5) Junior High School

The summer of 1972 was the summer before I would be starting 7th grade at LaSalle Junior High School in September. It was a summer filled with the activity of having our house fixed up after the fire. Two contractors, a father and son-in-law, were doing the remodeling.

Not only were we having our house repaired, but significantly improved. The upstairs of our home had never been completed when it was built. We referred to it as the attic and just used it for storage, there was not even a floor in part of it.

This upstairs was to be completed and would be a bedroom for my brother and me. My parents would move into what had been my bedroom. Their bedroom was to become part of the living room so that it extended all the way across the front of our home. It was all to be done with that wood paneling on the walls that was popular during the Seventies.

The rough sub-floor upstairs was pulled up board by board and thrown out to the side of the house. This meant that I had a lot of lumber to mess around with. In addition, there was plentiful paneling scraps from which I would build such things as shelves. The summer was filled with the buzz of saws and the scent of lumber and I would sometimes go for a ride to the nearby Grossman's to get more building supplies.

We got yet another color TV, including UHF channels, to go upstairs when it was finished. At this time before the advent of cable TV, there were dials to move the television antenna on the roof, which had a motor in it. When changing channels, the dial would be positioned to point the antenna in the direction of the broadcast antenna of the TV station in an effort to get the clearest possible picture reception.

Television became as important this summer, as music had been previously. There was Sci-Fi Theater on every week with a science fiction movie. The first one I watched was "Them". This was actually the original science fiction movie about ants that grow into giants due to exposure to radiation from the test of the first nuclear bomb in New Mexico and threaten Los Angeles.

I was also introduced to Godzilla and the next week's movie was "Son of Godzilla", about a Pacific island with giant insects to rival Godzilla and son. Then there was another movie, "The X From Outer Space".

The Son of Godzilla gave me an interest in insects and I would take the opportunity to observe spiders, praying mantises, dragonflies and, ants in the field next to our home.

Every day, I would watch reruns of Ultraman. This was about a good monster that would help the Science Patrol to thwart the attacks of monsters that would appear on a regular basis to terrorize Tokyo.

I first became intrigued by clouds and the nature of the atmosphere. I looked up one day, while riding my bike, and saw that there were the usual fluffy clouds (cumulus), but much higher up, there was a very different, wispy kind of cloud (cirrus).

The big news that summer, aside from the visits of Richard Nixon to China and Russia, was the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. There were two rival cereals, Quisp and Quake. Quisp was by far the most popular of the two and a poll was taken on whether Quake should be discontinued. The response was "yes".

In other news, there was a burglary in June of 1972 at an office building in Washington D.C., in which the burglars were caught. The name of the building was Watergate and that name would soon become very familiar.

But even with color TV that could get more channels, the summer of 1972 was still a summer of music.

There was "School's Out" by Alice Cooper

"Everything I Own" by Bread

"You Wear It Well" by Rod Stewart

"Last Song" by Edward Bear

"Summer Breeze" by Seals and Croft

"Saturday In The Park" by Chicago

"Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr.

"Going Down" by The Jeff Beck Group.

The record that I got and played most of all was the instrumental "Outa-Space" by Billy Preston.

LaSalle Junior High School was an older building than 60th Street School. It was constructed of light-colored brick and had been built in the 1930s. Today, what used to be called junior high school is usually called middle school. The school was across the street from the Niagara River. I received a bus pass to ride to and from school but would often walk home.

There was a different class, with different students for each subject. There was four minutes given to get from one class to the next. The day started with first period and lasted until eighth period. A student would have a class, lunch or, study hall during each period.

Each student was assigned a home room. This is where we would go to have attendance taken and for certain other purposes. Home rooms were assigned in alphabetical order of the student's last name. During home room, students that the office staff wished to see (usually for skipping classes) would have their names called on the loudspeaker system to report to the office.

In home room we were assigned lockers, which were in the hallways, and were given combination locks. My locker combination was 2-15-27, but I had never before used a combination lock and had a little bit of trouble with it. Fortunately, there was not enough lockers for all the students and another student was assigned to share my locker and, until I got used to the combination lock, I would just wait for him to open it between classes.

