Jack contines to sub and try to fit moments of awakening into the middle school curriculum.

“The specialist cannot see the whole.” Krishnamurti





Chapter Six Moments of Awakening




Friday I sub for the gate teacher, Mr. Sanders. He told me he’d let me have one period with each of his core classes to teach what ever I want.

“Great, I told him. I’ll do a lesson on sixties music. I’ll play some of the best of the protest rock, and have the students write a poem about the sixties from what they hear in the music….”

So, I burn a C.D. starting off with Simon and Gurfunkle’s, The Fifty Ninth Bridge Street Song, then going into Dylan’s The Times They Are A’ Changing, and Blowing in the Wind. I add Bridge Over Troubled Waters, A Hard Rains Gonna Fall, slip in some Moody Blues, and finish up with Jimmy Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. The students really get into the music. I’m surprised at how closely they listen. I decide to play each tune twice so they can get a better feel, so we only have time for the first five tunes. “What did your hear?” I ask as we do a web brainstorm on the white board after the second rendition of each cut.

Though they get no credit for the writing assignment, fifteen students turn in a poem or essay for me to read. Here is a sample of what they did.

60’s Groove On
You got the feeling of the music
You want to get up and dance
You have to restrain yourself
Now that you have fought the temptation to dance
You have to fight the urge to sing
You finally get past that and you calm down
You realize that the song is over
You fight to get back to your song
You listen to it over and over and over
You listen to a different song
This song is just as good as the last
You tell your friends about it
They like it too
Now, you got a music club

Feeling of the 60’s
Light as if on a cloud
Dreams and nightmares become one
Scrambled together
The wind blowing hard
As if to give you a warning
At times worry free
At others searching for acceptance
As soft as a lullaby
Or as bad as war

I’m now laid back
My worries have fled
I’m feeling good
Holding on to something
Don’t float away
Words are true
They make me think
Relate to this song
I really can
Don’t criticize
What you don’t understand

Feeling groovy
These times they are a changing
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind
Sail on Silver Girl
A hard rain gonna fall

Not bad for seventh and eighth graders, huh?

This year, I continue the history lesson when I sub for Ms. Baretta’s math class. I tell the kids that if they work hard and don’t give me a lot of trouble, the last ten or fifteen minutes of class I’ll give them a history of America from a man who lived through it from 1938 to the mid-two thousands. “ I was actually living during the Second World War. And I can remember on V.J. day neighbors marched through the streets banging on pots and pans and metal wash tubs in a spontaneous display of joy. Whenever you have an older teacher in your classroom, you should ask them questions about the past. Older people like myself have actually lived through much that you call history today,” I tell them.

“ And, remember, history is your life. Each one of us begins his history at the moment he or she is born. And your history is you, who you are at this very moment….”

Enough of the students are interested so that I can present my history lesson in the waning minutes of each class. “The history that I’m going to tell you is from my point of view. I was born in 1938 into a working class family in North Philadelphia. The Second World War was going on in Europe. And, I can remember that we had air raid drills. During the drills we had to cover our windows with blankets so no light would show. And air raid wardens would come around to check your windows. I didn’t know much about the war, but we watched the war movies and our enemies were the Japs and the Germans….”

“The Japs?” someone asks

. “Yea, we were very prejudiced back then. We called the Japanese, Japs. And they were the enemy depicted most in the movies. And when we played war, it was usually the Japs that we were fighting against. I remember I even had this nightmare back when I was five or six years old. The Japs were attacking our apartment house. They had set up a machine gun outside our front window. They opened fire and killed everyone in my family except me. I jumped in front of the machine gun so I would get killed ‘cause I didn’t want to be captured and tortured. The bullets just bounced off my chest, and I woke up screaming.

“We lived in an apartment as most people in my neighborhood did. Ours was a three-room apartment. My
brothers and sisters and I slept on a fold up couch and a bed in the front room. The middle room was my parents’ bedroom. The back room was the kitchen. And we shared a bathroom on the second floor with two other families. We had an icebox in the kitchen. The iceman use to deliver blocks of ice. There was no T.V. But, we had a radio. And we use to sit around the radio in the kitchen and listen to our programs, The Shadow, The Fat Man, The Green Hornet, Sky King….”

