Tag Archives: 1960s

Clubius Besieged Part 6 – Valentine (February 1967)

I woke up to my clock radio playing a song I hadn’t heard before…

… A four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway

It was a strange song. It sounded like the Beatles, but more like a grownups song than an older kids rock type song with guitars and drums and worrying about girlfriends and freedom and that sort of stuff. And some of the words I didn’t understand, like “finger pies” and “roundabout”. And that last line, “though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway”, what was that about? Was it like drug stuff, like that “Along Comes Mary” song by the Association that older kids said was about drugs, “My empty cup is as sweet as the cup”, even though it didn’t talk about TAKING any drugs like that marijuana stuff.

Penny Lane, the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then, the fireman rushes in from the pouring rain
Very strange

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Clubius Besieged Part 5 – Break (December 1966)

My clock radio turned on. Frank Sinatra was singing…

I said that’s life (that’s life)
And as funny as it may seem
Some people get their kicks
Stomping on a dream
But I don’t let it, let it get me down
‘Cause this fine old world, it keeps spinnin’ around

I hadn’t been awake, but I hadn’t been asleep either, I’d been in that kind of inbetween place. It was Monday morning of the last week of school before the two-week Christmas vacation. I hadn’t been able to go back to sleep since I’d woken up in the middle of the night after this weird dream of being in a giant house where zombies had taken over the bottom floor and I had to go upstairs, and then up into the attic as they kept looking for me. The attic had three regular walls but the fourth one was like a giant glass window with some kid behind it looking at me and looking worried. I asked if he could hear me but he didn’t respond, so I figured he couldn’t. I could hear the zombies downstairs and I kept looking at the staircase afraid they would come up in the attic and find me.

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Clubius Besieged Part 4 – Sock Hop (November 1966)

Because Abby told me, I knew Rose’s last name was Bertram, but I still hadn’t talked to her. She was in my Homeroom, but she sat in the front of the room by the door next to Myrna. I sat in the back by the windows with Lance and the other cool boys. She was kind of pretty and I just liked looking at her whenever I could, but I didn’t look at her so much that Lance and the others might see me and tease me about it. Sometimes when I was looking at her she might look at me and she might smile a little bit but then look away. I guess that was good. Abby had said that Myrna had said she was shy. I didn’t like to admit it, but I guess I was kind of shy too, so her being shy I guess was good.

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Clubius Besieged Part 3 – Math Club (October 1966)

On-Sets game by Layman E. Allen, Peter Kugel & Martin F. Owens

I was glad my regular school day was over, it felt like it had gone on for forever. I felt kind of tired all day because I hadn’t slept very good last night. Yesterday in Band, the teacher, Mr Balfort, got mad at me because I kept messing up my part in the “Liberty Bell March” we were learning, and then he said that this kind of thing happens if you don’t practice enough. I mean he was kind of right that I didn’t practice enough, but it was so embarrassing when he said that with all the other kids there listening and looking at me. Last night I practiced my part for a half hour, but I was still having trouble with it, so it was really frustrating. When I got into bed I kept thinking about that and worrying that if I kept messing it up he would get even angrier, because he did get angry at us a lot. I also worried about the Math test today, because I always wanted to do good on tests to impress my teachers, because tests always seemed to be really important to them, and I could see their eyes twinkle a little when they handed a test back to you where you got a really good score.

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Clubius Besieged Part 2 – Homefront (September 1966)

Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor

It was Friday afternoon and the last bell rang for the end of eighth period, the end of the day at Tappan and the end of my fourth week of school in this crazy junior high place with a thousand other kids.

It had been a very weird day because we had done swimming again in the school’s indoor pool for Phys Ed, and we didn’t wear swimsuits, we were naked that is.

Our Phys Ed teacher Mr Wash had said, the day before the first day last week when we did class in the pool, that it was his and the school’s “strong preference” that we swim without suits, because they didn’t want us bringing swimsuits to school and hanging them wet in our lockers, because they said stuff in there would get all moldy and stinky and stink up the whole school. He said if we insisted on wearing a swimsuit, we had to bring it that morning and take it home at the end of the day, and not leave it in our locker.

