MY LACK OF EDUCATION HASN'T HURT ME NONE. . . OR HAS IT?

Called out of class in '65, my last year of school, I was face-to-face with a counselor. 

"The reason I called you in, Jim, is that you scored 99+ percentile on the National Merit Scholarship Test.  You're obviously in the top 1% of students in the U.S., but, based on your score, likely closer to the top .1%.," stated the older man behind the desk.

"If we'd caught this last year, we could have got you a scholarship to the University of Washington, but, as of now, I have you set for one or maybe two years at Green River Junior College and, then, if you get the grades you're capable of getting, you can transfer to UW," he explained.

"I can't go," I mumbled, without explaining the dumb logic of the high control religious cult I'd been raised in that forbid higher education because anyone who got exposed to knowledge left the cult.

Anyway, few knew that I'd already left home at 16, getting into a big fight with my child rapist dad, and was now cleaning a bowling alley at night and going to Kent-Meridian Senior High School during the day.

"Onward mighty Kent-Meridian!  Foes tremble at the feet of Kent-Meridian!' was the stupid fight song.

But, Kip Thrasher and I skipped pep rallies, even though Kip was a halfback on the football team, finding competition between sophomores, juniors and seniors as to who could yell the loudest beyond asinine.

Kip and I would stay in the classroom, reading the Seattle Times and talking about life.  Seattle had two papers, the Post-Intelligencer in the morning and the Times in the afternoon.  None of my friends admitted to reading the P.I., cuz it was shit. 

Kip and his big-breasted girlfriend died two days after graduation in a head-on collision on Highway 80 between Kent and Renton.  Kip's little MG was demolished.

I'm still haunted by that.  Did he reach down to pick something up?  Why did he cross the center line? Were they fighting?  They were always fighting.

A few days before graduation, Kip had screamed "bitch!" at his girlfriend just before English class.

"Mr. Thrasher, we will not have your obscene language in our classroom," yelled the forgettable teacher.

"Well, she is!" replied Kip as his girlfriend sobbed.

At 13, I'd learned janitorial science at the feet of my mentor, George Pringle, the owner of ABC Maintenance, with it's infamous slogan "Always Be Clean."

George was 39.  I was, as I said, 13,  when I joined the company, but I was the adult in the business.  George was living with his folks after a divorce.

His dad and mom thought I was "good for George" because I was level-headed.  They lived in a weird house with a totally round interior living space with murals painted on the walls.  You had to be shown where the door knobs were to other rooms as they were hidden within the art.

A heated indoor pool was in one room with a trapeze hanging above it and a diving board.  George's favorite stunts were a backflip off the board or making the trapeze hit the wall.  I just swam in the hot water after taking the obligatory shower.

The bedroom had a dozen twin beds lined up in a row, all perfectly made.  On the one night I stayed over, George's dad slept in bed #1, his mom in bed #2, George in bed #3 and I in bed #4.

His folks drove a Henry J built by Kaiser, but had just bought a Rambler American.  After a week of driving the American, they parked it, calling it a "piece of junk" and resumed driving the Henry J.

Our biggest account was Shaw Brothers Drugs in Renton, with glass cases all the way to floor.

We used a homemade floor scrubber George had made using a 1/3 HP washing machine motor. It was not geared down sufficiently and was a beast to run.  We used rubber gloves to prevent electrical shock as we scrubbed the floor through the suds.  

Since George couldn't control his own machine between the expensive glass cases, scrubbing was my job.  Letting the scrubber down, it pulled left.  Pulling it up, it went right, but it was a delicate balance to keep it from wiping out a glass case.  

When I wouldn't hear George for a while, I would find him in the magazine section of the drug store, reading the National Enquirer about babies born with two hearts or extra limbs and other made-up bull shit.  

"George, if you don't start mopping up this water, we will be here all night," I would shout. 

He would apologize and resume working.

Another account was a radio station between Kent and Renton.  George never got paid for our work because the station claimed we'd agreed to work in exchange for radio spots advertising the business.

Anyway, on November 22, 1963, I was vacuuming out one of the offices of the radio station, but totally mesmerized by a huge teletype machine, as a long sheet of perforated paper with news from Reuters was being fed back and forth into a box under the machine.  

There were condolences from around the world concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.  I was surprised to see one from Russian President Nikita Khrushchev. 

"I thought he hated Kennedy," I thought to myself.

My work experience with ABC Maintenance helped get me the bowling alley job.  A neighbor, who ran the coffee shop inside the bowling alley, told me about the opening.

"I told them I thought you were about 21 and an extremely responsible young man," she said.

I dressed up in a suit and came back with a key to the bowling alley.

I was 16 and a senior in high school, having skipped two grades.  I was living at the time with Joe Mallory who'd also left home to get away from his alcoholic dad.

Joe knew a trucker, Earl Maxwell, who was selling his aluminum trailer and buying a new one.  With my bowling alley job in the bag, I offered to pay him the $125 he was asking for the trailer in 5 monthly installments of $25.

Joe borrowed a truck and moved the trailer to the cow field of the Lager Brothers Dairy in Maple Valley, Washington.  I think our rent was $15 per month for parking near the cows.

My grandpa had used Lager Brothers unpasteurized milk in glass quart bottles for years.  It had at least two inches of cream on the top of each bottle.  I hated the cream, but drank the milk and never died.

Joe and I cleaned the bowling alley at night during our senior year of school.  We had Sundays off and the Lager Brothers, three of them with long beards, insisted we eat breakfast.

"If you don't eat it, the dogs get it," was the line of reasoning the most loquacious brother used on us.

We would be served a dozen buckwheat flapjacks with duck eggs on top, covered in maple syrup.  One of the Lagers boiled cowboy coffee on the stove, screening out the grounds. 

My grandson Jack just came into this room and read the headline at the top.  I explained it was a line from Kodachrome, a Paul Simon song.

"When I think back

On all the crap I learned in high school

It's a wonder

I can think at all

And though my lack of education

Hasn't hurt me none

I can read the writing on the wall"

I had to explain to Jack how people write nasty shit on bathroom walls about fucking or shitting.  I told him one I read in the stall at a Seattle bus station when I was his age:

"Here I sit, broken hearted.  Paid a nickel, only farted."

Jack laughed and went back to his games.

Actually, I wanted to explain how Babylonian King Belshazzar had seen miraculously written the words:  Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, meaning his kingdom would be given to the Medes and the Persians, but Jack was gone.

All this shit I've written was supposed to be part of the introduction to a discussion of the 1980 movie "Ordinary People," but I've already rambled too much.

Peace out.