For the first several weeks I’m surprised at how interested the students are. Complete silence and attention as I explain what it was like growing up in North Philadelphia in the early 1940’s. They pay real close attention and some of the African American students are especially attentive when I talk abut how our neighborhood changed from a lower working class white neighborhood to a lower working class black neighborhood. I explain that Joey and I were among only half a dozen white kids in my school in the fifth grade.

As the weeks progress they seem to lose a little interest, especially when I tell them about the Grapes of Wrath and when I read it in the 1960’s how it taught me a whole different truth about how America treats her working class. “ The Oakies didn’t leave the mid west because of the dust bowl, they left when the Caterpillar was invented. A Cat can plow four hundred acres a day. The banks didn’t need share croppers anymore, so they kicked them off of the land and sent them scurrying to California. Oakie is a derogatory term that was used to describe the immigrants that came into California in the late nineteen thirties. They came not because of the dust bowl as I was taught in my high school history classes but because it was cheaper to kick them off the land and use modern machinery.

“But let me tell you who these Oakies were. They had homesteaded the land in the late 1800’s, forty acres, enough to feed your family, raising chickens for eggs and cows for milk, and all your veggies, and pigs for bacon and ham. In hard times, they had to borrow money from the banks and when they couldn’t pay off their debts, the banks foreclosed and the farmers lost their acreage, and they stay on to farm the land giving most of the profit to the banks. They were called sharecroppers, and when the Caterpillar was invented, the banks didn’t need them anymore so they drove them off the land.”

I tell a little about how Steinbeck describes the life of the Oakies once they reach California. “First of all, the big growers send fliers out to Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and other mid west states telling them how much work there is in sunny California. You know, the growers figure the more men that come out, the cheaper they can pay them. The migrant workers make barely enough to live on. The company stores over charge for their food, and the migrants live in dumps with no hot water or flush toilets. The Joad family is picking cotton for a small farmer who pays thirty-five cents a bag. This gives the family just enough to live on, but no extra for tobacco, or sugar. Then the farmer tells them that he has to cut their wages to twenty-five cents. Pressure from the bank. When the migrants try to organize, the banks send in vigilantes to beat them up….”

As interesting as Steinbeck’s history is to me, I see that I’m losing them. So, I decide next week to tell them about the different jobs that I held while growing up. “You know, we all have to work. Everyone has to earn a living. Your parents won’t support you forever. So let me tell you about some of the jobs you’ll have to work if you don’t get a good education,” I tell them.

“It was kind of hard to find a job in Philadelphia, but I began looking from about the time I was five years old or so. I remember one of my first jobs was when I helped my mom’s friend Hazel’s son, Buster move from his apartment up the street. I carried boxes, and suitcases, and bags for an hour or more. ‘How much do I owe you?’ he asked.

‘Whatever you think I’m worth,’ I told him.

‘I wish I could afford to pay you what you’re worth, but I’m almost dead broke. How about I give you twenty-five cents? That’a be enough for you to get into the movies, won’t it?’ he asked.

“I told him sure, but was really disappointed and had been expecting at least a buck.

“Another job was delivering groceries. I got a Red Flyer wagon one Christmas. I took it down to the grocery store about a block away, and waited until someone came out with an armful of groceries. ‘I can take them in my wagon,’ I’d tell them. Usually their apartment was a half block or so away. I’d carry the groceries inside and get maybe a dime tip. I only worked this job for a week or so because the wait between deliveries was too long.”

In one lesson, I reiterate why I am giving a history of myself.
“Remember, last week, Mary mentioned that here uncle told her that he had experiences just like the ones that I talk about growing up on a subsistence family farm in Georgia. Well, Mary, that is a part of your uncle. Just like growing up on subsistence farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is a part of me. We are our history. You guys look at me and see and old man with light blonde hair standing in front of you….”

The students laugh, and one says, “Yea sure Santa Claus has blonde hair too.”

“But, I’m more than this old man, more than the body that you see before you. I am all of my history. All that I remember from the late nineteen thirties through the early two thousands is a part of me. All that has occurred from your birth ‘til the year 2006 is a part of you. We are our history…. We are more than just our bodies.

