Nancy's Sophomore Slump

Me, age 15

By Tenth Grade I felt like an 'old pro' at high school. The year was a heady journey of ups and downs. I went on my first date, studied journalism, saw the end of a friendship and the deepening of others. That spring, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. A boy at school died. And Mom suffered a major health crisis that hospitalized her for weeks.

Me, fall 1967

I had taken Algebra in summer school so I could 'catch up' to my friends and take Geometry as a sophomore. I started out ok, but couldn't keep up and failed the class.

My geometry teacher Mr. Jacobson and I had a 'special' relationship. One day he said I was his favorite geometry student. "He kept bugging me and asked, "Who's your favorite geometry teacher?" That spring, when I was flunking the class, I told one of his honors geometry students to "kick Mr. Jacobson hello for me," and she did. She said he laughed and thought it was 'sweet of me' to remember him. When I came into class he told me, "I got your hello." I apologized, but he said, don't think of it, adding that he was "happy to fill my head with geometry."

About Journalism class I wrote, "Mr. Rosen's going to be a real peach of a teacher." I loved the class, even selling the Herald newspapers and Lancer yearbooks. I wrote, "Everything Mr. Rosen says sinks and goes deep into me. I looked through all my old Heralds and my Lancer.  I bet I’ve looked at my yearbook a million times."

I had Biology with Mr. Gasiorowski whose passion for his subject was infectious. What a great teacher and a great guy. He was a Chicago Cubs and Eddie Stankey fan.

When my dad brought home two rabbits in the spring I named them Eddie Stankey and Stanley Miller, a chemist Mr. G talked about who made amino acids in a test tube. My brother called the bunnies Spot and Snow.

Me with Edie Stankey and Stanley Miller

When Mr. G talked about Desmond Morris' book The Naked Ape I bought a copy. Mom picked it up to look at and was appalled by the description of the human body response during sex. I told her I had read more salacious things in her books which I had picked up and read!

In October my folks went to the Parent open house. I wrote, "Apparently Mom and Dad had a good time at open house tonight. They liked all my teachers, especially Mr. Rosen and Mr. Gasiorowski. Mr. R said, “I don’t know if any of the kids have been telling you what we’ve been doing..”
“Yeah!” Mom said.  “Two hundred sentences…”
“That was a while back.”
“Now you're doing verbs and photography.  She likes your class best, I think.”

Girl's Choir 1967-68. I am in the second row from bottom, fifth from the right.

I was thrilled to be promoted to Girl's Choir. We wore a navy blazer provided by the school. I felt really sharp wearing it to school on days we sang. I was always singing, walking home or through the school hallways. They were a great group of gals and I made many friends in choir. I enjoyed Mrs. Ballmer.

Gym was required for two years. My gym locker was near that of the 'Greaser' girl who had bullied me in junior high, taking my hat and throwing it. One day I was singing while dressing and she said, "She's singing. Are you singing for me?" I replied, "If you want me to." And so I sang the second alto part of the song we were learning in choir. Her friends listened, too. They said I was good. I was never picked on again. It was a confirmation of something I had believed when a girl: if a bad guy came along all I had to do was play the piano or sing to calm the wildness.

I was still pining for the same boy. I wrote, "Mom left me with no hope. But Dad did. He said, “Don’t give up.” He said anything—even a fumble—boosts a guy’s morale. Let’s hope so. Of course, he ought to know, being a guy himself—once."

My old neighbor and friend Mike D. who had moved away was now a freshman at Kimball. I was too shy to talk to him. One day he gathered his courage and asked if I was me and then asked if I remembered the telescope and Homer the Ghost. I didn't have the courage to let him know I really had liked him. Partly it was pride, as I was a year older, but mostly I was shy.

A boy from my homeroom teased me for a while then asked me out. We dated for a few weeks, going to a school dance. We were dancing to My Girl when he kissed me, my first kiss. He wanted to go steady. I liked him as a friend, but we had little in common and I broke it off.

My homeroom class, 10th Grade. I am in the second row, third from right.

I followed several friends and joined the Political Action Club.

I never cared about sports but went to the football games at school to see my friends. I did learn a little about football.

