usurpation of fiscal control offered one distinct advantage to the politically ambitious student: a kid who had no mathematical abilities whatsoever; who was sloppy and disorganized; or even a kid with a larcenous heart could serve a term as Class Treasurer with virtually no chance of the books not balancing, and no possibility of scandal. The bottom line (forgive the accounting metaphor) was that the person elected Treasurer was in the purest sense an illusion; a recipient of the status and benefits of being in student government with no risk of screwing up. I, of course, announced my candidacy for the office of Freshman Class Treasurer.

The Candidate Certainly I could regale the reader with exciting anecdotes of life on the campaign trail. But I‘ll save it for the sequel. Suffice it to say that the election came, the election went - and so did my fantasies of rubbing elbows, or whatever, with those beautiful student government girls. I wish I had some clever proverb or meaningful philosophical quotation, preferably in Latin, to insert here. But I don‘t. The British might say, “Stiff upper lip.” But then the British always say that. I wish I could report that I saw and appreciated the value - the growth experience - of

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129 being certifiably and officially rejected by an electorate of my peers. But I didn‘t. The fact is, I just wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear as I licked my wounds and searched for some new and improved pathway up and out of the depths of doltism. There was, however, one additional element of that election process that is worthy of comment here: the campaign speech. The day before the election, the entire freshman class was called together at an assembly to listen to the candidates speeches. As I recall, we were gathered in the south bleachers of the football stadium at about ten o‘clock in the morning. There were two or three candidates each for the offices of President, Vice President and Secretary. Then there were a dozen or so opportunists running for Treasurer. The twenty-odd political hopefuls sat on folding chairs positioned in a wide array behind the podium, facing the constituent audience. The class Faculty Advisor stood at the microphone and delivered a standard oration on the advantages of democracy, the responsibility of American citizenship, and the holy obligation to cast your vote for the best candidate. I remember this “best candidate” line because I got the distinct impression that this teacher had certain candidates in mind. That he paused, looked back at those “anointed ones” and smiled, gave me the first clue. These little lectures on citizen duty could get pretty passionate in those Cold War days. Sometimes, there was offered a word picture contrasting West High‘s free, open, unbiased elections with the “rigged, stacked-deck, so called elections of the Godless, atheistic, Commies in Russia.” It was all very moving. Well anyway, this dog and pony show chewed up half of the assembly, so each candidate was limited to one minute to plea his or her case. Most of us didn‘t have a problem with that. Indeed, to most of us the idea of getting up and making a speech at all was frightening. The shorter the better, we felt. But there was one aspect of the exercise that even at that early, naive, malleable stage of my personal and political development rubbed me the wrong way: All campaign speeches had to be written out (maybe

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130 even typed) and submitted to the Administration for approval, two days before the assembly. There would be no borderline-off-color humor, no sedition, and God forbid, no disrespectful cracks about the Administration uttered at this celebration of the First Amendment. From the Administration‘s point of view this preemptive strike mentality was well justified, though no guarantee of their desired result. The weakness of the system was demonstrated in the Spring of our Junior year when a fellow - a candidate for Student Body President - made a most dramatic point of tossing aside his Administration approved speech and letting loose with a sixty second harangue about the world and how things ought to be. I think he was hoping for a popular uprising that would sweep him in to office. But he did not win. He well may have received the most votes, but when the results were announced, he did not win.

The Slide Rule Boys I‘ve seen a lot of old movies - usually black and white British movies - set on a prep school or university campus. There is always the scene where the young man is waiting to find out if he passed the big exam and gets to go on to become Prime Minister of England, or if he failed and has to go back to the farm harvesting wheat with a sickle. Comes the big moment: The dean (or the Don,) dressed always in a cap and gown tacks the list on the bulletin board amid a throng of fretting underclassmen. The next scene either involves a suicide, or was a montage representing years of achievement. The bulletin board scene never happened at West High School. Early on, grade cards were handed directly to the student. Later, when the technology for altering these documents became too sophisticated, the school began to mail them to the parents. This transferred any concerns about fraud and forgery to the postal authorities, and minimized the chances of a student‘s academic privacy being violated. Still, everyone knew who was a “brain” and who wasn’t. There was a certain air about those who were the great academic achievers. Sometimes it was totally obvious. I mean there were extreme cases.

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Like, today, television programs depict the nerd who has six ball point pens in his pocket protector. Well there was a 1960s edition of the same character: they were the “Slide-rule Boys.” For the sake of the children I will attempt to describe a slide-rule: A slide-rule is to the pocket calculator what a spiral notebook is to the lap-top computer – an ancient forerunner. It was about twelve or fourteen inches long, two inches high and maybe a quarter of an inch thick. It was made of wood laminated with plastic, and had a lot of numbers and mathematical symbols printed on it. It was called a slide- rule because the middle part was actually a separate panel, held in with tongue and groove, that slid horizontally. In other words, by sliding the middle panel the length of the device could be extended out to almost two feet. Certain numbers would thereby line up and show the solution to the mathematical problem. There! That‘s a slide-rule. I had a perfectly good understanding of what it was for: Really brainy kids who were studying physics and engineering did high powered mathematical computations on their slide rules. I knew that. My dad who was an engineer even owned one. (Which I still own today.) But what I did not understand - and still do not understand - is how to actually use one. This falls into the same category as an abacus and a Morse code key. I also don‘t know how to drive a wheat harvesting Combine; nor pilot a 747 airliner. So why, one may ask, were these brainy physics and engineering students called Slide-rule boys (and Slide-rule girls.) Was it merely because they knew how to use the slide-rule? No, no, no. It was because they wore their slide-rules in big leather holsters attached to their belts and hanging at their sides. From a distance it looked like a throwback to the old west when gunslingers wore their six-shooters similarly. But of course when you got within fifty feet of such a person it all came in to focus. You could more specifically identify the slide-rule-in-holster hanging from the obligatory blue Cub Scout belt, and the spaghetti sauce stains on the wrinkled shirt with the buttons buttoned in the wrong button holes.

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Now before I am accused of Slide-rule boy bias allow me to note that as nerdish as they were, they ended up getting the last laugh: It was at the 1972 annual convention of the Slide-rule Boys of America, while attending the “All You Can Drink Grape Nehi Reception” that some of the guys came up with the idea for an automated slide-rule. A few quick calculations later and they had invented the first personal computer. Later that evening at the Spaghetti-O‘s and Beanie-Weenie banquet they developed the concept of software. The mouse came after midnight. And the rest is history. Today, these guys own most of the prime real estate in the country. And the beautiful daughters of all those formerly young and beautiful cheerleader girls who used to fawn over the football players, are employed as their Administrative Assistants. And they all have big mansions and drive expensive cars; and travel the world in private jets. And they think they are really cool, but they would say they are really “Neat-oh.” (Can’t you just imagine Bill Gates saying “Neat-oh”? But once a year when they all get together for a reunion they have to have super-tight security. Armies of rent-a-cops keep the public and press completely off the premises. It is not, as you might think, to protect them from robbers or kidnappers. No, it is to protect their privacy and to guard their secret - as they strap their old holsters and slide-rules on to their old blue canvas Cub Scout belts, and parade around in nostalgic bliss.

Slide-rule Boys X and Y (Insecurity and Lunch) A couple of these individuals stand out in my memory. I won‘t mention names because they hold the mortgage on my house and I don‘t need trouble. But I have developed a clever system of masking their identities. Slide-rule Boy X was notable because he was particularly insecure. This was strange. It wasn‘t that most Slide-rule boys were the opposite – that is to say, secure. Rather it is that they were completely oblivious to the concept of being either secure or insecure. My impression was that

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133 they were oblivious to almost everything, except high powered theoretical math and physics. But Slide-rule Boy X was different. He had a need to let people know that he was in that special category - as if we couldn‘t tell. His technique for fulfilling that need was to constantly tell anyone who would listen that he had an I.Q. in excess of 160. It really got boring. There is no big story about the guy other than what I just told you. He ended up being a teacher, and I understand that if you visit his school, every student on the campus can tell you what the guy‘s I.Q. is. And that makes him feel happy, and secure. Then there was the story involving Slide-rule Boy Y. He was quintessentially the most oblivious kid I ever saw. The incident took place in the West High cafeteria on a day when the featured entree (indeed the only entree) was spaghetti with tomato sauce. This, historically, was the favorite luncheon choice of slide-rule boys, worldwide. The cafeteria had long rows of rectangular tables arranged with relatively little chair space between the rows. And on that particular day, sitting amid those cramped quarters, eating lunch and talking with friends, was Dick Neimi. Neimi was a good looking, blond headed, well built young man who grew up to be a detective with the Phoenix Police Department. I recall vividly that he was wearing one of those short sleeved, button- down collar white shirts that were so popular at the time. Nearby, from the food line emerges Boy Y, slide-rule on belt. His right hand and arm were occupied cradling a huge stack of math and physics books to his chest. His left hand, palm up, balanced a standard fiberglass cafeteria tray upon which rested a standard dishwasher safe, plastic cafeteria plate; upon which lay a double sized serving of Slide- rule Boy‘s Delight - spaghetti with tomato sauce. You do know where this is going! Yes, Boy Y spotted an empty chair at the far end of the row of tables where Neimi and company were sitting. This personification of awkward movement, cradling books and balancing tray, squeezed and squirmed down the congested narrow aisle of chairs, bumping and

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134 elbowing his fellow students as he went. It was a harmless nuisance until he came to a pause directly behind Dick Neimi. It was time to get his bearings. And as he swung his body around to see if the chair he was headed for was still unoccupied, centrifugal force had a most unforgiving effect on the double order of spaghetti with tomato sauce. The large red and off-white, gooey blob sailed from the plate. And as if it were controlled by the kind of electronic guidance system that Boy Y would later invent for nuclear missiles, it scored a direct hit on the top center of Neimi‘s head. Did Neimi get up and punch the kid‘s lights out? No. Strangely, he didn‘t move a muscle but sat with an incredulous expression on his face, as spaghetti and sauce - somewhat like molten lava - slowly flowed down his neck, and cheeks, and over his nose, reaching his white shirt on four sides simultaneously. If that picture is indelible in my mind, it is no more so that the post script: Boy Y - The Oblivious - had not even noticed what had happened. He continued worming his way to his chair, plopped his books on the floor, his tray on the table, and sat down. It was only then he discovered his plate to be empty. Did he look around to see what damage might have been done? No. Was he struck with fear in anticipation of someone punching him in the nose? No. Was he even embarrassed? Not even. But it was apparent that he felt victimized and angry as he yelled out to no one in particular, ―Hey! Someone stole my spaghetti!!