“Now what do you think of that?” I ask my students.

In San Francisco, they have begun to celebrate the Summer of Sixty-Seven Love In some forty years after the event. I wasn’t at the Love In in sixty-seven. And, though I had been heavily influenced by the Beats during the Triv days in fifty-nine and sixty. During the next six years or so of the sixties I had gotten side tracked a little.

In June of Sixty-Seven, I received my Master’s Degree from Cal-State, Hayward. I spent most of that summer working at a cannery in Hayward and looking for a teaching job. I traveled from one end of California to the other trying to track down a job.

I was reading Henry Miller who was years ahead of the Love-In poets, and getting into the feel of freedom that he felt comes only through a joy in life that makes one see the little miracles that happen at every moment.

I’m walking through the orchards of the Great San Joaquin Valley on this magnificent December day shortly before the Christmas of two thousand six. The brown earth of the broken canal road presses against my feet while walnut trees stretch out leafless tree after tree after tree after tree as far as my eyes can see all the way to the inner coastal mountain range. A flight of two black crows expands to seven stretching out the clouds and high blue sky. Bird song rings through the frost tipped branches on the other side of the canal. When I come to the open field of winter wheat, the valley spreads westward all the way to the Altamont and Mt. Diablo. Focusing on the ground I see blade after blade after blade after blade of slender green wheat stretching the ground beneath my feet to its true dimension.

Mother Earth feeds my soul and body as I bounce into a slow jog. And it strikes me that the Earth really is our Mother. As Joseph Campbell says we come out of the Earth just as an apple comes out of a tree.
Our material being is from our Mother Earth as our spiritual being is from our Father in Heaven.

Remember, The Lords Prayer. Our Father, which art in Heaven… Give us this day food for the spirit…. Fourth Way writers say that we have two Fathers. The Earthly father supplies the Earthly matter which combines with the matter of the Earthly mother to create one’s Earthly self. The Spiritual Father supplies the energy, which creates the Essence, or Spiritual Self. This is an invisible unknowable force, which can grow and form the greater part of a fully developed Man. As far as I know the Fourth Way teachers don’t discuss whether or not the Spiritual Father brings Spiritual energy to the Son in a sexual fashion as the Earthly father provides his material contribution. As products of this planet, could we not have a spiritual counter part to The Holy Father in the Mother Earth? As I continue though the Valley farms and orchards, Mother Earth smiles on the infinity tiny spark of energy that makes up my existence.

As the year rushes by I find I have to shift my theme again to hold the interest of my eighth graders. “In the sixties, I learned that everything they tell you is a lie,” I tell my students to begin my ten-minute lecture. “This was one of the main lessons of the Sixties. We learned that our parents’ lied to us, our teachers’ lied, the mass media lied. We learned that we had to reevaluate everything, and find the truth for ourselves.

“So, what we are going to do from now to the end of the year in these sessions, is to answer one question. What is the meaning and purpose of life?”

“What do you mean, what is the purpose of life? The purpose of life is to eat pizza,” one of the jokers tells me.

“Naw, there’s more to life than pizza. Have you ever asked yourself, why am I here on this earth? I remember my best friend, Vance, said to me one night, ‘You’re born, you go to school, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, and then you die. There’s got to be something more to life than that. What’s it all about, man? Why are we here on this Earth?’

“Ask yourself that question during the week,” I tell my students as the bell rings.

At the next session, I get some answers, but not a whole lot of interest. “We are here to keep the human race going. To have children and continue the evolutionary process,” one student tells us.

“God created man to live and experience his truths,” another says.

“No one can really know the purpose of life. It’s a question you can’t answer,” says another.

“I still say the purpose is to eat pizza,” our joker adds.

“O.K. I see that at this point, we are asking the wrong question. Before we can answer the question what is the meaning and purpose of life we have to have to answer another question. We have to understand our human machine and how it works. The question is, What is it that controls our very sophisticated and complicated machine? We have a very complicated machine. There is the respiratory system, the circulatory system, and the nervous system. We have all these millions of nerves and neurons, billions of cells…. You know, we study everything, but our human machine. We know how a car engine works, how a computer works, but we don’t know how our machine works. Who is in control of your machine?” Complete silence, but strands of interest.

