If another thing did make our forgotten generation stand out, it was the effect of divorce. Many of us were scarred in new ways. Never before had so many parents casually quit the family unit. Maybe they watched too many Elvis movies in the 50's. The hip-shake was too much for 'em. We didn't die in a war, but part of us died when our parents split up.
After seeing Elvis on TV our young Father's tried to bang anything in a skirt.....
These events actually happened. The names have been shortened to protect the guilty:
High School: I hated school, for the most part. I think it must have been the constant weight loss for wrestling, because in the brief time at the end of each wrestling season, 7th through 12th grade, when I could eat normally, I actually enjoyed school and improved my grades, as I remember it.
Phoenixville High: Great wrestling coach, Lonny Moore. A+ Role model! Not only was he a solid coach, but a master motivator, causing the entire wrestling team to diet like Ethiopians during a drought. It got to the point where if you weren't constantly hungry, missing meals with no body fat, you were looked upon as a traitor. From the archives.....
We were blessed with a lot of talent though, that's for sure. I distinctly remember Steve McGovern, who went to the state finals on two basic wrestling moves. Here's a guy who wasn't the strongest guy you'll ever meet, but he concentrated on hitting these two wrestling moves from anywhere, mainly the Fireman's Carry for the take-down and the Head Lever-where you pull the bottom wrestler's arm back by the wrist and put your head into the guy's armpit. Then you slip your head under the arm and lift him over for the pin.
So the guy would eventually be dead tired after fighting off the head-lever the whole time he was on the bottom after getting taken down by the Fireman's Carry. Steve beat just about all comers with this strategy, despite being a big pot-head party animal. It was pure genius, really. Exercise was a rare occurrence for Steve, although he did show up for every practice. Here's a newspaper blurb from the archives on Steve's career:
This exposes a little-known secret of success in sports, mainly that you don't have to be the best at everything to be a winner, just be the best at three or four basic moves that you practice day and night until nobody can stop them.
Then there was Mark Cagle, one of the best pure athletes I've ever seen, at least in high school. He was a grown man it seemed, and we were still kids. He was another natural. He didn't seem to have any special exercise routine going on. He was just naturally strong and fast. I'm not sure how he didn't win the state tournament....he was the only one of us that went on to do anything meaningful at the college level. From the archives; Cagle, a 1977 graduate, captured four postseason titles and went on to become an All-American at West Virginia University.
It seems that we were tough at every weight class and we were because we won the conference all three years I was there. Luckily I fit in and made varsity all three years, although I missed most of my junior season due to a knee injury early on.
We were ranked top ten in the state in my senior year. Lonny knew how to get results. I don't know if he could deal with today's kids. The discipline we had was not to be valued in later years like it was at that time. They stopped spanking the kids, stopped pushing them, even stopped yelling at them. Now the prisons are full.
My own performance sucked for the most part, after my sophomore year, at least compared to my potential. In fact, my sophomore year was my best year, as the next year I injured my knee early on and missed the season, and my senior year I finally reached my former excellence by, maybe the last few matches, and won the Sectional Championship, despite being insultingly ranked third by the local "experts." Rank me third? Good move if you were trying to totally piss me off. Thank you for the motivation.
Unfortunately, by this time, my body was trying to grow and I had grown tired of starving myself to make weight by the post-season and took a dive at the District tournament, stupidly lost on purpose. I honestly don't remember what I was thinking at the time, to do such a thing. This is probably the most dishonorable thing that I have done in sports, that I can recall.
Regardless, I will never truly know how far I could have gone in that final season of wrestling, which still stings to this very day. My sophomore year was my best year, probably because I didn't have to cut much weight to make the team. The timing of my knee injury early in the next season effectively ended any real mark I could have made in local high school wrestling and the Sectional title at the end of my career was like a fart in a hurricane.
My wrestling career was basically over, at that point. It's just that nobody bothered to inform me of such. Looking back, I wasted a lot of time on some huge ventures that were essentially over; they had reached their peak. Then I would blow another decade or so, trying to "force it" down my own throat, like wrestling another four years in high school and college, a huge waste of time, especially since I was doing it mostly, for my parent's approval.
