Mixed Emotions

Today’s illustration invokes a multitude of emotions for me. On the one hand, by the character’s expression and posture I see a “deep in thought” mind-set, just as much as I do a sense of melancholia. It just so happens that the boy depicted in the above illustration is a 3D replica of myself from back in my Parlin Junior High School days some 40 odd years ago.

One thing I do know for sure is that whatever it is that he’s experiencing in that illustration, I am experiencing right now. For you see, no matter who or what we become in this life, beneath the surface we will always be our true selves.

That is not to say that we don’t change as we mature. If we become a better person as we mature than what it is that we become is a better model of ourselves. It is the quality of our character that improves. Our being remains the same.

Never hesitate to look back at the road you’ve traveled so far. Look back at the rough spots as well as the smooth sailing well-paved easy spots. I’ll guarantee you that it was those rough spots that added most of the notable qualities to your character. As legendary motivational speaker, Les Brown, so often said, “When times are good you put it in your pocket. But when times are rough you put it in your heart.”

So it is along those lines that I created today’s illustration. Our protagonist is experiencing a multitude of emotions. The first one being that of a student who is unquestionably deep in thought. He may be searching the deeper archives of his memory banks for the answer to a trick question on a test. That is a possibility.

If that is the case then I do hope for his sake that he’s pondering the answer to the very first question. I say that because he hasn’t written so much as a single character as yet.

Let me freeze that frame. It’s taking me back to a specific moment during a test in Mr. Barry’s science class at the Fairfield Whitney. I remember staring down at that blank piece of paper without so much as a single clue as to what to write. I didn’t know any of answers on the test he was giving – not a one.

Everyone else in class was scribbling frantically. And you know how slow that minute hand on the clock seemed to take forever to tick off one minute when you’re waiting for the last bell to ring – right? Well now it was ticking off the minutes as fast as I could blink. Go figure.

So anyway, just as I decided that I’d at least write my name across the top of the page, he said, “Times up. Turn your papers over.” I hadn’t answered a single question.

My stint in the seventh grade at the Fairfield Whitney was the foggiest of all my school years. That was the year I started fiddling around with my big brother, Billy’s, F-hole Silvertone acoustic guitar. The neck was so warped that something so simple as the basic A chord was a challenge and a half.

That was also the year that I discovered you could use Q-tips to smooth your pencil drawings into more realistic renderings. So I really had a lot going on that year. Needless to say, none of it pertained to school. That became readily apparent when Barry called me on the carpet for not having done the homework for the umpteenth time.

“Do you realize, Mr. Huffman,” he said, “That we’ve reached the end of the second quarter and you’ve yet to pass in a single homework assignment?”

It completely blew me away when he said that. For some odd reason I could not the handle on that school year. Time was passing me by like the batting of an eyelash and I couldn’t retain so much as a single fragment of information.

One school day bled right on into the next without a breath of fresh air in between. It was much like being trapped on a sinister merry-go-round that was spiraling out of control at breakneck speeds.

That was the year my English teacher, Miss Cunningham, accused me of cheating on a homework assignment. She had assigned us to draw a cartoon character using a colloquial cliché, such as, “Don’t cha,” “ain’t,” and things like that.

As she so aptly put it, “I rather doubt that somebody so slow as you could ever draw so gracefully.” In the middle of my explaining that I draw just about every waking moment of my life, she called me a liar. And then Mr. Dakin barged into the room shouting something to the effect of what a stupid boy I was, and that I belonged in reform school.

That was also the year that Mr. Dakin open-handedly slapped me across the face for running upstairs. Man, how I so longed for those simpler days back at the Horace Mann School with Miss Blake. I was rather traumatized by my stint at the Fairfield Whitney. I hated that school year above and beyond all of the rest.

What saved me that year was a bout with Poison Oak that was so severe that I was hospitalized with it. I lost my entire outer layer of skin. And I missed the entire fourth quarter of that school year.

When my classmate, Tommy Rogers, came by to drop off my report card, he stepped back in somewhat of a shock when I answered the door. “What happened to you?” he asked. When I explained that I had ingested poison oak, he asked, “Will you ever look normal again?” Even to this day that remains a matter of opinion, I suppose.

You should have seen my report card that year. I got seven “F’s.” I even flunked gym. Even after all that they still promoted me up into the eighth grade. What a relief it was to never have to set foot into the Fairfield Whitney ever again. It wasn’t until August of that summer that I got to go out to play at all.