I was writing more poetry:

The sunlight from the window,
Formed a stream of light flowing into the room.
The light illuminated the particles of dust
Floating on the river of melted sun.
The slowly sinking silver moon
Abandoned its position in the heavens
Giving it up to the victor, the sun.
A rosy dawn slowly, silently
Took over the sky transforming
A midnight blue to rainbows.

I read Gone With The Wind and wrote, "I feel I know Scarlet and Gerald and Rhett and Melody and Ashley all personally. I suffer with them. They haunt me, through Rhett's asking Scarlet to be his mistress, through Ellen's death, through when Scarlet finds the Tarleton twins have died. War is horrible. The book is so much a love story, but also it gives an excellent picture of Southern life and a great background to the Civil War. I never knew that was like that."

Other books I read included Alfred Hitchcock's Stories Not for the Nervous; The Moonspinners; The Return of the Native and Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy; Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote; J. D. Salinger's books; John Knowle's A Separate Peace; Green Mansions; The Foundation Trilogy by Issac Asimov; Kingsblood Royal; The Chosen by Chaim Potok; Anna Karenina; and Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein.

Tom and Dad playing at dining room table, Me and Mom.
No one else wore their hair that way. I always did something weird.

The fall began with the murder of a classmate's little brother in the Quickstead Woods near Kimball. Then my Grandfather Ramer was hospitalized after his first heart attack. One night some boys were trying to get the attention of the girls who lived across the street. Dad yelled at them to be quiet. They threw a beer bottle through my parent's second-floor bedroom window.

That October, listening to my records I wrote,

"Life is so baffling and unpredictable. It schemes, and you can only hope you’re on the right side of the conflicting forces and not on the overpowered side. It can cut you down like a scythe cuts the wheat. You fall at its mercy. It can be endless in every way as the stars. It can make you as exhausted as one lost in a pathless woods.

I won’t cry, no I won’t cry,
I won’t shed a tear
Not as long, not as long as you
Stand by me.

I feel so strange to feel so friendly
To say “good morning,” and really mean it,
To feel these changes happening in me,
But not to notice still I feel it.

"It’s all so strange. To say “good morning” and really mean it.  It makes me think.  Do they?  Does someone care, even if to say a “good morning?”  What is there left to say?  Is there something I’ve forgotten?  One person left blank?

“I can no longer keep my blind drawn,
And I can’t keep myself from talking.”

"But I notice, I feel it. What a strange effect a beautiful, overdubbed melody can have, creating a whole new emotion out of nowhere. Changing instantly how you feel. Maybe tomorrow I’ll know the answers. Maybe tomorrow I’ll know. I can only wait. And hope He will stand by me, as before."

At Christmas, our neighbors the McNabs joined my family for a turkey dinner. I played Christmas Carols on the piano and they sang along. Afterward, Grandma Ramer, Dad, my brother and me took a drive to see Christmas lights.

We ended up in Detroit. I wrote, "We saw Cobo Hall, Ford Auditorium, The Spirit of Detroit, Hudson's Christmas display windows. It began to snow, not much on the ground, but it does look beautiful to look out your window and see snow falling. Yes, we saw Detroit in all its glory, and the dark, back alleys that chill you to the bone. Not far from Grand Circus Blvd. and it's lighted stores, are broken-down tenements. But even there, in cracked windows, can be found a few colored lights, a lighted candle."

We spent New Year's Day in Tonawanda. I wrote, "Now I'm grown I can see people's personalities. Aunt Alice and Uncle Kenny, Skip, Tom Wilson. Skip says I can't marry until I'm 30--get an education. Uncle Ken is funny. Aunt Alice will have a baby in July. John [Kuhn] pities poor dad--"even your own daughter!"--because I pick on his big nose." I wrote that "Nancy Ensminger was impressed by my description of my life in Michigan." Sadly, Aunt Alice lost that baby.

In January I wrote, "I think the world's falling apart. Riots, wars, crime--dear God, I wish I lived on some obscure island in the Pacific or on an iceberg off Greenland. When will man find peace? Will he ever? We destroy all the beautiful things with ugliness. I wish I were a child again able to live in my own magical world and leave the rest up to the adults. But in this day and age, teenagers are caught up in it. Ever since I heard [a boy] talk about being drafted I've been scared for the boys I know. I hate war. Cutting down the nation's youth, without a chance, growing up too quickly."