What I did not realize was that, after my parents adopted a boy when I was thirteen, it did not matter what I did. It was all about the "new kid." It was essentially over right then, between my parents and I. From that point on, I was an afterthought, really. As much as I tried to be, "the good son", the new member of the family could do no wrong and I could do nothing right. My own mother, to her dying day, worshiped this interloper and his every move, ignoring my relatively meaningless existence.
Back to high school wrestling; I'm always talking about do-overs and regrets, what I would have done and could have done and should have done. If indeed I could have started over again from that point, right after that knee injury my junior year, I think my best move would have been to drop wrestling altogether and concentrate on getting my grades up and growing my local lawn business and maybe coming up with some kind of career plan. There's always a better way to spend your time. Unfortunately, I never could recognize when it was time to change my path. I could only look back and agonizingly see it way later.
As it were (was?), I did nobody any good hanging around the wrestling room the rest of the season with a cast on my leg while watching everyone else reap the rewards of a great and winning season, only to get depressed that I wasn't a part of it. There's about eighty nine better ways I could have been spending my precious time. Instead, I never did fully recover from the injury before graduation, even though I eked out an average senior wrestling season at best, only to piss away three more precious years wrestling for free in college, no scholarship. Finally, by some miracle, I scored a one year scholarship at West Virginia University by my senior year in college, after transferring and working my ass off in the wrestling room at my new school, only to finally graduate, still with no concrete career plan and no job prospects. So I basically wasted another five years screwing around with the wrestling with still no career plan, not particularly enjoying the experience and gained next to nothing and everything is forgotten by anyone that matters anyway. Pure idiocy.
Teachers, good, but mean spirited. Eagles fans, you know? A lot of bullies. Real tough, picking on kids. I hope you're real proud of yourself. Maybe they were already jaded by the dope-smokin', hippie baby boomer generations before us, who were no angels themselves. That's how it was for our generation though. We always showed up to pay the price for the hell-raisers that came before us. By the time we showed up, the teachers had hair-trigger tempers. Plus, they were typically miserable, working in that school district, for some reason, and took it out on the students. There was this English teacher, Mr. Blahut, who routinely handed back papers with 25 to 50 F's marked on them. Jeez what a bunch of dicks.
Not all teachers were bad. Favorite teacher, Mr. Aurand, Biology. He got my stupid humor, which actually takes intelligence, I have learned.
Socially, I was inept, to put it lightly. Awkward is a good word. Shy-boy. Probably a result of getting my ass beat regularly by my stepfather in the 60's, who was quite the disciplinarian, but it felt like an ass-beating to me. I got to know the sting of the belt. It got to the point where I would almost piss myself if he looked at me sideways. I mean, to me, he was a giant. A pissed off, giant maniac that was chasing me with a belt. The worst was when he would yank my pants down to my ankles and slap my bare ass in public restaurants, in front of a room full of strangers. Not the best way to grow a confident young man. It always struck me as odd, that a father would humiliate a young boy in such a way, and still baffles me to this very day....
Luckily I got some decent mentoring later on in high school, from Coach Lonny Moore, among others, in school sports. By college, I was almost "normal", but I was still frustratingly plagued by panic attacks until my mid-30's or so, especially during any kind of attempt at public speaking.
In fact, I got a taste of this, probably one of my most embarrassing moments, at least in high school, my ill-timed, first attempt at stand-up comedy, in front of my entire 9th grade English class. We had a writing assignment, "describe how to do something step by step", which we had been required to subsequently read out loud. I wrote a little masterpiece I called, "suicide bit." Problem was, it wasn't supposed to be funny.
I read my little "comedy" piece in front of the class and then, dead-silence. My first lesson in public speaking. I enjoy making people laugh, but this was a disaster. What never occurred to me, at my young age is, suicide is a very common problem. I think, if I had more encouragement, I would have stuck with stand-up comedy. I love going to comedy clubs, but I still can't do public speaking now, without sweating and stuttering like an idiot. I am sure this could been remedied, with some more practice with more tactful material.
Highlight-Homecoming Court w/K.Scott. She was ridiculously cute, and I said about 5 words all night. Eventually, I would probably gladly have made this girl my wife, but her family moved away soon after. My young life shows a persistent history of uncannily being "cock-blocked" by one random thing or another. It's pretty amazing, how unlucky I was. The experience usually went something like this: great opportunity - majorly screwing up of great opportunity - lesson learned - opportunity never occurs again well into old age.....
