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Mark Schweickart
Janie,
I only lived near the Cody, Yarbrough, Coughlan group after sophomore year. Prior to that I lived in the center of Old Worthington on Morning street just north of Granville road. (The Wilchecks and Slivinsky’s were also in this area). However, until third grade before we moved to Morning street, I did, as you say, live near Kenny Seminsky when we lived west of High on Rosslyn St. He lived on Kanawha, one street over. I reconnected with him after I moved to LA in the 70’s. He was in San Francisco. I never got around to actually visiting him until sometime in the early 90’s. At that time he was doing quite well for himself, as a housing contractor -- buying, fixing up, and selling (or as they say “flipping”) real estate. He had recently married an English woman and they had just had a baby girl at the time.
This is my favorite story of his from that time. He had been seriously struggling to make a living as a handy-man a few years earlier. He had posted an advertisement somewhere, and got a call to do a rather ambitious job, which he accepted, of course. The problem was that he was so broke, he did not even have a car, let alone a proper construction style van, but mustering that old St. Michael’s bull shit bravado, he shows up at the site on his bicycle, explaining that his truck would be in the repair shop for a few days. Somehow he parlayed this shady misrepresentation into actually doing a first rate job, which led to others, and to others and, by the time I finally caught up with him, led him to having a beautiful house on a hill with a view of the San Francisco skyline below him. I am sorry to say I have since let that connection fade away, so I do not know what he is up to these days.
And here’s my favorite Kenny Seminsky story from grade school days, one that I am sure he and I and the rest of our 6th grade class are deeply ashamed of for the burden it placed on those coming up through the ranks behind us. At that time, we had a combination 5th grade/ 6th grade class in the old quonset hut building, and a larger 6th grade class in the main school building. Kenny and I were in the combo class. I don’t remember the nun’s name, but she was often a little odd. Allow me to pause for a slight wacky-nun digression here. I’ll never forget her telling us the story of the time she supposedly saw some bogus diet pills that in fact contained a baby tapeworm in the capsule. She went on to describe that not only could you see the capsule move, but if you were unfortunate enough to have taken one, the tapeworm would grow and grow, and thereby sap you of all your life sustaining nutrients. However, you could remove it by holding a glass of warm milk in front of your face and opening your mouth wide. The tape worm would leap out and you could catch it and pull it all the way out. I wonder if the screenwriter for “Alien” also had a nun telling him similarly demented stories to inspire that most memorably explosive scene in the history of pop culture. Yikes. Pedagogy at its finest.
Anyway, back to Kenny. Sister Tapeworm one day decided it would be clever to show that our little combo class was superior to the other 6th grade class by having the boys in our class dress up a bit one day. So the next day most of us wore a tie to school, except Kenny. He came with a sports jacket and tie, and being the incredibly handsome kid he was in those days, he certainly did not look like the usual scruffy bunch that normally darkened our hallways. Sister Tapeworm, being also a punster prankster, made a card and attached it to a bottle of ketchup, and instructed Kenny to deliver it to the other 6th grade classroom while their class was in session. The card simply said, “Catch Up.” I doubt if anyone was impressed by her lame word-play, but the fall-out from this innocuous act was severe. The principal, as well as the other teachers, were so taken with how civilized we looked that day in our ties, that a decree was soon administered, declaring that from that day henceforth, all boys attending St. Michael’s Grade School would wear a tie to school. After all, if the girls had to wear uniforms, why shouldn’t the boys have some semblance of a uniform. And so this decree remained in force for years to come, perhaps to this day, I don’t know. All this ex-altar boy can say is my mea culpa -- “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” Schoolmates, “forgive us, we knew not what we were doing.”
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