With the help of several of his friends, my brother, Carl, took over my paper route for me that year. His epilepsy prevented him from taking on the challenge alone. When the day finally came near the end of August when I could deliver my own newspapers again I was in seventh Heaven. You would never believe how much I missed coasting up and down the streets of Everett during the wee early hours of the morning, let me tell ya.

For eighth grade homeroom I had Miss McGrath. You couldn’t ask for a nicer teacher. I do believe that I hadn’t fully recovered psychologically from that severe bout with Poison Oak for I was just as much as an air head in the eighth grade as I was in the seventh. As a result, I wound up repeating the eighth grade.

A rather bizarre incident that happened during the summer following my first year in the eighth grade seemed to change my luck in school. It happened one summer morning during the wee early hours just after first light. And it happened up behind the Parlin.

I was riding my bike up to Robie’s newspaper office on Broadway. Mostly because I was kind of early that day, I did a few spin arounds on my bike in the back lot of the Parlin. You know that back lot with the high cement wall that borders the backyards on Lexington Street – right? Well, that’s where it happened.

From out of nowhere came some kind of energy force field as such that seemed to pass right through me. The best I can think to describe it as is a ball of light. I’m not really sure now if it passed right through me, or just above my head. It happened so fast.

It’s not as if I actually saw it. I’m really not sure. Maybe I just imagined that I saw it. Either way, it streaked right through me and then right through the solid brick wall of the Parlin. In the process, it drove me head on into that brick wall. I had to stretch out my hands to stop myself from slamming face first into the wall.

That is a really strange story, I know. Not everyone I tell it to takes me seriously. And I can’t say that I blame them. Some say it could have been a freak occurrence of “Ball Lightning.” “Ball Lightning” is a scientific phenomenon that we still know so very little about, other than that it does exist.

Whatever it was, it permanently changed something inside of me. Who knows? Maybe it jarred my brain chemistry or something. But from that moment on, schoolwork became a cinch.

I needed only to read something once to retain it for what seemed like indefinitely. And I could now “snapshot” something with my mind’s eye to recall it with uncanny accuracy regardless of how much time had passed - even decades.

That became a valuable resource for an artist. I do honestly believe that we all have those capabilities. It’s just that mine did not come to the forefront until that incident occurred.

That wasn’t the only thing that changed. It seemed as though I had become more aware of the world around me after that. My people skills, and my analytical skills became leaps and bounds above what they once were. And you should have seen what it did for my report card. A’s and B’s became the norm with very little effort. My world had changed.

Let me now unfreeze that frame and move along to yet another intended interpretation of that illustration. Let me ask you something. Have you ever looked upon someone’s expression and wondered what it was that was really going on in the background?

People don’t usually blurt out what’s going on in their lives. Some people go through life ever so gracefully while enduring some of the most traumatic experiences imaginable. You’re bound to come across one every so often in the course of your hectic everyday lives.

What comes to mind is an altercation I was involved in down in Glendale Park during the summer following my year in Miss Walsh’s fifth grade class at the Horace Mann. We were having a game of “rough-n-tumble.” When I tackled this kid from behind, he got pissed and shoved me. It happens. It’s the nature of the game.

So anyway, I, in turn, got pissed and slugged this kid right across the kisser. Natural you would expect a good old-fashioned slugfest to break out after something like that because, hey, that’s the Everett way – right?

Well instead, this kid burst into tears, and I kind of felt sorry for him. I just thought we had entered into the proverbial fistfight that kids so often do. That is until one of his friends piped up and said, “Hey, he didn’t mean anything by it. Cut him some slack. He just lost his father.”

Up until then I had no idea what that kid was going through. He was playing along with the rest of us as if his life was cruising ever so gracefully along the straight and narrow. To say that I felt like “the heel of the century” is an understatement. I could only imagine what that poor kid was going through.

So naturally I stretched out my hand in friendship and said, “I am so very sorry. I had no idea.” And he in turned apologized saying, “It’s not your fault. I kind of started it.”

It wasn’t until then that I noticed how that kid had somewhat of a far away look about him as we continued on with our game. I now knew why. And it is that far away look on that kid’s face in the above illustration that triggered that memory.

So that’s another interpretation to throw into the mix. We could be looking at a kid who is at a loss for words while feelings the pangs of his folly. How easily the words do flow out of anger, but trying to find the right words to make up for it is like searching for a needle in a haystack. It’s amazing how easily that big foot fits into such a little mouth sometimes - isn’t it?

