School Memories:
#166 High School: Parts One and Two: Sandy’s Revenge
A book making Up the Down Staircase look like a comic about My Little Pony could be written about Evanston Township High School. I have been avoiding this topic due to the scale and complexity of it. Cumulative synaptic failure, traumatic brain injury, and contemporaneous hallucinogen use all tend to obscure the facts. For me to attempt to accurately portray my high school years is like asking a shell-shocked World War One veteran to accurately recall the Civil War. Bear with me, I am only one year away from my 50th high school reunion, but I will attempt to describe ETHS while I sill can. Your patience is appreciated; it’s a multifaceted tale.
The school looks like a castle, or prison, with additions of varying age placed akimbo. Situated on a sixty-acre site, the school, w/ its imposing central tower, still dominates the poor black neighborhood that surrounds it. ETHS was divided into four separate, but physically connected, schools named North, South, East, and West my sophomore year. These schools all co-exist in a three-story, H-shaped, main complex. There is also an attic and a basement as well as multiple outbuildings, an auditorium, and several specialized sports areas. All four schools have long hallways lined w/ student lockers on each of the three main floors in addition to the three central halls that connect the four schools. There were over 5,000 students there in the early 1970s when I was a student.
Each student is assigned to one of the four schools and their classes are located, w/ a few exceptions like gym, only in their own school. Students were expected to spend most of their time in their assigned school. Thus, long-term friends from Junior High and new friends were randomly separated from each other for four years - if you obeyed the rules. When I attended ETHS the hallways were guarded by hall-monitors; some of them were college students working part-time. They checked your ID and tried to prevent students from wandering between periods or into zones that were off limits.
There were common areas like the main library, the gyms, the sports fields, the main auditorium, and the central office where the superintendent, like the wizard of Oz, reined supreme hidden from view. Each school, whenever possible, maintained it’s own separate sub-systems. There were four principal’s offices, four principals, and four assistant principals. The mnemonic for spelling principal correctly is “he is a prince of a pal.” In my case that was not true. There were also four cafeterias, four libraries called resource centers, and four inner courtyards. During the summer, there was, and still is, an ancient celebrity tortoise living in the east courtyard.
There was a dress code dictating our behavior regarding belts, shirttails, hairstyles, and other nonsense. At least we didn’t have to wear striped uniforms. When the hippie-era hit w/ its radical clothing and hairstyles that code pretty much went right out the window.
The entire campus was very closely monitored. Multiple variations of guards were present. There were even a few armed, off duty, plainclothes cops. Most of the outer doors were locked. Like many similar scenarios throughout history, these strict rules fueled an active underground network of subversives engaged in their own individual styles of opposition to “The Man.” Some kids toed the line, and I respect that, but many didn’t. I was one who disobeyed.
For example, most student was unaware of the multiple attics and huge sub-basements that existed behind the scenes. The basement has, at least that potion that I saw did, a sand floor. It is filed with miles of wires, conduits, and hot steam pipes running in every imaginable direction. Those pipes and a mysterious tunnel connect the school to a separate building to the south and across the street that contains the school’s furnace. There was also a vast network of ancient attics that interconnected the four schools. These areas are all off-limits to students. Some stairwells actually continue down below the first floor to another level that leads to the basement but they are usually locked. Unless you had a key, or happened upon an unlocked door, this infrastructure was inaccessible.
Initially, ETHS utilized a conventional classroom schedule. After my freshman year, the administration switched to a radical new schedule developed by some acidheads from Stanford. That “modular time schedule” organized our daily class-time into multiple twenty-minute long periods. This created random large blocks of free time that ranged from a few hours a day to an entire morning or afternoon unscheduled. This was a highly variable time structure that fit my needs just fine. The vastness of the spaces that I have described, especially if you were high, made for endless possibilities.
Students from Nichols, Haven, Willard, and all of the other middle schools were transferred to this single massive high school. Isolated and sheltered kids from the various neighborhoods of Evanston were thrown together. Kids from Skokie, mostly Jewish, attended. Black kids, typically living in the neighborhood right around ETHS, were there also as were the Greasers, the Jocks, the Boppers, and the few remaining Lumberjackets. They all added to a complex mix; the stage was set.
Our lives would be forever influenced by the next four years. Like the simple chemical reaction of rocket fuel, the two components of social unrest and hallucinogenic drug use combined and worked their magic.
Procol Harum
"She Wandered Through The Garden Fence"
She wandered through the garden fence
and said, 'I've brought at great expense
a potion guaranteed to bring
relief from all your suffering.'
