Dave’s High School Daze

As soon as Dave hit 17 he persuaded his parents to buy him a VW van which he quickly decorated in the de rigueur hippy style of the time. The van was a stick shift and at first he barely was able to drive it. Stopping on a hill with Dave behind the wheel was quite an experience.

One night he had the bus loaded with people, and everyone had just fired up. He was making his way west on Market Street where freight train tracks cross the street. I wasn’t there but Felicia, who just happened to live on Market Street, filled me in on the details, Dave didn’t really want to talk about the incident. Anyway, it seemed that somehow Dave got the van caught between the two ringing, flashing crossing gates and in the ensuing panic stalled the van and flooded the engine. They all could see the advancing freight train’s lights and  hear its whistle blaring. Everyone, including Dave, fled the van and watched from the side to see what was going to happen next. Luckily the freight train was moving slowly enough and was able to see the van and stop, about 20 feet away. The engineer gets out and is confounded and asks “what the hell is going on here“. Nobody had any kind of real answer for him. He was able to get the gates up, and Dave was able to drive away without the police arriving. After that everybody in the van walked home, they had had enough of Dave’s driving for one night.

Dave soon traded the van in for a much flashier and sleeker Jaguar XKE. Around the same time he and John Rinaldi took over the only fraternity in PAHS, which was, I believe also ironically called XKE.

Dave and the fraternity boys did not seem to take High School too seriously. They would leave home in the morning at the proper time but instead of going to school they all wound up at Billy Dice’s house on Madison Avenue, just a few blocks away. Billy’s parents went to work early and never knew that their place was being used for a hooky house. The boys would spend a few hours there doing god knows what and then maybe saunter into school somewhere about noon, if they made it there at all. This was definitely not your typical college bound crew.

Despite all this Dave passed most of his classes, I think he got test answers from some of his girlfriends or something. But Dave was a bit too gregarious for his own good. He would pull up to the front of the school,  park his Jaguar in an illegal spot and then walk up  the  front entrance hours late practically every day. This did not go unnoticed by Mr. Stofega. Just one day before graduation Dave was expelled from high school, denied graduation and his whole senior year went to naught. That was the last schooling Dave  would ever receive.                                                  back home                                     by Skinny