There is one final sentiment I wish to portray with today’s illustration. It is one of a typical Everett kid coping with the doldrums of school during those last few days before the long anticipated summer vacation begins. That’s when the minute hand on the clock on the wall seems to take forever to move a single increment. And I know you know what I mean.

It was during those last few days when the teacher so often struggled to come up with innovative ways to help us pass the time away. All we were actually doing was taking up space so as to comply with yet another nonsensical rule that we spend “x” many days in school out of the year.

Some things never change. Even to this day, the so-called “experts” in education adhere to the archaic principle that the more time a kid spends in school – the more that he or she will learn. I’ve never heard anything so foolish in my life.

I’ll applaud anyone who is enthusiastic about educational reform. The truth is that educational reform will never happen until those so-called “experts” finally break out of that counter-productive, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all mindset that has dogged public education since day one.

It makes me cringe every time I hear one of those so-called “experts” say that kids need a longer school day, and a longer school year. And I’ll bet ya ten-to-one that they didn’t think that back when they were sitting at one of those desks waiting for the last day of school.

Too much of a good thing can be harmful. Heck, they taught us that back in elementary school. So why should school itself be any different from anything else? It’s not. Kids need a break.

Kids need quality time with their peers away from the formal constrictions that school places on them. That is when they truly learn the necessary people skills they’ll need to succeed in life. You don’t learn that stuff at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. You learn it on the sidewalks of Everett.

One thing I did enjoy during those last days of school before the summer vacation is when the teacher lowered the curtains, set up that movie screen at the front of the classroom, and then dragged out that old fashioned 16mm movie projector. You knew you were in for a treat when that happened.

My favorite were those Coronet Educational Films. Those things were a riot and a half. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those are the films that taught you how to conduct yourself properly in every day situations whether at home or at school. And the way they portrayed our every day social norms was so out of sync with reality that it became more of an Avant-garde comedy than anything else.

For one thing, they’re showing a supposedly typical American family seated around the supper table. Everyone’s hair is neatly combed. Dad’s wearing a suit and tie. Mom’s sporting a party dress. And the kid’s look like they’re dressed for Sunday school.

Everyone’s saying please and thank you. Nobody’s sticking their elbows up in anybody else’s face. And nobody leaves the table without asking, “May I be excused?”

In all honesty, if I ever stood up from the supper table and asked my dad if I may be excused, he’d say to me, “Why, do you have to fart?”

If Coronet Films were to ever focus on a real Everett family they’d wind up with the comedy hit of the year. First of all, if we're all going to sit down at the supper table together - then this must be Sunday. If it isn't Sunday, then the moment I step into the door, my mother is not going to say, "Welcome home, dear. You're just in time for supper."

What she's going to say is "Where in the hell have you been? I've been calling you for over an hour. You know we always eat supper when you're father gets home from work. Now our supper's cold and it's all your fault."

To which I reply, "Why didn't you just eat without me?"

"Who in the hell do you think you're talking to? You're not talking to one of your friends now, buddy boy. Just sit down and shut up before I knock you down."

So I take my seat at the kitchen table while my mother continues to rant and rave over my coming home late as she dishes out the food. She's wound so tight that she's slamming the food down onto our plates. It just so happens that she plops three scoops of French fries onto my plate and only two onto Carl's.

I smirk at him and say, "I got more French fries than you."

"Hey Ma, you gave Paul more French fries than me and I'm always home on time."

"Oh, I did not," she shouts.

"Yes, she did," I whisper to him because I'm sitting right next to him.

"You did, too," he shouts. "And it isn't fair."

"Oh for cry sakes," she shouts as she plops two more scoops of fries down onto his plate.

"Now, I got more than you," he taunts.

"No you don't," I say as I reach over and grab a handful of his French fries and jam them into my mouth.

"He took my French fries," he screams at the top of his lungs. "And he didn't even wash his hands before he sat down!"

"Why you son of a beach," my mother yells as she jumps up and grabs hold of that belt that seems to magically appear out of thin air whenever she wants it. Next thing you know, I'm crawling under the table to escape the inevitable wrath while my mother's swinging wildly trying to get a piece of me.

In all the chaos, she knocks over a glass, spilling water all over the tablecloth. "Look what you made me do," she shouts. "I can't have a gawd dam decent thing in this house. All I ask is just once to get to sit down to a peaceful meal like a normal family. Now get in there and wash those filthy hands. Then sit down and eat your supper. And don't let me hear another peep out of you."