Adventures In Sartorial Splendor (or “Tracking The Illusive Dress Code”) One day recently, all of the local Phoenix television stations opened their six o‘clock news casts with the same story: Two junior high school students were refusing to adhere to their school‘s new dress code. The requirement was to wear a certain blue and white uniform. They showed up in something else. One wore a T-shirt with an American flag across the chest. The other wore a T-shirt bearing the

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135 likeness of Jesus Christ. What red blooded American could object to that, they figured. Well, of course, rules were rules. The school administration booted the kids out. The youngsters, represented by legal counsel, filed suit. And for several days the community was entertained by some pretty heady litigation over First Amendment rights. I was struck by the contrast between this incident in the 1990s and a similar case in the 1970s. During those early days of the Women‘s Liberation Movement, some local high school coeds went to class not merely bra-less, but wearing sheer, see-through blouses. Most of their classmates did not object, but the adults on the faculty were quite upset. The faculty men complained that it was “disruptive.” I think that meant they could not keep their eyes on teaching. The faculty womens’ complaints were delivered with mixed emotions: They supported liberation, but rather resented the complete lack of support required by the bra-less coeds. In the early 1960s, at least around West High, one‘s choice of garb was seldom the vehicle for a political statement. It wasn‘t even a reflection of which campus group to type you were identified with. Of course the Slide-rule Boys, and a few cowboys were the exceptions. The prevailing attitudes about what to wear were pretty stodgy and predictable. The boys looked at what Frankie Avalon was wearing in the movies or what Ricky Nelson wore on television; and the girls checked out Sandra Dee and Annette Funacello. I don‘t remember any boys fashion magazines but the girls went cover to cover through Seventeen. Then everyone looked at what everyone else was wearing, and that‘s what you wore. For the boys it was pretty simple: Levis and short sleeved, button- down collar shirts were the most likely choice. The jeans were sometimes substituted with khakis - beige cotton pants which, in keeping with the button-down trend sometimes has little belt buckle gadgets sewed on in the middle of the back side, just below the belt loops. For various purposes of school spirit, and the preservation of civilized life generally, Fridays were often designated as “dress up” days. Boys were not only expected to, but took great pride in dressing in

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136 the image of the “Rat Pack,” that cooler than cool aggregation of Hollywood stars, gangsters and hangers-on whom the magazines showed hanging out in Las Vegas, and whom we all saw in such movies as Ocean’s Eleven. The group included Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and several other lesser-knowns who might have been known as the Rat Pack-B squad. Of course the most notable member of this swingin’ scooby dooby do fraternity was none other than the President of the United States, one John Fitzgerald Kennedy. JFK‘s membership in the Rat Pack was, incredibly, never made into a political issue by his adversaries. That he could fly to Vegas or Hollywood, make a legitimate speech on foreign policy, then spend the rest of the night with Frankie and the boys, boozing and picking up “broads,” went relatively unnoticed - or at least unreported. Of course it was a different time in America. The press corps viewed a politician‘s private life as private. This little detour into Camelot has a purpose. Each of our presidents, during their term of office has had a significant impact on the country. Most such were related to policies or programs. Some rose to the occasion in the face of a crisis. A very few - maybe only FDR - are known for all of the above. But Jack Kennedy, like no other before or since, had an immediate and dramatic impact on America‘s popular culture, and it‘s sense of style. Certainly, most of that type of attention revolved around Jackie Kennedy‘s elegance, or the sailing and touch football games at the Hyannis Port compound. But the president himself contributed in a significant, albeit subtle way: He wore clothes well. His slender, athletic build helped. The fact that he could afford to have his suits, shirts and even ties custom made helped even more. The two factors combined, resulted in the most stylish, best dressed American president of the twentieth century. And it was in this image - young, virile, and full of sex appeal, that the boys at West High costumed themselves on dress up day. It is worthy of a sidebar here to observe how quickly things can change. A mere three or four years later - after Kennedy was killed in

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Dallas; after the Viet Nam war got cranking; after Timothy Leary coined the battle cry, “Tune in, turn on, drop out” - things changed dramatically. I don‘t know if they still had ―dress up‖ Fridays then, but if they did I am sure the sartorial role models were not wearing narrow ties and two buttoned sports coats. The question of appropriate dress for West High girls was a matter of great concern to the Administration, and fell specifically into the domain of the Dean of Girls, Eleanor Fullington. In those days every high school had an Eleanor Fullington who approached with great seriousness of purpose her responsibility to preserve, protect and defend the virtue, morality, modesty, and if possible, the chastity of the coeds in her care. And among Dean Fullington‘s powers and authority was the enforcement of the “Girls’ Dress Code.” Now I always assumed that there was in fact some kind of a printed or mimeographed booklet delineating what was or was not to be worn at school. If it actually existed I never saw it. Then I thought, maybe it was a “girl thing” - something they handed out to coeds at those “Girls Only Secret Assemblies” that us guys had heard so many rumors of. In retrospect I doubt that the booklet ever existed or that the assemblies were ever held. But I‘m not positive of that either. I did know, however, that there were strict rules on female dress. Well, to be completely accurate, I didn‘t know that at all. But there was one alleged rule that everyone (at least the guys) could quote ver.batim : “No Spaghetti Straps!” I remember the first time I heard it my response was, “What the heck is a spaghetti strap?” Told that it was a very thin shoulder strap on a girl‘s blouse or dress, my reaction was confusion laced with a touch of excitement. I had no idea why a spaghetti strap was taboo. But given that it was, I figured heads wiser than mine must have adjudged them particularly erotic. I spent the rest of my high school years on the lookout for spaghetti straps. If, in fact, there was a dress code for girls it seems to me that it would have been aimed at keeping the female population on a firm moral footing, preventing provocative posturing, and assuring that future generations of American womanhood maintained some facade of

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138 modesty. If so, it was a failed policy, as witnessed several years later when I came across one of my previously prim and proper classmates who, by then, had attained star billing at the Highliter - the city‘s best known topless Go Go bar. It just goes to show you. Or at least she did. But even back during those high school days there wasn‘t much enforcement of the code, if it did exist. Those girls who had been blessed with significant cleavage never went to extraordinary lengths to hide it. And the leotards the young ladies wore for Modern Dance class - and which they often continued to wear after school - left little to the imagination. In short, there was, de facto, no code at all. Of course there is always an exception to the rule, which is another way of saying don‘t underestimate the ability of the Administration to deal with a crisis. The case in question had nothing to do with the likes of low cut dresses. It wasn‘t even a girl. It was a young man - a blond haired fellow - who decided to make a fashion statement by coming to class one morning with that hair dyed bright green. I thought it was cool. Everyone who wasn‘t an Administration lackey thought it was cool. And, he got every bit of the attention he sought, including that of the Administration who kicked him out of school for… for… violating the dress code, of course.

You Are What You Drive Other than fantasies about girls, there was nothing more chronically present in a boys mind than the desire to get a drivers license and have a car. That was in the early 1960s. It is equally true here at the end of the century. The reason is simple algebra. A+B=C. Or, drivers license + car = Girls. Well, that was the prevailing logic among fifteen year old males. That it didn‘t automatically work out that way was one of life‘s cruel little surprises. Between the ages of fourteen and eighteen life is full of cruel surprises. That is also true between the ages of eighteen and fifty. After fifty, if you still run into cruel surprises it just means that you haven‘t been paying attention.

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But the concept of having a license and a car was more than a sexual thing to a boy. It was inextricably tied to his self image and his prospects for ever feeling that he was a man. I never heard anyone say it exactly this way, but regarding that self image factor the prevailing attitude - at least among the guys - was, “You are what you drive.” If you didn‘t drive - you were nothing. If you could borrow your dad‘s Chevy for a date, you were the beginnings of something - at least for those few hours. If you owned your own clunker, you had arrived. And then there were those rare few fellows of exceptional automotive status. You envied them. You admired them. And you despaired at the reality that you would never be one of them. They were the guys who had cars that were, well, really neat; cars that were brand new; cars that were really expensive; cars that were neater, newer and more expensive than your dad‘s car. There were only two methods by which a high school kid got the kind of car we are talking about. One was to forsake all other worldly pleasures and activities - including homework - so he could work forty hours a week at an A.J. Bayless supermarket or a Blakley’s gas station, to pay for such a vehicle himself. The other way was to have a wealthy, indulgent father. The rest of us didn‘t know and didn‘t care which route had been taken. We just envied the result. A few of those car hang in my memory: Bob Locker has a 1957 Corvette, turquoise blue with three-on-the- floor. Ronny Romley has a 1958 Chevrolet Impala that was a mauve color - although in those days it was called desert pink or something. I figured it probably had four-on-the-floor. It probably had spinner hubcaps. It probably had tuck n’ roll interior. I don‘t recall. Years later Ronnie told me the car had none of those high priced extras. But I do remember that it had a name (as was the fad) lettered artistically small on the rear driver‘s side fender. It was called, “Ha- Fast”, alluding certainly to the sizable engine. Of course if you said, “Ha-Fast” rapidly it became “Half-Assed.” This discovery created a major sensation among the students and a major bru-ha-ha with the

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Administration. I could be mistaken after all these years but I think young Mr. Romley was given an ultimatum to either paint over the name or leave the car at home. If so, I‘m sure he complied, as this was decades before local legendary litigators like Gary Peter Klahr were around to take up First Amendment cases on behalf of seventeen year old dissidents. It was also back when school administrators had the luxury of viewing a half-assed double entendre as a major crisis. But that they would be so lucky today! My personal high school automobile story requires an historical prologue: Henry J. Kaiser was an industrialist who during World War Two built ships for the U.S. Navy. When peace came in 1945, he had a lot of steel left over and decided to use it to build automobiles. He built the “Kaiser” - named after himself. He built the “Frazier” - named after some relative. He built the “Henry-J” - named after himself. And he built a sports car called the “Kaiser Darren” - named after himself and some relative. Most people said the design of the Kaiser was sleek and ahead of its time. But they didn‘t necessarily mean that in a good way. The Kaiser line of automobiles only lasted a few years - five at the most. They were never very popular. By the early 1960s you seldom saw one on the road, except in front of my house. My dad loved them. Looking back, I can admit that a Kaiser really wasn‘t a bad looking car. But at that time, at West High School, when “you were what you drove,” I always harbored a secret wish that my dad would go buy a Chevy.

Auto Accident It has been nearly thirty years (actually now forty-five years) since my brother died in an automobile accident. It is still difficult to write about it.

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The Highway Patrolman said he died quickly, and that was consoling at the time. He hit a concrete embankment at 79 miles per hour. They were very precise about that. The circumstances were fairly common. It was late; probably two or three in the morning. He was alone, driving south on I-17 to Phoenix. He had been drinking. And, at the Bloody Basin overpass, just south of Cordes Junction, he fell asleep at the wheel. He left a widow, an ex-wife, and a son. I have memories of that time: Getting the phone call; the funeral; the hurt in my parents' eyes - parents are supposed to go before their children. It's the natural order of things. When that gets turned around, the pain is all the greater. Mike was thirty. He was older than me, but looking back I realize he was a kid. So young. During the year that he died, nearly fifty-thousand other Americans were killed in auto accidents. There have been almost a million more since that time. I don't know the statistics for the rest of the world. It's a lot. This business of young people getting killed in cars has been around a long time. I remember in high school, my brother was a member of some club that undertook a campaign of putting wooden crosses, about two feet high, painted white, at the sites of all fatal accidents that had happened in Maricopa County. It was to be one cross for each death. Some intersections had ten or twelve. As the campaign progressed, people began to complain. They didn't like having to think about it. Of course that was the whole point. The effort was too successful. Before long they had to go out and take all the crosses down. I guess that was to be expected. If they had continued their campaign through today, there wouldn't have been any space left to build shopping centers. Just crosses. Friends dying in car crashes is not something one gets used to, but sadly it is something one has to expect. Think of those you have known. I remember when I was in about the seventh grade. A new family moved into the house next door, the corner house. They had several children but we never got to know them very well. Shortly after they came, their college aged son was killed in a head-on collision. It had been a church

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

142 trip to California with a car full of kids. I think there were no survivors. The family moved away soon after that. Through high school and college we lost several friends: John Morrow and Bill West were together driving home from a summer job. It was late at night at a rural intersection when a woman ran a stop sign and hit them broadside. I remember when Gary Buck died. That involved a motorcycle. I remember when Gary Zeigler died. I remember when Lanny Rueger died. I remember in college when another fellow I knew died - but I can't remember his name. And that is certainly part of the tragedy. I can't remember his name. Maybe if he lived, I'd still know him. But there is a lot of ―what ifs‖ in life. Auto accidents create them. It is said that young people tend to think that they will never die. And it's probably true—that they think that.

Ahh SPORTS… “The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat.” That’s the crappy line some baritone narrator always says over slow-motion video of Olympic events, with dramatic music heard in the background. My bet is that the guy never smelled a locker room in his life.

