Tales Out of School - TIX and FLEAS

20 February, 2000

Houston

My year of Junior High School (1967-1968) was almost a non-event period in my middle-teens. Junior High, aka Middle School is an awkward, in-between time for us all – intellectually, socially, and emotionally. And so it was for me, too.

My six years at Ferncrest (private school) happily at an end, I entered a new chapter of my life. Up until now, I had always attended PRIVATE schools – and now, for the first time ever, I would go to a PUBLIC school. Eewww! I was TERRIFIED. I was apprehensive because I was not at all looking forward to going to a LOUISIANA PUBLIC SCHOOL.

PUBLIC SCHOOL – the mere mention of these words sent shudders up and down the spines of every parent who desired a DECENT education for their children. Louisiana public schools were infamous for their poor quality, and ranked consistently second from the bottom nationally. Thank God for Mississippi", it was said. I used to see the public school kids on the bus (we called them “yats” because of their way of saying hello: “where’y’ YAT!”, as well as for the ignorant way they spoke and acted.) The students enrolled in N. O. public schools were, as I saw them, for the most part, rowdy, vulgar and ignorant. An anti-intellectual atmosphere prevailed there. It was stifling, to say the least. When I think of that, I realize I even  felt lucky to have attended Ferncrest for as long as I did. At least the kids there were, for the most part, moral, studious, and definitely well-spoken and well-behaved.

At the time, my mother and I lived in Parkchester Apartments on Paris Ave. in New Orleans. As it turned out, the closest junior high school - and the school in whose district Parkchester was located in, was *Francis W. Gregory. I was happy to learn that it was on Pratt Drive, a 5 minute walk from our apartment. So, I walked to school. This was a plus, since I didn't have to catch a bus or a ride, and I was NEVER tardy.

Gregory was modern - only a few years old at the time. It had one main, long rectangular building, which met another smaller building at a right angle. There were a couple of other smaller buildings, a track for running, a large field, a gym, and an auditorium! It really was a nice school!

The first four months passed quickly. The New Year was upon us. It was now 1968. My Science teacher at Gregory was a lady whose son was in my P. E. class. She was in her mid-40’s during this never-trust-anyone-over-thirty "hippie" era.

When I returned to class after the holidays, a new student had arrived, and was assigned to my lab table. When I talked to him, and asked where he was from, he told me, in fluent Brooklynese, that he and his family had just moved down to New Orleans from New York City.

There had been a major garbage strike which left that city nearly paralyzed, with refuse piled high on every city street. I  asked him: “What’s the matter? Trash got too high?” an obvious dig referring to that lengthy, awful strike. In retrospect, that was mean, though I didn't mean for it to be; I was just joking. He took it in stride, though.

The fellow turned out to be all right, but, a typical New Yorker, bragging all the time about his city.

One day the teacher got off the subject of Science (been known to happen), and she and some of the students toward the front of the class began to discuss being “cool” and “with it” and "groovy".

The number one hit radio station in New Orleans at the time was an AM station: WTIX. Everybody called it “tix.” Mrs. Wahlig, trying to impress her junior-high captive audience as to how hip she was, loudly boasted so we could here it in the back of the class: “Well, I listen to TIX all the time!”

Now my buddy next to me was not paying a bit of attention to this frivolous chit-chat. Her loud voice wafting aft distracted him from whatever he was doing. He suddenly looked up – his face screwed up in great surprise. He was not familiar with WTIX or its nickname, so, in typical New York Wise-Guy style, he points to Mrs. Wahlig with his thumb and blurts out to me: “Ayy! Get dis: she listens ta TICKS!!”

He then turned to the teacher and hollers out loudly: “Ayy, lady!! You listen ta TICKS? Well, I listen ta FLEAS!!!”

The class exploded in riotous laughter! The bewildered science teacher couldn’t imagine what got into this guy, who up until now had been the quietest kid of the bunch, or what exactly he meant by that comment. She just looked dumbfounded.  Everybody looked at my lab partner strangely, and he couldn’t figure out what was going on either.

He just looked at me and shook his head in disbelief.

Before the next class he asked me what all that funny stuff was all about, and I clued him in about WTIX radio station being pretty much the coolest one on the air. He laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. Well, since I listen to fleas, I might as well start listening to 'TIX', too!!"

The year ended quietly and uneventfully. I left Gregory to complete my high school studies at Kennedy High, and carried on. I never thought about Gregory once I left.

I never saw that kid again after that. Perhaps the 'trash got too high' for him in New Orleans, too!  Who knows?


All that happened so many decades ago. They say 'you can't go home again', and that 'that home ain't home anymore'. For me, home is just a mass of fading memories and a couple of dozen equally fading photographs. I have almost forgotten that school, and, like just about everything else I remember about the city of New Orleans, F. W. Gregory and Kennedy High School, are both gone. In the case of Kennedy High School, that damn, old storm Katrina took it away. Even Ferncrest, too, is gone, but not forgotten. Sad to say, but they're all gone, "gone to join the swelling ranks of things that we look back upon."


*One person who went there a few years after me, was entertainer Ellen deGenres. I am mentioning this, well, just because.