School's Out!

Dad n' me June 14th 1979 -  Graduation Day!

Carrying over from the weekend with Flag Day and Father's Day...It's the time of year when school is out for the Summer. I graduated High School June 14, 1979 - Flag Day appropriately. My Friend Tom's green VW Bug pulled up in front of my house just after dinner. Someone kicked the door open letting a big cloud of blue marijuana smoke out. Jammed into the car was Tom (the driver), Poinzy, Phil, Scott and John. Sort of my possy I guess. I managed to squeeze in, sitting on John's lap. Someone opened a bottle of Michelob for me, stuck it in my hand along with a joint, our journey began. We were pretty wrecked by the time we got to Pascack Hills on Grand Avenue in Montvale (NJ). But we were happy, happy to be done with a place we had nothing but a healthy contempt for. The commencement ceremony was held up on the football field, it was hot and humid. We were directed to line up loosely by height. Tallest near the end. My friend Scott was one the tallest kids in Hills and Poinzy was the shortest - somehow we arranged for him to be at the very end of the line.  We were loud, rowdy, irreverent. I told off a cheerleader (Mary Jean ______)  I'd never had any use for - a rich kid whose father was the fucking Mayor of Woodcliff Lake ( a very expensive Bergen County suburb).  It was a chore mounting the stage to retrieve my diploma but I did it.  I gave the middle finger to the Board of Ed, stumbled, & nearly fell off the stage exiting. It was a lot of fun. It was over.

I met up with my folks up near the baseball field where they had to park. My parents were proud of me, especially my dad,  who didn't graduate high school since, at age 16, he enlisted in the Navy and went to fight for his country.  That's where the above photo was taken - the baseball field parking lot. He finally graduated with me!  We went out to dinner at New Jersey's finest steak house Stan Bader's Stake Out in Park Ridge with my aunt Sue and my Grandmother. My friend Scott's family was seated at an adjoining table by chance and every now n' then we'd look over at each other and crack up laughing. Later that night Phil, Poinzy and myself headed down to Seaside Heights to party until the milky light of dawn arrived while listening to the sounds of the sea. The next day we hung out at Island Beach State Park where we got viciously Sunburnt. I remember later that night (back home at The Gran Saloon) hanging out, feeling the heat radiate off my body, red as a lobster.

Yes! We smoked pot, we drank beer (we were all of legal age back then). We were irreverent, reckless. But it was fine. We didn't settle our differences with guns & bombs.  We weren't full of the contempt & hatred today's youth are filled with. Sure, we didn't really dig the President (useless Carter) but we respected him on some level. It's disappointing to see the shit going on today. Clueless rich kids with Oppression Envy, kids who want to kill entire races of people. Kids who are not a sand's grain as smart as we were. Violent, blind sheep with no sense of morality, basic decency or basic sanity. I'm glad none of them are mine but mine wouldn't be there. Why? Because they'd have been taught the value of individualism, hard work and that Activism, Collectivism, Idealism & Utopian thinking is intellectual masturbation embraced by those who have no courage to do any real work on themselves.

School's Out!