MISS LUFTIG LOVED

As I was being moved by paristalsis toward Towpath’s anus, Avon was embarking on a daring plan: It would build a junior 1) Serious girl friends – Co-eds would have rather thrown in their lot with a one legged, blind, hump-backed, retarded heir to a and senior high school in one new ediface on the other side of town. I spent the next six years working from the basement prophylactic factory fortune than in with a skinny, dazed and confused, and very angry at the world piece of cannon fodder.

of that building up to the third floor classrooms, then it was out the door again and removed to the University of Maryland.

2) The U.S. Navy – I tried hard to enlist in the Supply Corps and fold underwear for six years in order to stay out of the jungle I should probably have written more about my high school experience than I ended up writing in “Baby Bomber Chronicles,”

killing tiny people, but the Navy rejected me because I couldn’t see.

because the time was a good one, and was a very important one in my life; Avon was a wonderful model for my high school 3) The Connecticut National Guard – This would have been a piece of cake assignment, except that you had to know somebody teaching career which lasted 32 plus years at Eastchester High School, NY, a career which I am wrapping up as a part time college important to get accepted.

professor, which is a job I’d like to keep into my dotage – which may or may not have already arrived.

4) U.S. Coast Guard – There was a 7 year waiting list, I’m sure composed entirely of die-hard patriots who wanted to blast the At Avon High School, I also developed an interest in sports – not any remarkable skills – but an interest, which led me to join tiny people away as soon as they were sighted off Nantucket.

the Cross Country and Track teams, play basketball with the DeMolay, and try some ice pond hockey (I couldn’t really skate) in 5) The Ministry (!) Yes. I considered it seriously – for a draft deferment. I had converted to Unitarianism; Even I saw this as Colt Park, Hartford. I also skied a lot in Massachussets, New Hampshire, and Vermont. During high school summers I was first a unforgiveable hypocrisy, but I was willing to do it; however, first you had to be accepted into Yale or Harvard Divinity camper and later a counselor at the YMCA’s Camp Jewell. These were also formative experiences– but probably the most man-Schools – which were housed in…Yale and Harvard. I didn’t even bother to apply.

building experiences were the two survival canoe trips I took in the summer after my sophomore year – first to the Fulton Lakes, Then my notice to report for an Army physical arrived. I made a quick call to New Haven to tell them that the Navy said I and then to Saranac. I went off a boy, and came back as a…half man.

was blind, but the guy on the other end laughed his ass off, saying: “Our standards in the Army are WAY more lenient than those At graduation, I was awarded the Harvard Book Award for “Best All Around Student,” which some teachers informed me by of the Navy . Don’t worry. We’ll take you – and we’ll give you two pairs of glasses, so that when one gets shot off, you can put on muttering under their breath could only be a payback to my father from the Superintendent, Frank Driscoll. Dad was by then the the other. No one ever lived long enough to need a third pair. Ha Ha. I can be very funny sitting here behind a desk at this cushy President of the Avon Board of Education and had successfully promoted Frank to the office. I graduated in a class of 104 – three job in New Haven.”

or four of whom were pregnant and missing from the graduation exercises, and I left Avon feeling I was a pretty important person.

Then, at The Last Minute with more than a little help from my father, I was accepted into a hastily cooked up Peace Corps I was accepted reluctantly by Dickinson College, without problem at the University of Connecticut, and was rejected out of Program: Bull Castration in the Sahara Desert. I could now travel half way around the world in the other direction on the govern-hand by Bucknell. I went to the University of Maryland as a legacy (third generation), although I don’t think they ever noticed.

ment’s dime and cut off the balls of the one bull left in Upper Volta, if I could find him.

I enrolled as a pre-med, which I was told was a terrific program, and was prepared to be a very lonely out of state student in a This won me a temporary draft deferment!

somewhat Southernly environment – and was told not to expect much socially because premed students spend most of their time HUZZAH!

studying and the rest of the campus went home on the weekends.