Enjoyed innocent "dating" with Kathy H., Betsy B., and Sherri M. Clueless about girls, lucky for them. What a sin that the girls were so gorgeous, and I didn't really understand how small this window of opportunity would be. Plus, I had a confidence problem, which is never a good thing.
Linda P., Summer of '77 is ours in eternity. I remember making out with Linda on the living room floor of her parent's beautiful contemporary-style house, tucked into a very private corner near the edge of the Park on Valley Forge Mountain, while Fleetwood Mac's new "Rumors" album played on the stereo. Or sometimes we would walk down the trail behind her house, which led through the woods to an open field overlooking the edge of Valley Forge Park. We would lay in the tall grass, hidden from the world, the warm sun playing upon our young bodies, while the summer breeze would gently toss locks of her long brown hair across her pretty face.There were no cellphones or electronic distractions at that time. They weren't invented yet. I had her undivided attention.
Linda was the type of girl in high school I thought I could never get, remember that esteem problem? She seemed more sophisticated, mature and quite unattainable in my young mind at the time. We all create our own limitations. Regardless, my hormones got the better of me, and one day in the summer, while hanging around the Sun Bowl on Valley Forge Mountain, I boldly asked her out and she said, "Sure, we can go out. Where do you want to go?"
I was completely thrilled. She seemed older than her 17, I guess because she smoked, and she had kind of a raspy, sexy voice-the type of thing that would probably not seem so sexy twenty years down the road-but it was now that mattered. Plus, she had a really cool red Firebird. I felt like I was dating a 25 year old woman, which is a dream come true for any teen-aged boy. This was my first real girlfriend, in that we made out a lot, and more, and hung around together. Linda was hot. She looked like an under-developed Jacqueline Bisset, an actress I also liked a lot. We used to have a game where if we saw a car at night with one headlight out, we would kiss. The summer of '77 with Linda was one of my best summers ever.
Unfortunately, my parents were totally against the relationship, and eventually banned Linda from the house. I still managed to see her for another year, and even took her to her senior prom at a neighboring high school. My mother was so desperate to stop me from seeing this girl, that she made up some very unflattering rumors about Linda, that she supposedly heard from a neighbor, which caused me to break up with her before I went off to college. Linda took it pretty hard, to my total surprise. I had no idea how fond she had grown of our thing together. Later I found these rumors to be untrue, but by then it was too late. I've always felt bad about how this ended, to put it mildly. You never forget your first girl, that's for sure. Dedicated to Linda:
1978: Sectional Wrestling Champion-I should have done better than this, but my talents were badly managed, and I had a poor attitude. Plus, I lived too far from the high school practice room. Unfortunately, the emphasis was on making weight, more than the technical aspects of wrestling. Still, I had two scholarship offers, from Drexel, and Southern Connecticut State. Sick of losing weight for wrestling in high school, I turned down both offers.
For you young wrestlers with some natural ability in the sport, here are some recommended books, thoroughly reviewed by yours truly. In fact, going through these books makes me want to get back in the game, but my utter lack of health insurance prevents me from such a reckless endeavor. I wish I'd had these books back then. I am sure I could have gone from being merely good to great.
Senior Prom, drank too much. I don't know what I was thinking about here, but I got so wasted, I could hardly speak. The football players had smuggled in some Southern Comfort-some serious whiskey. Sorry Monica B! She had to drive. She was a nice girl, originally from Argentina. Some of the stupid things I did, I have to cringe.
High School ends, thank God. Grad party, 2 beers, made out with class valedictorian. There was only one in those days. It was kind of cool, because she was a scholar, and I was an incredibly dumb jock. I think it was easier to hook up at that moment, because the women knew they wouldn't have to deal with the consequences later at school. That was it though. I tried to call her a few times and continue, but she was not open to anything more. At the very least, she helped me discover the magic of moderate alcohol consumption. I was actually invited to three different proms at three different high schools, and went to two. Looking back, I should have gone to all three. These things don't happen every day, you know.
Part 5
After seeing Elvis on TV our young Father's tried to bang anything in a skirt.....
