FLASHBACK: Andress Eagles (1967 - 1971)

I can't help it.  What stands out most in my mind about high school--an awful time for most kids who were as geeky and gay as I--was a bully-proofing gift from my father after his return from Viet Nam:  a tangerine metal flake dune buggy.

Susie & Jeff, driveway (1969)

I mean, look at me, the year before, as a freshman, with my two best buds in the neighborhood.  Stare long enough and you'll see an Andy Warhol wanna-be who was stuck scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors.

Ronnie, Jeff & David, Front Yard (1968)

My science fair project certainly wasn't going to win me any popularity contests (or academic prizes).

"Effects of Transplantation upon Molds" (Back Yard, 1968)

Ronnie, dreamy Ronnie with the brown eyes and bangs, had a motorcycle but no father. ALL the girls I knew loved him.

Ronnie didn't do it for me.  Richie did. They say the first cut is the deepest.  It certainly is. But my love for Richie, a straight, half-Japanese jock, was unrequited.  He married a beautiful baker's daughter.  Somebody told me he got fat and lost all his teeth in a bar fight.

I didn't have a motorcycle--yet--but Dad had sent me a Sony tape recorder from Viet Nam.  It was a big improvement over the hi fi David had in his garage, where we listened to "Downtown" over and over again.  Two track, equipped with microphones, it functioned as a backyard karaoke machine.  

David's parents loom larger in my memory than he does.  His South African mother taught us to play rummy with two decks of cards, and his father took us fishing in his Airstream.  He also fell off the roof peeping at the Lolita next door.  

Jeff & David, Bedroom (1969)

Truth be told, I had a lot more in common with a couple of new kids on the block than either David or Ronnie.  As soon as Susie and Pattie moved in across the street, David began dating Susie, and Pattie developed a crush on Ronnie. Rosemary, their mother and a German war bride, wasn't that much older they they were. She screamed at her husband, sold Avon and gossiped viciously.  Rosemary and Susie both wore that yellow sun dress, much to my own mother's chagrin.  When I took Magda to El Paso in 2017, Rosemary was the old neighborhood's only survivor.

Ronnie, Susie, David, Rosemary, Pattie & Jeff (1968)

Once I started driving the dune buggy to Andress, everybody wanted a ride.  It didn't hurt that the braces and glasses fell away around the same time.  Is it any wonder that to this day I identify with Carrie?  

Junior Senior Prom Gang, Living Room (1970)

David and Ronnie graduated a year ahead of me. David married and divorced Pam (eyeglasses, above), the fast girl he took to the prom, before marrying a much younger woman who lived up the block. They had a couple of kids before he developed a drug problem and died prematurely.

Ronnie's story is even sadder.  He became a hot rodder with a Ford Mustang Mach I and impregnated a popular freshman cheerleader who was forced to give their child up for adoption.  His beer-drinking grew worse after he relocated to Houston where he finally killed someone in an alcohol-related car crash.  Ronnie always stopped to see my father when visiting El Paso.  We lost touch after Dad died.

I made a new best friend, Terry.  He may have been gay.  Or maybe not.  We had a lot of laughs but he didn't make nearly as big an impression as Richie.

I joined the yearbook staff.

In my senior year, I became editor. Good training for blogging!

 

Simon and Garfunkel's haunting album "Bookends" obsessed me.  I chose "Old Friends" as the yearbook theme,  reprinted Simon's lyrics and photographed my grandparents to illustrate it.  A decade later, I saw the duo perform the song in Central Park along with half a million other people.  I still have the afghan Oma knitted.

Susie and Tom, another of her beaus, represented new friendship.  They didn't last long after Tom was arrested for marijuana possession in Juarez.  He worshipped Jimi Hendrix.

The Talon staff goofed off whenever our journalism teacher was having a nip in the darkroom.  Once we put the annual to bed, we often told her we were going to Dunkin' Donuts for coffee; instead I spun doughnuts by applying the dune buggy's emergency brake in the soft desert sand nearby, eliciting delighted screams from my passengers. If that sounds like fun, it couldn't compare to an after-school activity when we'd load the buggy up with water balloons and toss them at pedestrians as we sped past.

Here's Richie again (front right).  He edited the sports pages.  I committed his yearbook inscription to memory:  I don't want to sound like a chick or anything, but it has been fun working under you . . . 

Susie married Chuck (front left, above) but divorced him after he went to prison for cocaine distribution in California.  

We kept in touch for years until she neglected to tell me that cancer had killed her sister only after I asked why Pattie didn't send me Christmas cards anymore. Unforgivable!

Pattie taught me a very important lesson after I accompanied her to a prom where she was among the representatives from each of El Paso's local high schools who comprised the "royal court."   I had whined to my journal that "she only invited me because she couldn't ask Ronnie so now I have to rent a tux and buy a corsage."  She pilfered it unbeknownst to me and we didn't speak for weeks afterward.  NEVER leave your journal unattended!

Despite Terry's sidekick status, nearly all my closest friends were female, including Karen, a West Virginian with hillbilly roots whom I asked out a couple of times.  She graduated first in our class. I've always adored smart women.  Would you believe I took her to see Midnight Cowboy at the drive-in?

Barb and I dated, too, after she and Ronnie broke up.  She eventually became my step sister after my mother died.  Ken married her mother, Lois.  Barb could have starred in a screwball comedy. Nobody ever has been more upbeat.  I recently visited her in Prescott, AZ where she lives with her third husband.  Susie married three times, too.