If I remember correctly, there were six elementary schools in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls that sent their students on to LaSalle Junior High School. 60th Street School, where I had gone, was one of the six. That meant that five out of six students in the new school would be strangers at first. There were a few that I recognized from baseball a couple of years before or had seen at the bowling alley.

There were two brothers in my home room with very long hair and I waited to see if they would be allowed to start school without getting haircuts first. They were allowed to go to school without haircuts. There was a girl that I thought for sure that Barbie dolls must have been modeled after.

In the cafeteria, a different lunch was served daily and I encountered some foods that I had previously been unfamiliar with, like Spanish Rice. The general favorite seemed to be pizza. There were treats like ice cream sandwiches. Milk, either white or chocolate, was sold from machines for five cents. Lunch was fifty cents, but some kids had cards that got them a free lunch.

I had French class during eighth period, the final period of the day. There was electric shop, and I became familiar with the basics of electricity. There was also print shop, although the era of setting movable type seems like ancient history now. Seventh grade science focused on biology. In English class, we spent quite a bit of time on the book Treasure Island.

I did not really adjust to sudden change well and it did take me a while to get used to the new school. I would dislike something new at first, but would gradually build an affection for it. When we first landed here, I did not like the nearby factories. But I got to the point where I would be sad to see one of the factory buildings being torn down.

There was roller skating in the gym held periodically. Music would be playing loudly and the song that seemed to be played the most was the heavy instrumental "Rock And Roll" by Gary Glitter.

If a student had a study hall for the last period of the day, he could leave early rather than staying. Periods were 40 minutes, with four minutes between classes, so that student could leave at 2:16 instead of at 3:00.

The school changed it's system so that homeroom came after first period, instead of first thing in the morning. I got my classes switched around so that I had study hall first period.

I would often get to school at the regular time anyway and go for a morning walk during first period. I would often walk from the Junior High School to the B-Kwik store on Pine Avenue (now Niagara Falls Boulevard) next to Burger King. Walking is when I would really think and it became a lifelong habit.

As always, there was new music.

There was the mellow "From The Beginning" by Emerson, Lake And Palmer

"The Hurt" by Cat Stevens

"Alone Again Naturally" by Gilbert O'Sullivan

"Down By The Lazy River" by The Osmonds

"Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress" by The Hollies.

On television, there was a show called "Run For Your Life". It starred actor Ben Gazzara as Paul Brian, a terminally ill man trying to get the most out of the short time he had left to live. He was trying to "squeeze thirty years of living into one or two", as was stated on the show.

There was also reruns of The Patty Duke Show. Lost In Space was still on television. There was Kung Fu and The Pink Panther. There was another monster in sci fi movies named Gamera.

Most important of all, there was Gilligan's Island. It was a semi-comedy about seven castaways stranded on a Pacific island. I got to really admire the knowledge of the professor and to think that I must learn as much as I possibly can, particularly about science.

The Second World War was always on television. My father had went through the war and would often watch movies and documentaries about it. There was the documentary series "The World At War". There was the comedy Hogan's Heroes. There were always movies like The Devil's Brigade, The Guns Of Navarone and, Where Eagles Dare.

In the news were the final Apollo moon landing in December 1972 and the exit of America from the Vietnam War the following month.

Christmas 1972 was a memorable on for me. I was given two gifts that would really shape my way of thinking for the future. One was a set of books called the Modern Illustrated Library, which I still have today. There was a book in the set about every major subject, each was a major volume put together by an academic team.

There was Science (which I read the most), History, Geography, Nature, Communication and Language, Art, Philosophy and, Man in Society. I treasured these books and read them incessantly. They shaped my thinking for life.

The other significant gift was a set of record albums. On television there was a set called "20 Monster Hits". There was an addition called "10 More Monster Hits". It was records of Sixties and early Seventies music and there were photos of the 1969 Woodstock concert on the album covers.

