Military School

Today kids use knives and guns in school but when I was growing up we used our fists. It was safer but it was still very, very stupid. And, sometimes with me, it got out of hand so I was sent to military school to learn to manage my anger. I think I was trying to compensate for my smaller size, which actually turned to an advantage in some sports, like gymnastics, and I was also fast.

My parents sent me to military school for discipline after my Bar Mitzvah when I was just fourteen.

I went to a military school in North Georgia and in my second year I made the varsity gymnastics team. The first year I got beat up a lot of times for being Jewish. Of course I fought back but I was outnumbered. Looking back on it now I recognize that I got better than most and was privileged to go to a boarding school, even one where I was singled out as a Jew. I wasn't the only one. There were three of us and we all received our share. So along with privilege I had to deal with antisemitism, the kind you get from kids and when I was tough enough to defend myself that all changed. After I made it onto the "varsity" gymnastics team nobody bothered me anymore, because I then had big friends, jocks from the football team, the boxing team, the gym team - and we all watched each others back. I didn't make the boxing team, but I worked out with them. And, I learned there that it takes more than brawn to defeat one's adversaries, it also takes brains. So, I worked hard at being smarter. But, most of all, it takes BIG friends.

At military school everyone had to go to mandatory "Christian" services in the chapel on Sundays. It was required and it didn't matter to them that a few of us were not a Christian. Christian morality was supposed to work for everyone. I didn't like going but I had no choice. It was the way of life (in the 50s) at the military school. It was horseshit but it was their rules.

I can't say I didn't benefit from boarding school. I had a problem with anger and they didn't get rid of it but they channeled it and I learned how to study. If I was a poor student before, after military school I believe I could learn anything. I always loved to read so that part was easy, but I also didn't have to discipline to study until being forced to in their nightly study halls before lights out and the ruler that they used to smack us with if we looked up from our work when we were in study hall.

Off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz. And the adventure begins.....

I finished out my high school in Miami Beach at Beach High after leaving Riverside Military Academy on a dare that I would break barracks and hide out and I considered the action, which I now know as foolish, my Huck Finn period. I won't go into all the details of what happened next. But briefly this is what did happen: The military school was part of the year, 6 months, in Georgia and the rest of the school year, 3 months, in Hollywood, Florida. I decided to go "over-the-hill" when school was in Florida and I hid out in John Jacob Astor's houseboat which was moored not far from where my family lived in Miami Beach. It was easy to get onboard since no one was there at that time of year and there was some food in the pantry. I also tried to fish, making my tackle using a safety pin and some worms and string I found on the boat. I had enough to live there for weeks but I wanted company so I contacted my younger brother about a week into my little adventure and he told my father who came and got me. I was given the option of going back to military school but after almost three years I decided I wanted to try a co-ed high school. My dad was reluctant to let me stay but he did and I now wish he didn't because the high school in Miami Beach could not compare with the kind of excellent education I was getting in military school and I did not adjust very well to a school where there was no discipline. It was because of my discontent that I enlisted in the army upon graduation. To this day I bear the guilt I have for not finishing military school but life goes on and I learned then that I could never quit anything again - even if it was done on a dare in the first place.

It is hard to transfer to a new school and even though I grew up there and knew some of the kids it was not the same as my buddies in military school. There was a comaraderie that comes with shared hardship especially when those experiences are difficult as it was intended to be and most especially unique as they were in military school. I have memories from that time that will always be special to me.

So while I was attending the last year in school in Miami Beach I also got a job which was unique and interesting. It is the one thing I thoroughly enjoyed that year. Since My father had a camera school and I had some experience with cameras I was hired by Pilkington Studies to work as a photographer. I used a 3 (1/4) X (4 1/4) [plate size] and 5 X 8 Speed Graphics, which I was very proficient with, and a Hasenbladt which was the leading reflex camera of that time which used both film plates and 35m film and my job was taking portraits as well as covering weddings, bar mitzvahs and some news and special events assignments. I was their youngest professional photographer and very good at it. And it was fun.

The day after my high school prom, after getting drunk with a friend on the beach, we both went to the recruiting office and signed up for the army and about a week or two later I was beginning my new adventure.

Muse - Mt Weather - White House - DSA - Humanity - POTUS
Re-up - Coevolution - France - War Room - Ike - Hackers - ENIAC
Teddy - Patriot - Ana-Mae - Ancestors - Hotel - Military School
Army - Special - FBI - Jane - South - Luca - Link - Reason - Shop
Up-Hill - Capitalism - Family - Down-Hill - Struggle - Vagabonds - Left
Children - TN - Liberal - Angst - Faith - Extinction - Curse - Blast #1
Blast #2 - DARPA - WormHole #1 - WormHole #2 - Crypt #1 - Crypt #2
Hack Attack - High Crimes - (BHG) Jewelry - Golem - Pyramid
Epilogue - Epilogue to the Epilogue - No Coherence - Nature of Nature