No, I’m not talking about Shakespeare.
The word on everyone’s lips the summer after 6th grade was ‘jointure’. My school district was now a jointure. Simply, it meant that rich town has formed an alliance with poor town. Poor town had declining enrollment (probably most families’ kids were too old, and childless families moved in), and could no longer keep their collective financial skulls above the waves. I believe they also had shoveled way too much money into the prior elementary building before ripping it down (and giving the property to the borough instead of selling it).
All the teachers had to attend a ‘let’s get together’ meeting where they were supposed to mingle and magically become a new school district. A bizarre group of really cleaned & scrubbed young people called ‘Up With People’ came and sang “Get Together”. They talked like hippies, but seemed to have stepped out of a 1962 sitcom………..smiles too wide, eyes too beady (or Brady?).
Poor town had two schools–a 12 year old three story elementary school, and a ‘high school’ built around 1905. Both schools were separated by a small alley, but the jointure gave them money to build a bridge between third floors. The high school became our middle school.
There were several ‘unique’ facets to this arrangement. I’m being polite–they were a pain in the ass. The elementary building housed K-8. It also had a huge gym and the cafeterias (yes, two: little kids can’t be mixed with Junior High kids). This meant that you had to cross the alley 10 times a week for lunch, and two more on Gym days. Not fun in the winter, when you had to either climb stairs to the bridge, or cross the alley in sub zero Arctic winds. The cafeteria was re-done before the jointure, the folding lunch tables were perfect for sticking your gum below.
Some of the prior high school teachers took a package and left–they had no desire to teach these spoiled little rich brats. My Mom wasn’t affected–she was in elementary schools; the elementary school across the alley stayed the same with some (briefly) empty classrooms. Unusual result: the high school rooms, once with a comfortable attendance, now swelled to 30 or more kids per room.
Our junior high building was incredibly creaky. The north and south doors were labeled ‘Boys’ and Girls’ in chiseled stone. Cinder block bathrooms sprayed with some kind of light blue smooth stucco. The dull yellow brick staircases had small high windows. Cast iron radiators from the turn of the century. Wooden moaning classroom floors blackened by high-use. The only cool thing was the immensity of the second floor–the ceilings were 30 feet high, both halls and rooms. If things were quiet, your footsteps (especially girls in heels) echoed ominously like a Hollywood film noir.
We called it ‘going to the ghetto’. Like we knew what a ghetto was–if any of us saw a true 60’s ghetto in NYC or Chicago, we’d be yelling for Mama!
Please welcome Syd Griffin’s Long Ryders.