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Clubius Besieged Part 1 – “T” Day (September 1966)

I had to leave home at the latest by ten to eight, to get to Tappan by second bell, which gave me five more minutes til third bell and the start of my first class. It took about twenty minutes to walk to school, though it seemed longer than that, maybe because I had to keep turning corners and going on different streets.

Today was a “T” day, so I had to remember to bring my saxophone, because I had Band fifth period. On “M” days, I had French instead, which meant I only had to carry my three-ring notebook, and whatever textbooks I brought home yesterday to do homework. When girls brought books to school, they would carry them against the front part of their body with one or both arms wrapped around them. But you never saw boys carrying them that way, though I think it was easier. We always carried them in one arm on the side of our body. I’m not sure why, except that boys never wanted to be seen doing anything “like a girl”.

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Clubius Contained Part 44 – Childhood’s End (August 1966)

[Author’s note: This is the final chapter of Clubius Contained]

I was up early as usual and in the kitchen eating a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast when there was a knock on the front door of our cottage.

Molly and her mom had arrived last night and had stopped by for just a little bit to say hello. Mom had said we’d be going to the beach in the morning if they’d like to join us. Molly’s mom said she needed the morning to sleep in and get settled, but Molly said she’d join us. I told Molly that I usually run to the beach in the morning and she said she’d like to do that too. We’d made a plan for 8 o’clock, which it was now.

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Clubius Contained Part 43 – Crime Society (August 1966)

The DC Comics Justice League

David REALLY liked the Justice League, which was Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter. He was really into DC comics. I mean I still liked Batman and Flash, mostly because they had some really neat villains, specially Flash. Two of Flash’s villains, Mirror Master and Doctor Alchemy, were my favorites. I seemed to be more into the badguy characters these days than the goodguy ones, though I wasn’t sure whyM. Maybe just because David was so into the goodguy ones.

I was also starting to get into the MARVEL comic superheroes more, specially Spiderman, and Doctor Strange. Sure they were goodguys, but they weren’t so “goodie two shoes” as the DC superheroes were. They had their own problems, like I did. Spiderman was still really just like an older kid, more like me, who had a difficult life because his mom and dad had died in a plane crash and he had to live with his aunt and uncle. MY mom and dad hadn’t died, but they had gotten divorced, and it felt like we weren’t a regular family anymore. And Doctor Strange had been in a car accident that messed up his hands so he couldn’t be a surgeon anymore, so he got into all this cool magic and mystical stuff instead. I couldn’t be a regular kid from a regular family anymore, so maybe that was kind of the same.

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Clubius Contained Part 42 – Hexagons & Dice (August 1966)

I woke up to that less bright softer light coming in the small window in our little cottage bedroom and taps of rain on its glass panes and the roof above. David was sitting in his bed drawing on his sketch pad, noticing I was awake.

“It’s raining”, he said, “I don’t think we’re going to go to the beach. Are you going to run anyway?”

I swung out of bed and went to our window that looked out onto our big backyard through the blurring water on the window. The sky was gray and the grass and all the trees and bushes were all green and shiny with water.

I’d run every day since the first morning we’d been here, both to the beach and back. Yesterday was the first day I had done the whole mile run down Longnook Road, without having to walk even once. That felt REALLY good, in both my body AND my mind. Only big kids can run a WHOLE mile I figured!

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Clubius Contained Part 41 – Longnook (August 1966)

It was the next morning, and mom was sleeping in. For whatever reason, I didn’t sleep in as much as I usually did, maybe because I was so excited to be there. I got up when David did and we explored the outside around our cottage. It was kind of a cool hazy morning, but not cool enough to want to put jackets on or long pants. The birds were all chirping, different ones than I was used to in Ann Arbor, including seagulls, which were kind of like the crows I was used to, only they were white and gray instead of black. The sun was up there above the haze and you could smell the ocean in the breeze.

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