Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden at Wendell Wilkie High School.
Hey Mr. C.,
I think it’s really cool that 700 people marched to the Metrodome the other night to protest the name of the National Football League team from Washington, D.C. The Vikings must have been kind of disappointed to see such a big crowd coming, only to find out they weren’t actually interested in tickets.
Me and my buddies have promised never to use the name of that Washington team again! We’re going to call them “The Washington Awkwards” from now on, ’cause that’s how it feels when we see their logo and all their uncomfortable-looking merchandise and stuff.
I hope they pick a new mascot soon.
It makes me think of the ordeal we went through at Wendell Wilkie High School with our team name, which was “The Contenders”, because Wilkie was the Republican nominee for president against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940 and he almost won (NOT).
A lot of students don’t like “The Contenders” as a team name because it just sounds, you know, mediocre. I mean, there’s this feeling of trying your best, but kind of falling short. So the Young Republicans Club got on this kick to change the name to “The Nominees”, because that’s the contest that he actually won – in the Republican Party.
But then the Tea Party Republican Club found out that Wilkie was actually a Democrat before he was a Republican and became an emissary for FDR after losing to him, and wrote a book called “One World” and they felt so disappointed they started to push to change the name of the school to Ayn Rand High with a team called “The Objectivists.”
Just when that idea started to get some traction, the Students Hating All Military Madness In Every Sense (SHAMMIES) found out about Wilkie’s “One World” book and started to agitate for keeping Wilkie’s name on the school and calling the team “The Peacemakers.” But that idea got crushed pretty fast by the administration because (people say) Coach Gittum let them know he’d have nothing to do with it.
Then the Irony Club had to get into the act. They thought our team should be called “The Losers” because that’s what Wendell Wilkie is known for, after all. There were almost enough votes to get a resolution on that through the student council, but at the last minute a splinter group thought “The Failures” would be even more ironic, and they couldn’t keep their coalition together.
Finally a group of moderates in the Honorable Compromise Club pushed to change our team name to “The Statesmen,” which caught on with a lot of people as a less-bad option than all the other ones that were being discussed, and it passed the student council on a narrow, but statesman-like, vote.
But when it got to the Board of Education they threw out the whole idea because it would cost way too much to change all the school signage and letterhead and buy new athletic jerseys and stuff. So we’re still The Wilkie Contenders. Contenders who fell short of our goal! But they complimented us on our process and they hoped we learned something about democracy, which of course we did!
It sure burns up a lot of energy!
Your Pal,
Bubby
What was your Big Cause in High School?
Trail Baboon 
If we had any big causes back when I went to high school, I was blissfully unaware of them. It wasn’t until much later that I began to take notice, and eventually became actively involved in issues I felt strongly about. Ending the war in Viet Nam was the first cause for which I marched in the streets, and took part in sit-ins. After the shootings at Kent State, all hell broke loose in Carbondale. Martial law was declared, and the National Guard deployed; eventually SIU was shut down a few weeks before the end of spring quarter to quell the student led demonstrations that disrupted business as usual both in town and on campus. Since then, there have been numerous other causes that I’ve cared enough about to participate in, but I have to admit the demonstration at the Metrodome isn’t one of them.
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
Despite my high school years being in the midst of the Viet Nam war, most of us were mindlessly checked out. In college there was a little more action, but very little. I quietly opposed the war, but in my conservative part of the world that was a dangerous position to hold.I remember trying to make sense of the justifications for that war–it just did not seem to add up at all in my mind. I lacked the confidence to really say this at age 17. However, year later, as the US decided to invade Iraq, I was sure this was a terrible decision. The Viet Nam experience gave me confidence to oppose that decision.
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As Tom Lehrer points out in one of his marvelous satirical songs, it’s easy to stand up and be counted when you know everyone in the room is in agreement with you. It’s much, much harder to be to lone voice in a crowd of people who disagree with you. That’s one reason I was very impressed by a young man, no more than 15 or 16, who was circling in the rotunda of the capitol building on the day of the vote for legalizing same sex marriage with a sign opposing it. I didn’t agree with him, but I respected his courage to stand up for his beliefs, and I told him so.