DRIBBLING WITH A DREAM (or Waiting for Saint Jude) Jim Schoon was a very popular fellow in my high school class: great sense of humor; usually smiling; everybody liked him. I saw Jim at our thirty year reunion a while back. I learned that he had gone on to become an ordained minister - has a church in California, I believe. And although I‘ve never attended one of his services, there can be no doubt that he must do a wonderful job. It is, therefore, a matter of great irony that this man of good cheer was the cause of one of my most memorable, humiliating moments. It was perhaps three months into our freshman

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

143 year and every boy who was not otherwise lame, was engaged in tryouts for the basketball team. It helps this tale significantly to know that young Mr. Schoon was a first class basketball player. He could run. He could dribble. He could pass. He could make long shots. He could do lay-ups. He could shoot the jumper. And each of these necessary component skills in America‘s ultimate finesse sport was enhanced by the fact that freshman Jim Schoon already stood close to six feet tall. Keep in mind that in and around 1959 a high school varsity basketball coach figured he had the state championship wrapped up if he found a center who stood even as much as six foot three. But I digress. Now as surely as basketball candidate Schoon had it all, basketball candidate Billy McCune had it none. Well, I could run - a point already established in that I was not lame. But beyond that, I could not dribble, nor pass, nor make long shots, nor lay-ups; nor could I shoot the jumper. Oh, and did I mention - I stood about five foot three. The obvious question - the one that revolves around the futility of a no-talent, five foot three-er even trying out for the team is covered by two answers: First, in those days that is what you did. You tried! Kids were not yet pre-natally, genetically engineered to be born and conditioned and programmed as blue chip performers in the billion dollar athletics business. Instead, it was an old fashioned concept of a youngster loving to play and compete; trying out for the team, and leaving the rest to God - and the coach. The second reason for being in the try-outs at all is that wonderful combination of characteristics that are usually still very much alive in adolescence: Hope. Fantasy. Dreams: A belief in miracles, and the communion of Saint Jude, the Catholic patron saint of lost causes, who might - just might - decide that some great purpose would be served by plucking this speck from obscurity and thrusting it onto the starting lineup of the Freshman basketball team. That such divine interventions seldom happened, didn‘t matter. That was where hope, fantasy, dreams and faith came in.

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So there we were for three afternoons, running and passing and dribbling and long-shoting and lay-upping and jump-shoting. Some decidedly better than others, but us ―others” none the less carrying on amid hope, fantasy, dreams and prayer. Finally came the big day. The hundred-odd candidates assembled in the gym represented, cumulatively, enough anxiety to move a Richter scale. Coach Fred Roche – who I thought had, in fact, led the varsity to two or three State championships in earlier times, served as spokesman for his staff of junior varsity and freshman mentors, who stood reverently and silently a few steps back; their clip boards and neck whistles providing the badge of athletic officialdom. “All right Freshmen, listen up” he began. “If I call your name line up over here.” He was pointing to the wall. Then he added, “If I don‘t call your name, keep practicing. And better luck next year!” With no further ado he barked out his choices. “Erickson!” Well of course Erickson would make it. He was six foot three or something. The frosh squad would be built around him. “Cunningham!” There was never any doubt about Cunningham. The guy could fake you out of your jock. And he had a jump shot that never missed “Meleck!” Yeah, Meleck. He was pretty good, too. So far I couldn‘t argue with Coach Roche‘s picks. But there were still ten or twelve names to call. Prayers and solemn vowels were fervently, if silently, muttered as hope struggled desperately to stay alive. The coach called three, four, five, six more names. And with each utterance, reality offered a slightly more vivid peek at its ugly head. One of the more sensitive boys was heard to emit a muffled sob representa- tive of his disappointment. As for myself, I was managing to suffer in silence as I experienced, for the first time, that sinking feeling one later associates with divorce, job termination, or the flashing of red lights in the rear view mirror.

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I understand now that it was a psychological defense mechanism that caused my mind to wander away from the setting and the circumstances of the gymnasium. I don‘t think I really expected to make that team, what with my lack of talent and all. But still it seemed to serve my mental health to beam my consciousness to some other plane. I don‘t know exactly where it went, but where ever it was provided sanctuary. Then suddenly, like a bellowing masculine voice jarring me back to consciousness, a bellowing masculine voice jarred me back to consciousness. “McCUNE!” it said. McCune? McCune? Did I hear McCune? Did Coach Roche call out McCune—as in McCune, Up Against the Wall? As in, McCune you made the team? As in, Thank you God! As in, Thank you Saint Jude! As in, the parting of the Red Sea? As in EUPHORIA! Displaying the same quickness that must have caught the coach‘s eye and made him choose me for the squad, I sprung to my feet, bolted across the floor, and joined the line of WINNERS. That I was between eight inches and a foot shorter than the others there, should have struck me strange and suspicious. That I knew I had no talent should have given me a hint that something was terribly wrong. But such cognitive contacts with reality were totally drowned by the half gallon of adrenaline jetting through my veins. That is, until I heard Coach Roche‘s bellowing, masculine voice calling my name, again. “McCune!” This time his call was accompanied by a quizzical look and a penetrating stare. “McCune, what are you doing in that line?” he demanded, with enough volume to be heard everywhere on the campus. I began to experience feelings of self doubt, as every eye in the gym fixed on me.

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“You called my name, sir.” I was heard to say in a tone half way between statement and question. “I didn‘t call your name,” he replied in a manner than implied all the absurdity that was implicit in the statement. Then he added what each and every other one of the hundred-odd boys present already knew. “I called Schoon!!” Indeed, standing there beside me in the line of winners; looking down in my direction, smiling, sympathetically I‘m sure, was Jim Schoon. Just let me die! I thought to myself. Just let me die right here, right now. Let it be a quick painless heart attack. Let them excuse school for a day to attend my funeral. Let the coach feel guilty about it. But mostly, just let me die! It was the kind of moment they always say you‘ll look back on and laugh about years later, when you‘re grown up and have kids of your own. And as unlikely as it seems at the time, they are usually right. With the perspective, now, of forty years I look back with more than just a laugh. I look back with no regrets. For I have learned that on some hopeless occasions Saint Jude will indeed jump in and prop up a lost cause. But even if he doesn‘t, it‘s important to understand that despite the risks of failure and even humiliation, you‘re never going to make any team unless you try out. And always remember that the first rule of a successful and fulfilling life on this earth is, Show up!

Grid, Grit, Guts and Glory Dreams are slow to die and during that first year of high school I continued to carry a secret vision of myself as the star halfback of the West High Thunderbird‘s Varsity football team. I knew that deep in that part of the brain that controls coordination and athletic finesse lay the seeds of a superstar. All I had to do was gain forty or fifty pounds, grow three or four inches and develop an impressive array of muscles. Oh yes, I would also need to improve my stopwatch time in the hundred yard dash, from about fourteen seconds down to the ten range.

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This business of experiencing miraculous measures of physical growth warrants a brief sidebar: It did, in fact, happen. But not to me. And I want to make clear that I was in no way jealous of my two friends who were thusly blessed. To wit: Bill Morrison and Alan Mense each, during most of high school, measured in at around five foot two. This is a guess. I didn‘t carry a tape measure in those days. I know that I wasn‘t very tall, but I was taller than each of them. But if you met them today, you would likely look up to say hello, as each stands somewhere in the range of six foot four or five. Again, a guess. I still don‘t measure people. But what is significant about these two cases is that such tremendous growth seemed to have taken place in a very brief period of time - like over a summer. So it can happen. My physical growth between the beginning of my freshman and sophomore years amounted to about one inch; and ten pounds. If it was not miraculous, it did at least put me over that all-important hundred pound threshold, and rekindled my dream of gridiron glory. Now there would be no stopping me!

Determining One’s Station I had a definite feeling of excitement that first day of football practice. Well it wasn‘t really practice, but the process of issuing equipment. There in the locker room, standing in line, our arms were loaded down with stacks of shoulder pads, hip-pads, thigh-pads, a jersey, pants, shoes, socks, helmet and jockstrap. Keep in mind this was a few years before the proliferation of Pop Warner football with its pushy parents living vicariously through their children. It was the early 1960s when a kid - a boy - did not think in terms of the NFL draft, nor even full-ride scholarships to big time football colleges. Rather, a boy thought about the spirit of competition and the love of the game; and that other thing we thought about as we dawned the pads and helmet for the first time: those beautiful cheerleader girls. Football was so popular among the boys at West High that the school had five teams: There was the Freshman-A team and the

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Freshman-Bs. Size had a lot to do with those assignments. A frosh who weighed eighty pounds - no matter how good a player - was going to the Bs with other boys his size. In those days the policy was adopted out of concern for the youngster‘s health and safety. Today it would have more to do with litigation and insurance premiums. The Frosh-As were the guys who were better and bigger; the sure- fire stars of the future. Rumor had it that the As were given lectures on how to act when the cheerleader girls fawned over them. The top level, of course, was the varsity. They got the best equipment. They played on Friday night in the lighted stadium before five thousand screaming fans. They got written about in the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette. They got the cool letter-sweaters. They got the best looking girl friends. In the context of the early 1960s, it was life in the fast lane. The Junior Varsity-A team was made up largely of sophomores - good players moving up through the ranks; and some juniors who were hanging in there and hoping to get to play in a few varsity games. Then there was the J.V.-B squad. You see, the school owned a lot of uniforms, having accumulated them since 1949 when it was founded. And there was a nearly endless supply of boys wanting to play. Remember that this was before the advent of serious rock n‘ roll, video games, MTV, or the gay rights movement. Playing football was the only option. The other factor was that in those days there were a lot of teachers who wanted the opportunity to coach football. Today, I am told, the teachers spend all their time doing paperwork and writing reports mandated by the Congress or the state legislature. But in those days teachers had time to coach and the school had enough recruits and uniforms to make everyone‘s dream come true. Once the Freshman-A, the Freshman-B, the J.V.-A and the Varsity teams were filled, all the leftover recruits, equipment and lopsided footballs were gathered together to form the J.V.-B squad. And it was with great pride and anticipation that I took my place; determined to make a significant contribution to the success of the J.V.-Bs! Now if I have given the impression that we J.V.-Bs were, relatively speaking, the unloved, the unwanted, the scrubs, the bottom of the grid-

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149 iron barrel, then it is clear that you have good reading comprehension. But let me make it equally clear that this deficit of talent, this scorn, this indictment, did not apply to our coach. Ed Ranshaw was one tough character. I don‘t remember what he taught in the regular classroom. It might have been history or geography or something. But on the football field he taught Tough. Or at least, given the raw material he was given to work with, he tried. But there was no question about it - Coach Ranshaw was tough. Before accepting the assignment of coaching the J.V.-Bs; before becoming a high school teacher, Ed Ranshaw had been a professional hockey player. Need I say more? But there is more to say. If you looked at Coach Ranshaw‘s hands (as we all did,) you would notice that his fingers on both hands were amputated at the middle knuckles. The story was that as a professional hockey player - a Goalie, no less - an opponent came flying into the cage and caught Ranshaw‘s fingers between the blades of his skates and the ice. Zip. In an instant, no finger. I do not know if this is the true and accurate story, but it is the story we knew and retold. Some others said he lost his fingers in the war. I don‘t know and we didn‘t ask. But either way, the physical evidence was startlingly obvious enough to convince us all that this guy was tough.

