Hi Clasmato,
Here I am with no properly Internet connection at home and unaware of anything you or anyone else might have emailed me since posting my last, yesterday. Since we (Bob and I, anyway), ascertained that you are from Whetstone, Whetstone and my Columbus experience have really been on my mind – mostly because I never gave that school or its students a CHANCE, and plunged into a deep depression my whole senior year, alleviated when I got to college, the reasons being several:
1. I had found a very comfortable place in Pennsylvania in school society – in fact Bob Jones was sort of the class clown, and I led his successful campaign for class president (or at least I THINK I did – LOL!!!). At end of junior year, I was voted best husband material in our class – and it was only later, at Whetstone when several students were eager to tell me that the year before we moved there that Coach Jim Ferrell had caught the entire varsity basketball team in actual sex acts in the showers, and there had been a touch of a hushed up scandal about that.
Several players made real passes at me during season (including the star center who was a year younger – and his boyfriend). I hated the sport – mostly because growing 6 inches a year my coordination hadn’t caught up – and I was basically shy and easily intimidated due to my home environment. At Denison (which got aggressive recruiting me because it did NOT allow sports scholarships, so my height made for possibilities for their team, most tall guys getting sports scholarships somewhere – and my academics and interests, etc. fit what they look for in students. I got grants in aid, as Denidoo, or Den-o-Sin, as we liked to call it has always had a policy that they will FIND the aid if you can get admitted – and they always DO. Denison THEN having the reputation as the TOP PICK for those turned down by the Ivy League or Seven Sisters schools, NOW, for having the highest percent of graduates going into Public Service careers.
Interestingly enough, THAT largely, now, due to former Senator Richard Lugar (IN, Rep.) founding his Institute for Government (or similar – and it is TRULY bipartisan – and Lugar’s Poly-Action committee recently declared support of former Sen. Sam Nunn’s daughter – Dem. --who hopes to run for Governor of GA) there, he being a very active and long-serving trustee, as was Michael Eisner of Disney.
In PA, society had gone into “hippie mode”, and I was going leftist, the BIGGEST result being that PA society in general had relaxed a lot and become more informal – while Columbus, where housing was far more expensive, seemed to me full of helmet-haired people in ticky-tacky boxes decorated in French Provincial or similar. I remember Ohio State won a championship game and there was widespread looting of shops on High Street by enthusiastic crowds. The paper was FULL of letters declaring that FINALLY some people had the SENSE to do that sort of thing for a GOOD REASON – LOL!!!
It was Jim Farrell who saw that Denison might develop my skills (I stopped growing early, believe it or not), so about 1.5 years ago, I tracked him down to thank him, but also mentioned I’d eventually turned out goose-gay and was curious what he had found in that SCANDAL. He blocked my emails – LOL!!!
And at Whetstone my top political hero was actually Lugar, then Mayor of Indianapolis – because he WENT RADICAL and annexed everything around his city so that EVERYONE in the metropolitan was invested in dealing with the metro area’s concerns, the opposite of what today’s Republicans seek to do.
2. Don’t expect any sense to my numbering. Whetstone, although considered the best high school in Columbus System, did NOT have any of the classes I was prepared for in my PA high school, like Advanced Calculus, third year German, etc., so with English and Physics being the only ones appropriate – I had a lot of Mickey Mouse classes and study hall. I remember dating a tall thin woman who seemed exotic because she wore a scarf all the time, learning it was to cover the scars of once having drunk acid to commit suicide. While we dated, Esso became Exxon – not that it meant anything to me then. I took Valerie Diamond to the prom (but never dated her otherwise). I was clinically depressed the entire year, so never noticed how nice people probably actually were to me – my family’s physician having a talk with me about that – me dour and uncooperative – and sent me home with a lot of Playboy magazines to spark my romantic life – HA!!!
Only known photo of Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke Jones TOGETHER (the two most back and left)
Back to Bob Jones for a minute: we used to joke around about that old expression “Keeping up with the Joneses”, and only much later did I learn that Pembroke Jones, the wealthiest rice merchant in the world in early 1900s was from Wilmington, NC and his wife best friends with Mary Lily Kenan lifelong. One of their estates is now Airlie Gardens, the other, a HUGE, gated, well-heeled development, Land Fall, reportedly including LOTS of Kennedys and probably why Caroline Kennedy gave one of the two annual Profiles in Courage awards to a Wilmington teacher who’d valiantly fought Republicans who were down-dumbing education, 1.5 years ago. Land Fall was developed by Frank Hawkins Kenan, and a non-denominational chapel there is named for him.
But Mrs. Jones (all these people had some of the largest estates in Newport, RI as summer residences) threw some of the world’s most lavish parties for the youngish widow and wealthiest woman in the world, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, and THOSE PARTIES for THAT reason spawned the term. Also of interest might be that Pembroke and his wife NEVER did anything public, private, or even SOCIAL – without including Pembroke’s male lover as well. It was NOT a scandal (then).
The Pembroke Jones’s Newport cottage, “Sherwood Lodge”.
And even though I at least went swimming with Bob Jones, I have NO IDEA if he has chest hair or not – me getting a crush on him after dealing with the cruisey Whetstone basketball team and getting ideas. Returning for the PA senior prom to take my old girlfriend Marlowe Schaefer, now married and a lawyer I hear, but sharing a queen bed with Bob and unable to sleep all night hoping for ACTION, which is NOT in his nature – he sleeping soundly all night. Bob, his wife, and I have had our laughs over that already.
