St. Clare's-2nd Grade-Fall 1969-Spring 1970

1969 was a big year in many ways. It was the year of the the Apollo 11 moon landing, Woodstock, The Who release the rock opera Tommy, The Rolling Stones fire Brian Jones and then Jones dies essentially a month afterwards, the Mick Taylor Era of The Rolling Stones begins which will include 2 shows in one night at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (the 2nd show of the evening being immortalized on the famous bootleg Live'r Than You'll Ever Be), Jimi Hendrix played at the Oakland Coliseum as well which is immortalized on a Hendrix Family Dagger label release and a little band known as Led Zeppelin began to venture out in earnest on the road to conquer all. Not very well known is that they played a gig here in Eugene.
And so, 2nd Grade started for me. In my mind, music was setting in motion some of my dya to day feelings. At this young age, I had the music of Herman's Hermits and The Monkees on constant rotation in my head. It was the year that I would invest in a copy of The Beatles Yellow Submarine album and be exposed to their incredible psychedelic side with songs like "Hey Bulldog", "It's Only A Northern Song" and George Harrison's mindblowing "It's All Too Much". I was also letting Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme album dominate inside my head as well. I owned a copy of this album and it wasn't uncommon for me to have songs like "Cloudy", "The Dangling Conversation", "Homeward Bound" and the title track going on in my head.
If I can say anything with certainty about 2nd Grade, I can, without hesitation, say that I was blessed to actually have a teacher who had my best interests at heart teaching me that year. Mrs. Kaiser was a wonderful woman who knew I had hearing problems and that I had fallen behind in my math skills. She wasn't just a teacher. She was my first mentor. She also made me feel like I had a friend in her. I didn't sit completely up front at her desk that year. She liked to move around when she taught. So, she had me sit in an area where I had a good enough chance to hear her as she was moving around. The clincher for me was that, on one of the first days of classes, she took me aside after school was over one day and she told me that I was to let her know if I didn't hear anything. She would personally see to it that I would understand what I had missed. I finally had a teacher I could trust. For pure teaching ability, she may have been the best teacher I ever had at St. Clare's. She got points home to us in a non-intimidating or detached manner. She really wanted us to learn.
2nd Grade was also where the ham side of me got to reveal itself for the first time. There was to be some sort of presentation at the end of the year where every class was to present some kind of musical number at the 5th-8th Grade yard across the street that the parents were to see. I can still very clearly visualize the day Mrs. Kaiser and some other teacher were privately scouting out our class when she put some music on for us to see who had a musical apptitude or enthusiasm. They were trying to be sneaky about it. I caught her and this other teacher looking in after she had walked out of the room and told our class to listen to this music. I knew that she was gauging us for this paegent that would take place in the Spring. Well, I listened to this music and I started really getting into it because I could see the both of them peeking in. I hammed it up in a big way and was also trying my best to make it look natural. Little did I know what was going to be planned for me as a result!
Well, Spring rolled around and school was starting to wind down. This presentation by all of the classes finally came around. Now, I can't recall if we practiced for this thing or not. I could swear that we had to have done so. My hamming it up earlier in the year came back to me. When our class did the presentation, everybody stood together as a group and played along to the music except for one guy (and I very slightly recall that there was a girl who was chosen as the female big music appreciator of our class). Well, the guy was yours truely. I recall very clearly being given a percussion instrument that I could bang away on to my heart's content. When we were up there, I just gravitated towards it. I loved it. I felt like I was a star.
On the same day, I ran a race in that very yard and I recall that I ran so hard in trying to win the race that I fell down and cut myself pretty well on the cement. That resulted in a trip across the street back to the office of Mrs. Cintas (perhaps?was she there at this point yet?) to get bandaged up and taken care of.
2nd Grade was also a time where I started being more sociable with my own classmates. I think it was 2nd Grade, but I recall that we had gotten the news that Danny H. had broken his arm and that we wouldn't see him for a while. Shortly before he came back for school after he had his arm in a cast, I remember that I suggested to the class that we go over to where his Dad would rop him off and that we should cheer him when he got out of the car. He arrived and we did, indeed, cheer him back to school as if he was a returning warrior.
