Summer School

Now that the 4th of July weekend is over, I am reminded of Gates-Chili summer school which was a mini-industry of the summers during high school. Kids went there for driver's education, to make up classes they didn't pass the previous year or to take new classes. The latter were in the minority but in the days before you could get a work permit (at age 16) this gave you something to do and it included a social aspect.

Summer school at G-C was another world for the Catholic School crowd. A chance to see what it was like to go to school in "regular" clothes and not have the ever present reminders of the church around school - kind of refreshing if you ask me. Oh, and the most exciting thing....to go to school with girls!!! On the other hand, I do remember how boring it was studying old regents exams in preparation for the Geometry exam at the end of the summer. My coolest class was a French II class which, after the first-half make-up portion, had a second class in which there were only two students and the teacher. Seems like a pretty amazing educational opportunity in retrospect....and that class vastly improved my French grades for the rest of high school.


Another thing about G-C summer school is that we often walked home. The walk was about 3 miles and on some hot summer days this could seem long. I remember one such walk where we all (we were a group of maybe 5 or 6) tried to make ourselves faint while walking down the Pixley Road. Someone had shared the technique of taking several deep breaths and then squeezing oneself to go faint...yeah, it works.

I suppose summer school was less fun for those with the pressure of making up a failed course, but as I remember it, it was sort of a fun social diversion during those carefree days of early teenhood.

SPX II -- Where have all those classmates gone?

Like I said before, a class at St Pius X was a unit. For eight years we spent some 180-200 days/year at 6-7 hours/day together (for those counting that's around 10000 hours) in the same place doing the same thing. That's a LOT of shared time..... maybe more than is shared with anyone else in a lifetime. That being said, the day that graduation picture (previous post "Introduction to St Pius X") was taken was the last time I ever saw most of those classmates. It didn't seem strange at the time, we all went on our separate ways to new schools, new classmates and besides, even having shared all those hours in a common experience, many of us were like social strangers anyway. But still, looking back, it is a little sad to think we never hear or know about each other as life goes on and the years go by. I bet there would be a lot of interesting stories if we could somehow organize them.

Many, if not most, of the class went on to one of the several Catholic High Schools in Rochester. St. Agnes and Nazareth for girls and Aquinas for boys were the mainstays. I don't think anyone from our year went to Mercy and a few went to McQuaid, which was then about 10 years old. Some went to the newly opened Cardinal Mooney and maybe some to the also newly opened Bishop Kearney. And many went to Gates-Chili HS. The trek to the Catholic schools was long. It involved getting on early buses at our local stops, transferring at a place in Gates to a bus headed to one or more of the high schools and finally arriving about an hour after leaving home. Then a reverse repeat in the afternoon. Actually, it was a pretty amazing system that was dependable and free (well, we didn't know about school taxes at that age). The only downside was that if you missed the bus, either in the morning or in the afternoon, you had to find a way to get to where you were going - and that wasn't always convenient.

But back to SPX for a minute. I want to mention the connection between the school and the church. Since, in the "new" school, they were attached, we could easily move from one to the other. We did this for occasional confession days - like a class soul cleaning, and occasional masses and lenten services. We altar boys might be called out of class to go serve a funeral. Also, the convent was attached to the other end of the school. It was a mysterious place to us -- a place where all the nuns lived, our teachers. For all the time we spent around the nuns, I for one, knew very little about them. They wore those full black robes with white dressing around the head. All I do know is that some were very, very kind to me during those years - something that I have remembered with gratitude all my life.  I don't know how they managed to keep such order in such large classes but they did (in my memory).

Streetcorners

In some ways, 7th and 8th grades were awkward years. Too young to play the games that always kept us busy before and too young to really have any sort of independence or self-reliance, we just had to find the best ways to deal with our changing social awareness, hormones, relationships with adults, etc. Before online social networks, regular organized activities, even cable TV, that often meant just hanging out.

There weren't many places to go every day after school, weekends, or during those glorious and endless summers before having to work or even do a lot of homework.

What we often ended up doing was just walking around in small gangs which meant oftentimes "hanging out on street corners" as our parents often complained.

But, besides street corners, we were lucky to have had a house which was under construction, seemingly forever, where we could hang out in the afternoons after school. It was on Chestnut Drive, right across from the Volunteer Fire House #3. We were oblivious to any concern anyone might have had regarding these young kids milling around the house under construction and certainly we neither meant nor did any harm. It was just a place to go, a place to be. But I can just imagine all the eyebrows our presence must have raised.

We would also play basketball or pool at someone's house, but things were different when girls entered the equation. Somehow we got through it all. We knew so little, we talked so much, we dreamed, we fantasized...and eventually we got our driver's licenses.

Roadside Ice Cream Stores

On Chili Avenue, across the street from Washington Irving elementary school (in Gates), was the nearest ice cream store for we Chili folk in the mid twentieth century. Carvels had soft ice cream, usually only chocolate or vanilla. When we were kids, at seemingly random times,  our parents would load us into the station wagon to go to Carvels to get ice cream cones. Some were slow eaters, they could make an ice cream cone last forever taking one little lick at a time, and some were gobblers, like me,  who found the treat so tempting it would be devoured before we got back home .... 10 minutes, at most, away. As  teenagers we would often get sundaes -- my favorite was the Mexican Sundae which was hot fudge over vanilla ice cream with Spanish nuts sprinkled over the top. I remember the cones being 25 or 50 cents at the most, the sundaes maybe a dollar....but then, gas was 35 cents so I guess inflation makes it all comparable.