Cheese and Crackers “Cheese and crackers!” That was the expression Ed Ranshaw would yell to express his exasperation at our poor performance at practice. He yelled it a lot. The frustration he faced as a coach was that nobody on the team was anywhere near as tough as he was. Indeed, if the rules would have allowed him to play fullback in our games, we would have had an undefeated season. As it was, however, we did have a perfect season: five games; five loses! I remember one day at practice when the running backs were not running hard, the blockers were not blocking hard, and the tacklers were not tackling hard. The coach blew up and decided to provide us an object lesson. If the scene had taken place in the 1990s, he would have

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150 begun the lesson by calling us a bunch of pussies. But I‘m sure that there in the fall of 1959, the word he chose was “sissies.” Still, it was an effective affront to our collective manhood. “I‘m gonna run the ball and you sissies are gonna try to tackle me,” he screamed with a distinct tone of disgust. Now that might not seem such a big deal until you consider that he was dressed in a T-shirt, P.E. shorts and tennis shoes. We, on the other hand, wore full football uniforms - helmets, pads and cleated football shoes. One kid, who grew up to be a social worker, expressed his heartfelt concern that the exercise might result in the coach receiving bodily injuries. I recall Ranshaw doing a double take at the kid and responding with heavy sarcasm, “Yeah. Right!” The defensive and offensive units lined up nose to nose on the fifty yard line. The coach lined up in the fullback position. The signals were called. The ball was hiked to the quarterback who immediately handed it off to the T-shirt and tennis shoe clad coach/fullback. Mr. Ranshaw was not an especially fast runner but he moved foreword like a freight train. He didn‘t depend on the offensive line to open a hole for him, nor even block for him. Indeed, he ran right up their backs, bowling them over as he went. The defensive linemen observed this total disregard for pain, injury and life itself, and were virtually paralyzed with fear. Some of the defenders froze in their tracks. One turned and ran. It was rumored, later, that one peed his pants, although it was never proven. A few - the gutsier guys - the ones who were determined to move up and off of the B-squad, threw themselves at the two hundred pounds of object lesson bearing down on them. But it was to no avail. The coach plowed them, one and all, into the ground and moved on to score his mythical touchdown. Like I said, Ed Ranshaw was tough.

The Big Game My particular role on the J.V.-B squad was unique. Literally, unique - as in “one of a kind” or “like no other.’ I was the Place Kicker. Those unfamiliar with football may be interested in learning that in

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

151 the National College Athletic Association the record for the most points scored by an individual in a college football career, is or at least was held by place kicker, Luis Zendajas of Arizona State University. I think he scored ten thousand points in four years. You see, the place kicker kicks all the field goals, which are worth three points; as well as all the “conversions”, also known as “extra points,” also known as “points-after-touchdown.” So you see, the Place Kicker can be pretty high up on the football team food chain. It was a real honor to be the Place Kicker. In terms of my personal statistical record as a football player, I unfortunately found myself on a team where the coach did not believe in trying for three point field goals. He was a touchdown kind of a guy. “Why go for three when you can go for six,” Coach Ranshaw was sometimes heard to say. But still, there were those opportunities for glory, kicking the ball through the uprights for the point after touchdown. Inherent in that role, however, lay another dilemma: During the particular season in question, the team I found myself a member of did not score any touchdowns. Ergo, my very special assignment was to show up for every game, sit on the bench, avoid speaking to the coach; but to wait for the coach to speak to me. Through September and October and the first part of November, I successfully carried out this assignment. But as Thanksgiving approached I was struck with an awareness that we had only one more game on our schedule. The season was going to end without me having moved my butt one inch off the bench. This raised within me certain questions relating to the return on the investment of my efforts. It also had a deleterious impact on my ego and self esteem. Prisons these days are filled with people who pursued lives of crime because of such diminished self images. But I was luckier than most, for beneath that rough, tough exterior of Coach Ranshaw there must have beat a sensitive heart. It was the fourth quarter of the final game. We were at Mesa High playing the Jackrabbit‘s “rainbow” squad, which was their name for the J.V.-B, or maybe J.V.-C team. We were behind.

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One of the assistant coaches - and can you imagine the lack of status associated with being an assistant coach for the J.V.-Bs - came up with a brilliant play; a trick play. It called for throwing a pass to the most unlikely receiver the team could come up with. We needed a player who was not only short and scrawny, but who, at a glance, would exude the image of athletic incompetence. “Hey, McCune,” the coach‘s voice boomed. A certain surrealistic fog seemed to come over the scene. The combination of being on the bench and hearing Ed Ranshaw call me into the game was not something anyone had ever expected to witness. As I ran to report I fastened the chin strap of my circa 1952 helmet, and mentally - if not verbally - chanted a mantra, “Please don’t fuck up. Please don’t fuck up…” Rick Ball, who later made the varsity, was playing quarterback. In the huddle he told me to line up in the Left End position, run down the field ten yards, then cut to the center of the field. He would hit me with the pass. I continued to chant, “Please don’t fuck up. Please don’t fuck up…” Now Rick Ball was a pretty smart guy - later demonstrated by the fact that he had already finished law school when most of the rest of us were still at the community college. But I mean he was smart that day. When the huddle broke, he pulled me aside and sensing my nervousness said, “You can do this. Just stay calm. I‘ll throw the ball right to you.” Normally, seeing the quarterback so obviously giving special instructions to an eligible receiver would be like sending a telegram to the other team. In this case, however, the entire Mesa Jackrabbit‘s Rainbow Squad watched me line up in position, chuckled to themselves, and calculated the odds at a million to one against me being the intended ball carrier. They wouldn‘t even bother to block me. The ball was snapped. I ran as fast as I could straight down the field ten yards. I cut ninety degrees to the right and headed to the center. Rick, meanwhile, faded back a step or two and let loose with the long

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153 bomb. Well, maybe ten yards doesn‘t qualify as a long bomb but it seemed like it at the time. Just as he had promised, the ball was coming right to me. Please don’t fuck up, Please don’t fuck up, I continued chanting. The moment of truth arrived. Whap! The ball hit me right in the chest. My hands grabbed it. My arms embraced it. I didn‘t drop it. I didn‘t fuck up!! The adrenaline surged. Confidence oozed. It was a moment of fulfillment; a coming of age. It was better than sex. Well, it was better than what I imagined sex was like. At least you could do this out where everyone could watch and cheer. Doing that with sex didn‘t become popular until later in the 1960‘s. Holding the ball tightly I turned up field and ran another three or four strides before a thundering herd of Mesa linebackers caught up and clobbered me. But I didn‘t feel a thing. They could have hit me with hammers and I would not have noticed. All I knew was that I caught the pass, gained fifteen yards and made a first down for my team. Life was grand !!! * * * * * * The ride back to Phoenix on the team bus provided me the rare adolescent experience of basking in the sun. I had not scored a touchdown. The team had lost its fifth game in a row. And one could argue that the big play didn‘t change a thing. But it did, really. It changed me. It was an obscure Thursday afternoon game played by an obscure team. There were no cheerleader girls on the sidelines and no fans in the bleachers. There would be no article on the sports page. But as the bus lumbered through the city of Mesa my teammates, and even the coach, complimented and congratulated my effort. I looked out the window and my mind drifted to two philosophical thoughts that I have never forgotten: The first is that in any field of endeavor there are dedicated team members showing up every day for practice, sitting on the bench, just waiting for their chance to prove what they can do. And we should always remember that these individuals are every bit as much a part of the team as are the first string players, to whom glory and adulation has become passé

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And the second thought that has stuck with me since that autumn afternoon in 1959 was that the very act of showing up every day, sitting on the bench, and waiting for a chance to prove your stuff is really a lot of crap! I decided then and there that I was getting out of the football business; and finding something that would give me more than six seconds of glory for a three month effort!

The Pen is Mightier Than the Jockstrap About a week after my six seconds of glory in the last J.V.-B football game of the season, one of the coaches took me aside to explain that if I was to continue in the sport I would need to “bulk up.” This meant spending the next nine months doing sit ups, push ups, knee bends, and “pumping iron.” I envisioned that regimen, looked at my one-hundred-or-so pound body, thought about it for ten or fifteen seconds, and walked immediately to the Administration office. “Could you transfer me out of varsity P.E.?” I asked. The lady‘s eyes scanned my body, head to toe. She felt no need to ask why I wanted out of the football program. “The coaches will have to approve this,” she said. “They will. Believe me, they will,” I replied. “Yes, I imagine they will,” she added. I didn‘t know whether to take her comment as sympathy or sarcasm. “What do you want to take instead of football?” “Couldn‘t I just go hope early?” I responded, hopefully. She didn‘t dignify my question with an answer, but muttered to herself and rolled her eyes. The fact was that a few days earlier I had met Mr. Jim Agee who taught English, Journalism, and was the faculty advisor to the school newspaper, The Sun Dial. I learned that the newspaper staff was enrolled in a sixth hour class called Publications, that offered the same credit as P.E. From that moment foreword, and for the rest of my life, I would be directly or indirectly involved in journalism.

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I would like to say that during the nearly three years I spent as a reporter, then Managing Editor, at The Sun Dial we righted some great wrongs, organized various student protests, uncovered rampant corruption at the school board offices, and won the Pulitzer Prize. But those would be lies. This was at least a dozen years before the Watergate burglary. Crusading, investigative journalism had been around since the days of John Peter Zenger (1697 - 1746,) but in the early 1960s it was, if not dead, somewhat comatose. My guess is that at the same time, at some other high schools in America, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were covering the same hot stories as we on The Sun Dial : the magazine sale, the scholarships, the Christmas dance and the big game. We hoped desperately for a scandal - a pregnant cheerleader, an indicted Vice Principal; maybe a torrid love triangle among the faculty. But we knew that if such things did happen, that (A) we probably would never hear about them, and (B) if we heard about them we definitely would not be allowed to write about them. I remember once writing an editorial complaining about the Administration‘s control of the student newspaper. The piece was entitled, Dignity Above Truth. The Administration would not allow it to be published. There, I have vented the pent up feelings and frustrations of high school journalism of the 1960s. But I am compelled, now, to admit that there are two sides to the story. No, I‘m not going to say that the Administration was right in disallowing us from carrying any story that had substance. Indeed, even in those naive times in America there were issues that we would have been better off for having explored. But the redeeming factor was that we learned something which, I am convinced, too many young news people - especially local television reporters - have never learned: namely, the fundamentals of journalism. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? Get the story; the whole story. Save your opinions for the editorial page, or for the by-line column. We may have been boring but we came away with a solid understanding of the responsibilities that come with the privilege of writing for a paper, or reporting on the public airwaves.

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I must take a moment to return to the Publications Office at West High of the early 1960s. It was the place where I had the privilege of studying under Jim Agee, the first teacher who, in my experience, made me feel like a human being with intelligence and potential. And even though we were not doing investigative journalism nor writing torrid exposes, he made me feel that each story I wrote was important, and worthy of a professional attitude. I will always be thankful to him for that. Of course, there were some other lessons I did not learn there: One being the importance of organizing and pacing one‘s work so that you don‘t get under the crunch and stress of a deadline. I didn‘t learn that from Jim Agee. The fact is, I never learned that lesson at all. Not that he didn‘t try to teach it!

GODABOBS One of the great perquisites of being on the staff of our school paper, The Sun Dial, and being enrolled in that end-of-the-day class called Publications, was that you were expected at all times to be on the lookout for local companies that might purchase an advertisement in our august journal. Why, the reader might ask, would the demand of selling ads be considered a special privilege? Read on. Those local entrepreneurial entities that might consider advertising in the high school paper were, among other things, not located on the high school campus. It followed, therefore, that we clean cut and earnest young journalists had to have access to the outside world. This reality necessitated that we - each of us - be granted (grudgingly, I‘m sure) by the Administration that most coveted of perks, The Permanent Sixth- hour Off-campus Pass. While the varsity team jocks were banging and bruising and sweating away, motivated by dreams of some future six seconds of glory and the fawning of cheerleaders, we were cruising east on Thomas Road toward the intersection with Central Avenue, where stood the Mecca known as Bob’s Big Boy restaurant.