The rest of this story is covered in “Baby Bomber Chronicles” – my very popular comic novel – which you’re still interested, Again, much of this is detailed in BBC (and now available on Kindle); but, suffice it to say, I quickly learned that at Maryland just happens to still be in print and available on amazon.com - discounted.

I may have been just a number, but I had a hot one. My active social life could be one reason why I did so miserably in my pre-The Peace Corps was a dreadful and corrupt organization, and should be eliminated.

med classes, but, after 45 years of reflection on my failures, I realize it was probably more of a left brain/ right brain kind of thing But as terrible as the experience turned out to be, a lot of good things happened to me because I was there. First and foremost, or maybe even a learning disability that worked for most subjects, but not for Organic Chemistry – or any other kind of science.

I met Inez, the love of my life and my lifelong companion. Second, I learned I could be an excellent teacher and that students, for I graduated as an English Major - barely.

the most part, would follow me anywhere. Third, I learned French – our family’s informal second language. Fifth, I learned to The campus began falling apart because of drugs, sex, rock and roll, and the added stress of the likelihood of being sent to love the Caribbean, a place to which my wife and I return to periodically. And – last but certainly not least – it gave me a place to Vietnam and shot. Some of our Maryland dropouts flunked out of school, basically trained, sent to Vietnam, and sent back in hide until President Nixon instituted the draft lottery in 1969 which prevented the young white people of America from burning body bags within a year and a half of last being seen at a Thank God It’s Friday beer bash in front of the freshmen dormitories.

down the other part of Washington – the part that the young black people of America had neglected to burn down during the riots My generation was being processed yet again – into dog food.

a year before.

Midway through my junior year I chose a parallel track – one that I would never have anticipated. I joined the University It also gave me the right to apply to graduate school – for a Masters in English. Thankfully, my local state university took me of Maryland Rugby Club because I was told it was an excellent way to rupture your knee caps and be rejected by the Selective into its night school, and, after quitting the Peace Corps after being told to leave (for trying to start a union), I began to flourish Service System. I eventually became the Captain (of the C Team) but a captain none the less – and I had a wonderful time and once again. Inez and I were married and I was offered a job by our old family friend Frank Driscoll, the guy who had tapped me made many friends “of my sort and station in life.” I had many concussions, but my knees turned out fine.

for the Harvard Book Award at Avon High School.

I had been used to going feral from time to time (living under a canoe for a month was excellent practice); and I was feral Frank and Dad had bailed me out of trouble once again.

once again by my senior year in Maryland, living in a squalid apartment with only occasional paying roommates waiting to be I spent the next 32 years in productive labor, constant turmoil, and equally constant work as an agent provocateur and officer drafted out of the Rugby Team. Rugby taught me that I was not a natural “flower child,” as so many of my classmates suddenly of the teacher’s union. And then finally (WHEW!) I won the brass ring of a State of New York pension, and quietly retired. I also found themselves to be. I had certain … hostilities; and Rugby – the most dangerous sport in the world at the time – seemed earned an EdM and EdD in English from Teacher’s College, Columbia, which I consider my finest academic achievement – sec-a saner outlet for expressing my anger than being flown across the Pacific, handed a gun, and killing a bunch of tiny people.

ond only to staying married to the same woman all those years and raising two wonderful and beautiful daughters.

The government didn’t agree.

From this vantage point (almost 65) it was a hard fought battle – much harder than I would ever have predicted – but it was My senior year was supposed to be the best of what the “Golden College Years” were supposed to be; but I was miserable.

successful by all the measures I care to apply. With a home in Westport, CT, a summer cabin in Canada, inherited farmland in With all hope of getting into medical school dashed on the rocks of impossibility, I scrambled to find some way to avoid the draft Kentucky, money in a retirement account, and two pensions coming in – and still with Inez – who has always stuck by my side so that I could see something like a future ahead of me.

for God knows what reasons, I consider myself a very lucky guy.

So many things seemed impossible now, such as:

And I’m lucky I got this far. Others didn’t.

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