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though I did not know the batting averages of the Pittsburgh Pirates, I knew
they had won the National League Pennant with 95 wins. What I really
loved were the names – Vinegar Bend Mizell, Harvey Haddix, Roberto
Clemente, Smoky Burgess, Gino Cimoli, Bob Friend, Vernon Law, and the
hero of the series, Bill Mazeroski, who I heard
live
on the radio hit the home
run to win the series against the Yankees. I was one of three boys excused
from class that morning to help fold up chairs from some parish event, and
Father Cook had the radio on in the rectory. I could hear a cheer go up
from our classroom not far away when the news of the Pirates’ victory came
in. Eight or nine of us bet 25¢ each year it seemed with Tuck Schneider
who always took the Yankees. For once we would not have to pay off. In the
Series, the Yankees scored 55 runs to Pittsburgh’s 27, but the Pirates won
four close games to three runaways for New York, confirming – to me at
least – that numbers did not count for everything.
But that glorious morning skipped me out of only one class. I returned
to the usual threats of fire and brimstone that awaited us if we did not buckle
down and get this stuff. On a more practical side, Sister Vincent De Paul said
we would not be accepted by the high schools to which we were applying
if we couldn’t get this New Math stuff, and then what would we do? She
breathed flames and algebraic equations, steam rising from her black habit as
if hell were only inches beneath our feet.
I took my D for the class along with half the class, but a group of us still
managed to be admitted to Villanova Prep in Ojai, where the same difficulties
were waiting for us. Freshman year was regular algebra and I received my usual
C- despite “applying myself.” But fall semester of our sophomore year, first
day, I knew we were in trouble big time as the teacher, Mr. Sorem, passed out
new white paperback math books. I knew what was coming. It was the latest
version of the Set Theory whirlpool applied to Geometry, with added detours,
roundabouts, and codes to be explained later. I think most of us received a
“gentleman’s C,” as there would be problems if Mr. Sorem flunked
everyone
excepting Tommy Mahon, who would later earn a PhD from Cal Tech.
Calculus Calamity
I transferred mid semester to Bishop Garcia Diego, the Catholic high
school in Santa Barbara most of my friends attended. The school in Ojai had
done the math; my father had not paid the tuition. At Bishop, I was placed
in a regular geometry class. This would have been difficult at best had I taken
the first semester background in rules, etcetera, but without them I was lost
and barely managed my usual C-. My other grades were Bs and As, and I was
placed in the advanced group which, for our senior year, included calculus. I
convinced the padres that there was no way I could pass calculus, and so I was
transferred to the second group that did not take math. There was one other
student with my same aversion to numbers and we both ended up with an
extra English section taught by the principal. He’d assign us books to read and
write reports on which we would present to the class while he was called into
the office for administrative duties. Compared to the tortures of calculus, this
seemed like a reward, not extra work.
College Calls
But my mathless bliss was short-lived. I was soon in college and a basic
math course was required for all freshmen unless they qualified for something
more advanced. An aging Christian brother taught the remedial course which
was a review of algebra the first semester and trigonometry second semester.
I never missed a class, tempting as that was, and I tried to do the homework,
but it just didn’t work. I scraped by with my proverbial C- in Algebra, As
in English, Bs in Philosophy. But in Trigonometry I could not gain access
to the inner secrets, to the working of the formulas. He might as well have
been speaking Gaelic – sine, cosine, tangent – all the assorted nonsense
about angles and spheres were light years beyond the one-potato, two-potato
arithmetic at my command. I could not generate anything close to the correct
figures when old Joe Buckley came through the door at the beginning of class,
yelling “Turkey Shoot, Turkey Shoot,” meaning a pop quiz that day.
I went to class, I did the homework, I paid attention, I didn’t get it. I was
truly relieved when I found I had been given a D and not an F for the course,
the operative word being “given.” Old Joe Buckley was an FBI – Foreign Born
Irish – and he must have passed me in the course, dipping deep into the well
of Christian charity, pushing the limits for a young man to whom he must
have figured he had some ancestral connection. That was close. Passing that
class meant I was done with math forever.
VietNam
The next year, however, we were subjected to the Selective Service test
to determine if we’d keep our college draft deferments or hit the jungle trails
of Khe Sanh, hot-footing it past mortars, punji stakes, and bouncing betties.
That test in the fall of 1966 was given by the Educational Testing Service
which was, I had no doubt after the SAT, a trickle-down organization with
roots in the Spanish Inquisition. All their tests were loaded with math –
Trig to Qualitative Nonlinear Differential Equations. I made as many blind
multiple-choice guesses as they had 1-5 spaces to fill. Seventy or above kept
you off the next nonstop to Chu Lai, and miraculously I scored 71. I couldn’t
believe it. For a day or two I almost believed in religion again, believed some
guardian angel had guided my guessing hand. SAPO! as my school-mates on
the east side used to say – meaning blind, unconscious, stupid, undeserved,
rotten, unmitigated, numbskull Luck.
M M
ontecito
emories
98
summer
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fal l