Student council skits and the Violet Milner Era (Wildwood enters the dark ages)

For 8th Grade Student Council elections, students were encouraged to put on a skit that were performed to the entire school in the Gym/Auditorium to familiarize students with the candidates. It was a big event. Every student, 4th grade and above, got a vote but it may have been 5th grade and above.

Douglas Adds: For a long time, it was just 7th and 8th graders who could vote in Wildwood School elections. When my class was up for election, I argued to Mrs. Cundall and the inimitable Mrs. Lanus, who together managed the Student Council, that 5th and 6th graders should have the vote as well -- and then focused my campaign for "Assistant Mayor" on the 5th and 6th Grade vote, a strangely Machiavellian strategy for an 11 year old.

My opponent, Harry Temple, was very popular among 7th and 8th graders, but wasn't motivated to get out the underclass vote -- or any vote, really, as he was not in any way ambitious. I made friends with some needy 6th graders, Nicky Karras and Jimmy Boardeman, and they managed my campaign with the young kids. Electioneering at Wildwood was with posters and, more importantly, "buttons" made of construction paper. I taped (or, more accurately, made Nicky Karras and Jimmy Boardeman tape) Jolly Rancher candies to my buttons, which made them very popular -- again, especially with the 5th and 6th graders. Cruelly, I sort of "dropped" Nicky Karras as a friend after the election; in some other post, I'll write about my strange "friendship" with Jimmy Boardeman.

I still remember being amazed that I won against someone as popular as Harry -- I also remember feeling a bit guilty about it, because I really liked Harry. Thinking back, I find it hard to believe that I could have been so calculating in my campaign strategy, but I distinctly remember when I argued for giving the vote to the 5th and 6th graders that I was thinking I could get them to vote for me.

Douglas skipped a grade and so he was in 8th grade when I was in 7th. Douglas wrote most of the skits people used when he was in 8th grade. No one else was really clever enough to come up with anything original and Douglas's skits were quite original.

Douglas Adds: Some of them were pretty closely adapted from comedy records that Ed and I played obsessively, particularly one by "The Old Philosopher" but also The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart as well as Johnny Carson's Tonight show skits. There was a United Nations themed skit written for, I believe, Patty Coken that was almost entirely original. I think I did most of my writing while home "sick," typing out the skits on that 5x8 note paper Ed and I favored for a lot of our projects -- the "parallel universe" baseball league rosters were on that paper as well. I always hit the keys so hard that the centers of the "o's," in particular, were punctured through and the keys would become clogged with ink residue, which we cleaned, dentist-like, with either an exacto knife or a dissecting pin.

An original Moe Gamboe manuscript from Douglas's 8th Grade election campaign skit could fetch as much as $25, assuming I happen to have $25 when it is offered. He basically received no credit for writing all those scripts but the worst part was next year no one could come up with anything as creative and the new Principal eliminated the student council a year later.

Of course a 6th reading level resulted in faculty membership at Wildwood, much to the disdain of Mrs. Keating our librarian, the only truly literate teacher we had. Of course they ended up getting rid of the librarian. Why encourage reading with a library class, this was school and besides they couldn't afford to add any books. We did have 4 or 5 usable editions of Charlotte's Web, a perennial favorite among the girls of the day.

Douglas Adds: Indeed, Mrs. Keating had to go: she was smart and dedicated. I worked for her for a while, stenciling Dewey Decimel numbers on the spines of books and pasting library card pockets in the back. I also remember her screening all the "free" educational materials to reject those that were just disguised advertisements from companies such as Kellogs or PF Flyer shoes ("Footwear through the Ages, presented by P.F. Flyer Shoes"). The collection of books in the library was dated and hardly used at all; she always commented when I borrowed a book that she didn't believe she'd ever seen anyone else open it. There was a series of books on the boyhoods of the Presidents that I read again and again -- talk about propaganda.

Edward and I both benefited from a very smart and dedicated Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. O'Connor, who lasted exactly one year, having in her pure joy of teaching kids run afoul of the harridans and drones who made-up the Wildwood teaching staff. The next year, we were handed over to the strange, near-narcoleptic Mrs. Clare for 1st Grade before the true tedium of the crotchety Mrs. Penny in second grade.

The one other Wildwood teacher I would have credited with an intellect would have been the high-strung and ascerbic Mrs. Albright in 5th Grade. At any rate, whe was the only Wildwood teacher who ever saw through me and seemed to see the caluclating little boy that I was -- one time, when I was explaining some sort of absence-without-leave, she said in exasperation "Douglas, you have an excuse for absolutely everything." But she and I always got along.

We also used to listen to records in library class. I vividly remember hearing Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, which started out with something like: "Like all of his country men Fortunado was a quack". This was heady stuff for 5th and 6th graders let me tell you. I think those records were the only way some of the students were ever exposed to any kind of significant literature besides of course the Man from Uncle paperbacks many of us purchased through the student book club.

Fortunately, Doug managed to avoid the entire Principle Violet Milner debacle once Mrs. Smith finally fell through the floor boards and met her rotund demise (she may have had to retire due to gout but the falling through the floor boards was a popular alternative ending). Mrs. Milner was an up and coming school administrator hell bent 0n sterilizing any ounce of creativity she came across.

Violet was destined for great things and a shining future in the Chicago Board of Education, a bastillion of bureaucracy and banality where she was certainly in her element. Milner's one weakness was that she was identical in appearance to the Big Bird character from Sesame Street and with out make up or any form of costume. There was in fact speculation she moon lighted as Big Bird at several Chicagoland Toys R'us to supplement her meager principal income but as Big Bird remains a popular figure there is reason to doubt this. Violet Milner was only popular with the School bureaucrats, and unlike Mrs. Smith she seemed to hate children, though there was never any fear that she might accidentally sit on a child and crush them.

Douglas Adds: Marcella Smith was indeed immense. I always think of the way her car listed to the left due to her weight in the drivers seat . . . and how it bounced up and down on its shock absorbers once she was lifted out of the vehicle and began her slow waddle toward the double doors, the choking scent of rose perfume trailing in her wake.

Staff morale suffered greatly when Milner seized control. She ran both Edgebrook and Wildwood schools with an iron fist, expecting some form lesson plan from each teacher and worse yet eliminating the coffee cake festivals that were the very hallmark of the Marcella Smith administration. I have to tell you that Bobby Melko used to stop by in the teacher's break room after a coffee cake feast as the film projector room was right next to the teacher's break room / coffee cake repository and he and his film projector colleague would scoop up and crumbs that happened to be remaining so the loss of coffee cake was felt on the student side as well.