These events actually happened. The names have been shortened to protect the guilty:
High School: I hated school, for the most part. I think it must have been the constant weight loss for wrestling, because in the brief time at the end of each wrestling season, 7th through 12th grade, when I could eat normally, I actually enjoyed school and improved my grades, as I remember it.
Phoenixville High: Great wrestling coach, Lonny Moore. A+ Role model! Not only was he a solid coach, but a master motivator, causing the entire wrestling team to diet like Ethiopians during a drought. It got to the point where if you weren't constantly hungry, missing meals with no body fat, you were looked upon as a traitor. From the archives.....
Lonny Moore coached Phoenixville's wrestlers to five consecutive Ches-Mont League championships during a 16-year tenure. He compiled an overall record of 160 victories and 51 losses for a winning percentage of .758.
We were blessed with a lot of talent though, that's for sure. I distinctly remember Steve McGovern, who went to the state finals on two basic wrestling moves. Here's a guy who wasn't the strongest guy you'll ever meet, but he concentrated on hitting these two wrestling moves from anywhere, mainly the Fireman's Carry for the take-down and the Head Lever-where you pull the bottom wrestler's arm back by the wrist and put your head into the guy's armpit. Then you slip your head under the arm and lift him over for the pin.
So the guy would eventually be dead tired after fighting off the head-lever the whole time he was on the bottom after getting taken down by the Fireman's Carry. Steve beat just about all comers with this strategy, despite being a big pot-head party animal. It was pure genius, really. Exercise was a rare occurrence for Steve, although he did show up for every practice. Here's a newspaper blurb from the archives on Steve's career:
McGovern finished undefeated (43-0) in dual meets and 82-8 in his career before graduating from Phoenixville in 1978. He won two sectional, three districts, and two regional titles and became a two-time state medalist. His career at the University of Maryland was curtailed by injury.
Amazing, but the weed-smoking and aversion to exercise seems to have caught up with Steve in college, wrestling against bigger and stronger athletes. If someone could have persuaded him to train aerobically and hit the weight room, he would have been unstoppable.
This exposes a little-known secret of success in sports, mainly that you don't have to be the best at everything to be a winner, just be the best at three or four basic moves that you practice day and night until nobody can stop them.
Then there was Mark Cagle, one of the best pure athletes I've ever seen, at least in high school. He was a grown man it seemed, and we were still kids. He was another natural. He didn't seem to have any special exercise routine going on. He was just naturally strong and fast. I'm not sure how he didn't win the state tournament....he was the only one of us that went on to do anything meaningful at the college level. From the archives; Cagle, a 1977 graduate, captured four postseason titles and went on to become an All-American at West Virginia University.
It seems that we were tough at every weight class and we were because we won the conference all three years I was there. Luckily I fit in and made varsity all three years, although I missed most of my junior season due to a knee injury early on.
We were ranked top ten in the state in my senior year. Lonny knew how to get results. I don't know if he could deal with today's kids. The discipline we had was not to be valued in later years like it was at that time. They stopped spanking the kids, stopped pushing them, even stopped yelling at them. Now the prisons are full.
My own performance sucked for the most part, after my sophomore year, at least compared to my potential. In fact, my sophomore year was my best year, as the next year I injured my knee early on and missed the season, and my senior year I finally reached my former excellence by, maybe the last few matches, and won the Sectional Championship, despite being insultingly ranked third by the local "experts." Rank me third? Good move if you were trying to totally piss me off. Thank you for the motivation.
Unfortunately, by this time, my body was trying to grow and I had grown tired of starving myself to make weight by the post-season and took a dive at the District tournament, stupidly lost on purpose. I honestly don't remember what I was thinking at the time, to do such a thing. This is probably the most dishonorable thing that I have done in sports, that I can recall.
Regardless, I will never truly know how far I could have gone in that final season of wrestling, which still stings to this very day. My sophomore year was my best year, probably because I didn't have to cut much weight to make the team. The timing of my knee injury early in the next season effectively ended any real mark I could have made in local high school wrestling and the Sectional title at the end of my career was like a fart in a hurricane.
My wrestling career was basically over, at that point. It's just that nobody bothered to inform me of such. Looking back, I wasted a lot of time on some huge ventures that were essentially over; they had reached their peak. Then I would blow another decade or so, trying to "force it" down my own throat, like wrestling another four years in high school and college, a huge waste of time, especially since I was doing it mostly, for my parent's approval.