The Herald, our school paper

On April 5, I wrote, "It happened again. Martin Luther King Jr's murder. Students wore black armbands, shaking their heads silently during Mr. Stephan's speech. They protested that the flag wasn't at half mast until the governor proclaimed it. They were emotionally upset. We all felt bad, and perhaps guilty for our race. We are the future who will deal with this problem. It's fortunate most felt compassion instead of victory."

On April 6, I wrote, "It seems we just all exploded happily over Hanoi's wanting a peace talk, and up, up, up went the stocks. LBJ had to stay and cancel his trip as riots broke out over King's murder and down, down, down went the stocks. I am convinced this country is a mess. Mr. Jacobson's been talking politics in class lately, and Mr. Burroughs is great on current events. I've learned a lot about him about Vietnam, stocks, the racial problem, and other problems of this Rat Race. Mr. Gasiorowski has been preparing us for sex, marriage, and other things about Adult Life and responsibilities. With Mr. Rosen we try to take this world and report all the latest facts on the Rat Race to the Rats themselves. So, in the end, you've gotta get involved. Mr. Gould tries to help your 'love life,' and Mrs. Ballmer helps you get enjoyment out of succeeding and working hard to get to the top. And Mrs. Dubois teaches teamwork. In school, they prepare you for Life."

On April 18, I went to Great Scott on Crooks Rd. with Mom to buy easy meals. Mom was going into the hospital for two weeks and I would be responsible for cooking, cleaning, and getting my brother up and to school. Every few years Mom would try another treatment for her psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

In May, my journalism class attended a conference for high school students held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We got press cards. My friends and I spent time wandering around town among the college students. I hoped to go to college, too. But I had not talked to my folks about it.

The photographer for the school newspaper and yearbook was the step-son of my Ninth Grade English Teacher, Mr. Botens. He would hang around our classroom, talking to Mr. Rosen. One time they were discussing how to photograph a person in a jar and they asked me to pose. I was wearing the Mod suit I'd bought with the money I found on my way to summer school. I liked Joe, but he was older and I thought he was too cool for me. My friend Dorothy knew him and one day we went to his house so she could return chemistry papers she had borrowed. In April she told me she asked him if he'd date me. She said he said he thought I was cute and would consider--it but he had a girl. That was bitter-sweet.

On May 15, 1968, I came to school and my friend Kathy gently broke the news that Joe had suffered a serious accident. I was stunned. At choir, my friend Peg told me Joe had died. The Girl's Choir sang Happy Birthday and I was offended, unwilling to have life go on in the midst of death. I grieved for days, recalling all my losses over the years. In the end, I decided, "So, follow his example, when he lived. Find the ambition and vigor he met life with. And die with the courage and determination he did, but only when it is time. Now you know death for what it is."

Newspaper articles on the death of Joe Botens

1969 Lancer tribute to Joe Botens

On June 5, I turned on the radio and heard that Robert Kennedy had been shot. One of my close friends was upset, saying her parents didn't understand. There was another school rally and the Principal gave another speech and a prayer for Kennedy's recovery. On June 6 I wrote, "I prayed as I fell asleep: Don't let him die, don't let him die."

October 1967 Free Press photo of RFK visit to Detroit

While Mom was at the hospital the doctors discovered that she was being harmed by the medications she was on and they took her off them, cold turkey. She became very ill, losing both weight and her hair. The family feared she would die. Dad came home from work, ate, and went to the hospital. I was not allowed to go. I stayed with my little brother.  It was an awful, stressful time.

The school year ended. The last day I walked home alone, for all my friends had left already. I was very blue. Summer of 1968 was the lowest point of my life.

The stress of Mom's illness showed in my family. I was falling into depression, moody and unhappy. My folks were short with me. There were fights. They did not understand that stress affects the whole family.

My Uncle Dave was in a horrible car accident in Annapolis. I went with the McNabs to see The Graduate. I traded bedrooms with my brother, making me nostalgic thinking about all I'd experienced while in that room. I went bike riding with my girlfriends. We saw the fireworks display at the Clawson park, just a block away from where I now live.

