ASHORE
CANYON AVENUE SCHOOL, SAN FERNANDO VALLEY c. 1957
There was the Word according to our teachers and the remote figure of the Principal – and then there was the word, the absolute version, according to the playground. If the versions were judged by weight, the former was a bug up against an elephant. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: The mark of the intelligent person is the ability to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in their mind at the same time. By this standard the horde of feckless booger-wiping midget barbarians pinballing across the concrete (this is a school, children, no grass is needed) were exemplars of brilliance - which only proved that Jefferson was as capable of missing the mark as anyone else. Certain topics had real staying power: Sports, rock 'n roll, the ninety westerns on television, and who had visited Disneyland the most times. Others were more specific according to the grade or grades in which they flourished. The 2nd and 3rd graders were convinced the 1st graders supplemented their lunches from home with classroom paste, and had tried to eat a pet raccoon brought to school by one of the teachers. The 4th graders - my assigned mob at the time - maintained that the raccoon, having being annoyed by a group of 3rd graders while trying to delicately dismember some crayfish in a classroom sink, had thrown a wad of fish guts at them and hit them in the mouths, which instantly resulted in hysterical puking and slipping on the result so that they had to be sent home and try to explain to their parents what had happened. The 5th and 6th graders tried to remain aloof from this sort of gossip. It wasn't because they had given up the habit, but rather that they were too busy - depending on their grade - either plotting on what they would do upon ascending to the top of the motley heap of their subjects, or wondering how to survive their entry into high school, where they would begin the ascent to rulers of the playground all over again, thus enacting what the few of them who became students of classic mythology would recognize as a modern version of the Myth of Sisyphus.
One day during afternoon recess - a mandated period spent out on the concrete and designed to vent the excess (which is to say, pretty much all) energy of the horde - a new and compelling rumor swept through the school. One of our schoolmates (somehow no one knew his name) had been riding with his family in their car down a freeway (the exact one was unknown) when he saw a friend (you know what I'm going to say) riding in a Cadillac El Dorado. This was interesting because the El Dorado, a small behemoth with jutting tail fins, was a new car and none of our parents had sprung for one. As the El Dorado swept past the the kid's car, he leaned out the window to wave at his friend, and his arm was cut off by the tail fin. The fate of our wounded schoolmate was never discussed - the reaction of his family or those of his friend and the driver of the now infamous amputation car remained unknown to history. Logical analysis of how such a thing could happen was irrelevant. The important fact - FACT - was that a kid at our school had to live with only one arm. Never mind American History and Social Studies and Arithmetic - what kind of arm would he get to replace the one chopped into pieces that even now were being run over by thousands of cars? Was it going to be wooden, or something metal? Would he have a hand like Captain Hook? If he did would he use it to kill crayfish and feed the raccoon? I confess I was a fervent teller of the tale. And when it began to fade, to be replaced by the irrefutable fact that girls who wore sack dresses had cooties (something like polio, but not as serious 'cause you didn't have to live in a iron chamber like the ones in enemy submarines when you got captured), I spread a new detail - something just discovered - about it.
When the boy's arm was sliced off, it didn't fall onto the freeway. It spun around on the tip of the fin and then stuck on it, upright, so that the hand flapped back and forth as if it was saying hello! The sight frightened everyone in the cars following so badly that many of them left the freeway sooner than they planned to call the police. But the cops never found the car (or the arm), not ever. This addition to the original story took it back to no. 1 on the Playground Top Ten for another week or so, and then the story faded away like so many before and since.
CANYON AVENUE SCHOOL, SAN FERNANDO VALLEY c. 1957
There was the Word according to our teachers and the remote figure of the Principal – and then there was the word, the absolute version, according to the playground. If the versions were judged by weight, the former was a bug up against an elephant. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: The mark of the intelligent person is the ability to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in their mind at the same time. By this standard the horde of feckless booger-wiping midget barbarians pinballing across the concrete (this is a school, children, no grass is needed) were exemplars of brilliance - which only proved that Jefferson was as capable of missing the mark as anyone else. Certain topics had real staying power: Sports, rock 'n roll, the ninety westerns on television, and who had visited Disneyland the most times. Others were more specific according to the grade or grades in which they flourished. The 2nd and 3rd graders were convinced the 1st graders supplemented their lunches from home with classroom paste, and had tried to eat a pet raccoon brought to school by one of the teachers. The 4th graders - my assigned mob at the time - maintained that the raccoon, having being annoyed by a group of 3rd graders while trying to delicately dismember some crayfish in a classroom sink, had thrown a wad of fish guts at them and hit them in the mouths, which instantly resulted in hysterical puking and slipping on the result so that they had to be sent home and try to explain to their parents what had happened. The 5th and 6th graders tried to remain aloof from this sort of gossip. It wasn't because they had given up the habit, but rather that they were too busy - depending on their grade - either plotting on what they would do upon ascending to the top of the motley heap of their subjects, or wondering how to survive their entry into high school, where they would begin the ascent to rulers of the playground all over again, thus enacting what the few of them who became students of classic mythology would recognize as a modern version of the Myth of Sisyphus.
One day during afternoon recess - a mandated period spent out on the concrete and designed to vent the excess (which is to say, pretty much all) energy of the horde - a new and compelling rumor swept through the school. One of our schoolmates (somehow no one knew his name) had been riding with his family in their car down a freeway (the exact one was unknown) when he saw a friend (you know what I'm going to say) riding in a Cadillac El Dorado. This was interesting because the El Dorado, a small behemoth with jutting tail fins, was a new car and none of our parents had sprung for one. As the El Dorado swept past the the kid's car, he leaned out the window to wave at his friend, and his arm was cut off by the tail fin. The fate of our wounded schoolmate was never discussed - the reaction of his family or those of his friend and the driver of the now infamous amputation car remained unknown to history. Logical analysis of how such a thing could happen was irrelevant. The important fact - FACT - was that a kid at our school had to live with only one arm. Never mind American History and Social Studies and Arithmetic - what kind of arm would he get to replace the one chopped into pieces that even now were being run over by thousands of cars? Was it going to be wooden, or something metal? Would he have a hand like Captain Hook? If he did would he use it to kill crayfish and feed the raccoon? I confess I was a fervent teller of the tale. And when it began to fade, to be replaced by the irrefutable fact that girls who wore sack dresses had cooties (something like polio, but not as serious 'cause you didn't have to live in a iron chamber like the ones in enemy submarines when you got captured), I spread a new detail - something just discovered - about it.
When the boy's arm was sliced off, it didn't fall onto the freeway. It spun around on the tip of the fin and then stuck on it, upright, so that the hand flapped back and forth as if it was saying hello! The sight frightened everyone in the cars following so badly that many of them left the freeway sooner than they planned to call the police. But the cops never found the car (or the arm), not ever. This addition to the original story took it back to no. 1 on the Playground Top Ten for another week or so, and then the story faded away like so many before and since.
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