The music in this set included; "Piece of My Heart" by Janis Joplin

"Sylvia's Mother" by Dr. Hook

"Atlantis" by Donovan

"Indian Reservation" by Paul Revere and The Raiders

"Hey Baby" and "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" by The Buckinghams (which I liked when we lived on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls)

"You've Made Me So Very Happy" by Blood, Sweat And, Tears

"I'd Love To Change The World" by Ten Years After

"The Witch Queen Of New Orleans" by Redbone

"Brandy" by The Looking Glass

"Young Girl" by The Union Gap

"The Horse" by Cliff Nobles

"Everyday People" by Sly And The Family Stone

"Arizona" by Mark Lindsay.

During seventh grade, I gained an interest in meteorology and read all about it just as I had my other interests. I also read more archeology and got back into reading about astronomy. I made use of all the lumber left over after the house remodeling and built things out of wood.

I tried my own writing, keeping a diary. I took an interest in finance for the first time and was fascinated with carbon paper. In the spring of 1973, I had a really great kite until it got tangled in the high-tension power lines along 56th street. I had a sling shot with a brace that goes on the wrist, making it more accurate.

There was still more music.

Danny O'Keefe had "Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues".

Vicki Lawrence sang "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia".

The Beatles song "Penny Lane" had already been around for a while, but this is the time that I remember it on the radio.

Finally, there was the Defranco Family with the hit "Heartbeat It's A Love Beat".

During the summer of 1973, after 7th grade, I did a lot of reading in the book set that I had been given for Christmas. I read, or at least looked through, all of the books. But the one about religion and philosophy, I only spent a little bit of time with.

I particularly read the volume about science. My main interest was astronomy and I was given a new telescope with a tripod, much bigger than the one I had gotten back in third grade. My telescope was a refractor, based on a lens, but for the first time I understood the operation of a reflector telescope, based on a curved mirror. The world's largest telescopes are based on mirrors, rather than lenses, simply because a mirror can be supported from beneath and thus can be made much larger. I also had a polaroid camera that took instant photos.

I rode my bike further than ever before. We would often go over to swim in the river at Chippawa, on the Canadian side. I had an inner tube that I would take out on the river. (In those days, tires had an inflatable tube inside). I really enjoyed jumping off the bridge into the river. It was fun to get a flat stone and see how many times I could make it skip off the water.

This also was a time of a lot of trouble, reports of violence and, drugs. I dug out that old book from the Canadian side, Super Karate Made Easy by Moja Rone, and thought about studying it for fitness and self-defense.

There was always new music.

There was "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealer's Wheel

"Crocodile Rock" by Elton John

"Get Down" by Gilbert O' Sullivan

"Delta Dawn" by Helen Reddy

"Brother Louie" by Stories

"Smoke On The Water" by Deep Purple

"Playground In My Mind" by Clint Holmes

"The Morning After" by Maureen McGovern.

In eighth grade, beginning in September of 1973, we had a lot of discussion of current events in social studies class. During that time, current events in America can be pretty much summed up in one word: Watergate. Some Republicans In Washington suspected that their rivals, the Democrats, were getting funding from Communist Cuba.

The June 1972 burglary of the Watergate Building was an attempt to find evidence of this. The burglars were caught because the building had doors which would open in one direction but would be locked from the other direction. They put tape over the door latches, but a security guard noticed the tape and called police.

The Republican president, Richard Nixon, apparently did not know about or authorize the burglary. But he was involved in attempts to cover it up. Within a year, it would lead to his resignation from office. This was the only time anything like this has happened in American history.

Watergate was not the only news around this time. America had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War in the autumn of 1973. A group of Arab countries responded by cutting off all oil supplies to the U.S. The government adjusted the time by one hour in an attempt to conserve energy. Until the crisis was resolved, we were going to school in the morning darkness.

Eighth grade science was about earth science and space and this became my favorite class. I did a project on the operation of a volcano to enter in the science fair. Before the end of the school year, we would go on a field trip to the Ontario Science Center in Toronto on chartered buses.

As always, I did a lot of reading on my own outside of school. I looked at school not as a full education but as merely an introduction to the world. I often did my real learning outside of school because I could follow my own interests wherever they led.