Let me tell you a little about our machine. First of all, we have three main centers, a thinking center, a moving center, and an emotional center. The thinking center controls thought. This is the center that we develop in school. The emotional center controls emotions, feelings. When you are bored, or angry, or happy, it doesn’t come from your thinking center, it comes from your emotional center. The moving center controls your movements. You know how if you’re playing basketball at first you have to think about your moves. But, once you learn to play if you think about what you are going to do it gets in the way….”

I can see that I have completely lost my audience. The kids are yawing and beginning to talk among themselves. “O.K. One thing more. Because we don’t understand our machine, we are all of us asleep. You, me, your parents, Mr. Daniels, President Bush, everyone of us functions at the second level of consciousness called waking sleep,” I say as the bell rings for class to end.

“Yea, I guess we’d better sleep walk to lunch,” the joker says as he closes his eyes and puts his arms out in front of him.”

“How can we be asleep, if our eyes are open and we’re talking?” asks one student.

“You come up with the weirdest things, Mr. Daley,” says another.

It’s a couple days later. It’s my prep. period, but I have to cover for an absent teacher who didn’t get a sub. I hurry down to the next hall and to Mrs. Lumens’ room. There’s another sub sitting at the teacher’s desk with a disgusted look on her face. “Are there lesson plans for six period?” I ask

“Just this,” she says pointing to a post it, handing me the room key, and taking her leave. The post it says, “Fifth and Sixth period work on skits.” The students are spread out in groups. I remember that Mrs. Lumen’s had written that this was her bad group when I subbed for her a couple weeks ago.

“O.K. get back into your assigned seats while I take roll,” I tell them. They grumble and complain, but after a couple more request most move back to their seats. I run through the names on the roll sheet. They laugh or else get upset when I mispronounce several names. I see lots of hostility and attitude, but figure I can use the period to work on identifying and negative emotions.

“So, you guys are working on skits?” I ask.

“Yea, we have to work on our skits in our groups,” a student answers.

“Are you writing them, or what?” I ask.

“No, we already wrote them. We’re practicing in our groups,” another student answers.

“O. K. get back into your groups,” I tell them. The students move into groups of various sizes, some as large as seven, several groups of three or four, and a couple with just two students. As I watch from the front of the room, I see one group that is cutting colored paper to make props, and another that is practicing a skit. The group that is practicing has one girl leading a boy who pretends to be a dog, and five characters watching. The rest of the groups are just talking, laughing, and fooling around. I walk to a group of five that is especially loud. “What kind of skit are you working on?” I ask.

“She left our script at home. We can’t work on it,” one of the students answers.

“You don’t remember any of it?”

“No!”

“Don’t you think you ought to rewrite it?”

“No, we can do it tomorrow. They’re not due ‘til Friday,” one of the groups tells me.

At another group two students are fighting over a note. I hurry over and take the note from them. “Where’s your skit?” I ask.

“We’re discussing it,” a student answers.

In the front of the room a heavy-set kid is hitting his friend with a wad of yarn. “That’s not even your group,” I say as I remember him talking with two kids who are seated to his right.

“I’m working with two groups,” he tells me.

“Yea, we’ll get back with your first group,” I say pointing him to his seat.

A burst of laughter draws my attention to the other side of the room where a girl is hitting her boy dog with a broom. “What are you doing?” I yell.

“It’s part of our skit,” the girl answers while the boy growls at her.

The heavy-set kid is out of his seat again waving a pair of scissors in front of his second partner’s face. “What in the hell is wrong with you?” I yell as I take the scissors away. I see that the boys have been cutting pieces of black yarn, which is lying, all over the floor. “Get in your seat,” I tell the boy that had the scissors. “Get that yarn up off the floor,” I tell the other boy.

“I’m gonna tell the principal you were cussing at me. I’ll get you fired,” the boy who had the scissors tells me.

“Don’t you realize that you might have slipped and stabbed your friend?” I ask the boy.

“That’s no reason for you to cuss at me. I’m telling the principal and getting you fired,” he repeats.