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In high school I was a naive idiot who couldn’t imagine opposing anything that most people supported. There was no trace of rebellion in me until my undergraduate college years, when I came out on the topics of nuclear bombs and sex. I was against bombs and for sex. A bit later, in 1964, I campaigned against the Vietnamese war, which brought me into the only conflict I ever had with my father.
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Morning all. I was in high school in the early seventies – we were still riding on the coattails of the sixties back then, at least that’s what it felt like to me. The big issues (at least that I was “into”) were Roe vs. Wade, the end of the Vietnam War, the voting age changing to 18, the oil embargo and, of course, Watergate. I had a history teacher who was fascinated by Watergate; during a summer school AP history class, this teacher spent more than a week having us watch the hearings on tv. And, of course, due to my dad’s work in politics, I was fairly inundated with information about trying to dismantle the draft! It was a pretty interesting time to be alive and involved.
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i am not able to remember what your dads work in politics was.
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If you are replying to me, tim, the big issue with my dad was that he fought in WWII and could not believe that his country would go to war in Vietnam unless it was really necessary. He and I used to have lively arguments about that. When he quit drinking, the arguments went away.
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i remembered your dad steve but i couldnt remember sherrilees dad’s
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As an attorney, he defended a half dozen young men who had tried for conscientious objector status and didn’t receive it. This led him to get involved in the movement to get rid of the draft. As part of his involvement he was campaign manager a couple of time for a state representative.
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ok thanks. now ive got it. what was the outcome of the guys who didnt get the co status. jail or nam?
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Good morning. I can’t think of any cause the came up during my high school years. In junior high there were some kids that were more or less “rebels without a cause” who came to school in low slung blue jeans and smoked cigarettes out behind the school. By high school those rebels more or less disappeared and some had probably already dropped out of school.
There were no hippies and almost no protestors. However, there was some more or less rebellious music that I loved and which most older adults hated. I’m talking about Rock and Roll. Also, there were beatniks who were, in some ways, early versions of hippies. I don’t remember any beatniks in my home town. Protestors were usually labeled as being dirty communists if they dared to show their faces.
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Keeping my armpits dry, especially around the cute girls.
Chris in O-town
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🙂
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I’m with Chris–
I was just trying to get a girl to like me as more than ‘friends’. Kissing! Kissing was a priority for me… didn’t help much.
That’s the thing about theater; after the show, everyone would hug outside the dressing rooms. Soon as the house lights came back up we RAN from the booth to the back hallway so I could get hugs from girls I barely knew. Bliss.
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Well done, Dale… I mean Bubby. High school was before I was politically conscious. It was 1964-66, and the only thing we protested was a dress code instituted by a new principle who wanted girls to keep wearing skirts at all times, and they could be no shorter than x inches. (Don’t get me wrong, we liked skirts, esp. with panty-hose and Keds, but not constantly.) NO JEANS! We were up in arms, and eventually it got removed.
I do remember though, in our summers in the trailer court (I was 10-12), that we kids rebelled when our parents thought it wasn’t prudent to play card games with a group that included two “colored boys”. I was really disappointed in my folks, who up until that time had modeled fairness and kindness. Where, in 1958, had I already picked up racial equality, if they weren’t modeling it? Church in Storm Lake, Iowa?
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In the 50s, when I was in high school, the popular kids more or less dominated the school and some teachers reinforced this system. I grew up in Jackson Michigan, with 2 years spent in St. Clair Shores when I was in the 9th and 10th grades. When returning to Jackson for my last two years of high school, I didn’t belong to the popular group, although I knew many of them. One of the teachers that favored popular kids was surprised when I had some good answers to some of his questions. He asked the popular kids, right in front of me, why he didn’t know me. I think one of the popular kids told the teacher I was okay or something like that. Popular kids, in those days, weren’t very interested in causes.