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There amid air conditioned comfort, in booth-seats upholstered of turquoise and avocado naugahide, and tabled with the finest beige Formica; over cherry cokes, French fries and the occasional Big Boy Hamburger (money permitting,) we discussed and debated issues of concern to persons responsible for the writing and editing of a high school newspaper. This invaluable educational experience was occasionally carried out interactively with our colleagues from the North High and Central High and Camelback High papers, who had their own school‘s coveted sixth-hour off campus passes. We were not without integrity, nor lacking in intellectual honesty, or for that matter, creativity. Did we actually attempt to sell ads during these sixth-hour forays? That would be the question that someone from the Administration would be posing if there was ever a full blown investigation of our activities. A straight faced, resounding, “Yes, absolutely!” would be the response. For with each visit to Bob’s there was a pause to ask the hostess on duty if she thought the restaurant would be interested in an ad in our paper. “I doubt it,” she always replied. Oh well, maybe next time. And with that our business was concluded, leaving us thirsty and maybe hungry. So, given that we were already at Bob’s we may as well sit down and refresh ourselves. And that we did, never realizing, of course, that this exercise was wonderful training for the future when we would have to justify the tax deductibility of a business lunch. Over the years, Bob’s Big Boy was more than just a popular restaurant in central Phoenix. It was an institution; a safe and wholesome refuge for two or three generations of teenagers. Opened in Phoenix in 1956, when their hamburgers costs thirty-five cents, Bob’s was part of a relatively small California-based chain founded by a fellow named Bob Wain. Certainly the food and service were quite good, but the thing that made it always crowded was the atmosphere. It was not the decor or the lighting; and definitely not the “canned” music quietly flowing from the small speakers in the ceiling. Rather, that magic atmosphere was created by the gathering of the people. There was always a sense of excitement about just being there, seeing friends and laughing and eating. Going to

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Bob’s became such a popular habit that it acquired its own lexicon as one would tend to say to friends, “Let’s godabobs!” During all the years I went there, I personally never witnessed a fight or major disruption within the ranks of the teen multitude hanging there - a fact attributable to the constant presence of off-duty policemen standing in the waiting area near the front door greeting everyone who entered. In time, these officers, including Jon Sellers, Tom Ezell and Hugh Ennis became well known - and in a very positive way - to the teenagers in the north central Phoenix. In time, several Bob’s Big Boy restaurants were opened throughout the city, and each was equally popular in its own area. Our Bob’s, at Central and Thomas lasted until sometime around 1980 when it was torn down to make way for a complex of high rise buildings. There was a certain sadness seeing it go, as it held so many happy memories for so many of us. Yet, the end of that era was not as painful as it might have been. A few years earlier, Bob Wain apparently decided it was time to put more leisure in his life, and accepted what must have been a very attractive offer to sell the chain to the Mariott Corporation. When that otherwise admirable business empire came in, it changed a long list of tried and true formulas that had brought so much success. Before long, word spread that the atmosphere and the food down at Central and Thomas was just not the same, anymore. It wasn‘t that they didn‘t continue to make a profit. Sure they did. But it was different. And a lot of us who had been so dedicated to the place seldom went there anymore. To us it was a classic example of someone ignoring the old wisdom, - If it ain’t broke, don‘t fix it!

The Knees Know I could write a book about Coach Lyrch. It would be short and not very much fun to read. But there is one memory of those days in Physical Education class at Maie Bartlett Heard school, that cries out for expression: It‘s about the “deep knee bend.” Each day we lined up in four rows on the blacktop basketball courts to do calisthenics. The jumping jacks were okay. I didn‘t mind

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159 push-ups. But doing deep knee bends - Ohhh!! Stand up straight with your arms extended out in front of you for balance. Now, keeping your back straight, you lower yourself into a squatting position by bending your knees; then back up again. My complaint - not that I ever verbalized it - was that doing these deep knee bends hurt my knees. I could feel the bones and joints and cartilage grinding against each other, literally wearing out my knees. I hated it but I endured it; suffered in silence. Had I complained, I would have drawn to myself the kind of attention a young boy tries specifically to avoid. I‘d have been the one “who couldn‘t take it.” The other boys would sneer. The girls might appreciate my honesty and start to like me, but in the fifth grade I wasn‘t interested in having the girls like me. And then there was the issue of what Coach Lyrch would have said to me - in front of everyone. I didn‘t even want to think about that. Now jump ahead about forty years: Dateline, Washington, D.C. The American Society of Orthopedic Knee Experts today released the findings of a scientific study they have conducted over the past four decades, regarding DEEP KNEE BENDS. The unanimous conclusion of the Association‘s Board of Governors is that every grade school in America should immediately cease and desist from making kids do deep knee bends. The news release went on to explain - although in nice scientific language - that the exercise was literally causing the bones, joints and cartilage to grind against each other, and was wearing out the kids‘ knees. If I‘d have known it was going to take them forty years, I would have said something.

Selling Shoes "Man Alive - Two for Five!!" That's what the radio commercial shouted with excitement sometime around 1955. I think the advertiser was a place called BBB. It

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160 was a shoe store and the pitch was that you could buy two pair of shoes for five dollars. Yes, it was a good deal, even back then. And, no, the shoes were not made of cardboard. They were leather, probably with Neolite soles. Regular shoes for the times. Today, it is a bargain if you find two pair of shoe laces for five dollars. Of course, we've enjoy forty or forty-five years of inflation since those bargain days. But something else has changed as well. Shoes used to be made to protect your feet, while adding a touch of sartorial style to your costume. High heels added a touch of curve to a woman's calf, as well. But still, the promise of a pair of shoes was pretty basic. Today it is different. Today, a pair of shoes is a life altering vehicle guaranteed to transform you into the fantasy person of your choice; all through the marvels of applied science and technology. And it's all very specialized, too. Look at the television commercials. Studs Longstretch, the six- foot-eleven-inch tall basketball star, who reportedly earns thirteen million dollars per year, dribbles past his opponents at lightning speed. Near half-court he scoops the ball into one hand and bounds into the air. Up toward the rafters his body flies. For a moment, he appears to be in a state of suspended animation. A hush comes over the crowd of 30,000 adoring fans. Finally, he begins his descent and final approach. Homing in on the basket like a missile with an electronic guidance system, his air speed increases. Focusing intently, he raises the ball above his head as a mortal man or woman would draw back a fly swatter. Silence. Who-o-o-sh! Slam dunk! The crowd goes wild! And why is this six-foot-eleven specimen able to do what you and I couldn't even attempt? It is not his gene pool. It is not that he spent fifteen years at a secret, government-operated basketball farm. No, it is his shoes: the ultimate output of years of research. High-tech computer-generated design and development by a team of scientists, formerly associated with the Cold War arms race. Double Bubbles. That's what they're called. Or, to be more market- specific, "Studs Longstretch Double Bubbles” by NikBoch.

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"Be the first in your school, on your block, or in your gang to pony up a mere $159.50 for a pair of Studs Longstretch Double Bubbles. The shoe molds to your foot through a space-age system of ducts and flumes that carry a mixture of pure oxygen and synthetic liquid adrenaline to every square millimeter of the podological cavity. "Cast worries and stress aside as our patented system of electronic sensors, strategically located at nine critical points throughout the heel and toe module, instantly measure your metabolic rate, ground speed and key odoriferous environmental factors. "Studs Longstretch gives you his personal guarantee: “Get you some Double Bubbles and you’s gonna run fast, jump real big and meet up to 20,000 real babe-chicks. They is real good shoes, 'cause I invented them myself when I ain’t playing basketball’” It is a fact that the manufactures sell million of such shoes. It is a fact that virtually all such shoes are really ugly. It is a sad fact that cases are reported of young people committing murder for the sake of stealing such a pair of shoes. And, it is also a fact that a normal, healthy American consumer of average intelligence, education and temperament can be driven to the edge of murder trying to buy such a pair of shoes. There was a time, in the foggy past, when a customer about to spend $159.50 on a single item, got the royal treatment from the sales staff. And there was a time when the people whose livelihood depended on selling you something, actually knew something about the products they sold. And if actual knowledge was lacking, the creative, ambitious salesperson made something up. You knew it. They knew you knew. But it served a purpose. It made you feel better about parting with your hard-earned money. And it let you know they valued you as a customer. Times change. Today, you go into a retail establishment. For the sake of discussion, lets say you're ready to pay big bucks for a pair of those Laser-age sneakers. You see fifty different models displayed on the shelf: Pumpers, Bubbles, Velcro's, blue ones, red ones. You have questions to ask. Decisions to make.

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After fifteen or twenty minutes you spot someone who appears to be an employee - usually a nice looking young man or woman, decked out in a sporty athletic motif uniform of some sort. As you approach, you feel confident you'll get the help you seek. This is a specialist. One of only two employees in the entire store. This is not one of those fast food air-heads, programmed to be a quasi-human extension of a computer terminal punching up 99-cent hamburgers. This is big time retail. You are in good hands! Wrong again! It doesn't matter what your question was, they only know three answers, which they offer in rotation: "Huh?" "I dunno," and my favorite: "Alls we gots is on da shelf." Each answer is immediately followed by this person turning his or her back to you and walking away. Now, I don't want to sound like one of those old codgers who's always talking about the “good old days.” But I really do remember when the effort to sell you a pair of shoes reflected concern, desire, orchestration and a good deal of theatrical value. It was around 1950. I was four or five years old when my mother took me downtown for new shoes. I wanted Buster Brown's because we'd seen him on our 12-inch, black-and-white, General Electric television every Saturday morning. It seemed like this little kid actually lived in a shoe with his dog, Tige. Or at least that was the level of sophistication on Smiling Ed’s Buster Brown Gang Show. I doubt I ever got real Buster Brown's because they were in what we would today call the Up Scale range. But I do know that I witnessed the ultimate in retail salesmanship. They had, in the shoe store, an X-ray machine. Not the kind that took pictures of your chest. This was for your feet! It resembled one of those peep show devices that years later took my quarters at the State Fair. Standing about forty-five inches tall, it had a small viewing window at the top and two slots at the bottom. It was into those slots that you were to stick your feet. The purpose of the machine was to obtain an actual X-ray vision of the structure, the bones, the tendons and cartilage of your very own

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163 individual tootsies. It was just like the powers of Superman. And the obvious logic was that by examining the true shape of your toes and heels, the salesman could assure you a scientifically accurate and proper fit. Standing on the floor I was not tall enough to reach the view finder so the salesman did for me what he had done for hundreds, if not thousands of other kids. He held me up to the peephole, put his own feet in the slots, and flipped on the switch. There they were: fluorescent green skeleton-feet. Anticipating my question, the nice man said, "Yep. That's really my feet. I'll wiggle my toes to prove it." And he did. And the skeleton-feet wiggled. Fluorescent green. And I saw it with my own eyes. Many years later, a friend with thirty-five or forty years experience as an X-ray technician told me that those shoe store devices had been quickly banned by the federal government. It seemed they were designed to spew out raw, unshielded radiation. Anyone who repeatedly exposed his feet in one, very likely would have encountered radiation poisoning, or cancer. I wonder what became of that men who went to such lengths to sell us our shoes. Heaven knows I wouldn't want the shoe industry today to revert back to extreme and dangerous methods of salesmanship. But it does seem reasonable that when you are asked to spend $159.50 per pair, the shoes salesperson should at least be required to know how many toes the average person is supposed to have.

OUT IN THE REAL WORLD A few thoughts on lessons learned long after Tisdale Terrace.