“Maybe you’d like me to write a referral, so you can tell the vice-principal,” I say as I go to my clipboard.

“Go ahead, write a referral. I’ll jus tell ‘em I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again,” he tells me.

“Sammy, huh,” I say as I write his name on the top of the referral. “What’s your last name?” I ask.

“Why should I tell you,” answers.

I write on his referral, “Out of his seat and waving a pair of scissors in another student’s face.”

“Here, go get me fired,” I tell him.

“I will,” he answers as he grabs up his backpack and storms out of the room.

At the teacher’s desk, I notice a sour faced girl who is fingering papers. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m talking to my friends,” she says pointing to a couple of student T.A.s who are huddled behind the desk.

“Get back to your seat,” I tell her. I can tell by the looks on the girls’ faces that the sour faced girl is not their friend. I gather up the papers that the girl was fingering and see a page of notes from earlier subs. I take up the paper and see that the other subs have just left a list of absent students and a note or two about what they did. “Students worked on skits. Very little work done. Mostly, they just sat in their groups and talked,” I write.

“I don’t know why you’re writing anything. Mrs. Lumen’s never reads what the sub writes,” the sour faced girl tells me.

“Oh, is that right? I’ll just note that also. Caroline says that you never read what the subs write, I jot on the note so Caroline can see.

Two students are struggling over a pack of gum in the far corner. “Put that in your backpack,” I yell as I walk toward them….

A couple of days later, the vice principal calls me into her office. “You’ve gone and done it this time, Mr. Daley,” she tells me.
“Done what?” I ask.
“Here read these notes,” she tells me.
“Mr. Daley was cussing out the class. Then, he cussed at me and pushed me up against the locker. I don’t know whether my parents should sue him, or sue the school,” the note from the heavy-set kid reads.

“That’s not what happened,” I say looking up at the V.P.

“Oh, yea? Read the second note,” she tells me.

“Mr. Daley cussed out the whole class. Then he pushed Sammy up against the lockers,” the note from Caroline reads.

“Well, we’d better talk to some of the other members of the class,” I tell the V.P.

“That’s not all. Here are some excerpts from the essays that you forced Mrs. Diamond’s class to write,” she tells me, and hands me four or five rough draft essays.

“Once I had a really good first period and then I’m going to second period and then Mr. Daily was there and that just ruined my day. Also some of the class was talking and all of a sudden he said “shut up you class of 7th grade retards. And when he said that I knew everyone was thinking No You Shut up you stupid hump back whale.

“Man, he pist me off so much I just wanted to get a yard stick and hit his back and make it straight….”

“I walk into a classroom and worst substitute is their. I wait outside until Mr. D. calls us in. He had to be at least 73 years old I calculated from his birth-date. Mr. D. is always having a bad day. His attitude is always in a bunch.

“He tells me to be quiet when he’s the only one talking. I sitting here trying to get white he is putting people’s name on the board. Everybody can’t figure out why he hasn’t retired yet. I mean he only has to substitute instead he makes us mad. I be on my best behavior, while he puts down 25% of my classmates on the board. I could tell how much our class hates Mr. D.”

“There was one day when I came to school and when I walked in the classroom I noticed that Mrs. Golden was not there. We had a substitute named Mr. Daley. He was a mean teacher. No body paid attention to him and we didn’t even wanted to listen to him.

He started getting mad when he was taking roll. When he would call our name, everybody would say here in a mean way. Thats how he started getting mad, but then when he started getting more mad everybody got scared. So we all started paying attention. After that he told us to write a story….”

“It was a regular school day for me. I got into class and found that we had a substitute, Mr. Daley. Mr. Daley is an O.K. teacher, but when he gets mad he cusses at you, I personally thought he could get fired for cussing at us. Well, maybe he went too far by cussing but what could I do about it? Anger management might help him calm down, we’re only kids, so why cuss at us?

“Yea, well I made that assignment for ninety students. You only given me four of their essays,” I tell Mrs. Goreman.

“Oh, I’ve called a number of other students to testify at the school board meeting,” Mrs. G. tells me.

At the school board meeting a week later, Thomas testifies, “Mr. Daley told us that everyone we know is a liar. My mom is a liar, my dad is a liar, all our teachers are liars, and even President Bush is a liar according to Mr. Daley.”

