"Culture Shock" - Submission #43

From day one in California, I immersed myself in a new lifestyle. Gone were the vices of weed, cigarettes and alcohol. Gone were the days of self-medicating to escape the painful realities of my life. I no longer wanted to suffer through life, I wanted to embrace life... a new life... and drink it in.

As I started to attend church, much about me was in stark contrast to who I was just months earlier when I attended that church service with my brother. My appearance was quite different. My hair was much shorter. My wardrobe now fit in with the other “church goers.” My attitude and countenance now reflected a teen, eager to learn, as opposed to one that couldn’t wait to escape a sanctuary of individuals so different than myself.

I was in the midst of turning over a new leaf... which was a good and noble exercise. A concerted effort to execute a complete makeover of my attitude, inclinations, habits, thoughts and actions. But even though the church setting and living with a preacher served as a backdrop, my early acts and evidences of transformation were not the result of a religious experience or a confrontation with God. The changes in me were the result of my overwhelming desire to live a life that had zero resemblance to the life I had lived up to this point. This distinction was lost on me at that time. It was also not understood by those observing my changes play out.

More on that later.

My arrival didn’t give me much time to prepare for the start of my junior year of high school. I lived within the boundaries where students were assigned to attend Excelsior High School in Norwalk. This was a very old high school and one that would end up getting closed down a few years later. As a point of interest, after it closed down, it became the movie set for “Grease 2” and a number of other TV shows and movies.

Of one thing, I was certain... I did not want to attend Excelsior High School, a school well known for its frequent gang activity. This truly frightened me and caused me to lose sleep.

Frankly, no school in the area was exempt from some sort of gang infestation but some had better track records than others. One such school was Richard Gahr High School in Cerritos. Gahr was known to be pretty racially balanced with minimal gang issues. Luckily for me, my brother, Butch, lived within the Gahr boundaries. So... I “borrowed” his address and enrolled at Gahr.

Despite the fact that attending Gahr ended up being a good choice, the first few weeks of school was an exercise in massive culture shock. I had attended California schools from Kindergarten through the 4th grade but that was a long time ago in “kid years.” My formative years, ages 10 through 16, were spent in small town Iowa. I went from attending a lily-white high school in the Midwest, with less than 200 students to a racially diverse high school in Los Angeles County with over two-thousand students.

Almost everything about school was different in California. There were no inside hallways… every passageway was outside. Our lockers were outside. Most everyone ate lunch outside in the area known as the “Quad.” For the most part, the various races stuck together during lunch period… blacks with blacks, Mexicans with Mexicans, Asians with Asians and whites with whites. Unwritten rules… I guess. I normally sat alone during those early days.

Many students fell into specific categories or cliques that seemed to have their own peculiar dress codes and languages… like the “Stoners,” the “Surfers,” the “Cholos,” the “Preps,” and, of course, like most every high school in America… the “Jocks” and the “Nerds.”

As for me, my style was pretty simple... all the basic colors of corduroy pants
and black wallaby shoes.

Gahr High School was relatively close to where I had attended elementary school before dad died and we moved to Iowa. So, it was interesting to come across some kids that I knew but hadn’t seen in more than six years… like, Chet Beatty, Bobby Hernandez, Mike Green, Paul Pugh, James Felton and Ted Walton… these are a few of the names that pop into my head as I type away. Regardless of that past connection, there was no re-connection with any of them during my next two years of high school. Chet Beatty and I ended up at the same church about 15 years after graduation and are still friends and in contact today… but he’s the only one from that group.

To say that I was anxious, intimidated and lost... was a substantial understatement. I watched the clock in each class incessantly, trying to will it to move more quickly. The best part of each day, for me, was hearing the dismissal bell in French class and walking out to see Bill’s turquoise, 1971 Malibu, waiting at the curb to pick me up.

Slowly but surely, over the course of my junior year at Gahr, things began to get more comfortable as the culture shock started to melt away. I got used to my surroundings and formed a few casual friendships. But even through the tough parts of my move and acclimation to my new surroundings … I never… ever… regretted moving to California.

My fondest memories of that time period of my life was living with Bill and Janet in that cramped little apartment across the street from our church. Janet would cook a full meal every night and all three of us would sit around the dining table, talking about our day. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had sat down for a family meal prior to that point.

Bill had a big aquarium with some really cool looking fish and it wasn’t long before I got a 10 gallon starter tank for my bedroom. Bill and I would go to the pet store on Pioneer Blvd about once a week to buy supplies, new fish or just to look around. That was always a highlight.

We really got into UCLA basketball too. It was
interesting to watch the team in their first season without coaching legend, John Wooden.

Every night, at 10:30PM, we would laugh our way through black and white reruns of The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. And then throughout the week, Bill and I would find situations where we would quote Gleason and do our best to imitate his bombastic voice… “To the moon, Alice!”

Life was good. Life couldn’t get much better.

And then… a bombshell.

To be continued…