I cautiously take my seat next to Carl, and we finally settle down to enjoy our stone cold supper. It's just as well. We're eating liver tonight. Did you ever have to eat liver? Neither did I.

When we have liver, I pretend to eat it, but as soon as nobody's looking, I drop it onto my lap. Then I open my legs so it falls through down onto the front of my chair. I've got it down to an exact science.

As soon as all the liver was off of my plate, I'd reach down with my napkin and ball it all up. Instead of asking, "May I please be excused?" I'd jump up and shout, "I gotta pee my brains out," and make a beeline to the bathroom.

Once I’m in there I’ll turn the water on ever so gently so all you’ll hear is the water running down the drain. It sounded like somebody peeing. All I had to do then was quietly place the liver in the toilet and flush.

Minutes later, after finishing my French fries, I'd let out an ungawdly burp and say, "That was good. I'm outta here." Carl, however, sat at that kitchen table, until bedtime if he had to, until he ate every last bit of that liver. And no, I didn’t tell him the secret to my success. You know what they say? "Loose lips sink ships."

While this entire hullabaloo was going on, Julie and Billy were having their own battle just across the table.

"Ma, Billy's elbow is sticking in my face."

"Billy, put your elbow down!"

"I can't reach my mouth with my fork if I don't bend my arm," he shouts back.

"Get that gawd dam elbow at your side before I rip it off," she shouts.

So now Billy goes into malicious compliance mode and crouches over the table with his elbows tucked so tightly to his side that he looks like he's picking his teeth with a needle.

"Straighten up!" My mother yells giving him a cuff across the back of the head.

As soon as my mother's eyes look back down at her supper plate, Billy shows Julie all the chewed up food in his mouth.

"Ma, Billy's making me sick by showing me all the food in his mouth!"

"Gawd dammit," my mother yells as she again draws that belt out of thin air and starts chasing Billy all around the supper table.

"For cry sake, Grace, simmer down and eat your supper. Never mind about them two. Boys will be boys. Now settle down," my father snaps.

"Whose side are you on?" she screams at him. "A lot of help you are just sitting there stuffing your fat face without giving me any support to discipline these hooligans."

By the time we finish eating everyone's mad at each other and nobody's on speaking terms. At this stage of the game, if you asked to be excused - you'd be told to shut up. That's what supper's like at my house. Why don't they show that in the film?

Let's face it. If you grew up in Everett, you're family was nothing like the ones portrayed in those silly educational films. We didn't gladly share our ice cream cone with our sister. We didn't politely step aside when somebody else needed to use the bathroom. And we certainly didn't wear our school clothes to the supper table.

There is one good thing about those nonsensical Coronet Films that I am ever so grateful for, and that is that they are all now in the public domain. What that means is that the legal copyright has run out so you can do whatever you wish with them.

Thankfully, the Prelinger Archives has posted two thousand of them for you to freely download. It has become somewhat of a popular cult-hobby to reorganize cuts from the original film, extract the audio, and add your own dialogue to create a whole new take on the subject matter. People have posted hundreds of them on the Internet Archives.

Needless to say, I’ve done a few of my own. And that’s what today’s downloads are all about. What we’ve got here are two documentary films focusing on growing up in Everett.

The first one is simply entitled “Character.” It is a harmonious recital of the ever so popular Parlin Character.
It’s only about a minute long. Check this out by “clicking” your right mouse button on the underlined title below, and choosing “Save Target As” to down load this short video. Then all you gotta do is “click” your left mouse button on it and it will play.

Parlin Character

The second one is entitled “Growing Up in Everett.” You’re going get a real boot out of this one. It’s about three-and-a-half minutes long and is made of clips from two different films. And you can check this one out also by “clicking” your right mouse button on the underlined title below, and choosing “Save Target As” to down load this short video. Then all you gotta do is “click” your left mouse button on it and will play.

Growing Up Everett

That just about wraps it up for today. All of my downloads are working again. I won’t go into any long drawn-out details other than to let you know that while you sleep, I’m hectically coding and uploading to ensure a pleasant “We’re From Everett” experience. What a nice guy – huh? Sometime when I think about how nice I am – it makes me cry.

And while I'm thinking of it ... I think I've found a way to simplify the "commenting" process. Check it out. It no longer pops up in a separate window and the choices look easier to understand. At least I think so. Tell me what you think.

I’ll see you again on Father’s Day. In the meantime, take good care of yourselves, don’t let the bastards wear you down, and be good to each other because “We’re from Everett!”