Mom was still not well when my July birthday came. Instead of a Sweet Sixteen party like my friends had, I was lucky to have a cake and a family gathering.

I struggled with the evil in the world, the loss of my naive belief in the innate goodness of all people. Now, I wondered if I wanted to live in such a world. I prayed to just die and then felt terror. I realized my terror was because I believed in God and feared that my prayer might be answered. I had at least accomplished one goal: I was on my way to a real faith.

One summer day I took my brother Tom and his friend Bruce McNab to show them my daily walk to Kimball. After Freshman year all I could think about was getting back to school. This summer I was nostalgic for simpler, happy days. One year had changed everything.

Bruce McNab and Tom Gochenour

You Must Change Your Life: Ninth Grade and a New School, a New Me

Me, age 14

Fall of 1966 saw another change in my life: going to high school meant a third new school since 1963. Homesickness had been replaced by nostalgia for the past. Fourteen years old, and already my heart resonated to lines such as, "I remember, I remember, the house where I was born," by Thomas Hood.

Me, Winter 1966-7

Being an introvert, not one to jump in and go with the crowd, I still missed having a best friend. I was lonely. I also knew that my priggishness was keeping me back. Only liking classical music, classical literature, and disdaining the popular was a real drawback to making friends.

My resistance to rock and roll and 'liking boys' was wearing down. I was ripe for change, and high school was an opportunity for a start-over. But, at what cost? Could I betray what I had always been--in exchange for what? That road was unknown.

A few weeks into the school year my English teacher Mr. Botens told the class, "You are three persons: "The person you were in the past; the person you are at this minute; and the person you will and want to be in the future." That comment changed my life, for I understood that I held my destiny in my own hands. I could be who I wanted to be. The question was--what did I want to be?

I was very aware of leaving childhood. "I'm suddenly seeing things through different eyes," I wrote in my diary. "I found out what life is all about. The suffering, pain, and work that was ahead. But the thread broke and the dream of childhood drifted away." I wanted to write, and knew "it takes imagination to write fiction, and study, brains, and experience to write non-fiction."

Homecoming float for Freshman Class, Oct. 29, 1966

My Freshman year classes at Kimball held a mixed bag for me, academically. I actually did good in General Math, Civics, Glee, and even Gym, but ended up flunking German although I really wanted to learn. I never could memorize. In college, I just squeaked by in Latin.

Team English had three teachers and 90+ kids. I was in the highest Reading Group, but middling spelling and grammar groups. (Many years later when working in editing and copywriting, I kept my trusty grammar guides beside me.) I loved Mr. Botens.

Girls Glee Club 1966-67. I am on the center row, far left. 

I was in Girls Glee Club and was pleased when Mrs. Ballmar called me to join a group of girls she thought were some of the best singers. My training was good: I had been in chorus in elementary school in Tonawanda and played the piano. My folks bought me a guitar and I was taking lessons and teaching myself to sing folk songs with guitar. I loved the idea of 'portable music,' an instrument I could take anywhere.

The Christmas Concert was an amazing experience, with all the choirs joining in the last piece, The Song of Christmas, and the O Holy Night. Learning the alto for O Come, O Come Emmanuel was handy considering how many times I sang it in church over my life! In my four years singing in three choral groups, the Christmas concert remained a highlight of each school year. Performing was exciting. In the Spring Concert, we sang Mr. Wonderful.

1966 Christmas Concert program

I made many friends in Glee. Pat had been in Mrs. Hayden's class and we became best friends that year. If I was fearful and controlled, Pat was a free spirit who pushed the envelope. She certainly pushed me into uncomfortable areas. Even going to see Dr. No and Goldfinger at the Main Movie Theater was a push for me!

Pat took me home with her after school and we practiced flirting with the 19-year-old man who was helping to build an addition on Pat's house. We made pulled hard candy. I stopped by Pat's house on the way to school and we walked together, or her mom gave us a ride in bad weather. Pat let me borrow her parent's copy of Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis. Now, I wonder if her parents knew! One weekend we walked to downtown Royal Oak by way of the railroad tracks, discussing religion.