And though I said, 'You don't exist,'
she grasped me firmly by the wrist
and threw me down upon my back
and strapped me to her torture rack
And, without further argument
I found my mind was also bent
upon a course so devious
it only made my torment worse
She said, 'I see you cannot speak
is it your voice that is too weak?
Is it your tongue that is to blame?
Maybe you cannot speak for shame.
Or has your brain been idle too,
and now it will not think for you?'
I hastened to make my reply
but found that I could only lie
And like a fool I believed myself
and thought I was somebody else
But she could see what I was then
and left me on my own again
Our freshman year was still pretty innocent. Fresh out of junior high, the class of 1970, like freshman everywhere tended to lay low. Most of us dutifully stayed in our own quad, except for Scott and Bill, and we were largely unaware of the goings-on in the other schools. In 1966-1967 we were all still far removed in the backwater of the heartland from the revolution that was gripping the coasts. Drug use was, at least to my knowledge, nonexistent that first year. We were seeds, awaiting the coming of spring.
I spent most of that first year as a member of a clique of Jewish girls. We shared a table in the south hall resource center. This was not a study hall so quiet talking was allowed. I had some experience w/ the other, euphemistically named, “study hall.” This was held in one of the large, old, rectangular homerooms that contained dozens of hard antique desks arranged in long rows. After school “study hall” was a way to punish delinquent students for crimes that did not rise to the level of suspension. The perpetrators/victims were forced to remain there, seated in total silence, for a period of time as after-school torture. The antique wall clock measured time with unimaginable slowness. Each minute passed slowly, one at a time, marked only by a tiny shift in position of the minute hand. I learned the meaning of relativity in that study hall.
I would sometimes walk w/ my Jewish girl friends, Marla Parker, Debbie Rubin, Stacy Shatz, and the others, west on Church Street, over the Sanitary Canal, and past McCormick Boulevard on the way to one of their houses where we would socialize for a couple of hours. McCormick Boulevard, separating Evanston from Skokie, is named after Col. Robert R. McCormick, the inventor of the harvester. He is also the namesake of the fireproof McCormick Place Convention Center that burned to the ground in 1967.
These after-school get-togethers were innocent. At least one of their parents was usually home and there was nothing sexual, at least as far as I knew, going on.
My dad told a joke:
Father: “Hey! What are you kids doing down there?”
Child: “Nothing, We are just having sex.”
Father: “Oh, ok, I was worried at first that you might be smoking.”
We were totally straight during our freshman year. We didn’t smoke cigarettes, much, and we did not use any drugs. I do not recall drinking any alcohol with my Jewish girl’s clique. There were several Jewish girls who were my close friends. Sometimes, Ellen Pearlman and I would talk on the phone for hours. We were just friends, emerging from childhood.
Joni Mitchell
"Morning Morgantown"
When morning comes to Morgantown
The merchants roll their awnings down
The milktrucks make their morning rounds
In morning Morgantown
We'll rise up early, with the sun
To ride the bus while everyone is yawning
And the day is young
In morning Morgantown
Morning Morgantown
Buy your dreams a dollar down
Morning any town you name
Morning's just the same
We'll find a table in the shade
And sip our tea and lemonade
And watch the morning on parade
In morning Morgantown
Ladies in their rainbow fashions
Colored stop and go lights flashing
We'll wink at total strangers passing
In morning Morgantown
Morning Morgantown
Buy your dreams a dollar down
Morning any town you name
Morning's just the same
I'd like to buy you everything
A wooden bird with painted wings
A window full of colored rings
In morning Morgantown
But the only thing I have to give
To make you smile, to win you with
Are all the mornings still to live
In morning Morgantown
Although I hesitate to mention it here, there was another Jewish girl that I did not know as well. She was very cute and quite short. Her name was Denise Rose. What I do recall well is the fact that she had extraordinarily large,…. em, ah,…, eyes. I admit that I did notice her, and them. Another girl, a year older than us, named Norma something also had really big,.ah,...eyes. Some things just form more resilient memories at that age.
Regarding age, a difference of one year in junior high and high school was a vast gap that rigidly separated the school’s classes. For example, a good friend of mine when I was four or five was a girl named Ruby Wax. Her Father was the “Sausage King” of Chicago. She lived one block south of me on the other side Elliot Park next to the lake in a white house. I remember Ruby’s living room sofas were covered w/ protective clear plastic. Her parents were nice. They had heavy Germanic accents. I think they were holocaust survivors.