Martha, the next student testifies, “ Mr. Daley told us that we were all asleep. That we are machines that cannot do, or think, or feel. He told us that we have hundreds of separate ‘I’s.”

“Mr. Daley said that we have a sexual center,” another student says.

“What!” our district superintendent cries.

“Mr. Daley is teaching Higher Levels of Consciousness!” cries the chairman of the board.

“Terminate his contract!!!! Terminate his contract!!!” the board members cry.
“Cancel his pension!!!! Cancel his pension!!!! Cancel his pension!!!!” cry the teachers in the audience….

It’s a day or two later. I’m in a sixth grade classroom covering for a teacher who had to leave early. There are only a couple minutes of class left and the kids are out of their seats talking quietly as they wait for the dismissal bell to ring. “All right, how much is five plus a negative four?” I ask them. The students stop their talking and look at me. No one answers. “Come on. It’s easy. Five plus a negative four? You can do it. Think!”

“Negative one?” a student asks.

“No, but close.”

“One,” says a big student in the back of the room.

“Right. Good, now you can ask me a question,” I tell him. He stands silently. “No question. O.K. How much is negative five plus negative seven?” As I wait for the students to answer I’m thinking myself, It must be negative twelve ‘cause we’re moving to the left on the number line.

Next morning, I’m putting on a pair of Levi’s with wide flared legs. It’s a pair that I wore yesterday with a little mud on one leg. I’m thinking that I ought to put on a clean pair and take a bath. But, then I tell myself that the wide legs are almost like chaps and that they are the thing to wear since I’m going horseback riding a little later.

I’m walking through a dirt field. There are lots of quartz pieces lying in the field. I pick up several and thing how lucky I am to have found the field.

An old friend, Sage, is my front room when I return. He tells me that he has been a struggling actor for the past thirty years and has finally made it to the big times. He turns on the T.V. We watch clips from his up coming sit comedy special. I’m thinking that the guy looks something like Sage, but I’m a little suspicious. I put my arm around him and say, “Congratulations, man. I thought you were still drinking and probably dead by now.”

Anne comes in, says hello to Sage and calls me aside. She tells me that she’s heard that he’s dealing drugs and that we’d better be careful. I look in the attic and discover that Sage has hidden about fifty pounds of weed in the back corner. I cover the box that it’s in and tell myself that I shouldn’t turn him in if I’m going to smoke his weed.

I’m outside next to an old convertible that belongs to my best friend, Vance. The top is down and I discover a bag full of money in the back seat. I’m sure that Vance will be sharing it with me and can hardly wait to go horseback riding with him. My next-door neighbor, Steve, comes over and looks in the car. “You know this has probably been used in a bank robbery. I’m sure you’ll find a gun in it if you look,” he tells me.
Vance walks up to join us. “Hey, this is my neighbor, ahh…. Kirk,” I say having forgotten Steve’s name. “Vance is the smartest guy I know. He would never do anything to get me in trouble. The only thing is that he’s use to doing his own thing. He doesn’t have to worry about family and stuff….”

Next morning, I’m standing on the deck of a cruise ship with Anne and Blake. We are somewhere in the middle of the ocean. “I’m going to take a walk around the deck,” I say.

“Stay dry,” Blake tells me. As I start aft, my right foot hits a lifeboat. It flies overboard and is washed out of sight.

“You better tell someone,” Anne says.

“It’s too late, now,” I answer not sure if I shouldn’t try to retrieve the boat myself. I continue aft and the sea grows rougher. Soon giant waves are coming over the ship. I’m underwater and sinking deeper and deeper. I swim with all my might trying to make my way out of the water. It seems like hours go my as I struggle toward the top. I’m dying for a breath of air. In desperation, I take little breaths and suck in a little air with the water. Finally, I am out of the water and back on the deck. The deck is dry, but the ship is rocking heavily in the stormy sea. I rush forward looking for Anne and the grandkids.

Two men are walking on a high rocky mountain range. One of them strikes the other with a rock, and quickly buries him under a large pile of boulders. A third man approaches. The killer sits on the burial mound hoping that the approaching man will not notice.