In eighth grade I was really interested in science, particularly space. I memorized most of the moons around the planets in the Solar System. I first grasped what relativity was about. And I was given a new telescope and a revolving star chart at Christmas.

Aside from space, I read about aircraft and this was when I first understood how an airfoil shape to the wing is what actually makes a plane fly. The most memorable book that I read was "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. I had watched the movie back in third grade.

One possession that I was really delighted with was a flair pen that I had gotten when they first entered the market. Ultimately, I lost that one but got another.

In the Seventies, when a guy and a girl were dating they would join their names with a plus sign "+". Written all over the place, from book covers to walls, would be "Dave + Debbie" or something like that. Apparently, the plus sign has long since fallen out of style.

There was a flood of new music during eighth grade and I got a tape recorder so that I could actually record songs off the radio. The quality of the sound was not quite as good as actually having the record, but it was a lot easier.

There was "Sweet Gypsy Rose" by Tony Orlando And Dawn

"Jet" by Paul McCartney

"Time In A Bottle" by Jim Croce

"Benny And The Jets" by Elton John

"Seasons In The Sun" by Terry Jacks.

Cher sang "Dark Lady" and "Half Breed".

There was "Hello, It's Me" by Todd Rundgren

"The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band

The heavy rock instrumental "Frankenstein" by The Edgar Winter Group

Harry Chapin with "W.O.L.D."

"Smoking In The Boys Room" by Brownsville Station.

The Grass Roots appeared again with "Wait A Million Years"

I reorded the older song "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" by Neil Sedaka.

The Defranco Family, who were from nearby Port Colborne, Ontario hit again with "Abra Ca Dabra".

I would sometimes go to Buffalo for the swimming that was offered at the athletic center of Canisius College, near where my father worked and my brother attended St. Mary's School For The deaf. I attended classes at that school to learn the sign language to communicate with my brother. Sometimes, we would go shopping at Towers and Zellers on the Canadian side. (Towers was later taken over by Zellers).

I got a renewed sense of being cool. I got my parents to buy me a leather jacket. I thought that the black light posters that were popular at the time were really cool. I also, unfortunately, began smoking because it appeared to be cool.

I was taken to a church service at the church behind City Hall in Niagara Falls. Both the inside and the outside of the church looked like something straight out of old England. I was not yet very religious but it made me less skeptical toward religion. I suppose that with all of the science reading I had been doing, I was picking up the scientific attitude of being skeptical of religion.

Near the end of the school year, there was a religious group passing out copies of the New Testament in the cafeteria, I took one and it would later be the first Bible that I would really study. I still have it today.

There was a rock concert in Jayne Park on Cayuga Island. A lot of people were openly smoking marijuana. I think that in the Seventies, there was the possibility that marijuana would soon be legalized. This resulted in authorities often adapting a "look the other way" attitude toward it's use.

In the spring of 1974, there was a violent shoot-out on the news from Los Angeles. The police had located a house where a group called The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was based. They had earlier kidnapped the daughter of a newspaper baron, Patty Hearst. She later joined her captors.

Police sorrounded the house and a gun battle ensued. The tear gas cannisters that police use are hot and can start a fire if they land on something flammable. That is what happened and shooting continued from inside even while the house went up in flames, but ceased as the walls collapsed. Patty Hearst was not among the dead found inside.

In May of 1974, we went to the courthouse in Buffalo to be sworn in as United States citizens by a judge now known for his liberal views, John Curtin. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Buffalo Zoo.

I still treasure the copy of the U.S Constitution that I was given upon gaining citizenship. This is what America really is, it is the Constitution. I would study it in great detail.

There was still more music. Around this time, I began to listed to FM radio, particularly 97 Mhz station WGRQ from Buffalo. Previously, I had listened only to AM.

A band called Fancy did a remake of an old song called "Wild Thing".

Chicago had "I've Been Searchin' So Long".

There was "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" by Bo Donaldson And The Heywoods

"48 Crash" by Suzi Quatro, of which I had no idea of the meaning of the song.