One day Ruby and I w/ a few other kids were tipping her Tulips over, gently draining rainwater from their petals. Snap! My tulip broke. I think that made Ruby cry and I was forever banished as a result. She was one year older than me so after that, through grammar, junior, and high schools she was always a year ahead of me. As a result, she ran w/ a totally different crowd; one that leaned toward beer drinking and sports. Because she was a year older, or perhaps because she still held a tulip-based grudge, we never socialized again. Now she is a famous comedian in England. I tried to contact her online a few years ago but I couldn’t penetrate her multiple layers of security.
After the hippie era began, these minor age distinctions vanished. 1967, my freshman year, was one year before the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. We didn’t know it then but the clockwork mechanism of the Universe was advancing. Our sun was approaching the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. Something was afoot. To quote Bob Dylan, “The times, they were a changin’.”
Bob Dylan
"The Times They Are A-Changin'"
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
Nevertheless, my freshman year was pretty tame. I still had to avoid the remnants of my feud w/ every black kid from Nichols, thanks to Jimmy Feldstein. Teddy McCommon was, unfortunately also assigned to South Hall so I had to steer clear of her in particular. Bigme Green was elsewhere and Baby Huey was apparently long gone. That was the year when I met Bill Welch. We got along well. He had a brother who had a large head. I teased him by calling him “The Embryo.” My mother thought that Bill was a bad influence on me and Bill’s mother was certain that I was a bad influence on him. He became a lawyer so I maintain that my mother was correct.
Bill and I played a gambling game called flipping quarters or “odd man” that was popular then. Three guys would all flip a quarter onto the back of their hand and cover it w/ their other hand. The three quarters would be revealed simultaneously and the kid w/ the odd face up would win the other two quarters. There were only two possibilities for each coin, heads or tails. Unless all three coins matched, creating a push, one coin would not match the other two. The owner of that coin won the other two quarters. Bill laboriously filed four quarters down to half of their original thickness. He then glued the two heads together and two tails together. This created two coins that could not match each other in a flip. No matter what the mark had, heads or tails, Bill or I would always win by being the odd man, a one hundred percent success rate. As long as you didn’t victimize the same guy too often it was foolproof. The only problem was that the glued coins didn’t ring normally when they were flicked but no one ever noticed.
In Junior High, flipping coins against a wall, to see who could get their coin closest to the wall, was a popular outdoor activity. The penultimate was a leaner, landing right on the corner where the floor met the wall. Gambling and games of all kinds were important activities in high school. The south hall cafeteria was the focus for most of our gambling. These games were for low stakes or just for sport. Ed O’Shaunessy was a gambler. He died young.
The Animals
"The House Of The Rising Sun"
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one
My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new blue jeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans
Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk
[Organ Solo]
Oh mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun
Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain
Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one
Card games and flipping quarters were both indoor activities. In High School we were, of course, too mature for baby games like that. Instead, there was a game where three coins were placed on a cafeteria table. One coin was flicked between the other two coins. As long as the player could continue to flick one coin trough the gap between the other two coins he could continue. I have no idea how you won, if there was even a winner, or if it was just a game of skill. Another game involved flicking a triangular, folded, piece of paper between two goal posts formed by the other guy’s fingers.
Principles, assistant principals, teachers, guards, and plain-clothes cops guarded the cafeterias. Our activities had to be done on the sly. Someone pushed the envelope one day to an entirely new level. The drop ceilings of the cafeteria were made w/ two- by four-foot white rectangular tiles made up of some kind of pressed foam and suspended on metal supports in a grid pattern. A breakthrough in the science of bad behavior occurred when someone realized that you could flick a pat of butter, using a cafeteria knife, up onto the ceiling where it would stick to the tiles. That alone was great fun, but the true breakthrough in the technology of mayhem was pending.
After a few weeks, we realized that the area above the ceiling was infested with mice. The butter would gradually soak into a tile until the upper surface was permeated w/ butter. At that time, the mice would eat the butter soaked section and create holes in the ceiling. I recall that a mouse fell onto a girl’s lunch tray. These were the innocent ways that we passed our time in the cafeteria that first year. Eating was secondary and we were still drug-free.
When the new modular scheduling started in our sophomore year, the cafeterias stayed open after the food lines were closed. This became our primary place to hang out and socialize. Students were allowed to talk openly there. Small and large conspiracies were borne there. There was a teacher’s lounge across the hall and the principal’s office was catty-corner. They and our handlers were ubiquitous. Miscreants had to be very sneaky when, for example, they conspired to drop a lit M-80 into a toilet.
