Bogus Bells

After years of benign neglect by the county, my dear high school Alma Mater, Wheeler High School is getting a much needed renovation. As part of the renovation, the original portion of the school built in 1965, will be torn down and rebuilt.

The Wheeler High School Alumni Association sponsored a “goodbye” to the old building and I had to go. It was neat walking the halls again. It was like nothing had changed except everybody had gotten older and fatter.

Here's a picture of me, my wife, and John Quarles. Please note we are the smallest people in the picture.

It brought back memories. Back when I was in school (the mid 70's) the motto of Wheeler could have been, to paraphrase Dave Barry: “Wheeler High School: Where the Leaders of Tomorrow are Leaving Wads of Gum Under The Desks of Today”. It is not true, young people; whose only knowledge of the 70’s is “That 70’s Show”, that everyone was stoned. Okay, maybe one out of three.


Of course, it brought back a memory of when I got into big trouble at school.

My first two years at Wheeler, we had double sessions. The upper classmen went in the morning and the underclassmen went in the afternoon. This meant there were no lunches served at school. In my junior year, the classes were united and lunch was now served. In keeping with modern times, we had two lunch rooms. One lunch room served the usual lunch room swill. The other served HAMBURGERS, FRIES, and MILKSHAKES.

I don’t have to tell you which lunch room I hit everyday and what I had. I still graduated weighing about a buck-thirty, which tells you something of my metabolism back then. To say I enjoyed lunch was an understatement. I was one of those students that majored in lunch.

In the winter quarter, I had this class that was in the “senior” hall and it had a complicated bell system. This first bell meant the seniors had five minutes until the second bell and then the second bell meant the seniors could go to lunch and then the third bell meant that the juniors had five minutes until the their lunch but if you were a senior you could leave class and have lunch. The fourth bell was the lunch bell.

This was a History class, which was the only subject besides lunch I was any good at. I sat in front of my friend Moody who was a Math genius. Moody liked getting on our teacher’s nerves, a gentleman we called “Willie Wetumpka”. One day, Willie was talking about Manifest Destiny or something and the first bell rang. Moody turned to me and said, “Let’s go to lunch”. We got up and went to lunch three bells ahead of schedule.

I remember we had a real pleasant lunch and then I went to my other classes. My last class of the day was an American Literature class which Moody was in also. I walked into class and a girl asked me how the office was. I said “What office?”

Like an idiot, I had no idea that she was referring to my early lunch. Just about that time, a student from the Vice Principal’s office came into class with note asking to speak with me and Moody.

This particular Vice Principal was a very nice, big ole’ bear of a man. He also had a Southern accent like you wouldn’t believe. When he would give an announcement over the Intercom about the Key Club selling kazoos at the library you would hear: “Tha Kay Club is sellin Kahzoos at the lieberry”.

This is the first time since sixth grade (I blew into an open microphone causing feedback) that I had been in a principal’s office. Moody, however, was known by the administration because of his math wizardry. He was on this math team that won a state award a week before this incident.

The Vice Principal was very disappointed in Moody. “Yew represented this sckuel when yew when you was in that Math thang” ( You represented the school in the mathematics tournament) “Then yew go do sumpthin lake this. I’m vary,vary disappoint in yew” (Then you do something like this. I am very, very disappointed in you). Then he turned to me and said these immortal words: “You too, boy”.

I was just the afterthought in this little bit of discipline. Moody represented the best of what we had, at least math wise. I was just a little toady along for the ride. Hey, it got me an early lunch.

The Vice Principal went on for a few more minutes about “sckuel” and you just “cain’t do watchu want”. Then he asked Moody why we did this terrible deed. Moody said, “We got confused by the bells”. Which I thought was great. I wanted to jump up and say: “Yeah, man, it was you and your bogus bells that got us all confused, like we didn’t know what we were doin’. Power to the people!” For once, I kept my mouth shut.

Then in a moment of total educational hipness, the Vice Principal asked: “How should ah punish yawl?” Before I could say, “Give us a lecture and we’ll never do it again”, Moody said, “I think detention would be appropriate”.

I know I gave Moody a look that said “What the fudge-ripple are you talking about?” I couldn’t imagine telling my mother I got detention for having lunch. Fortunately, the Vice Principal probably realized that we probably wouldn’t do it again and that the bell schedule was stupid, so he let us go with a warning.

I look back on that and wonder what would happen today if I was a high school kid and did something like that. I would either: get caught in a “No Tolerance” dragnet and sent to an “Alternative” School for a couple of weeks or given a counselor to help me with my time management issues. Either way, I think I prefer what happened to me back then.