I had a mad crush on a boy and Pat encouraged and abetted me in all the wrong ways. But, I also had crushes on dozens of other boys as well. It is a great relief to know that as a teen Jane Austen was described one of the silliest and boy crazy girls in England! I can excuse myself for being normal. I had finally broken my vow to never be silly over boys.

Me and Pat, summer 1967

Pat encouraged me to lose weight, giving me an exercise pamphlet. I went on a 1000 calorie diet. Mom had already tried a high protein diet, a calorie control diet, and even 'pep' pills. I can't believe the doctor gave me pep pills! Plus, I walked 2 miles to and from school every day. I did lose 25 pounds before the end of summer 1967.

By the end of the year most of the girls I would be friends with in high school I had already met. Friendship was such a big deal to me after several lonely years. I would walk girls to their classes for a moment's gossip, and be late to my own class!

In my diary I wrote about the overwhelming newness and awareness of just starting life, but also the lack of a purpose in life. I was still seeking the faith in God I had observed at the altar call when I visited a Baptist church in Sixth Grade.

"I think some people don't have a point of life to make it worthwhile. You may be having a grand time, but what is it worth if it doesn't have a point? A goal, a purpose, something to achieve. I don't have a point in life. I'm just living it. Seems a pity to just waste it. I just go on and on, every day. As much as I love life--my life--it doesn't appear to have much of a point." I continued, "The best point to have, I think, is God. It must be. Our point is to worship God, to believe in and love God. To serve him, and not we ourselves. No, not ourselves. We should do God's bidding. That seems like a good point in life. It really does."

I was not "there" yet, and my language reflected what I had heard, not what I had personally experienced.

Christmas came and went. Our consumer, throwaway values upset me when I saw the Christmas trees at the roadside. I wrote,

"I was thinking about all the little Christmas trees at the side of the roads now. How can people just toss them out in the snow? To think--a few days ago, they were decorated and "oohed" and "ahhed" at. Now, no one cares beans about them. They were beautiful, and loved, but once used, they're tossed away. Trash. People kick at them while walking. No one now thinks of how beautiful they were. People use them, then just throw them away."

I also wrote a poem, full of mock pathos:

The Tragedy of the Ever Green Tree

ah, once pretty ever green tree
with strands of tinsel
still hanging among your branches
of brown, falling needles;
the season's over.
ho-ho-hos and presents are gone,
safely tucked away in drawers and rooms
and memories.
your work is done, ever green tree.

once pretty ever green tree,
laying in the once fresh sparkling snow
now dirty and gray
next to tin cans full of
residue and refuse from the holiday--
the garbageman will come for you,
children kick you on their way to school,
and cars splash black melt on you
as you sit by the roadside.

once grand and regal
in the warmth of the livingroom,
decked in lights and donned in ornaments,
now you lie in the cold,
on the street
to be taken away.
grandeur has left.
all fame leaves with the turning
of calendar pages.

I was in my e.e.cummings phase. I later read this poem in speech class but gave an alias for the author. It was not the only poem I was to write about a throwaway society. When I was in my early twenties I wrote,

I am an old Bic pen,
an empty tube of colorless plastic.
Bought cheap.
Used.
Discarded.
The consumer's whore.

Mr. Botens had to get our parents get permission to read The Catcher in the Rye. I had never read anything like it. The last book I had written about reading was Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. In January I wrote, "I picked up some good sayings from Holden. Good ole' Holden," adding it helped me 'express' myself. I also admitted that the 'sex' stuff in the book was pretty embarrassing to discuss in class. I took to introducing myself as Rudolph Schmidt, the alias Holden used when he met a fellow student's mother. I went on to read everything I could by or about Salinger.

Other books I noted reading that year included Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ethan Frome, Death of a Salesman, The Oxbow Incident, Inherit the Wind, In Cold Blood, and The Great Gatsby.

The first 45 record I ever bought was Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfield. I was now spending most of my allowance on a 45 record a week, which I bought at the Kmart store in Troy. Records I bought included Michelle, Ebb Tide, Homeward Bound, Message to Michael, Sloop John B, Monday, Monday, Paint it Black,  Red Rubber Ball, and I Am A Rock. I even bought silly records like Little Red Riding Hood! So much for pledging to never like silly music like Itsy Bitsy Teeny Tiny Polkadot Bikini!

