"12 DEAD FROGS"memoir; MY new California school/1956––TROUBLE for 'the CHICAGO KID' right off the bat!

(MEMOIR in paperback): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777FHXX2

(Excerpted from TWELVE DEAD FROGS AND OTHER STORIES, A Filmmaker’s Memoir, by Rick Schmidt ©2017).

RELOCATION (1956)

When my parents moved us from South Side Chicago to California in 1956 they tore me away from all the familiar people and activities that I’d developed to keep myself happy and functional. No more IC train rides to see movies (my parents didn’t know about me at 12-years-old doing this alone…), no more big-city haunts like bowling alleys in darkened second-floor ramshackle dwellings (watching small kids scurry around in the back to set up the pins in those days before it became automated). No more baseball games after school, playinng ‘500,’ knocking balls and fielding them on the vast Midway. And no more hanging around with Mack and Jimmy, other friends in back alleys or behind tenements where we tended to congregate. And no more camp in Wisconsin – my parents might have considered sending me back there, but for some reason I never asked. Without Susie, what was the point? Anyway, I felt very isolated after the move, especially when the Susie letters stopped arriving.

And some genius decided that since the experimental school I had attended in Chicago had advanced its students from the 7th grade directly to 9th (skipping 8th grade), the same thing should be enacted for me in California. So at the private school I newly attended I wasn’t just saddled with “new kid” baggage, but was stuck with being younger and undersized, a sort of midget-sized mascot among bigger kids. I hadn’t yet reached that major growth year of age 13-14 like all the others. Why hadn't the educators realized that a new student skipping a grade might have enough difficulties just adjusting to a new facility (new state, new weather, new everything!), without having to compete in sports and academia against kids a year older, taller, and maybe even wiser?

PADDLING MACHINE (1956)

At school, I immediately gravitated towards the only kids that looked halfway familiar to my past Chicago surroundings; two hood-type boys who wore black. Their black coats, black zip- up shoes, and DA hairdos, supplied a little consolation. And, of course, they were over a foot taller than me. Should anyone have been surprised when I got into trouble?

One day during recess my two “chook” friends managed to get in a fight with a kid my age and size, someone who was in the grade below us (the one which I’d skipped). No one was getting particularly hurt from what I could tell. But while I stood back watching the scuffle in a kind of daze, the principal’s wife suddenly burst on the scene, shouting at the participants then grabbing my arm and confronting me. “Why didn’t you break it up?” she shouted right in my face.

I was too shocked to give an answer, but two unspoken answers came quickly to mind. For one thing, my new friends were quite a bit bigger than I was. And secondly, they were meaner. It never occurred to me to do anything but stay clear of the fray. But she had other ideas. She raised a big stink (mostly to her Principal husband), which resulted in the maximum punishment any student could receive at that school – the dreaded paddling machine. We would have to crawl between the legs of every student in the four upper grades, while they swatted our butts. So I was to be given the same punishment as my pugilistic friends, even though it hadn’t been my fight.

The principal’s wife explained that I was equally responsible for the fight, since I hadn’t taken a stand to break things up. There was some attempt to get me off – a letter from a friend of my parents questioned their judgment. But the mock execution went ahead as scheduled, myself still numbered among the condemned.

On a bright sunny day, the forty or fifty kids from the four upper grades, 9th through 12th, formed a long line on the playing field, the principal’s wife in attendance with a few other teachers. I was chosen to be the first victim. I crawled at top speed through the sand and gravel, between all those pairs of legs. By the time I had reached the end my new blue jeans had turned to rags; two big, frayed holes in the pant legs revealed my gouged and bloody kneecaps. But as I watched my buddies take their turn, run the gauntlet, it dawned on me that I hadn’t really been hit that hard by my new fellow classmates. The true outcasts––the only kids who didn’t look like all the future bankers or lawyers at that preppy school––fit the bill as the scapegoat minority at that lily-white, conservative stronghold. Whatever they represented, they got their butts thoroughly pounded that day.

Afterwards, I was further instructed by the principal to never associate with my new (bad) friends again. OK! Since they weren’t nearly as dear to me as the kids I’d left behind in Chicago, I had no problem with that.

DISH SERVED COLD (1956)

Later that week, the kid who was the subject of my friend’S fight decided to further enhance his playground standing by trying to beat me up. I guess he figured I was weak (after all, the administration had punished his enemies), and that he would have an easy time of it, dropping me down a few more notches in the pecking order while propping himself up.

Well, he came at me during lunch recess and I started running. I ran away as fast as I could, but he kept gaining. This chase went on for quite a while, all the way across the grassy, 100-yard soccer field and beyond. When I entered the far baseball diamond he was still right on my heels. Just before he was about to pounce, I dove headfirst into the loose dirt and gravel surrounding home plate, hands out stretched. Before he could figure me out, I spun around and whipped a handful of dirt right into his face.

The fight ended with him holding his head while wandering slowly back toward school. Fortunately he didn't receive any permanent damage to his eyes (a glass eye or two would have surely gotten me expelled!). In any case, I guess I established the fact that it just wasn't worth picking on the new kid. (He’s too crazy!)

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