SPEAR SCHOOL? TELLME ABOUT IT!

                             CHAPTER 8.

      “SPEAR SCHOOL?  TELL ME ABOUT IT!”

So I ended up leaving St. Coletta’s School in 1974 and started that summer at Spear Educational Center in Arlington.  It was a strange learning place because half the day would be devoted to reading, writing, math and other subjects, while the afternoon would be devoted to recreational classes such as typing, sports and games.

What was really shocking was the restrictive diet that it had: no dairy or meat products, bacon could not be sugar cured, and no sweets.  Everyone was given a small packet of vitamins that they took with their snack.  And God, taking all those vitamins made me gag!  No wonder it did a doozy on my stomach.

Anyway, some of the students I remember from my 3 years there include a young lady named Karen Caprizzio, who was having trouble with her math and sometimes got emotionally upset.  Then there was a kid named Jeff…something or another.  I forget his full name.  Anyway, he liked to sing songs like “Barney The Bashful Bullfrog” and “My Heart’s In The Highlands.”  He was from Fernald School, which was a learning institution for those with mental disabilities.  And there was a doozy named Mike Exellbert, who lived in Roslindale and would sing silly songs like “Allerettes And Cigarettes” and say stuff like “You Just Can’t Beat 12 Noon!  12 Noon for breakfast and 12 Noon when the sun gets down.”  Or how about a kid named Albert Tobin?  He was the bully of the school; he’d always say things to upset Karen and he used to tease me by calling me names like Richie.  (In fact, one afternoon when he started teasing me about being called Richie when I was younger, I started a fight with him.  They had to break it up, but for a week I ended up being on the outs with him.)

There was one kid named Carl Foley, who was a patient at the Massachusetts State Hospital.  When we picked him up each day, he’d be talking like a runaway locomotive.  He’d be swearing and saying this like “Carl, Get In The Car” and “Okay.”  Unbelievable.  Most of the children who attended the school lived at home, but some would come in from institutions like the ones I mentioned. 

I would be there all day from 9 a.m. until 4 or 5 p.m. in the afternoon, except Wednesday when we were let go at 12 Noon so the teachers there would have their weekly conference.  Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, we’d be taking classes from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m., with the last 3 hours given over to recrecation.  And sometimes, when one of my class mates make me laugh, I’d have to stand up and turn around.

Yeah, that was something.

However, it was while I attended Charles River Academy that I learned how to use a typewriter.  And it’s given me this long love of writing things.  In fact, in 1982 and 1983, I worked on a long epic novel called “A Natchez Wedding,” which was about two kids trying to get married in Natchez, Mississippi, a place I’ve never been to.

Another time, I started working on a book called “The Coronation Of Mother Goose,” which I modeled after the Mark Twain book “The Prince and the Pauper.”  But it never got anywhere, since I set the book out on the West Coast.  And I once tried to tackle the science fiction project called Xenon vs. Xepilon, which was the story of a space war.

Yeah, it’s good to dream and imagine.  But when you’re writing a book like this, you have to be practical.  You have write about things you know and experiences you’ve been through.  Nothing’s wrong with creating something fantastic, but you always want to get your facts straight.  At least when you’re writing your first book, like I’m doing with this one.

Still, I’m thinking of starting the 2 again as soon as this book’s finished.  Who knows?  May I’ll work on them as well.

When first I went to Spear School, we were renting out the classroom of an Armenian Apostolic Church in Belmont.  Our place was across the street from a Greek Orthodox Church where we’d hear the bells ring out every hour on the hour.  I remember the first year I was there because when it was hot, we’d have the windows open and at the top of the hour, the church bells across the street would ring the hour.

One time, while we were at class, a funeral was taking place across the street.  The bells tolled solemnly once for each year the decedent was on the Earth.   It did so twice: first, when the funeral was beginning, and second, when it was ending.  I always knew that everyone has a short time on this Earth, and we must make it a better place when we leave than when we first came.

In the fall of that year, we moved to a new location in Arlington, this time next to a Methodist Church or something.  I forget what kind of church that was.  Anyway, the structure continued with the same hours: 9 to 5 each day(except Wednesdays) and 9 or 10 to 4 during the summer.  This was a year round school, so kids went through the year, except for holidays and scheduled vacations.

Early in 1976, we moved to Framingham, where we were located in a former Catholic Monastery.  That’s where we stayed until I left the school in August of 1977.  They had a swimming pool(which we never used) and a tennis and basketball court, where we played during the spring and summer months.  Also, we’d do some running around the school for special points, because the teachers had started something called Reward Store.  We started carrying checkbooks in class that would record how many checks we had for good behavior.  If we had good behavior, we could earn checks for certain things we could play with later that afternoon like games, record players, skates and more.  Someone who screwed up would have their checks taken away from them.

I had that happen to me a few times, but a couple of the students would lose all their checks or their book.  Or, in the case of one of them whose name I’ll not mention, he had the words “No Reward Store Today” written on his book.

I will tell you that he had a bad habit of talking about his day and picking up on that “Allerettes And Cigarettes” song.