3. How about some fun Whetstone DISH??? Both high schools I attended had AVID basketball players who did NOT play on school teams – partially due to height – who just could not ABIDE that this giant didn’t like it and wasted all this height. Their clear love of the sport kept this from ever being obnoxious to me, and BOTH tried coaching and cajoling me. Kerry Glatts in PA (who got me back in touch with Bob half a year ago, actually), and Lester Imboden (son of a successful physician) at Whetstone. Les was fit and had the hairiest legs I’d seen to date, so I was more cooperative with him. He hung with Ronnie, a shop student, and the two of them were WILD for XXX magazines, and this is OFTEN a way to get into male trouble while pretending to ogle gals – something I didn’t appreciate until later, and ACTUALLY their act was a bit weird – a sort of precursor to Beavis and Butthead.
But I searched for Les about a year or so ago (thinking that maybe he’s still single or something), and discovered he lives in rural Ohio, a gentleman farmer collecting many tens of thousands of US Government dollars, yearly, NOT to plant – and is Republican. “Scott” was briefly popular as a first name in our generation – but NOT for our kids. Les named his first-born Scott, and I wonder if there is significance to that. I never actually contacted him.
But I can do better than that. Liz Blees and Jim Buchan (a romantic couple), are the two grads who also went to D.U. with me, Jim living across the hall from me Freshman year, and he and I FREQUENTLY got into philosophy debates, he being a Fundamentalist (and I felt a transformer in his blanket that I was SURE was a syringe and he had a secret habit – until two months later a friend got an electric blanket and I learned what it actually was), and did you know that Liz Blees’ Dad was a very successful psychologist who LOST HIS LICENSE for reasons I know nothing of – about the time we graduated Whetstone. He soon thereafter moved to California and started a church – according to Liz.
Recent pic of Jim Buchan preaching (he really looks like a Fundy Preacher, no???)
Well, Liz was a lot of fun, and one time when she and Jim had an extended separation, I took her on a date and ended up lying, clothed, atop her on my bed and kissing – NOTHING more. She IMMEDIATELY went into a violent whole-body orgasm (which being naïve, I thought was a seizure – the BEST compliment I have ever received in my life – and I DID have an actual pregnancy scare over Christmas vacation with someone else that year, that being the END of my “straighthood”). Better yet, she told me that Jim, who had organized the first ever Fundy Services thing at Denison, him preaching, Freshman year (he transferred to Bob Jones University the next year – not sure if MY Bob Jones had anything to do with this or not, but names and such keep repeating in my life), ALWAYS came off the platform HARD and READY and DEMANDING!!!
I don’t know what happened to Liz Blees (I did search a while back) – I think she left school when her father’s CA ministry didn’t make enough to pay Denison bills, then $20,000.00 for four years – now over a quarter million. I tracked down Jim Buchan to Charlotte, NC about a half year ago – he now the leading inspirational writer for a top Fundy/Tea Party religious mag that is well known. He blocked me, quickly.
OH!!! And do you remember the sort of dumb guy who’s Dad was in trouble for some scandal about corruption in Ohio’s State Prison System which he was head of (he played football and was that physical type)??? I worked with him at the BBF (Burger Boy Food-O-Rama) at Henderson and Reed Roads, and the night of the Moon Landing when he, I, and one other ran it alone with NO customers, he actually did what he claimed so many football players at Whetstone had a secret pact to do all the time in the fast food restaurants where they worked – added to the mayonnaise volume. SWEAR TO GOD this is true.
4. On THAT note, I’m now blank-minded, but I’ve ALWAYS wanted to somehow pay back EVERY school I ever attended – beginning in PA with cut-up Bob Jones and I and others doing a WILD on-stage comedy act – but I haven’t even broached the idea to Bob who is less wild now (I presume). If I can get some writing traction and even name recognition, we could really raise a LOT of money for some needed school project – and of course I would love to do Whetstone as well – but this would not be in the immediate future – especially considering that I live on a government stipend of $1,200.00/month -- I managed to get Disability two years ago – WITHOUT a diagnosis -- by a kindly Jewish shrink in actual Lumberton, NC, the fictional one being the setting of the movie BLUE VELVET, as recently mentioned. Here is the graphic I actually had intended to post then:
Click image to see FULLY.
I lost all my wealth to crooks, mostly in Mexico, and have about $125.00 in the bank right now – LOL!!! I don’t know if “Falconer” will “resolve his depression” to help me at all anymore, but I’m still happy as can be and unafraid of this. God always provides. NO ONE should feel sorry for me.
You see, I really DO need to get going on Lawsuits (which I detest, but if I can expose or clean up corruption in the process, then it is moral). And being now drained, I’ll stop. I can only HOPE you have had time to read this far – at least to get the DISH on our former clasmatos.
I guess this is blog-bound (every salacious thing already posted there, long ago, but this being semi-organized for easier digestion).
Scott
Long time NEW YORKER cartoonist Michael Maslin drew this for me in 1974-- FOUR YEARS before I blasted out of Cape May.
Click to see fully.
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