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The one thing I most rebelled against was what you say in your first sentence, Jim. I rebelled against it as a teacher, how coaches and other teachers stroked the socially elite. In our school it was the choir director, to the max.
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I graduated from HS in 1963. There was much early foment in 1960-63 nationally but little of it was headline stuff. Racial issues were arising but they did not penetrate to NE MN, in part because NE MN was falling apart, the hard-rock steel industry collapsing. The issue of taconite tailings in Lake Superior was of some concern. Our town had a local divisive issue–a local health clinic was started, in the late 50’s, a sort of early HMO. It pitted merchants and upper echelon railroad employees against the blue collar part of town, but not strictly on those lines. I was too young to know much or say much. I had two girl friends in HS, both of whom were very strong-minded and outspoken, very opposite in points of view, especially on the clinic, and both spoke often on the clinic long after it was a fait accompli. As in most things, the girls in my class matured on social and political issues faster than the boys.
I was very low profile through grade 10. When I did start to say things after that it was objections to Jim’s point, about those teachers who stroked the school social structure, which in a steel and railroad town was carefully tied to the town social structure. I also was odd in NE MN in being unimpressed with JFK, an opinion I still hold. Not that I wanted Nixon. Oddly, my two girlfriends (With whom I had on-and-off again relationships) were on the same side of that issue, bot falling under his charisma.
In the fall of my senior year US Steel abandoned Two Harbors, closing the ore docks and all operations. (They later re-established the operation for taconite shipping.) That unified the town, all except for a few old-guard local businesses.. High school students were involved in efforts to raise money to try to develop other companies, which succeeded, except for a bad design by the US Postal service. I was very active in that. But my father had to travel to find work, which left me to 1) be a student, 2) run the farm, and 3) earn money where I could.
From there I went to as politically active a campus as you could find. Early Viet Nam. Racial uprisings, very immediate topic on the South Side of Chicago, and politics, extreme points of view on campus, communists to John Birchers. Which overwhelmed me and made me a moderate cynic.
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heck i wanted to be a protester but the leaders were all such bozo’s. i went to the big protests at kaufmann union and got instructions on how to deal with teargas when the pigs came as they inevitabbly would. charles stenvig former police chief was the mayor and the pigs were out to get the hippie radicals. but the leaders of the cause were the unshaven radicals who were brave enough to take the microphone but once they got it either droned on forever about something that could have been said in two minutes or they didnt have anything to say at all and/or no talent to present the line they attempted to deliver. at school ( i was in a liberal suburban jr high and sr high in a suprisingly non liberal burb of west bloomington) the causes were dress code (i was reminded at our recent reunion that we had to protest to get the right to wear jeans) hair length (over the collar was the rule at the previous high school ) i cared about that one because i was an athelete but grew my hair to shoulder length and found out there was no place in football , wrestling and i didnt bother with baseball the coach was a nazi. the war was the national topic and the draft had me shaking in my boots. older brothers of friends and older friends were coming home in a box or messed up and the reports on the achievement s in nam were discouraging. causes, the casual attitudes toward sex, excellent access to drugs and political upheaval made it an interesting time to be alive. i ws a bit of a conundrum for the administration at the high school. my mom was the art teacher and when i would get suspended i would have them call the art room and tell my mom i was needing permission to leave. it turns out they were frustrated because they thought i was the drug dealer for the school ( i only sold enough to get mine free) and they couldnt catch me because i didnt do it regularly or with strangers. the protests and causes i participated in were boring and pointless. the war went on, the big got bigger and the strong got stronger. it was the beginning of the attitude that allows ceos to make 5000% more than the employees. the powerful realized they could do whatever they wanted to if they put on the correct face. stop having black smoke belch out of the chimneys of the factory and hire a pr firm to talk about how for the environment your comapny is and its almost like really caring. the world has turned a corner of some kind where we give lip service and back it up with documented verified statistics that show i care even if i am bp and the oil leak wasnt my fault. the world is still spewing the poision into the air and seas and soil but the superfund borders seem to end in new jersey. the protest songs were great and had a wonderful ability to make us believe we were doing something but…. i had a way to deal with it then and it has changed a bit but in reality the result is about the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eccz7D0QK0
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I wasn’t one of those who made speeches at protest rallies. I did know some of the people who gave those speeches and there were some who were good speakers. They had a difficult topic and might have been feeling very alienated. I certainly was. It very disappointed to realize that the country was on a very bad path and the great majority of the people didn’t want to hear about it. Even when larger numbers of people joined the protests, they didn’t manage to work together well enough over the long run to make the changes that were needed and still are needed.