The Phantom of the High School In 1994 actor Tom Hanks played the movie role of Forrest Gump, a slightly retarded young man who stumbles into all the socially and

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164 politically significant events of the 1960s, '70s and '80s. The most famous line in the film is Gump's observation, handed down from his mother, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get." How true! We all experience twists and turns in our lives. but probably not to the extent of a man I had the honor of knowing. Tom Thorpe was like a lot of the male teachers in my high school. His education had been interrupted by World War Two. He served as the Navigator of a B-24 bomber making daytime raids over Germany. He told us a story about fate. One morning, late in the war, a member of his crew didn't show up at muster. Their plane could not join the armada for that day‘s bombing mission. As it turned out, the day saw some of the heaviest losses of Allied bombers to that point in the war. Had they gone, they likely would have died. Attempting humor, the kids in our class asked if Mr. Thorpe had given the tardy airman a medal. He responded that he had the man court martialed. "Our responsibility was to do whatever it took to complete the mission. Fate would determine what became of us." My brief association with Mr. Thorpe consisted of the three or four weeks I was in his Physics class. Never, to my memory, have I seen another teacher who so demonstratively enjoyed his work. Keep in mind this was the early 1960s when America was obsessed with the goal of identifying and training everyone who had the potential to be an engineer or scientist. The Cold War was shifting into high gear; John Kennedy had just challenged us to get to the moon and back by the end of the decade. Both efforts required technology. The search was on, and Tom Thorpe, I believe, was determined to personally supply the necessary cadre of young physicists. And I must admit that he was quite successful. His students went on to MIT and other high-powered places. Scholarships flowed like water. The teacher himself became well known in “Physics-teaching circles” across the country for producing winners in the coveted, Westinghouse Talent Search -- a nationwide program to

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165 find the best and brightest science students. Today, these kids are top professors; researchers. At least one became an astronaut. Now let me make it clear that I was not one of his whiz-kid blue- chippers. I could never quite grasp the significance of knowing that a falling body accelerates at a rate of "thirty-two feet per second, squared." I still don't. It seemed prudent that after three weeks I transfer out of Physics and accepted a high-level appointment as Hall Monitor, or something equally important. But while I was in his class I observed the quintessential, humorous, "Mad Scientist" who thrilled at doing wild experiments and demonstrations that amazed and delighted his students. And although I had absolutely no penchant for scientific subject matter, I was thoroughly enthralled with his sense of theater, and in awe of his intellect. It was said that he, and certain other outstanding science teachers around the country, received a letter personally signed by President Kennedy recognizing his contributions to science education. Over the next decade or more he continued to produce nationally recognized science students. I learned later that he would earn his doctorate, and move on to teach at the university level where I'm sure he continued to do wonderful things. And there, on a happy note, my story of Tom Thorpe would have ended, if not for a chance meeting thirty years after I dropped his class. At the Sunday evening end of a family outing, I ran into the Wendy's restaurant in Prescott, Arizona to get a “coffee to go" – a stimulant for the hundred mile drive back to Phoenix. Styrofoam cup in hand, I was headed toward the door when I saw his unmistakable presence seated across the room. He was certainly older, and surprisingly disheveled, but, undoubtedly, Tom Thorpe. My kids were waiting in the car, but still I could not deny myself the pleasure and curiosity of speaking with him. He sat alone with a cup of coffee; lost in his thoughts, it seemed. I introduced myself, and made clear that he'd have no reason to remember me, given my short tenure in his class. He smiled and he asked me to sit down. When I addressed him as Mr. Thorpe, he interrupted that it was "Doctor Thorpe. Doctor Thorpe."

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I repeated, "Doctor Thorpe." We only spoke for a moment or two, during which he said he was “now down with the VA.” There was something peculiar about his choice of words. I knew there was a large Veterans Administration hospital in Prescott. From the way he spoke one could have interpreted him to mean he worked at the VA. But I was aware that the Prescott VA [Fort Whipple] hospital had a long-term care facility. I assumed he was a patient there, but certainly did not seek clarification. I do not wish to imply that his conversation was incoherent, but there was a certain unreality about it. This man was very different from the one I had known. I desperately wanted to stay and pursue his story, but my children were waiting and I had to excuse myself. I drove back to Phoenix with my mind racing. The next day I telephoned some of my other former high school teachers, Dr. Thorpe's former colleagues, with whom I had stayed in touch. Nobody knew the complete and detailed story, nor do I now; but this is what I was able to piece together: Mr. Thorpe had indeed earned his doctorate, gone off to teach at a university and for several years, everything was fine – Sort of. I was told that during this period he suffered from two serious problems: One was a very unhappy - even hostile - marriage. The other, reportedly was that he sought refuge in alcohol. His behavior grew increasingly erratic – often missing classes; asking other professors to write the examinations for his students. In short, not meeting his responsibilities. His marriage ended. And then the ultimate consequence: the university released him. Mercifully, I’m told, it was a forced early retirement. About everything in life that he had once enjoyed was lost - not the least of which was his sobriety. He returned to Phoenix where former colleagues from the high school faculty confided in each other as having spotted him wandering, homeless in the "skid row" area of town, sleeping in alleys, or sometimes shelters. I mean no disrespect nor intend any humor, here, when I say that Thorpe may have gone a little crazy, but he hadn't gotten stupid. For

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167 when the winter months came along he knew exactly how to protect himself from the cold. Beneath the campus of the high school lay a catacomb of utility tunnels designed to carry electrical wiring, plumbing, and most important, warm air from the central heating plant. The very existence of these tunnels was, for obvious reasons, kept secret from the students. But during his many years as the campus scientist, Mr. Thorpe had become quite familiar with them. Perhaps, I speculated, he still had a key to their secured entrance. In any event it was there that he set up housekeeping - cozy and protected from the elements. Pause with me and imagine not just the picture, but the irony: The scholar. The nationally recognized Physics teacher. The man who had inspired and nurtured so many brilliant scientists and engineers during what must to him have seemed like a previous life, was living in a utility tunnel some twenty-five feet below the second floor laboratory which had been the setting of his important contributions. And there was another twist. Students began reporting sightings of a strange-looking, raggedy man on the campus. Administrators and security personnel would investigate and find nothing. Rumors spread quickly throughout the student body. It was the Phantom of the Opera, played out in a different venue as he vanished into his subterranean lair. For a time it was a baffling, and probably a bit frightening, mystery. But, the teachers - that is to say the older teachers - soon figured out the who and the where of it. Before long there was a confrontation. It was not an angry, nor violent encounter; but old friends meeting their administrative responsibility to the school and its students; and their moral obligation to a respected former colleague. And so, my memory jumps again to that brief meeting in Prescott, in a restaurant just down the road from the VA hospital; where I spoke with a brilliant man who was a little worse for wear. And now it becomes significant to me that he was drinking a cup of coffee, that he smiled and bid me welcome, and referred to his doctorate, and seemed particularly concerned to maintain his dignity lest I view him with diminished respect. He had nothing to worry from me. I was still in awe of him.

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I promised myself that I would not tell his story until he passed away, which he did a few years later. And I have mixed feelings about whether to use his real name. I'm not sure what he would want. But I do know his is a story worth telling -- sad, to be sure, but also valuable for its statement about the consequences of decisions we make in life. "Life is life a box of chocolates - you never know what you are going to get," says Forrest Gump. There is some truth to that. But in life as in chocolates, we do get to look and think before we make those choices. And maybe Tom Thorpe did. Maybe he telegraphed his perspective thirty years earlier as he talked of bombing missions in World War Two. Fate would decide what would become of him, he had said. Maybe that was in Dr. Thorpe‘s mind when he went down his path and ended up losing everything. * I must note, here, that I have done some rewriting of this particular essay for the PDF version of the original printed book. I later spent the better part of a year researching the true details of Tom’s story, which I then wrote as a screenplay titled “Thorn”. I mention this to make clear my opinion that among the factors contributing to his downward spiral was what today we know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming from his WWII experience.

Justice Delayed Can Be Sweet Years after I grew up and moved away from Tisdale Terrace, the father of some kids I knew there told me this story. I won't use his name and perhaps you'll understand. He is an old friend, and might still be embarrassed by something that happened almost sixty years ago. During World War Two he was in the Navy and had the misfortune of being sent to the brig. It was nothing serious - a fist fight, I believe. And it was a short visit. At a Navy brig the guards are Marines, and one such in particular my old friend remembered, was described as, “a sadistic son-of-a-bitch”. Apparently, that guard enjoyed inflicting abuse, physical and mental, on his inmate charges. It had not been a pleasant experience. Now jump ahead six or seven years: The war is over. Everyone is again a civilian. My old friend has a good job as a Supervisor at the Goodyear Aircraft plant, where he oversees the efforts of a dozen semi- skilled workers.

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One morning a new man reports from the Personnel Office. Exactly! A one-in-fifty-million coincidence. My friend recognized the fellow immediately. He would have known that face and voice in hell. But he said nothing - just took the paperwork and motioned him to a chair across the desk from him. The man sat down, unaware. The supervisor did not look at the file folder, just at the would-be new employee. Thirty seconds. Forty-five seconds, a minute passes. No sound. No paper shuffling. It was a one sided staring contest. The former Marine began to fidget and squirm in his seat. Confused. Why is this guy staring at me, and with such an unfriendly look? Another thirty, forty, fifty seconds passed as my old friend held his expression. The applicant most likely thought he had encountered some kind of psycho case. Maybe like some of those he'd encountered back in the Marine Corp when he was a guard at the Navy brig…. Boom! It hit him. His subconscious, repressed memory file suddenly jumped to the top of the cerebrum. He knew that face. He knew exactly when, and where, and why, and under what circumstances he had known it before. The eyes are the windows to the soul, and this man's spiritual blemishes were suddenly in plain view. My old friend told me he gave the guy credit for not pretending to be ignorant of what was obvious. He didn't chuckle and try to make small talk about the good old days, back when they were in the war together. He didn't try to make amends. He just slowly got up from the chair, turned around, walked out of the room, and out of the plant. And he never came back.

Making The Flag Wave A few years back, a great deal was written about the former Governor of Arizona, Evan Mecham, who was the recall-targeted; Grand Jury-indicted; then impeached, convicted and finally removed from office. Some folks feel that enough has already been written about Mr.

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Mecham. They may be right. But intellectual honesty compels me to tell how I lost my political virginity in an incident along the winding, rocky road of his career. Mecham and his troubles became the subject of national footnote during the late 1980s. My story took place in 1962. It was twenty-five years earlier, but in looking back it is clear to see that Ev and his cadre of true believers didn't learn a damn thing in that quarter century. I was a kid in high school and had developed a fascination with politics. The national, state and local election campaigns were coming up, and State Senator Evan Mecham - an automobile dealer in real life - was a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator. His immediate opponent was writer, political consultant, businessman Stephen Shadegg. Each sought the opportunity to face the incumbent Democrat, venerable Senator Carl Hayden, in the November general election. Well I didn't really know one candidate from the other, but Mecham caught my attention early. It wasn't anything he said. But his campaign was off to a strong start with lots of signs and a noticeable number of automobile bumper strips seen around town. I saw an article, or maybe it was an advertisement in the paper, announcing that Mecham would be giving a speech at a rally that evening, and the event was to be telecast live on KOOL-TV, Channel 10. Of course those were the days before videotape so all such broadcasts were live. Wanting to see some real politics up close, I decided it would be a good idea to attend the rally and rub elbows with some of the political movers and shakers. I talked a friend - I think it was Mike Yabroff - into going with me. The rally was held, or perhaps more accurately, staged, in the alley behind the KOOL-TV studios. This was the same location where used car dealers would do live commercials during the late movies. I'm sure Mecham felt at home there. When we arrived, I was surprised not only at how thoroughly orchestrated everything was, but also how well geared to the television broadcast: A set of bleachers on one side was just large enough to allow a small group to look like a crowd, given the right camera angle. There was a podium and various "Mecham for Senate" banners on a wall

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171 behind it. And then there was an American flag -- the one that was supposed to wave and fill the TV screen at the beginning and end of the broadcast. This, in particular, struck my interest. It was, in fact, a little child's flag about ten inches across, positioned next to an electric fan that provided the wind at appropriate moments. This was great. I was learning all sorts of neat tricks which, I was sure, would come in handy in future years. Mike and I arrived about fifteen minutes before the broadcast. As we surveyed the set and took in the exciting political-showbiz atmosphere, everyone was smiling and friendly. I could tell they were all worked up and full of anticipation. And who wouldn't be if your leader was about to make the first of a twenty-five-year series of speeches about conspiracies in government? Time was getting short so Mike and I went over to the bleachers and seated ourselves on a second row bench, right in the middle. My first real life, up close, hands on, just-like-the-big-time look at politics. I could feel the electricity in the air. About five minutes before air-time, one of Mecham's toadies walked up to us carrying an armload of hand-painted placards bearing such messages as, "We love you, Ev!" and "Stop Socialism, Vote Ev." Without so much as a hello, Toady shoved a couple of them at us said, "Here kid, wave these at the camera when we give you the signal." I looked at the sign, looked back at Toady and said, somewhat hesitantly, "Well mister, I'm just here to see what Mr. Mecham has to say. I mean, er, I don't know that I want to be holding up a sign for him yet." That was the moment in life when I learned the real world meaning of the word "incredulous." Toady looked at me with an expression that underscored his disbelief. It was more like a refusal to even acknowledge the possibility that anyone would have the audacity to express uncertainty about their dedication and loyalty to the obvious savior of all things American and patriotic. There was a moment of awkward silence as he groped to collect his thoughts and composure. I squirmed in my seat. Such was the look on Toady's face, that I thought he might have a stroke. Or hit me. Finally he spoke.