The whole social situation seemd to improve as a result of another year of our having to play kickball again. We pretty much knew who was a good player and who wasn't. My left foot was getting great results on the field which helped matters.
I have to say that I have a specific memory which always stays in my mind of the first two years I spent at St. Clare's. There were times when Mom and Dad might drop me off to school in their car-especially if the weather was horrible. But most of the time, I used to walk to school. It was when I used to make my turn towards the area of the Santa Clara Public Library that I used to walk by a house everytime in the mroning and afternoon where I could smell fish coming out of it. This was the old-time Portuguese influence of Old Town Santa Clara in full-force in my life. For as long as I shall live, I will never forget that smell.
It was during this particular schoolyear that I discovered that I liked other females as well. Specifically, that I liked older girls who were ahead of me in school. For starters, at that early age, I discovered that I like a classmate of my oldest brother from a distance. Does anybody remember Shelly Burns?
There was also a time when my Mom dropped me off for an afternoon to be babysat by two girls over on Hilmar Street (a street which would a few years laters frown in importance to me and be only a block away from the next Santa Clara house I would live in.). Mom dropped me off at the home of Mr & Mrs. Bob Fatjo where I was to be looked over by Lolita Fatjo and her friend Laura Preppeira (sp?). This was very confusing to me as I developed a crush on two girls all at once. As far as I was concerned, they were both beautiful. I still chuckle about this to this day. I can clearly remember the laundry room they had and how I hung out next to their washing machine for a while.
2nd Grade was also the time when I got to see Donna C. perform a number at a school gym show of some kind. She was sitting under a table and was singing about a song about getting into trouble. I remember I once talked to her about The Monkees and she told me that she really like Davey Jones. All the girls liked Davey Jones. Yep!
This was a year where I got to know the friends of my older brothers a lot better. I really liked them a lot. There was George Migliaccio (sp?-someone whom I will write about more as he is a very special person to me), Paul Gleason and the late John Perry. I must make mention of John Perry here. It was just a word association thing I was starting to develop, but I started calling him Prarie Dog because of his last name. I can still visualize the time he came over to play basketball at our house on Franklin Street. I can still recall going over to Paul Gleason's house and seeing my first picture of The Rolling Stones on his wall there. I looked at it and it left an impression on me although I didn't make any connection then.
There was a day when both of my brothers friends came over to play records in John's bedroom. The record, that I believe Paul Gleason brought over, was a copy of Through The Past Darkly from The Rolling Stones. There was also the time that a group of John abd Mike's friends came over, locked themselves up in his room and ran a tape recorder and taped themselves doing a spoof on Star Trek which I attempted to listen to with my ear pressed up against the door as hard as I could so that I could hear them. I got to hear them do their sendup of the opening song and their calling Kirk Twirp and Spock something like Shlock.
2nd Grade was where my parents were getting a little desperate in knowing that my math skills were falling way behind. They got some studnet from the University of Santa Clara to come over and try to get math to sink into my head. His name was Greg. For the life of me, I could swear that this was the same Greg who would later be a P.E. teacher to us guys in 7th or 8th Grade. I'm not positive on this. The poor guy tried his best. It just wouldn't sink in.
Towards the end of my finishing up 2nd Grade, I knew that my family was going to be moving up to Eugene. I can still see that last day of school and saying goodby to Mrs. Kaiser and the huge bear hug I got from her.
I recall my First Communion and not being very impressed with the whole thing. After it was over with, I wanted to get back home and watch cartoons.
One of my great regrets is that I was asked to come up to a basketball game in Oakland with my parents and my brothers to go and see the Oakland Oaks play. I passed. I wanted to watch television. I shouldn't have done this as a couple of years later (and even now), I would come to worship this league with an almost religious fervor because of all of the things I would hear and read about it-the ABA (American Basketball Association). I could have seen Rick Barry when he played with the Oaks. What was I thinking?
I want to write about it in another separate post, but I got my first dog on Christmas Day in 1969. It started a lifelong affinity that I developed with animals. He was a special little guy.
The end of 1970 was going to be a big time for me and filled with big changes. I was also going to start taking some big leaps in other areas of my life.