the window. All of the walls had been torn out and “modernized.” What a shame.
We walked past Karen Moulik’s family home on Clinton where I used to spy through the front window as I passed, hoping to catch a secret glimpse of my future wife. One night I got more than I bargained for: it was Karen’s enormous father—“the old water buffalo” as I used to call him—in his undershirt and boxer shorts. What a letdown!
I walked Paul past Hiawatha Grade School where I attended kindergarten and first grade and past the school where much of my maturation took place—Piper Elementary. Three things really stood out during my six-year tenure at Piper Elementary: an amazingly caring teacher named Mrs. (Helen) Hull, who was perhaps the first to recognize my potential as a human being; Laura Strama, the object of my affections who kept me up nights and provoked my fantasies; and my nemesis, Piper School Principal, Hugh Biddinger.
Exactly three times in third grade (but who’s counting!), Laura picked me out of all the other boys to help her take off her shiny, white winter boots! (She would ordain one of us every day in the snowy winter months.) This was an honor too great to be believed. I still remember the smell of that rubber and the feeling of being that close to Laura’s calf—that close to any female, for that matter.
Recently, I had lunch with Laura after not seeing her for about forty years. Now I know why I was especially attracted to the American actress Sandra Bullock—Laura could be her sister.
We caught up on old times and she even remembered those white boots! The last recollection was darker; it had to do with the tenuous relationship that had developed with Mr. Hugh Biddinger.
What a foreboding figure! He stood at six feet, four inches tall with long ape-like arms that hung down well below his knees as he swung through the blackboard jungle of Piper Elementary. Mr. Biddinger had a permanent scowl on his face and a diabetes alert bracelet on his wrist.
He really showed his true colors when one morning he joined in our favorite playground game, kickball. He joined the other team’s side to make up for a missing player. As Biddinger rounded the bases to home plate, he was tagged out.
Of course, after I spotted that play, I yelled, “You’re out!”
He screamed, “I’m safe, Jim Pet!!”
I repeated, “No, you’re out!”
Boy of the Year.
He then came over to me and walloped me hard in the back of the head with his clenched fist. I was knocked dizzy, but managed to run to the nurse’s station to report what had happened. You don’t expect your bullies to come in the form of school principals.
From that moment on, our relationship changed. Biddinger knew I had the goods on him. When I came up for the honor of the coveted “Boy of the Year” award in eighth grade, he made sure I was taken off the bench and put into action at the last basketball game of the season.
After that game (where I literally fell flat on my face) I now had all the qualifications necessary to be voted “Boy of the Year.” The day I won the honor was one of the proudest moments of my life. The plaque still hangs above the water fountain in the gym. I only wish Laura Strama had won the “Girl of the Year” honor, instead of the very bookish and straight Sue Sellars—then we could have ruled our little Czech Camelot together.
Finally, I took Paul past the gas station where AZ & R bowling lanes once stood. Every Friday afternoon, Hugh Biddinger would march the whole eighth-grade class over to the lanes to bowl three games.
One particular Friday afternoon will be eternally engraved in my memory, not for the too-salty hot dogs, Green River soda, or the pungent odor that emanated from the shoe rental counter.
On this day, whether you got a strike or a gutter ball hardly mattered because everything grinded to a halt. A voice on the loudspeaker announced that President John F. Kennedy had been shot.
Everyone from that era remembers exactly what they were doing on that Friday. Grim-faced and disheartened, after having our day of playful innocence violently interrupted, we slipped back into our street shoes, grabbed our winter coats, and slunk, dazed and confused, back to the shelter of our homes.
2 Camp Jam is the wonderful organization that Jeff Carlisi of 38 Special and Dan Lipson currently run. It’s designed to mentor budding musicians, ages nine to sixteen, coast to coast in weeklong classes. “No canoes—lots of rock” is their slogan!
A Bad Guitar and a Simple Song
IT WAS NOT JUST the intense politics of the day that created a sense of heaviness during this time; there were other tensions in the Peterik household, and, at times, it felt like my only saving grace was my music. When my parents would fight—and that was often—I headed for the asylum of my tiny bedroom and lost myself in the four or five chords I knew on the ukulele. Years later, “In My Room” by the Beach Boys resounded with meaning for me.
Soon the four-string instrument gave way to the guitar. I knew Elvis Presley’s guitar had six strings; I cleverly counted them as they appeared on the cover of his iconic first album.
I started begging my parents for a guitar when I was about seven. For Christmas, I finally got my wish. My first guitar was made entirely out of plastic. It was horrible, and it had this device on the neck. You pressed down on one of the buttons of the contraption that was clamped onto the neck and it made chords.
I looked under the chord device to find out which strings had to be held down and on which fret. Then, I would attempt to substitute fingers in order to start making my own chords. I could see that this guitar was just like a ukulele, but with two extra strings. All I really had to do was figure out what to do with the extra two!
I would strum the C chord on the ukulele and play “Love Me Tender” and then play it on the guitar. So that’s basically how I learned to play the guitar. I based the guitar chords on the chords I had learned on the ukulele.
By next Christmas, my parents knew I had to move up. My first semi-cool guitar was a Harmony acoustic model with a tacky painted-on sunburst finish—but it was my Stradivarius. I would get up every morning at 6 a.m. and go over and over the basic eight-bar blues progression. I practiced that series of chords so relentlessly that it got to the point that my sister Alice Anne would scream from her slumber, “Shut up with that same progression!”
You forget, after you’ve been playing for so long, how hard it was at the beginning to hold down those strings when you’re first learning your instrument. It took me months to get enough strength to clamp down the strings to the frets and form a barre chord, which is the basis of practically all advanced chords on the instrument.
I was very influenced by a group in this pre-Beatles era, The Ventures, who played wicked instrumentals; kind of surf music meets spy music. They were like a human aurora borealis: they wore matching sharkskin suits and played Fender electric guitars finished in custom colors. When I finally purloined a Fender catalogue from Balkan Music in Berwyn I learned the correct name for these