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"What? You're saying you don't want to hold a sign?" A pall came over the gathered throng. It seemed to get quiet as I felt a hundred pairs of eyes look my way. My throat went dry. I didn't know what my friend Mike was thinking, but I hoped he wouldn't say anything that would cause us to be the first two people lynched on live local television. Mike looked at me as if to say, "It's your line." "Well, yeah," I stammered. "We just, ya know, read about this in the paper and thought we'd come down and see what it was, ah, all about." "You don't want to hold a sign?" the Toady repeated with the monotone of a shell-shocked soldier. I just looked at him, concerned now that his brain had snapped; putting him into a mild catatonic state. It hadn't. Color quickly returned to his face. "Well boys," he said, now with a tone mildly reminiscent of a Gestapo interrogator, "if you don't want to hold a sign then I'm just going to have to ask you to leave." Those were the words he used. But the message, even to my relatively naive 17-year old mind, had much broader, more ominous, implications. It had an accusatory quality to it, as if to say, “If you're not with us body and soul, then you must be against us. As a matter of fact, it's clear you are against us. You're obviously a spy sent by our enemies. Maybe you're from the Kremlin. Speak a little Russki do you, comrade?” At least that's the way it seemed to me at the time. My friend and I may have been little more than dumb kids but we were smart enough to read the crayon marks on the wall. We knew at that point that we were not going to wave the Mecham banner on cue, so we got up and left. About a week later I found myself at a candidates forum where I met Mecham's opponent, Shadegg. He seemed like a rational enough character so I spent the rest of the campaign licking envelopes on his behalf. I guess it would be accurate to say that Toady won his little battle so many years ago in the alley behind Channel 10. That it should even be

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

173 thought of as a battle and a victory is a premise limited to the mind-set of a Toady, and all the Toadies who followed over the years: The world in black and white. If you're not with us, you're against us. We'll do the thinking for you. Just get in line. Wave the placard on cue. It's an old idea that someone is always bringing back. But it has never been valid, and it never will be. I remember, as I walked away from the bleachers that night, hearing another Toady bark out an instruction. "Ten seconds 'till air time," he said. "Turn on the fan. Make the flag wave!" I remember that, and am aware of just how confused Toady and Company has always been. The American flag isn't a symbol for those who agree with you. It doesn't wave on cue. Rather, it represents all those who live under it; including those who disagree, and those who sit in bleachers just trying to figure out what's going on.

Prison Stories When I was in the legislature in the early 1970s, I found myself appointed to Chair a special study committee on prison reform. In the course of that work, I spent a lot of time visiting the state's correctional institutions. Prisoners pay a lot of attention to the papers and television newscasts, so when I wandered into one of those facilities the inmates all knew who I was. That in itself wasn't surprising. But what I wasn't prepared for was their expectation that I was going to solve all their individual and collective problems. Out of hundreds of requests, there were three cases in which I intervened: Ernest, a middle aged white man, was the leader of the Alcoholics Anonymous chapter at the "Joint" -- the main maximum security prison. He was in for burglary, alcohol related, but had now been sober for a few years. The Parole Board said they would release him if he had a job waiting on the outside. I helped him get that job—as an electrician (his trade) at a very fancy resort hotel. Success! A few weeks later the resort manager—my friend who took the chance—called and insisted that I come out and fire the guy. Ernest had gotten drunk, and into a fist fight

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

174 with a guest. Before too long, he was back in the "Joint," where eventually he got into another fight from which he emerged dead. Jim was a young African-American man. I don't remember his crime. We met at a minimum security prison. He was a tremendous baseball player; a pitcher. His high school coach assured me the kid had major league potential. I used my good offices to arrange for the Los Angeles Dodgers to take a look. Their scout visited the prison, watched him pitch and expressed some, "future interest." It was something for Jim to work toward, to survive for. What I didn't know was that Jim was a bit too involve in some of the inmate gang activity. A few months later, three members of a rival gang caught him alone in the showers, and stabbed him ten or twelve times. I attended Jim's funeral. Then there was Billy, a kid from Tisdale Terrace, whom I had known all my life. I was surprised to stumble across him at the main prison. Like many of my generation, he had gotten into drugs and, under the influence of something hallucinogenic, stole a car; led the police on a high-speed chase across two counties; and somewhat inadvertently took a cop hostage. (The officer tripped, dropping his gun. Billy picked it up!) First offense - drugs, car theft and kidnapping: 12 years. He had served two, and was eligible for his first appearance before the Parole Board. I involved myself in his hearing for three reasons: I did not think he was dangerous; I really thought he had learned his lesson, and, quite frankly, because I knew him and his family. They were not wealthy nor influential, but were good, honest, hard-working people. I asked the board to grant his parole on the basis that he leave Arizona to work on the farm of a relative in the South, pending acceptance of that state's Parole Board (via an Interstate Compact.) Everyone agreed. He got sprung. Two years later I received a phone call from Billy's sister. Oh my God! What now, I thought? But the story has a happy ending. Billy was coming home for a visit (approved by the authorities) accompanied by his new wife. When

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

175 we all got together I learned that he was now in business with his father- in-law, and was doing just fine. In fact, I learned to both my delight and chagrin—Billy was making an income twice the size of mine. And I hope he still is.

A Decision To Rest October 20, 1994 1:00 p.m. As I write this, a friend lay dying. They say his liver and kidneys failed. He had a drinking problem - he couldn‘t stop. I have known him since we were children together in Tisdale Terrace, and my strongest memory is what I would call his robust personality: Outgoing and confident, and determined. In high school the football team voted him the “Spark plug Award” - not for being the best player, nor the biggest, but the guy who inspired the others with his grit. At some point in his journey, that quality slipped away. He was a well educated man - college and most of law school. He married, and for many years had a successful career. They had no children. But over the years, alcohol chipped away at the foundation. Eventually the marriage ended and the career fragmented. He entered treatment programs on more than one occasion - but without success. Alcoholics can get sober. I have known many. But I‘ve always had the feeling it is the most difficult challenge one can face. And it seems to me one can never meet that challenge unless, burning inside, there is a real reason and a real desire to live. Somewhere along the way, this fellow lost that. When I was young, friends would sometimes die. It was always unexpected and sudden. Accidents usually. But when you are older, friends die more slowly. You know it is coming. Often they will fight to live, to hold on, even if for only one more day. Sometimes, perhaps in this case, a person just doesn‘t see a reason to prolong the pain. A person makes a decision to take his rest. I don‘t know what the philosophers, the theologians or the psychologists have to

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

176 say about it. And I am not sure what I think about it. But I do understand it. (Later I learned that my friend died during the hour I was writing this piece.)

Mind Your P's and Q's “Shut up” (meaning, stop crying) or I'll give you something to cry about!‖ I probably heard that statement a hundred times before I was seven and never could figure out what was this thing I was to be given. One day I found out. There were some other admonitions that ring in my memory: “Mind your P's and Q's.” That one totally baffled me. I looked all through the toy box and the junk drawer and was absolutely certain I didn't have any P's or Q's. “Where are your manners?” my dad once demanded. I didn't know that word. I got it confused with “brothers” and said they were out in the back yard playing. “Cut it out!” was another one that confused me. It seemed to have such violent, ominous overtones. Today, of course, I understand all the semantic inferences of those parent-to-child communiqués. But even more important, I understand the historical significance they hold: They were the beginning of what would become the billion dollar American Self-Help industry. Each year, millions of citizens - bewildered, befuddled, mildly depressed men and women - spend hundreds of millions of dollars on self help books and home study mental health courses. It is represented by those books with the “reach out and grab me” titles: The Bastard You Married - And How to Get Rid of Him; The Road to Mental Utopia - And How to Find It; and Coping With the Schizophrenic Within You - And How to Find the Real You and You and You. It seems there's a book or two or three for whatever emotional dilemma is in vogue this month. I don't really have a problem with this, at least not conceptually. I've read a few of these self-help books. I have even bought a few. A

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

177 lady friend gave me a veritable stack of them for Christmas one year. Needless to say, that relationship didn't last. These books probably represent a good idea - especially if you are the author who's collecting some share of the $22.95 price tag! Seriously, I imagine such books can do some good. They definitely look impressive on your shelf. They let people know you are open- minded and sensitive; that you'll spare no expense to be as one with yourself, and in touch with your psyche. My problem is that they are so damned boring. Laboring through the pages is like climbing a mountain in cowboy boots - an exhausting chore. I've come to the conclusion that nobody really reads them, at least not all the way through. The real therapeutic value comes in buying them. It makes you feel good about yourself. And that's what they're all about anyway. I am claiming copyright, here and now, to a book I plan to publish in the near future. I'm not sure of the title yet, but I have figured out the names of the chapters, which will also be the entire text. Included so far are: Shut Up or I'll Give You Something to Cry About. Cut It Out… Where Are Your Manners?… And, my favorite, Mind Your P's and Q's!. Maybe that's what I'll title the book.

Happy Days - A Dissenting Opinion Life in New York City at the beginning of the 20th Century was a matter of ghettos, demographically and culturally. But it wasn't a narrow world. Two or three blocks in one direction was the Italian ghetto; another direction, the Irish; or the Poles; or the Slavs. Discovering American was discovering the character and customs of a dozen immigrant nationalities -- something that would never have happened had each stayed in their respective eastern, central or western European homelands. If the heritage of each ghetto was different, their experience in America was the same - a struggle to adopt and learn the ways of a new nation, while sorting through the trappings and traditions of the old. All of this was happening against the backdrop of industrialization, new

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

178 inventions, and changing technology. America was the land of opportunity. These immigrant people were seizing upon it. And with each innovation and with each success, they were helping to build a nation and change the world. It was a wonderfully bustling, exciting, colorful explosion - an ethnic bombardment of an already fast-moving molecule called the United States. America‘s wonderful essayist Harry Golden wrote of those people and places: stories that are rich in the stuff that takes you back, perhaps with envy, to an intriguing slice of our history. Now jump ahead forty years or so, somewhere in the 1950's. We were the kids of Phoenix, Arizona. That didn't matter. It could have been Levittown, Pennsylvania; Orange County, California; or any of a hundred other boom towns that became boom cities that became boom metro-plexus. The War was over. Of course, for the benefit of younger generations, I mean World War Two. We later had war on Korea, war on Vietnam, war on Poverty, war on Crime, war on Drugs, and war on Inflation, although not necessarily in that order. But “The War,” as our folks always referred to it, was World War Two. It was the last war to be fought in black and white. Anyway, the war was over. The melting pot, so it seemed, was melting. And America was settling in to a period of relative peace, tremendous progress, and unparalleled prosperity. To parents who had grown up in the Great Depression and suffered the sacrifices of the war, this was a welcomed relief. To the kids, this was all okay. Kids have always adapted to their environment, whether the rigors of a refugee camp or middle-class America. Most kids didn't spend much time or energy thinking about the historical relevance of the decade of their youth. They just lived it. Certainly that's the normal process that keeps a kid a kid. But years later, as an adult, I would look back on those days of America's sweet bask in the sun and realize that as a child, I always felt the times were pretty boring! As a kid - especially as a kid prone to imagination, day dreams and romanticism - I was convinced and quite disappointed that everything