What I did not realize was that, after my parents adopted a boy when I was thirteen, it did not matter what I did. It was all about the "new kid." It was essentially over right then, between my parents and I. From that point on, I was an afterthought, really. As much as I tried to be, "the good son", the new member of the family could do no wrong and I could do nothing right. My own mother, to her dying day, worshiped this interloper and his every move, ignoring my relatively meaningless existence.
Back to high school wrestling; I'm always talking about do-overs and regrets, what I would have done and could have done and should have done. If indeed I could have started over again from that point, right after that knee injury my junior year, I think my best move would have been to drop wrestling altogether and concentrate on getting my grades up and growing my local lawn business and maybe coming up with some kind of career plan. There's always a better way to spend your time. Unfortunately, I never could recognize when it was time to change my path. I could only look back and agonizingly see it way later.
As it were (was?), I did nobody any good hanging around the wrestling room the rest of the season with a cast on my leg while watching everyone else reap the rewards of a great and winning season, only to get depressed that I wasn't a part of it. There's about eighty nine better ways I could have been spending my precious time. Instead, I never did fully recover from the injury before graduation, even though I eked out an average senior wrestling season at best, only to piss away three more precious years wrestling for free in college, no scholarship. Finally, by some miracle, I scored a one year scholarship at West Virginia University by my senior year in college, after transferring and working my ass off in the wrestling room at my new school, only to finally graduate, still with no concrete career plan and no job prospects. So I basically wasted another five years screwing around with the wrestling with still no career plan, not particularly enjoying the experience and gained next to nothing and everything is forgotten by anyone that matters anyway. Pure idiocy.
Teachers, good, but mean spirited. Eagles fans, you know? A lot of bullies. Real tough, picking on kids. I hope you're real proud of yourself. Maybe they were already jaded by the dope-smokin', hippie baby boomer generations before us, who were no angels themselves. That's how it was for our generation though. We always showed up to pay the price for the hell-raisers that came before us. By the time we showed up, the teachers had hair-trigger tempers. Plus, they were typically miserable, working in that school district, for some reason, and took it out on the students. There was this English teacher, Mr. Blahut, who routinely handed back papers with 25 to 50 F's marked on them. Jeez what a bunch of dicks.
Not all teachers were bad. Favorite teacher, Mr. Aurand, Biology. He got my stupid humor, which actually takes intelligence, I have learned.
Socially, I was inept, to put it lightly. Awkward is a good word. Shy-boy. Probably a result of getting my ass beat regularly by my stepfather in the 60's, who was quite the disciplinarian, but it felt like an ass-beating to me. I got to know the sting of the belt. It got to the point where I would almost piss myself if he looked at me sideways. I mean, to me, he was a giant. A pissed off, giant maniac that was chasing me with a belt. The worst was when he would yank my pants down to my ankles and slap my bare ass in public restaurants, in front of a room full of strangers. Not the best way to grow a confident young man. It always struck me as odd, that a father would humiliate a young boy in such a way, and still baffles me to this very day....
Luckily I got some decent mentoring later on in high school, from Coach Lonny Moore, among others, in school sports. By college, I was almost "normal", but I was still frustratingly plagued by panic attacks until my mid-30's or so, especially during any kind of attempt at public speaking.
In fact, I got a taste of this, probably one of my most embarrassing moments, at least in high school, my ill-timed, first attempt at stand-up comedy, in front of my entire 9th grade English class. We had a writing assignment, "describe how to do something step by step", which we had been required to subsequently read out loud. I wrote a little masterpiece I called, "suicide bit." Problem was, it wasn't supposed to be funny.
I read my little "comedy" piece in front of the class and then, dead-silence. My first lesson in public speaking. I enjoy making people laugh, but this was a disaster. What never occurred to me, at my young age is, suicide is a very common problem. I think, if I had more encouragement, I would have stuck with stand-up comedy. I love going to comedy clubs, but I still can't do public speaking now, without sweating and stuttering like an idiot. I am sure this could been remedied, with some more practice with more tactful material.
