Chapter 12

Skip Chapter Six

On the day I joined the St. Rita Cross Country team in the fall of 1972, I was not exactly in peak physical condition. If I had been, “husky” pants would not have been such an integral part of my wardrobe. I said “joined” instead of “tried out for,” because there were no tryouts for the cross country team. If you showed up for practice and completed the assigned workouts – no matter how long they took you (and they always took me longer than everybody else) – you were on the team.

Joining the team was easy. Staying on it was hard. The workouts were grueling. I was ridiculed for being so slow. And I was so wiped out by the practices that I once dozed off at the kitchen table while eating my supper.

It was no surprise that my Pillsbury-Doughboy™-like, adolescent physique had failed to earn me a nickname like “Muscles” or “Jimmy LaLanne.” And it was also no surprise when, at our first practice, the nickname “Pudge” was unceremoniously bestowed upon me by the jag-off who’d eventually become one of my best friends – Raymond J. Shaughnessy. Fortunately, after a few weeks of practice I’d shed enough weight to also shed that embarassing moniker.

I believed that once I’d logged enough miles I’d become fast enough to stay with the main pack of runners during workouts and races. But I was wrong. Although I put in the same number of miles as everybody else, I lacked the mental toughness and the ability to deal with pain that are necessary to be able to run long distances competitively. From day one I’d developed the habit of falling off the pace of the pack at the outset of every practice and race. And once you lose physical contact with a group of runners, you’re bound to lose mental contact with them, too. Once you’ve done that, you’re toast, and chances are you’ll never be able to catch back up to the pack. At least I never could.

So my teammates were greyhounds and I was a dachshund. At least I wasn’t the slowest guy on the team – that is, until the slowest guy on the team quit. And sure it sucked to be the last Rita runner in at every practice and meet, but what made it worthwhile was that I was still part of a team made up of crazy, hilarious knuckleheads like Neumann and Wolak; Dewinski and Hoeflinger; Cortez and Weston; Ripoli, North and  Jankowski; Doyle and Pirih; Jaskolski and Ternes; Bricker and Lein; Shaughnessy and Nash; Moore and Wojtowicz; and Rogalla and Lodding.

Then one morning, as usual, I was the last one to arrive for homeroom. As I slid into my seat in the last row I wondered why in the world a pack of snarling wolves – i.e., a roomful of 15-year-old boys – was staring me down. And through the early-morning fog my thoughts drifted back 24 hours to when …

… I’d been talking to Gary Piwowarczyk and Dennis Macejak as morning announcements blared over the P.A. Talking was not allowed during announcements, but being a Klenn I was unable to resist. (FYI – Klenns can go on and on and on about how close-mouthed they are, but don’t you believe ‘em. Because in addition to being great talkers, the Klenns are also great liars.)

Just as the announcements were ending, without even looking up from his desk, Mr. Eckert said: “Klenn. Macejak. Piwowarczyk. Write out chapter six for tomorrow.” Three fish caught on a single hook. Unbelievable.

When cross country practice ended that evening Mr. Eckert called me over and asked: “So whattayagot for homework tonight?”

“Uh, some Spanish and Biology … an Algebra quiz to study for… and I gotta write out chapter six,” I said.

“Sounds like you got plenty to do, so just forget about writing out chapter six,” said Coach Eckert. As he strode off to join the other coaches I trotted off to the locker room, grinning like an idiot – which in retrospect was apropos. I took the bus home, ate supper, did my homework, watched some tube, and hit the sack without telling a soul what had happened.

The following morning (back where this story began) I was struck by a thunderbolt of realization. I was the focus of the class’s attention because before I’d arrived, they all must have seen Macejak and Piwowarczyk turn in their hand-written chapter sixes. So if and when I failed to follow suit, my punishment was certain to be ratcheted up exponentially, providing some outstanding early morning entertainment. I stared at the floor as the wolves licked their chops.

I wish I could tell you that I sprang into action and tore some blank pages from my notebook and marched them up to the front of the class. But I did no such thing. I just froze, ashamed by the realization that my tardiness, combined with my absent-mindedness, had painted Mr. Eckert into a corner.

However, I had utterly underestimated my teacher/coach’s resourcefulness, who with a sadistic grin announced: “Instead of having him write out chapter six, after cross country practice yesterday I had Mr. Klenn run sprints till he hurled.”

Holy St. Jude! (For all you non-Catholics: St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes.) As the gallows’ trap door sprang open, Mr. Eckert, with a simple bit of fiction, cut the noose I’d tied around my own neck. The wolves nodded their approval in unison, having found a fictitious barf-fest incalculably more satisfying than an ordinary case of writer’s cramp.

Mr. Eckert never mentioned the incident to me, and I never mentioned it to anyone. And for a long time I’d regretted the fact that I’d never thanked him for bailing me out that day. Then at some point I figured that maybe I had thanked him simply by keeping my yap shut. Ya know, until now.

