Part TWENTY-FIVE – STILL DRINKING BEATLE JUICE, MULLING OVER OUR NEXT MOVE, BLIGHTER & FRIGIDAIRE.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, I rode the wave of Beatlemania well into my Senior year. There was a girl at Ferry Hall who got the vapours every time I came to pick Melinda up for a date. It got to the stage where Melinda, ever the entrepreneur, would charge this girl a quarter to go downstairs to tell me, ‘Melinda will be another fifteen minutes.’ Then she’d wait with me with a goofy look on her face trying to make small talk. I had no idea of the deviousness behind this. And my sister told me after reading Part 23 of this memoir, ‘You left out the time you picked me up from the Libertyville theater where a Hard Days Night was playing. I had six friends with me and you gave them all a ride home and had to walk them to their doors. Each one of them had a Major Crush on you as you looked a bit like George Harrison.’ Again, I didn’t have a clue about any of this.
‘Limey’ was being linked to England more and more – by his nicknames, by his classmates, by girls from Ferry Hall, by his sister’s friends… And there was more. We went to Soldier Field in Chicago to see West Ham (a top English soccer team) play a club from South America, and that renewed my interest in following the English ‘football’ leagues, placing part of my brain ‘over there’. We saw Tom Jones, starring Albert Finney, at a Chicago art theater, and were so impressed we bought an LP of the soundtrack.
James Bond, A.K.A. Sean Connery, that quintessential British spy, was strutting his stuff, and England’s ‘swinging sixties scene’ was becoming a cultural phenomenon, led by my hero, soccer genius George Best.
Illinois felt like a desert in comparison.
I don’t know when we as a family first began to talk about a possible return to England. I believe on reflection today that I was being redirected back there in deep and subtle ways. I don’t even know who first broached the subject. It could have been any of the following suspects: My father was coming up to retirement and he was worried that his company pension would not go as far in the States as it would in England. My mother was, and always had been, a fervent anglophile, having collected scrapbooks about all things Royal since she was a child. My brother Wyatt was obsessed with English castles (more of that later), and my sister and I had happy, but different, memories of old ‘Blighty.’ We were all fans of the National Health Service, of England’s superior radio and television programs, and of its cheap public transport. It was sometime in late 1964 that I also began toying with the idea of applying to a London art school as an alternative to American colleges, which didn’t exactly fill me with excitement. More of that wrong turn later. But now, we have my final year of high school to finish.
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Corwith Cramer Jr was an East coast blue blood and my history teacher.
One of our assignments was to write a book report about an historical treatise the title of which I can’t remember. I didn’t read the book, but managed to fabricate an impressive paper, quoting and analyzing passages at random and merely ‘impersonating’ someone smart, which is possible to do without actually being smart yourself. My report not only earned me an A+, but Cramer held it up in class as an example to the rest of the students on how to write a skillful and reasoned criticism. Everybody except Mr Cramer knew I hadn’t read the book, and my classmates ribbed me for months afterwards. At the time I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but looking back on it now, if my subterfuge had ever come to light with the faculty, I’d have never lived it down. As editor of the school’s prestigious literary magazine, I would have had an indelible stain placed on my character. All I can say today is that I dodged a bullet there. I can come clean about this now because Corwith Cramer is long dead.
It was no wonder the students at Lake Forest Academy were so cynical. We partook of every scam going. LFA was like a microcosm of life in Mayor Daly’s Chicago. For example, as editor of Reflections I would give preference to stories written by the editor of The Spectator, our school newspaper, in exchange for him writing a glowing description of my heroic performance in soccer against Carleton College or whatever. Things like that were rife and were what I imagine – or probably know – happens daily in the U.S. Senate or House of Commons bar. Thankfully I outgrew corruption of that kind and was never able to play the spoils system after I left school.
A harmful puppet
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In sports I made up for what I lacked academically by getting the Most Valuable Player award in soccer that Fall. And in Spring on the track, my 220 yard (201 metres) time of 22.5 seconds, which I did twice (proving it wasn’t a fluke) would have won me the 1964 Olympic Gold Medal…. for Women. Edith McGuire’s winning time in that race was 23.0 seconds, an Olympic record.
Race of the nicknames: Limey and Gomez (real name Tom Kelley – they thought he looked Mexican.).
At Lake Forest Academy I was a big fish in a small sea. The reality is that if I’d been that same fish in the vast ocean of Libertyville High School, Tom Poe (see Part 18) would have been faster. Everything is relative. Who knows, I may even have lost my virginity if I’d stayed at LHS.
In the meantime, things weren’t going so fast with Melinda. December, January, February, March, April and May came and went. By the time we graduated high school in June, I was still on first base and Melinda was still saving herself for marriage. In The Spectator they had a ‘gossip’ column in which my relationship with Melinda was a constant source of interest and ridicule. ‘Blighter’ was my other nickname, based on Blighty, an informal term for England, so The Spectator would report, ‘Blighter returned from yet another date with Frigidaire empty-handed again.’ Frigidaire was their nickname for Melinda. If they were to be believed, half of my classmates were having sex with Ferry Hall girls.
Blighter’s and Frigidaire’s yearbook photos. Note Melinda’s hair. There was so much hairspray that her head felt like Darth Vader’s helmet when I touched it, even though Vader wouldn’t exist for another twelve years.
In Part 26, the big decision to emigrate to England is made…
My life in passport photos
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Fab!
I used to know Calum Best (George’s son) when Julian was living with me.