Highlight-Homecoming Court w/K.Scott. She was ridiculously cute, and I said about 5 words all night. Eventually, I would probably gladly have made this girl my wife, but her family moved away soon after. My young life shows a persistent history of uncannily being "cock-blocked" by one random thing or another. It's pretty amazing, how unlucky I was. The experience usually went something like this: great opportunity - majorly screwing up of great opportunity - lesson learned - opportunity never occurs again well into old age.....
Enjoyed innocent "dating" with Kathy H., Betsy B., and Sherri M. Clueless about girls, lucky for them. What a sin that the girls were so gorgeous, and I didn't really understand how small this window of opportunity would be. Plus, I had a confidence problem, which is never a good thing.
Linda P., Summer of '77 is ours in eternity. I remember making out with Linda on the living room floor of her parent's beautiful contemporary-style house, tucked into a very private corner near the edge of the Park on Valley Forge Mountain, while Fleetwood Mac's new "Rumors" album played on the stereo. Or sometimes we would walk down the trail behind her house, which led through the woods to an open field overlooking the edge of Valley Forge Park. We would lay in the tall grass, hidden from the world, the warm sun playing upon our young bodies, while the summer breeze would gently toss locks of her long brown hair across her pretty face.There were no cellphones or electronic distractions at that time. They weren't invented yet. I had her undivided attention.
Linda was the type of girl in high school I thought I could never get, remember that esteem problem? She seemed more sophisticated, mature and quite unattainable in my young mind at the time. We all create our own limitations. Regardless, my hormones got the better of me, and one day in the summer, while hanging around the Sun Bowl on Valley Forge Mountain, I boldly asked her out and she said, "Sure, we can go out. Where do you want to go?"
I was completely thrilled. She seemed older than her 17, I guess because she smoked, and she had kind of a raspy, sexy voice-the type of thing that would probably not seem so sexy twenty years down the road-but it was now that mattered. Plus, she had a really cool red Firebird. I felt like I was dating a 25 year old woman, which is a dream come true for any teen-aged boy. This was my first real girlfriend, in that we made out a lot, and more, and hung around together. Linda was hot. She looked like an under-developed Jacqueline Bisset, an actress I also liked a lot. We used to have a game where if we saw a car at night with one headlight out, we would kiss. The summer of '77 with Linda was one of my best summers ever.
 |
| Linda Pemberton and I, 1977 - easily my best part of the 1970's. |
I know that my destiny was to marry this girl, but my parents so sabotaged my relationship with her that it did not come to pass. They would repeat this nasty little habit a few more times, until I was out of young wifely prospects. They were true cock-blockers 'til the end. Never listen to your parents when it comes to girls. They really don't know anything and long after they're gone you gotta' live with the effects of their meddling. Even if it ultimately had turned out to have been a mistake, I think it would have been my favorite one.
1978: Sectional Wrestling Champion-I should have done better than this, but my talents were badly managed, and I had a poor attitude. Plus, I lived too far from the high school practice room. Unfortunately, the emphasis was on making weight, more than the technical aspects of wrestling. Still, I had two scholarship offers, from Drexel, and Southern Connecticut State. Sick of losing weight for wrestling in high school, I turned down both offers.
For you young wrestlers with some natural ability in the sport, here are some recommended books, thoroughly reviewed by yours truly. In fact, going through these books makes me want to get back in the game, but my utter lack of health insurance prevents me from such a reckless endeavor. I wish I'd had these books back then. I am sure I could have gone from being merely good to great.
Senior Prom, drank too much. I don't know what I was thinking about here, but I got so wasted, I could hardly speak. The football players had smuggled in some Southern Comfort-some serious whiskey. Sorry Monica B! She had to drive. She was a nice girl, originally from Argentina. Some of the stupid things I did, I have to cringe.
High School ends, thank God. Grad party, 2 beers, made out with class valedictorian. There was only one in those days. It was kind of cool, because she was a scholar, and I was an incredibly dumb jock. I think it was easier to hook up at that moment, because the women knew they wouldn't have to deal with the consequences later at school. That was it though. I tried to call her a few times and continue, but she was not open to anything more. At the very least, she helped me discover the magic of moderate alcohol consumption. I was actually invited to three different proms at three different high schools, and went to two. Looking back, I should have gone to all three. These things don't happen every day, you know.
Part 5
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