Get On the Bus To a New Beginning: Step 77

One thing I never understood was why my sister, Peggy, was so excited about my going to John Marshall High School with her. She had been there since the school first opened four and a half years ago, and from what I could tell was doing just fine without me. If the situation had been reversed and she was two years younger than me there would be no way I would want her tagging along with me. It’s not like we were super close, at least not since we grew out of our highchairs and she no longer took an interest in feeding me. I mean she was all right for an older sister, I guess, especially after she no longer was the tallest and skinniest one in her class with kids picking on her, but she was going to graduate in five months anyway.

So, I walked with her up to the corner of 76^th and Hampton Avenue and boarded the bus with her, and let her introduce me to all her friends. They were friendly, as I recall, but I don’t think any of them shared her enthusiasm over my arrival. When we got off the bus at 64^th and Congress Street I tried not to seem ungrateful as I put some distance between Peggy, who engaged in a conversation with one of her friends didn’t seem to notice, and myself as we walked the three blocks to the school entrance. Since it was winter students were allowed to enter the building prior to the first bell, but we had to walk past the entire length of the school because only the main entrance was unlocked.

Typical of huge structures built in the Midwest as soon as a student moved away from where a draft could be felt coming from the open door all jackets, scarves, gloves, and often sweaters had to be removed to avoid heavy perspiration stains from forming under arms and ringlets of sweat from pouring off the neck and forehead.

Once my attire was in order two things conspicuous to my novice view of the jam-packed foyer were the constant drone of kids talking to their friends that sounded like a string section of a philharmonic in a perpetual tuning session and the piercing eyes staring down from the portrait of the school’s namesake. Justice Marshall as the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was well known for using his firm interpretation of the newly minted constitution as a way to keep both the administration and exuberant lawmakers in check. Similarly, his stern gaze from the canvas told all those who entered to think twice about what route they were going to take to class.

Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman, about an English teacher in a fictional high school in New York, had become a best seller that year, and would be made into a major motion picture of the same name in just another year. Standing in my new surroundings, imagining what my first day was going to be like, realizing I did not want to be caught going the wrong way on a one-way staircase, it became apparent to me that the mythical institution in New York could actually be John Marshall Junior-Senior High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.