Carvels had competition. Abbotts, first at Charlotte Beach of Lake Ontario, and later across from the airport offered delicious custard, something I still seek out each trip back to Rochester (and swear, if I were more of a business entrepreneur, I could make a fortune on bringing to other parts of the country, just like Rochester hot dogs - reds & whites). And there was Meizensahl's Dairy (a dairy outlet we passed on the way to Conesus Lake) which had absolutely delicious ice cream in a great variety of flavors. Stopping at M's was a great treat after a day of swimming at the lake.

Nearly across the street from Carvels was the Idylbrook Farms (estab 1946) ice cream parlor. It was a little fancier than Carvels. You could go inside and sit down to enjoy your treats - unlike Carvels which was strictly drive by - and they served more than ice cream. I've been told that Idylbrook was a dating spot for Rochester west-enders in the days before the post-war suburbian mushroom.

One thing I always took for granted growing up in Rochester was the simple pleasure of pulling your car into an ice cream stand and getting a cone or a sundae or a milk shake. Sometimes we don't appreciate what we have until we don't have it anymore.

Out in the Boondocks

Growing up in New York State we took the town structure for granted. It was not until I moved away that I realized its peculiarities. Monroe County, a typical NY county is divided into towns (and villages and a city). The City of Rochester ("the hub of Monroe County") is surrounded by towns and villages. Each town is a small political entity unto itself with elected officials, school system, police and fire departments, etc. Some towns had central areas - commercial centers or town centers. Once you get away from this town structure you realize just how expensive it is to duplicate all these services so many times for such small populations. Chili, like other second ring towns, was a little different. On the west side of Rochester, once removed from the city limits (by the town of Gates), it was the boondocks in the 50's. Not populated enough to support its own town services, it shared a high school with Gates (Gates-Chili High School), and another with Churchville (Churchville-Chili HS), and it did not have its own police force.

On entering Chili heading west on Chili Avenue, there is a sign that says "Welcome to Chili -- Home of Little Guy Soccer".  I have no idea what Little guy soccer was/is. I know I never heard of soccer until I was in high school and even then it was a sport that had a "foreign" aura... coached by guys with European accents.

Besides the Grange, Chili had little to offer in terms of teenage activities in the 60's. Chili Center had a library, baseball fields, and ice-skating rink. There were no stores except for a supermarket and drugstore. Westgate plaza was a mecca for us westsider tweens and teens but it was a couple of miles away so we couldn't just hang around there. Maybe the best hangout was Olympic Park on Scottsville Road. There was an old amusement park, bowling alley and most importantly, a pool hall -- and that is where we spent a lot of guy-time from about 8th to 12th grade. I think it used to cost $1.50/hour and the tables were bigger than anyone (we knew) had in their homes.

The Grange

During the 60's there were a lot of dances. They were mostly at schools, but sometimes at other venues most of which have faded from memory. But one place we went to a LOT was the Chili Grange. There were dances there with live bands on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. The building was somewhere out in the country and even before we could drive, we somehow got a ride or hitched a ride.  The only thing I knew about the Grange was that it was some kind of meeting place for farmers. The building had steps in front leading up to the front doors and inside the doors a big open room, maybe the size of a basketball court. In front was a stage and I think there were some side doors towards the front of the hall. Below, with access from the parking lot was another floor where I seem to recall refreshments were served during the breaks.

The great thing about the Grange dances is that, unlike school dances, they were not chaperoned - there were no adults in sight - a place for teens. Nothing very weird happened but there were no adults to tell you how you should be dancing or not to smoke. Drinking wasn't allowed in the building.

The bands were sometimes the biggest draw of all. The only one I thought I remembered was The Invictas - although the names of other bands which were probably comparable just slipped from memory. I found this little note  which mentions a few more bands (Showstoppers, Herd, etc) which I certainly remembered when I read their names.

In the summer, the place was packed and sweltering and often on Sundays it was all but empty. When popular bands played, there would be a stampede to get in through the narrow front doors. All kinds of kids from all over the city would attend the Grange dances. That's part of what made them so different and exciting. It was the kind of place girls, in order to attend, might have to invent stories for their parents. But in looking back..... it was pretty tame - just an atmosphere of freedom from any watchful eyes and a chance to listen to loud rock and roll music.

One thing we never took notice of as teenagers was the Grange cemetery out back. (This cemetery link includes the location of the building as well.)

What do they mean "Don't want for anything" ?

Bear with me while I digress now and then from life in Chili - I might use the blog to write a few things about how growing up in Chili shaped my thinking.

Sometimes when people hear the Zen goal of ridding themselves of "wants" people react (especially the more goal-oriented ones) by saying that it doesn't make sense not to have any ambition in life and other such things.  I think the message is often lost in the loose way the words like "wants", "goals", "desires", "ambitions" are interchanged in thinking about this concept. For me the message has mostly to do with "needs". It is one thing to want to achieve a goal in life.... it is quite another to need any one thing to make ourselves at peace in the world. Goals are fine, but what stresses us and makes us suffer is when those goals turn into obsessions or needs without which we feel lost or sad or non-contributing.

By releasing ourselves from needs we can more easily accept and appreciate what it is we already have.

What is advertising? Creating wants - that's okay, just don't let them become needs. I don't need a Corvette even though I'd like to have one. Wanting can be fun, but needing isn't.

The commandments used an interesting term...do not covet....don't make it a need. Sure, your neighbor has a cool TV and it would be nice to have such a thing.....but don't covet it, don't turn it into a need because then life is out of balance.

The Beatles sing "I Want You...I want you so bad it's driving me mad". That's okay, just don't let it become a need because then someone is liable to get hurt.

Wanting is part of life, needing is part of suffering, also part of life, but something some strive to lessen.

As the saying goes: It's not about having what you want but wanting what you have.

Hasta luego.