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Caritas’s religion class and asked questions from the Baltimore Catechism. But
exactly what
the quotient
was? I had no idea. I liked the language of math well
enough – the dividend, the divisor – but never remembered which was which.
I was keen in Geography, and in Grammar – as we called English back
then. I knew South America, our friendly neighbor, and the principal exports
of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru. I knew the capital cities – Bogotá,
Caracas, Quito and Lima – and received a B from Miss Vasquez, which in my
book was a high grade. I attached myself to English grammar with Sister Julie
in 5th grade, and would often sit on the steps outside the classroom doing
that night’s homework before running out to the field for a game of work-ups
baseball. I was above average at diagramming sentences, always knew where to
place the predicate nominative and predicate adjective. B in English as well.
Otherwise, Cs on the report card, and more lectures from my father about
how I should have higher grades, how I wasn’t “applying myself ” when it came
to math. The best I could do was spell ARITHMETIC: “
a
r
at
i
n
t
he
h
ouse
m
ay
e
at
t
he
i
ce
c
ream” – a memory aid Mrs. Hansen gave us in fourth grade. I
gravitated toward language and imagery.
M M
ontecito
emories
Counting Candy Bars
For the immediate future, meaning afternoons after school that week, I
commanded all the numbers I needed in order to marshal my discretionary
funds. Each day my pals and I walked the quarter mile or so down East Valley
Road to Montecito Village and a small grocery store among the dozen or so
other shops across the street from the firehouse and Chevron filling station.
We were mesmerized by the candy stacked on shelves in various boxes,
the penny and two-for-a-penny twists of taffy or tiny Tootsie Rolls and
Abba-Zabas; closer to the register were tiers of 5¢ and 10¢ bars: Big Hunks,
LOOKS, Paydays, Clark Bars, Necco Wafers, Snickers, Nestlé Crunches,
Mars Bars, Zero Bars, and Three Musketeers. We lived to load sugar, but
more often than not, only one or two of us had money, and Christian
charity – sharing – did not always make the journey down the road from
the religion classroom to the store. When I did come up with cash, it was
usually from redeeming a soda bottle I’d found – 2¢ – and I knew exactly
what the choices were; there was no confusion, nothing to work out. All
cost ratio factors were clear in my mind, and, stepping from the candy store
after school, there was no remainder.
Welcome To New Math
Then, before I knew it, it was the first day of eighth grade; the years,
one at a time, had disappeared as quickly as the contents of a nickel bag of
M&M’s. Fowler, Carlson, Witucki, Schneider and I parked our ten-speed
bikes in the rack, lined up for the pledge of allegiance, headed to our new
homeroom and desks and right off were slammed with New Math. Sister
Vincent de Paul thumped down Set Theory books on every one of our desks,
stuff so new the books were paperbacks, the first ones we’d ever had in all our
schooling, so new they didn’t have enough time to bind the book properly.
I knew I was done for – the old numbers were still floating belly-up
in my mind like a sea of dead sardines; I didn’t have the faintest idea (as
we said then) how I would make sense of this. We opened to Chapter
One, where numbers, letters, and Kabbalistic insignias were all in the
mix; Jimmy Darcey rolled his eyes at the ceiling, Peter Cooney looked
down at his desk distressed, and most of the class had glazed blank stares
on their faces. Even Tuck Schneider, who was handy with everything
mathematical, was not looking particularly confident. Only Art Knapp
and Maggie Tappeiner, the A students, were sitting up straight, bright
eyed and interested. Art would choose accounting as his vocation.
Baseball Season Winds Down
It was a warm and sunny morning, mid September, 1960, and my only
thought then was that the World Series would start in a couple weeks, and
96
summer
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fal l