During our freshman year, Bill and I had already begun expanding our range. We made our way into the attic on several occasions and once we even went into the basement. The basement was a warren of pipes and really scary w/ wires and hot pipes going in all directions and a sand floor. It was really hot down there so we only ventured a short distance. It was just too dangerous. Rumor had it that there was a tunnel under East Hall that connected w/ the furnace building but we never saw that.
We explored the attic. Some of it was quite strange, very old, and all of it was in nearly original condition. There was a staircase leading up to the clock tower and other weird old passageways. Bill found a way to get behind some lockers where his disembodied voice freaked out some girls when they opened their locker doors and heard him speaking to them in a creepy voice.
Sting
"Moon Over Bourbon Street"
There's a moon over Bourbon Street tonight
I see faces as they pass beneath the pale lamplight
I've no choice but to follow that call
The bright lights, the people, and the moon and all
I pray everyday to be strong
For I know what I do must be wrong
Oh you'll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street
It was many years ago that I became what I am
I was trapped in this life like an innocent lamb
Now I can never show my face at noon
And you'll only see me walking by the light of the moon
The brim of my hat hides the eye of a beast
I've the face of a sinner but the hands of a priest
Oh you'll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street
She walks everyday through the streets of New Orleans
She's innocent and young, from a family of means
I have stood many times outside her window at night
To struggle with my instinct in the pale moonlight
How could I be this way when I pray to God above?
I must love what I destroy and destroy the thing I love
Oh you'll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street
We needed keys to access some areas of the attic that were locked. We had some old skeleton keys. These were the same old-style keys that you might imagine being used in a civil war era lock; four inches long and black w/ a simple divided rectangular tip. Those skeleton keys worked on some doors but the newer locks frustrated us. One day, on the third flood between North and East Halls we found an open doorway into a room that we never had access to before. Much to our surprise, we were in the office of one of the school’s security supervisors. We noticed that there was a closet off of his office. In that closet there were some metal drawers and in those drawers were large rings full of keys. Pay dirt!
At that moment the occupant of that office, a mean-looking old man, probably only forty-five or fifty, came back. Bill and I were still in his closet, Maintaining strict operational silence, we stood motionless in his closet for a few seconds while he fished around for something in his desk drawer. Desperate, the only ploy we could come up on the spur of the moment was to simply walk out of the closet and act as if we had just innocently taken a wrong turn. He didn’t buy that for a second; he ran out of his office and locked us in. He returned shortly w/ back up. We were suspended for three days.
Bill and I each had a stack of short-term suspension notices. My mother put together a scrape book for me. She included a few suspension notices to remind me. We failed to acquire the master keys that time but eventually somebody cut some using a file. We were devious but nonviolent. We were just exploring.
When we were caught we would be taken to the South Hall Office. The principal couldn’t be bothered. Dealing w/ us was the task of South Hall’s chief disciplinarian, Mr. Robert Trevarthen. Trevarthen was, I am sure, a kindly man who loved his family but to us he was a beady-eyed little weasel. He had a militaristic demeanor and my bet is that he was an ex-marine. His face became so flushed when he got mad at us that we thought he might have a stroke and drop dead right there. Trevarthen was not pleased by our shenanigans. He took pleasure in expelling us. I believe he would have preferred to take us out back, shoot us, and be done with it. We took great pleasure in tormenting him and his counterpart in West Hall, Mr. Nelson.
Mr. Nelson looked a lot like the serial killer in the movie Manhunter by Michael Mann. You know the guy- tall, awkward, emotionless, socially inept, and mechanical. He was fun to mess w/ too. I spent so much time illegally hanging out in the West Hall Cafeteria that Mr. Nelson thought that I was a West Hall student. Once I made him apologize to me, feigning religiosity, for using the Lord’s name in vain after he got so made at me that he said “God damn.”
I grew a beard my sophomore year. That allowed me to pass the other students, waiting patiently at the end of the hall for the bell to ring, and walk directly into the hallway without hesitating at the hall-monitor. Walking briskly and saying hello to the hall monitor was the secret. He was there to prevent kids from passing. He assumed, since I was so brazen and had a beard, that I had to be some kind of teacher’s aid or another hall monitor. I would just take the left turn and keep on going w/ an air of confidence. Down by West Hall there was another monitor who saw that I had just left South Hall without being stopped. He just assumed that I was authorized and let me pass also. That ploy worked many times. They just got used to me.