I nicknamed JoAnn "Pioneer Woman."  After transferring from a school in Colorado where her parents made saddles, she became friends with Susie.  A Virgo like me, JoAnn didn't have much of a filter.  "Jesus Jeff, your tits are bigger than mine," she observed one afternoon while I drove the dune buggy bare-chested.  She eventually had two daughters and underwent breast reduction surgery.  I kept my shirt on for at least another decade.

JoAnn also turned me on to Aubrey Beardsley when she gave me this wall hanging.  It's been an integral part of my home decor ever since.  A hornet once built a nest upon it, just to the right of the rope at the top.

This cool analog calendar was another gift from JoAnn.  Retirement and the pandemic gave me enough time to painstakingly restore it, which required replacing all the string and printed paper.

I dubbed Susie, Pattie and JoAnn "the real girls" when we reunited in the Pines one summer. As close as we once were, it's Debbie I looked most forward to seeing at my 50th high school reunion.  A Jewish cheerleader with an edge, she also had a wicked sense of humor. I still can see her in front of me, in algebra class, doodling. When Mr. Kennedy's back was turned, Debbie would turn around and share her work, always a caricature of a girl, by slowly sliding another piece of paper up or down in front of it.  "Is she pretty? Is she still pretty?" she'd tease before revealing a hairy mole on the girl's chin, grotesquely crooked teeth, baldness or some other imperfection. I'm pretty sure Debbie's Mad magazine antics contributed to my only 'C" and Mr. Kennedy blackballing me from "Who's Who at Andress," a slight that seemed HUGE at the time. Too bad neither of us made it to the reunion, cancelled by covid.  No sooner had I registered and made my travel arrangements than another classmate announced her death without reporting a cause.  RIP dear Debbie.  I always thought of you as perfect:  smart, funny AND pretty!

FLASHBACK: 9912 Collette (1965 - 1971)

Mary was happy to see her parents when we returned from Germany.

Oma loved Charlie. 

Ken worked his magic at the beach with a new Type III Karmann Ghia, which he had shipped from Germany.  This must be a later trip to Daytona, given the car and perfection of Charlie's cut.

By this time, I pretty much agreed with Mary about El Paso.  She characterized it as "the cultural crotch of America."

But she and Ken returned and traded up on their new home.  Ken installed the sprinkler system himself at 9912 Collette.  DIY didn’t have a brand back then.

9912 Collette

We lived across the street from a family who sheltered their priest.  Rumor had it he didn't remain celibate for long.  The Franklin Mountains, Texas' tallest, loom in the background on a rare cloudy day.

See, it does snow in El Paso!  It only takes an inch or two to paralyze the Sun City.  Charlie felt at home.

Charlie (January 1968)

Mary went for a French provincial look in the living room with reproductions of Maurice Utrillo paintings she purchased in Montmartre.

Here's where I attended middle school and unsuccessfully ran for class president with "Hon or Bust," my campaign slogan, printed on covered wagon fliers.

Dowell Elementary School

Ken and I spent a lot of time exploring in the Opel on weekends.  Mary refused to ride in it any longer.

I'll never forget a long, slow drive to Columbus, NM, just north of the Mexican border, on a dirt road.   By then, the railroad had stopped running.

We stopped at Pancho Villa State Park which commemorates the Mexican general's 1916 attack on the United States.  Mary was born that year.

Mary served a German chocolate cake to the neighborhood gang on my 13th birthday. Ronnie matured into a literal ladykiller.  Tommy was the only guy I ever bested in a fight.  David, our ringleader, became a pint-size juvenile delinquent.  I can't remember the tall boy's name, but I suspect he came to a better end than the other three.

Motley Crew:  Ronnie, Tommy, Jeff, David & Forgotten (1966)

Charlie adjusted to a much warmer life than he'd had in Heidelberg.   Ken insisted that I walk him every morning and night along Trans Mountain Highway because he didn't want him pooping in our small backyard.

Before Ken shipped off to Viet Nam in 1966 we built a hutch for my new guinea pig.  Charlie and Cratchit were Photo Pest's first photographic models.

I cheekily captioned this photo "Integration" and sent it to Ken to demonstrate how well Charlie and Cratchit were getting along.

Cratchit had free run of the back yard in warm weather. It didn't take long before a cat killed him.  His brown replacement delivered and ate a litter during one of Mary's bridge games.  

Books from this middlebrow shelf (Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann, James Jones & Henry Sutton) gave me a crash course in human sexuality.  Mary kept Portnoy's Complaint hidden in her lingerie drawer.

I took lots of photos to send to Ken in Saigon, mostly of Mary posing with my neighborhood friends including David . . . 

and Susie and Pattie, sisters and Army brats who moved into the neighborhood during his absence.

After returning from Viet Nam, Ken made good on his promise to build me a dune buggy. It spared me the trauma a lot of my gay friends had to endure during their high school years. Thanks, Dad!

 

In their early 80s, Oma and Opa moved to El Paso so Mary could keep an eye on them.  Here they are in Ruidoso, New Mexico.

They gave Mary their '64 Rambler.  Ken was appalled, but she loved having an American car with an automatic transmission.  They drove me to college in it.  An eight-track tape of "Who's Next" never left the deck.

Mary eventually prevailed upon Ken to buy her a new Chevy Nova.  Which I totaled.  Not my fault!

I left this apple-cheeked kid behind to go to Columbia.  Mary and Ken couldn't have been prouder.  Don't judge their clothes.  Polyester reigned in 1971!