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Too Darn Straight
In 1969, “drugs” were still shocking and, for middle-class kids like me, illegal and mysterious. In ninth grade, the school had held an assembly where we had to watch “Reefer Madness,” a film intended to show us that smoking pot could transform us to insanity or worse.
But in that year, between the Civil Rights movement, widespread protests over the Vietnam War, and the ongoing sexual revolution — oh, how shocking was the depiction of birth control pills and a diaphragm in the movie “Goodbye, Columbus” in April 1969! — everything that our parents had tried to teach us felt dubious.
My Montclair High School years (1965–69) turned me into a highly focused nerd, determined to learn more and succeed better than the anyone else. (Although I graduated fifth in my senior class of about 500, I felt I’d failed to please my parents by not being number 1. More on that, later.)
Yet I couldn’t help feeling distracted by several young men in my grade. I gaped at Ted’s political commitments; was both fascinated and terrified by the urgent Black Power stance of someone who I think is now on the school’s Facebook page, supporting strong community; and, most of all, I longed to impress Rick, who opened up the great modern poets to me. (I’ll never forget the shock of his reading of William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” or diving into T. S. Eliot without understanding…