I used that same trick on another occasion to walk in the stage door at a Grateful Dead Concert in St. Louis. Cal Brody convinced me to go there w/ him for an after-concert party w/ the band, a party that we had no actual plausible way of ever getting into. But that is another story.
Getting into North Hall or East Hall was more challenging. They were separated from West and South halls by the long central corridor. To get there, we took the attic route.
Freshman year was like a continuation of Junior High. If I didn’t go w/ the girls to Skokie after school, I would usually catch the number three bus home. Sometimes we would walk east on Church Street and get some fries at Kresges. Life was simple and repetitive. The truth is I have very few specific memories of my freshman year. If you ask me to tell you one bit of knowledge that I learned in a classroom, I am at a loss. I remember that my math teacher had a name that started with a K and that he had really bad acne but I don’t remember, at least not consciously, a single thing that he taught me.
Things were as they were and nothing special was happening. I worked for a time as a soda jerk at Peacock’s Ice Cream Shoppe. They employed a pale-faced Greek assistant-manager named Gus who repeatedly urged us to work harder, in broken English, by yelling “C-mon, C’mon, C’mon man!” Big news, somebody put soap in Fountain Square’s fountain.
The most remarkable thing that I have learned about that hiatus period, the time before the cosmic upheaval began, is that John Malkovich, the actor, was one of the skinny clerks who sold us school supplies at Chandler’s in downtown Evanston.
The space-time continuum shifted suddenly between my freshman and sophomore years. It was as if everything changed in an instant. One day I was a geek from Nichols and then, the next day, I was a man of the world with long hair, a beard, and a fondness for hallucinogenic substances.
Small Faces
"Itchycoo Park"
Over Bridge of Sighs
To rest my eyes in shades of green
Under dreaming spires
To Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been
(What did you do there?) I got high
(What did you feel there?) Well, I cried
(But why the tears there?) Tell you why
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
I feel inclined to blow my mind
Get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun
They all come out to groove about
Be nice and have fun in the sun
I'll tell you what I'll do (What will you do?)
I'd like to go there now with you
You can miss out school (Won't that be cool?)
Why go to learn the words of fools?
(What will we do there?) We'll get high
(What will we touch there?) We'll touch the sky
(But why the tears there?) I'll tell you why
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
I feel inclined to blow my mind
Get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun
They all come out to groove about
Be nice and have fun in the sun
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
Ha
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful
Early in my sophomore year, the accumulated weight of political upheaval, the growing hippie movement, and the ready availability of street drugs transformed everything. The changing music scene facilitated this. Instead of The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, and Soul Music, we began listening to Led Zeppelin, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Blue Cheer. Acid rock found Evanston. Instead of hanging out at the Student Union, we started to go to The Electric Theater and the Aragon ballroom. The Democratic Convention of 1968, and the riots that followed that, happened in Chicago. Changes on a national and societal level certainly played a role. Our leaders were being assassinated.
Looking for a specific transitional moment, something that clearly delineated the tipping point in our small corner of the world, I recall “The Fight at the Student Union.” For the kids of ETHS, I argue that the watershed moment came when Sandy McGregor beat up Eckebret, the King of the Boppers, at the student union. Like the Battle of Gettysburg, the cosmic clock ticked as a result and our world was forever altered.
The Beatles
"Within You Without You"
We were talking about the space between us all
And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth, then it's far too late, when they pass away
We were talking about the love we all could share
When we find it, to try our best to hold it there with our love
With our love, we could save the world, if they only knew
Try to realise it's all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you
We were talking about the love that's gone so cold
And the people who gain the world and lose their soul
They don't know, they can't see, are you one of them?
When you've seen beyond yourself then you may find
Peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we're all one
And life flows on within you and without you
I have not researched the exact timeline, why would I let the facts mess up a good yarn? I think their historic battle happened in our sophomore year. Maybe it was the fall of 1968. I guess that the Student Union, just west of Downtown Evanston, opened in 1967. That facility gave students a “Third Space” where we could hang out. That role was filled later on by Polly’s, Triangle Park, Trimble’s attic, the MYF, and Clark Street Beach but I’m getting ahead of myself.