Chapter 11

That’s Ancient History

St. Rita School for Wayward Boys. My buddy Chris tells people that’s where I went to high school ... after spending eight years at St. Clare de Maltese Falcon. The actual names of my alma maters are St. Rita of Cascia High School and St. Clare de Montefalco Grammar School, but I prefer Chris’s versions.

Freshman year at St. Rita I had the good fortune/dumb luck to be assigned to homeroom section 1F – Ancient History, taught by Mr. Michael Eckert. While the topic of Ancient History held no particular sway with me, the man who taught it certainly did.

I didn’t especially look up to Mr. Eckert as a teacher. I especially looked up to Mr. Eckert as a badass. Around Gage Park – the neighborhood I grew up in on Chicago’s Southwest Side – some families produced badasses in pairs. Like my cousins Joey and Tony Geraci; the Cavelle brothers, Phillip and Jimmy; the Fielding Boys, Chris and Brian; and John and Tommy Sullivan. I myself was the furthest thing from a badass you could ever imagine, but I knew one when I saw one. And Mr. Eckert definitely was one. Maybe that’s why he never had to rely on shouting or swats to maintain discipline like some other teachers did. (“Swats” – the corporal punishment of choice during my years at St. Rita – consisted of being swatted on the ass with something akin to a fraternity paddle.) One teacher told us that he’d drilled holes in his paddle to decrease its wind resistance, thereby increasing the speed and force of his strikes. However, since his epic comb-over must have increased his wind resistance, perhaps in the end those competing forces cancelled each other out.

The first words uttered by Mr. Eckert every morning were not “Good morning, class.” They were “Rogalla, go get me a cup a’ coffee.” Bill Rogalla sat in the desk nearest our classroom door, so he was the obvious designee for fetching Mr. Eckert’s morning coffee from the teacher’s lounge. On his way out, Rogalla would grab a hall pass from Mr. Eckert to avoid being stopped by a hall monitor whilst on his mission of caffeination. Hall monitors were upperclassmen who’d volunteered to spend their study hall periods at desks in the hallways, making sure that all students roaming the halls during class time had permission from their teachers to be roaming the halls during class time. We never thought of hall monitors as narcs or snitches. We thought of hall monitors as brown-nosers and suck-ups.

One morning Mr. Eckert got to class a few minutes late, looking a little rough. He told us to review the current chapter of our textbooks, adding in a menacing hush that if he heard so much as a peep out of anybody, everybody would be very sorry. Then he laid his head down on his desk and was perfectly still. Maybe he had a cold or the flu. Maybe he was hung over. Maybe he just hadn’t slept well.

The room was dead quiet – for about five minutes – until a couple of guys started talking in whispers. Then a few more. Then a few more. And before we knew it the room was buzzing like a pit at the Chicago Board of Trade. Suddenly, Mr. Eckert sat bolt upright and the room went silent. “All right!” he hissed. “Write out the chapter for tomorrow. If I hear another sound, the whole class’ll get Saturday jug [“Saturday jug” was a 4-hour detention held on, you guessed it, Saturdays].” The room returned to silent mode for the remainder of the period.

On one occasion he captivated the class with tales of the unconventional tactics and weaponry – including the use of elephants – employed by Hannibal Barca, the brilliant Carthaginian general. “Anybody know what a sling is?” asked Mr. Eckert. “When Hannibal saw mercenaries from the Balearic Islands hunting birds with slings, he said ‘Them’s my boys!’ and recruited them for his army.” [It’s quite possible Mr. Eckert took poetic license with Hannibal’s quote to tailor it for his audience.] And he proceeded to march up and down the classroom aisles acting out the difficulties inherent in trying to defend oneself against a 15-foot-long spear.

Then one day, just as class was ending, Mr. Eckert informed us that the St. Rita Cross Country team tryouts were coming up. And that he was the coach. And that we were all invited. After class, Dave Wojtowicz – my best friend since the second grade – asked me if I wanted to go to cross country tryouts with him. I wondered if going out for cross country would preclude me from playing baseball, basketball and football for St. Rita. As it turned out, unexceptional showings at the respective tryouts were what precluded me from playing baseball, basketball and football for St. Rita.

Dave was unable to answer any of the pressing questions I had:

“Was St. Rita’s cross country team any good?

What kind of time commitment would be required?

Where would practices be held?

What kind of coach would Mr. Eckert be?

Did we know anybody else who was going out for the team?”

And without getting an answer to a single one of my questions, I told Dave of course I’d go out for cross country with him. I just had one last question:

“What the hell is cross country?”

If Dave had provided me with an accurate definition of cross country, such as: “the running of ridiculously long distances through the woods in shitty weather,” I’m pretty sure I would have taken a pass. But off we went, racing towards our futures on adjacent paths that would soon diverge.

Of course being a Klenn, once I’d made up my mind, I was all in, confident in the wisdom of my decision, eager to prove myself, and excited about the upcoming challenge.

But all that stuff went right out the window as soon as we ran our first workout.