Friday, August 01, 2014

Mess not with a Hughes

In late 1956 I began attending Delaware Township High-School for seventh-grade.
We called it “Della-Twip.”
Delaware Township High-School was later renamed Cherry Hill High-School, since our township, originally Delaware Township, was renamed Cherry Hill Township.
Erlton (“Earl-tin;” as in the name “Earl”), my home at that time, was originally the center of Delaware Township.
Erlton was a suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey, founded by a guy named “Earl” in the ‘20s or ‘30s.
But then President Eisenhower visited Cherry Hill Inn in 1956, and after that Cherry Hill became the town center.
Delaware Township High-School wasn’t finished when I began.
Only the academic-building was completed.
Previously high-school students did high-school in nearby Haddonfield (“ha-din-FIELD”), an old Revolutionary-War town just south of Erlton.
Delaware Township High-School was a response to the Post-War Baby-Boom, which prompted double-sessions at my elementary-school, which has since been torn down.
Della-Twip was finished when I began eighth-grade in late 1957.
That is, everything but the shop and mechanical-drawing wing.
We had a gym and cafeteria. Also an auditorium.
Life was fairly simple for me. We still were hiking mud and gravel to get to gym-class and that cafeteria.
But we were no longer crammed in just the Academic-Building.
Life was simple, but there were greasers and bullies and hard-rocks.
The girls were trollops and slatterns.
South Jersey seemed to engender those kind of people.
I was in a class one day, and some bully started harassing me.
He said he’d meet me out in the hall, presumably for a fight.
This bully had a reputation. Supposedly he had tossed another greaser twice-his-size over his head at a dance.
Class ended, I walked gingerly out into the hallway.
Bully was waiting.
He slammed me across the hall into the lockers.
But he made me mad.
I bounced right back and slammed him across the hall into the lockers.
He hadn’t expected that.
He was banking on his reputation as a successful bully.
He thereafter said he’d meet me outside after school, but I never saw any sign of him.

• “Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, BobbaLew.

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