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I was in high school during the Reagan years. We protested against Iran-Contra and Ollie North. I remember painting a big sign on a sheet with my pal Andrea and taking it out to protest in front of one of the local recruiting stations – it read “Real Heroes Don’t Shred Documents.” I also protested at a big fundraiser for the local Republicans that Reagan attended – that was my first brush with the Democratic Socialists of America. I became a huge fan of Michael Harrington about then and went and saw him speak once.
Inside my actual school the big controversy was the Christmas tree. The first high school I went to (Central) closed when Minneapolis closed three high schools to balance their budget. Two of the schools had programs that sent students to South High – Central and Marshall U both had student bodies that had been raised to be socially aware and weren’t afraid of protest. The “Old South” students were used to having a Christmas tree prominently displayed in the school office, placed by a huge window that pretty much everyone passed by sometime during the day. The old Central students had a large Jewish population, and Marshall U was just for equality, regardless of anything. A petition was raised to get rid of the tree. The “Old South” kids were used to their tradition, the “New South” kids were offended by it. Shouting and at least one fist fight happened because of the controversy. In the end, a compromise was found – the tree stayed up, but tucked behind a divider wall, closer to the principal’s office – it was still up, but not where everyone had to see it every day. Students of other religions and beliefs were able to add their symbols and tokens to what was displayed in the office. ‘The next year, as I recall, student groups decorated the office, not the office staff.
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The other form of protest that I remember from high school was the boycott of the prom. Prom was too elite, too bourgeois. So the first 3 years of high school – nothing. We also didn’t do sock hops, Sadie Hawkins or any other kind of dance – we were definitely anti-dance. When I was a senior, the junior class said “we really want to have a prom”, so the junior class sponsored a year-end prom. I did go with my then-boyfriend; dress on sale and some of my mom’s earrings. It wasn’t my cup of tea and we ended up leaving early.
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i was the band at my prom. that was a trip
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Sounds like it! Have we heard that story?
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Good stuff, Bubby. You taught me things about WW I did not know.
Is it not amazing, folks, that we have a major sports team with a name which is a racial pejorative, and that a man who grew up in the era of John Wayne and westerns, like the owner of that team, can in bald face declare the name is a proud term.
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In the early part of my high school career Watergate and Vietnam were the twin injustices dominating the headlines. By the time I graduated, both Nixon and South Vietnam had thrown in the towel, and the draft was a thing of the past. For a time it seemed that the world had veered permanently to the left.
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yep made you feel like the world was fixed. now here we are 40 years later.
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unfortunately, there was no change. The policies that lead to the Viet Nam war remained in place and are still in place.
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Oh, what a sky tonight. All rosy at sunset. Anyone see it?
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Yes. A good end to the day.
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missed it with my chinese business colleague commenting before we moved to the indoor bunkers at 430 that it looked like rain must be in the way it was so dark.i love the womblike feel of these early dark acclimatioons and the warm wind relatively speaking make me turn up my collar and be ready for the real weather to arrive.
i missed the rosy sunset. thanks for the silver lining linda. it is appreciated.
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YES! Everything was pink!
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It was amazing, truly glorious.
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