I kept the Top Ten record sales lists in my scrapbook

Easter 1967

But that other side of me was still there. At home, I played classical music on the piano, drew, and filled notebook after notebook with my writing.

In March I wrote, "It's fascinating, even at my age, to see a butterfly land on your finger, spreading it's golden-orange wings in the breeze as if it were keeping time to some unheard song. Sitting peacefully and calmly without at care. Only to fly away in a moment. Up and away it goes, off to another place. Gaily it circles in the wind, to land on a flower or a green leaf." But I also envisioned a dark future, "Perhaps it will land in a spider's web. Carefree, happy and gay--it's caught. It struggles to get away, but alas, it is too late. He turns gray and soon our pretty butterfly is no more."

Dad in our back yard. 1967

May 21, 1967, my family went to see dad's friend who lived in Windsor, Canada. I documented the whole trip minute by minute. I wrote,

"We went by the tunnel. We stopped at a Hi-Ho restaurant for a hamburger. Customs took about 2 seconds. On the way back to Detroit, we saw a whole pile of smoke. Dad thought it was from a factory. But as we got close, we decided there was too much smoke to be from smoke stacks. It was a fire, a tremendously big one. The flames went up so high in the air, and the gray smoke swirled upward in the wind to form big billows of gray clouds. Beautiful--yet deadly and sinister. A two-story building was on fire, and [there were] houses all around. People emerged from everywhere and nowhere, all watching and talking. We heard on CKLW it was the third time for that building to be on fire this year."

Then, Dad got lost.

"We had to travel until we found Woodward. We went through the heart of Detroit and the slums. The slums I've seen in movies all year in Civics, they were right there in front of my eyes. The crowds of people in front of porches, talking, leaning on cars, sitting on steps. The mutilated buildings boarded up. Why doesn't someone do something? I wish I could. I don't blame them for hating us. I think we're half-sick. Why can't everyone feel the way I do? Why so much prejudice? I think there should be more propaganda to get sympathy for the Negroes, and booklets telling how you can help them fight for their rights. And if anyone says we're traitors--no--we aren't. It's the patriotic, right, Christian thing to do. To put them down should be a sin or something. I don't know, I swear, I don't know or understand anything. Nothin."

I ended by writing, "Born Free is playing on CKLW. We're all born free, and yet some can't be free. We are born with rights and then somebody comes and takes it all away because your skin's the wrong color. Hate--violence--the one to blame is the one who won't give citizens their rights."

My teacher Mr. Warner taught us that there is only one race--the human race.

Most of my diary is filled with an obsession with friends, boys, and the agony of typical teenage angst over friends and boys. I hardly recognize the girl I had become during those teenage years. At fourteen I had an idea that people change continually, evolving, and named each change an 'era'. I suppose I still believe that for looking back I can see myself becoming different people as experience and wisdom shaped me.

March 21, 1967, Detroit Free Press story with Kimball boys.

April 11, 1967, Detroit Free Press. Hemline wars.

From My Files

I have been tossing and organizing. I found my high school newspapers. I was in journalism and the newspaper staff for three years. 

A great fashion ad! 

But also in these old school newspapers were articles about the social issues that had become youth culture issues.

 In 1970 Earth Day came to school. I still have my Give Earth a Chance button!

Anti-war demonstrations took place across the country on October 15, 1969. Including in the Royal Oak, MI Memorial Park.

 A special edition of the paper came out after on April 22, 1968 about the assassination of
 Rev. Martin Luther King.

 I had not remembered the hiring of the school's first African American teachers in 1969.

And I sure didn't recall writing this article on student's reaction to including minority studies in the curriculum. (Note: I had an elective history class in Modern History that included reading about the creation of Unions and on Civil Rights. Rad.)

An article that totally threw me was in the March, 1970 issue: The KKK had visited KHS! The student reporters, one of whom was a good friend, reported that the head of the Michigan KKK (who admitted to being a bigot) was promoting Gov. George Wallace for president in 1972. He said the American Independent Party was for the "white, lower-income, middle class American".

I had not realized when I picked up these papers that I would be gaining insight into the social issues of my high school years.