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

179 adventuresome, exciting, dramatic, heroic, creative and otherwise neat had already happened. For me and the kids in Tisdale Terrace, life was a cup of Ovaltine when we wanted real chocolate milk. Those were the early days of television and, whereas it was fascinating and entertaining, it also was a source of disappointment because it constantly reminded us of all we'd missed out on. For, by the 1950's, civilization had progressed to the point where everything our forebears had gotten to do when they were kids; everything that appealed to us, was by now illegal, or banned, or just didn't exist anymore. We read of Huck Finn floating a raft down the Mississippi. We were not to get near the irrigation canals because we might drown, or "catch polio." We watched as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland rallied the gang at least two-hundred followers appearing out of nowhere - to put on a big show in an old barn. I think all of our old barns had been bulldozed to build tract houses. Then there were Hal Roach's Our Gang movie kids - Alfalfa, Spanky, and the beautiful Darla Hood; not to forget Buckwheat and, of course, Farina who at the time I thought was either a really ugly girl or a really strange boy. Honestly, to this day, I have never figured out which! Anyway, the Our Gang kids got to do everything: Have a neat club house; drive high speed racing roadsters on the streets when they were only nine years old; and magically transform themselves into miniature adults wearing tuxedos and evening dresses, arriving in limousines at a fancy nightclub where typically Spanky was the owner-maître-de and stereotypically Buckwheat was the doorman. And where a full orchestra of more miniature adults accompanied Alfalfa, squeaking out a miserably off-key rendition of I'm In the Mood for Love. That he was booed off the stage was really all right, not to mention deserved. It was the predictable element of pathos, combined with the shadow of impending doom: Would the miniature patrons all up and leave, demanding their money back? Would Club Spanky be a failure? Would little crippled Bobby not get the operation? (You see, this was a story with a message!)

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Of course not. We all knew that the beautiful Darla Hood would step in at the last minute - dimpled and smiling in all her pre-pubescent innocence and radiance - and manage to sing the show, on key, to a successful climax, capped by a crescendo of applause and cheers. Hmmmmm! (sigh) It was exciting. It was romantic. It was the stuff we were convinced that some kids' lives were made of. But not on 25th Drive in Tisdale Terrace. Our lives - so it seemed - were driven by the battle cry, "There's nothing to do!" We didn't think of our parents' decision to pull up their eastern or Midwestern roots and resettle in a less established frontier, away from family and friends, as having any similarity to those who had passed through Ellis Island. We didn't think anything in our lives was especially significant, much less memorable. We never imagined that twenty-five or thirty years later, Hollywood directors and television producers; and restaurants and designers would go to great lengths to recapture and recreate the look and the feel and the tone and the trappings of our youth in the 1950's. It would be great fodder for commercialized nostalgia, marketed with the generic label of "Happy Days." If only we had known how much fun we were having, we probably would have had a much better time!

Fortunate Son If there is one factor that provided an advantage to many of us who grew up in post war suburbia, as contrasted with some who are growing up at the end of the century, it is the nature and quality of the parenting we received. My parents were married for fifty-two years, and did a pretty good job raising four sons. A few words about them: I‘ve read any number of auto-biographies in which aunxt-filled writers tell about their violent, abusive, alcoholic fathers. I have no such

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

181 story to tell. My dad was a gentle, hard working, extremely likable man with a great sense of humor. In my essay, The Great Goodyear Strike, I mentioned my father, Paul McCune, and his tremendous work ethic. For the last ten years of his life, which ended in January of 1999, he was a cancer patient receiving Chemotherapy. But he never let the cancer become the focus of his life. And he never lost that work ethic. I used to joke that he would have a Chemo treatment on Tuesday, and be back up putting a new roof on the house by Thursday. He was very much typical of his - Great Depression/World War Two” generation. Appreciative of having the “normal” life that came with peace and prosperity, but never taking it for granted. He would always offer such common sense advice as, “Don‘t ever quit a job until you have another one lined up.” And there was that sense of humor: “When you come to my house, ring the bell with your elbow because you have six-packs in your arms.” Or, a week or two before he died, he was wearing a pair of those joke socks that had the words “left” and “right” printed on them. I asked him what if he got them on the wrong feet. Without missing a beat he answered, “I guess I‘d have to keep my legs crossed all day.” But the most memorable and heartening experience I ever had regarding my father was an occasion when he wasn‘t even present. I was perhaps thirty years old, sitting with a friend in a restaurant when, out of the blue, a middle-aged man at the next table - a complete stranger - recognized me, asking if I was Paul McCune‘s son. When I replied affirmatively, he told me he had once worked with him, and just wanted to say what a gentleman my father had always been; what a “good man” he was. Indeed. I often miss my mother, who passed away several years ago. She was a truly good person. She was never mean-spirited, selfish or manipulative. Her pleasures were fairly simple. She was not out to change the world. And I can't remember her ever doing things designed to call attention to herself. What sticks with me most is that she lived good values. She wasn't one to preach values at me or the family - she just lived them. Similarly

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

182 with religion. She wasn't one to make a big show of it, but many times quietly expressed to me her faith in the power of prayer. Her advice and guidance came in unspectacular ways. Never was there a lecture; just a comment or observation for me to consider. And on target. She never presumed to run my life, but was always there as a safe harbor. Every now and again, when I am dealing with some problem or trying to make some decision, I have a certain hollow feeling. It is an awareness that my mother is no longer here to talk with. Instead, I have to imagine what advice or counsel she would offer if she were here. And I realize how fortunate I am to have had that foundation. And how fortunate I am to have had the kind of mother I had; and who continues to be missed.

One Nation I always thought Mrs. Glanville was older than dirt. She had to have been teaching for a hundred years. Siberling School in Akron, Ohio had a similar ambiance. It was one of those old-fashioned three story, red brick structures you find in the Midwest. By 1950, the bricks were almost black with decades of pollution from the Goodyear, Goodrich and Firestone tire plants. But even if the edifice was grimy, we were confident that it was structurally sound. Indeed, to us kids in the first grade, it seemed like the biggest, strongest, safest building ever made. We also knew it was fireproof, for seldom did a week go by that someone didn't reassure us that the walls, the floors and the ceilings of Siberling School were made of that 100-percent fireproof miracle substance: Asbestos. It gave us confidence! All I remember of Mrs. Glanville was that she was gray and wrinkled but generally nice enough. For the most part, the first grade is to me a blur of experience. It's probably that way for most people. But there is one memory so vivid, if only because it was repeated every day of the school year, fall, winter and spring: As Mrs. Glanville entered the room we stood beside our desks. On her cue, we put our hands together under our chins and she led us in the Lord's Prayer. At the Amen, our right hands went over our

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

183 hearts and she led us in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. It was the old pledge we recited. The closing line read –“..one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' The phrase, "under God,'' was not added until sometime in the mid 1950s. When we moved to Arizona the next year, Mrs. Taylor's second grade class at Grand Avenue School had a slightly different opening act. There was no Lord's Prayer - just the Pledge of Allegiance. Now you might think this is going to be a discussion of the prayer in schools issue. But it's not. Rather, my focus is on the pledge, and a phrase I have recited or heard maybe ten-thousand times over the course of my life. The phrase is - One nation ...” I wonder if we ever really were one nation. Civics teachers will tell you that the Civil War was supposed to have put the issue to rest once and for all. But I'm not so sure it did that. Now, it did prove that in a war fought with major engagements, the side with superior natural resources and manufacturing capabilities, with a larger population and better transportation and supply lines, will usually win - especially if the destruction occurs on the other guy's turf. The Civil War didn't make America one nation. It merely established the ground rules for succeeding generations to follow in pursuit of that goal. As John Kennedy suggested, we are a nation of immigrants who tended to settle together as communities, and influence the culture and color of the various regions. Jews from throughout Europe flocked to New York City. There are Germans and Scandinavians in the northern Great Plains; French-Cajuns in Louisiana; the English settled the South; Hispanics in the Southwest; and the Irish are everywhere. And not to forget several dozen nations of Native Americans; and also not to forget millions of African-Americans whose immigration was not a matter of choice. For the past century, we've spoken of America as a great melting pot. And I am certainly not the first to observe that this mix of ethnic, cultural and attitudinal ingredients never really melted. Certainly we pull together in a crunch. Wars have tended to play that role, with the

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.

184 exception of Vietnam. Natural disasters are good for national unity. And tragedies always brought us together - at least for a few days. We who are old enough, remember where we were when we heard about JFK in Dallas, or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. But in so many other ways, despite the platitudes, America has been more a confederation of peoples whose most common bond was an enlightened self-interest in the enjoyment of a wonderful constitution and the rule of law. Each group claimed this as its birthright, and generally tolerated -sometimes begrudgingly - the others doing the same. For the past two-hundred-odd years, America could pretty much be defined as a people who used to be from somewhere else. And even after several generations of occupying the fruited plains, we still tended to hold on - at least emotionally - to bits and pieces of our respective "old countries.'' Everyone loves to be a wee bit Irish. There is great satisfaction taken in one's Italian heritage. Polish pride has enjoyed a recent resurgence. And there is nothing quite so worn-on-the-sleeve as the claim of having one-thirty-second pure Cherokee blood. We enjoy the romantic images of our heritage. Aside from our diverse nationalities, we have also divided ourselves by geography: She's a southern belle. He's a Connecticut Yankee. I'm a westerner. They're from the industrial northeast. He's a Midwest dirt farmer. For more than two-hundred years, this is what America has been: A potpourri of peoples, united not by bloodlines nor ethnic traditions, but by a few simple ideas most eloquently expressed in the words of Jefferson, reiterated by Lincoln. “All men are created equal….” “We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is the glue that held us together. But at the beginning of the twenty-first Century, something is changing. It is the diversity. We're losing it. And what is most interesting, is the way we're losing it. For more than a hundred years, open-minded, liberal thinking Americans of goodwill have fostered and nurtured and joined such organizations as The National Conference of Christians and Jews; the

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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and others. We've had Brotherhood Week, Fellowship Day, and Ecumenical Sundays. We've preached and legislated tolerance and acceptance. And whereas there has been progress, it has been slow. Who would have guessed that in the final analysis the great equalizer, the great emancipator, would turn out to be Ronald McDonald! Well, maybe not that silly clown with orange hair, but the force that he represents: franchising - the profitable exploitation of sameness! The ultimate decision to unify America was made in the corporate boardroom, institutionalized by the uniform franchise agreement, and brought to fruition through the magic of network television advertising. I have been in Phoenix, Arizona; Lima, Ohio; Sullivan, Illinois; Grand Junction, Colorado; and Schenectady, New York where I experienced the growing sameness. I've eaten the same hamburger, the same taco and the same piece of original recipe chicken. I've stayed in the same hotel room, noticed the same quick printing and auto parts stores, and picked up a battery at the same electronics shop. I've seen the same automobiles. I've talked with new acquaintances about the television drama they watched last night, and that I watched as well two thousand miles away. I listened to the same musical jingles used to promote a radio station back home - but with different call letters in the lyrics. I've discussed the same pro football game or basketball playoff. And, perhaps most significant, I've sat with someone from the other end of the country and watched the same national newscaster give us a perspective on the state of the nation. And it's the same perspective offered from Yuma, Arizona to Bangor, Maine. America is indeed becoming one nation. One nation under God? Perhaps. But, more obviously, one nation under the Golden Arches. Hands reach out to the nation. Black hands. White hands. Brown hands. Yellow hands. Red hands. But they're all pretty much the same when they're handing you a Big Mac.

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I am certain that neither the founding fathers nor a million social planners who have wandered across the landscape since, ever anticipated that the greatest strides toward national unity would come with the electronic beeps and tones of the solid-state computer terminal cash register. But then, such is the genius of America.

Welcome To Tisdale Terrace Bill McCune c.1999/2015 Phoenix, Ariz.