Growing up with Guns in School

This summer I went to my 25th high school class reunion. It is funny how in all those years nobody seems to have changed. Everybody looks the same. The class clowns are still the class clowns, the smart kids are still the smart kids, the comuter geeks (that would be me) are still the computer geeks and the homecoming queen is still the homecoming queen.

In those days we came home from school and watched Happy Days and The Waltons. Our idea of racy television was Charlie's Angels (the tv show, not the movie — Drew Barrymore was two years old when we startred high school.)

Even in those idyllic days, when we were living That 70's Show, we grew up with guns in school.

It started my freshman year when some classmates and I put together a movie (Super-8) called, A Hillbilly Cleans Up. It was a short film about a Hillbilly who comes into town in his overalls, goes to a laundromat and undresses down to his red longjohns while his clothes are in the washer. Our cinematic debut was brilliant right down to the props. We had a straw hat, overalls, red longjohns and in every scene the Hillbilly had a double barreled shotgun over his shoulder. We started at school and the group of us, with no adult supervision, walked to the laudromat in the nearby college district with Bryan lugging that shotgun over his shoulder.

During our four years, students brough guns to show for class projects and I believe someone did a reloading demonstration in a speech class.

Our junior year (or was it senior?) we had Big John as our teacher. Big John was definitely old school, he said that since there was no more draft to make men of us — he would do it himself. Big John used to walk around smacking his hand with an old black with a wiffle ball bat, he would have made a great Marine Drill Seargant. Now don't get me wrong, we all loved Big John he was a lot of fun once you got to know him. And during that year, Big John took us trapshooting, just the men of course, since such activities were not for the jezzies (a Big John term for girls, probably derived from Jezebel.)

When the big day arrived to go the shooting range, I met my buddy Doug by my locker. He had brought his double barreled 16 gauage and a couple of boxes of shells from home. If memory serves, we kept them in my school locker. Of course in those days we didn't lock our lockers not even with the shotgun in it.

But the most famous gun incident at my school was: The Day Andy Shot the Clock. Our high school drama department was putting on the play Dark of the Moon. I was in charge of the fly-loft so I was working above the stage handling the rope and pulley systems used to raise and lower curtains and backdrops. My friend Andy, being an audiophile, headed up the sound crew.

The script called for a gunshot. To make it as real as possible, Andy's job was to fire a blank round from a real shotgun in the empty hallway next to the backstage door. One of my classmates, Jeff made up some blank shotgun shells with a light load and only wadding (no shot). He was to make sure the hallway was clear and then fire the shotgun down the hall. During rehearsals everything went off without a hitch. On opening night — everything changed. I guess, the excitement of firing the shotgun had worn off so Andy decided to try something different. Instead of firing down the hall, Andy aimed the shotgun at the clock in the hall about twenty feet away.

Now it may seem that that firing blanks couldn't harm anything. But a blank shotgun shell still has the plastic wadding and when you shoot it the wadding flies out the barrel at high velocity. So when the director cued the gunshot Andy fired. From the loft, I heard a bang, a crash and the sound of broken glass. I and the other crew heads rushed out in the hallway and saw Andy standing over the remains of the clock.

I grew up in a time when guns were more available to young people, not less. While my family had no guns, many of my friends grew up with guns in their homes. At appropriate times we even brought guns to school. I am not suggesting that we could ever go back to such a time. It was a more innocent age — and I miss it.