As the hippie era took hold in Evanston, the kids from Southwest Evanston, the Boppers, remained mired in their pre-existing behavior patterns of petty crime, insipient alcoholism, mob-mentality, and violence. They didn’t use guns or knives but they did like to gang up on their prey. They were drinking too much alcohol, rolling cigarette packs up in their t-shirt sleeves, and picking fights. One of the worst offenders was Egebrecht. I have no idea what his first name was. He had a big, dim-witted, hick sidekick for backup but he was in charge.
Little Peggy March
I Will Follow Him
Love him, I love him, I love him
And where he goes I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow
I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go
There isn't an ocean too deep
A mountain so high it can keep me away
I must follow him, ever since he touched my hand I knew
That near him I always must be
And nothing can keep him from me
He is my destiny
I love him, I love him, I love him
And where he goes I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow
He'll always be my true love, my true love, my true love
From now until forever, forever, forever
I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go
There isn't an ocean too deep
A mountain so high it can keep, keep me away
Away from my love
I love him, I love him, I love him
And where he goes I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow
He'll always be my true love, my true love, my true love
From now until forever, forever, forever
I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go
There isn't an ocean too deep
A mountain so high it can keep, keep me away
Away from my love
Do-do do-do-do do-do-do and where he goes
I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow
I know I'll always love him
A sociologist might blame their upbringing, their relative poverty, and the weight that society unduly placed upon them as a result of their lower socioeconomic rank. In my book, they were just a bunch of ignorant assholes. Like the groupthink in Lord of the Flies, they had a tribal mentality. Emboldened by the few larger gang-members, the majority of the Boppers were malicious little blond twerps from Kentucky or West Virginia. Like locust, they would swarm on a guy under the watchful eyes of their protectors.
This pattern of episodic, senseless, assaults by the Boppers on benign hippie kids persisted for months. A good friend of mine, John Trimble, was beaten up by a bunch of them in front of Walgreen’s one day. Although the timing is uncertain, I suspect that the confrontation at the Student Union happened after, and was triggered by, John’s assault.
Egebrecht was blond, tall, and thin. He was a tough, strong, kid. I didn’t know him personally. I tried to avoid him. I can’t comment on his intelligence but his behavior was immature, hostile, and violent. I hope that he eventually grew out of it otherwise he is now probably dead or in prison.
I had a full beard and long hair at the time but Sandy McGregor made me look like I was bald. Of Scottish descent, he looked like an extra from Braveheart. He had long red hair and a red beard. The fact that he was already developing a receding hairline, as a sophomore in High School, speaks to his testosterone level. He was one of those guys who are much stronger than he looks. Despite that, he was non-violent.
I don’t recall, or never knew, if a specific incident brought about their confrontation. We used to jokingly insult Steve Capillo by calling him Sandy McGregor’s assistant. They lived near each other in Northwest Evanston. They had been friends for many years. Maybe one of the Boppers made the mistake of threatening Steve. Maybe there was no incident. I remember that all the hippies, freaks, druggies, and sundry hangers-on staged a march from the high school into downtown Evanston one day as a show of force and solidarity. Maybe that triggered it but I suspect that Sandy had just had enough. In a surprisingly diplomatic agreement, it was decided that Eckabret, representing the Boppers, would fight Sandy McGregor, representing the hippies, at the Student Union.
Word of the impending fight spread quickly. When the time came there were crowds of supporters for both sides. I was there but I have only vague recollections of the two of them facing off and preparing to fight. The long story made short is that Sandy wiped the floor w/ Eckebret. I can’t relate a blow-by-blow narrative for your gratification but the fight was brief and immediately decisive. I think Sandy allowed Eckebret to maintain some dignity in his loss but the Boppers never recovered. The majority of them were ignorant little twerps and they scurried away like rats when their protector was taken down. The Boppers just seemed fade away after that. Maybe they started to smoke dope and that matured them. The pendulum had swung and for us a new era began.
Procol Harum
"The Milk Of Human Kindness"
When you knew that I had given all the kindness that I had
did you think that it might be time to stop?
When you knew that I was through
that I'd done all I could do
did you really have to milk the final drop?
Not content with my mistake
you behaved just like a snake
and you left me for a wasp without a sting
Tell all my friends back home
that I did it on my own
and that to their well-worn cares they should cling
When you knew that I had given all the kindness that I had
did you feel you had to break that lonely vow?
When you knew that I was through
that I'd done all I could do
did you really have to sow that final plough?
Not content with my mistake, you behaved just like a snake
and you left me for a wasp without a sting
Tell all the folks back home that he did it on his own
and that to their well-worn cares they should cling
