Spanish Lake is at the far eastern area of the Hazelwood School District in north St. Louis County. When Gary was in high school, the district was in the midst of a population explosion and were building two additional high schools that would the three schools would become Hazelwood West. Hazelwood Central and Hazelwood East. Hazelwood Central, then known simply as Hazelwood High School, was the main school, and the student population in 1972 was split into three separate schools called School B which became Central, C became East, and D became West. The students attended classes in two shifts that overlapped each other. The first one started at 6:45 a.m. and ended at 2:30 p.m. and the other began at 7:45 a.m. and ended at 3:30 p.m. Athletics began after 3:30 p.m. and the activity busses left school at 6:00 p.m.
The group of kids in School C were the early shift because they had the largest number of people in its population and the farthest, in distance, from the high school. Gary was in School C and rode a 25-minute bus ride to and from school every day. He played football and baseball so in the fall and spring he had long days. His siblings went to Hazelwood East and his brother was the first quarterback in that school’s history.
Gary rose early Saturday morning on the day of his reunion to find that his mother, Julie, had prepared breakfast and was waiting for him at the kitchen table. The sunshine was coming in through the window above the light pink table that matched the pink of the cabinets. The wallpaper was floral featuring pink flowers in white ribbons alternating with the light pink of the table. His mother sat on the bench beneath the window against the wall. She had a cup of coffee on the table in front her. Her gray hair was pulled on top of her head in a loose bun and a fuzzy gray robe was wrapped around her medium built frame. On the table before her a plateful of bacon was centered between two plates of scrambled eggs and hash browns. She had one in front of her and the second was settled in a spot that was obviously meant for him.
“Good morning, Gary,” she spoke to him first. “I heard you moving around so I made breakfast. There is a cup on the counter next to the percolator and you know where the orange juice is, don’t you?”
“Hi, Mom”, he simply said as he paced to the counter to lift the coffee pot she had directed him to and poured himself a cup of the dark, hot liquid. He brought the cup with him as he slid onto the bench opposite her. He took a sip from the cup before continuing the conversation.
“Thanks for breakfast,” he said as he lifted a piece of bacon from the plate.
“So what’s on tap today, son,” she mirrored hm by lifting a piece of bacon from the pile and crunched it in her mouth.
“Well, they are having an open house at the school this morning and I thought I would stay for the game afterward.”
“I see”, she lifted her fork and slid it under her eggs. “Darn, I forgot toast. Can you put a couple of slices in the toaster for us?”
:Sure,” he slid back out and back to the counter. He opened the cabinet closest to the sink expecting to get the bread and he was rewarded. He pulled two slices from the plastic wrapped loaf of bread and returned it to its storage place. The toaster was on the counter directly below the cabinet. He placed the two slices in it and pushed down the handle. He turned to the door behind him and pulled the handle to the refrigerator on the stoop to open it. He found the butter and returned to the counter with it. The toaster snapped and the top of the slices appeared. He pulled them out and threw them on the counter. He reached below the counter and pulled the drawer beneath it to reveal the utensils and retrieved a butter knife that he used to spread butter on each piece of toast. He left the butter in its dish with the knife on the counter and returned to the table. His mother watched every move he had made during this routine. She was smiling at him when he sat down. He noticed.
“What?”
“It was like watching you when you were in high school again and you haven’t left home,” she used her toast to push more eggs onto her fork.
He laughed and mimicked her, pushing eggs onto his fork and included a portion of the hash browns with it before he put it into his mouth. They ate in silence for a few minutes, smiling and looking at each other before he broke the silence.
“Mom, I was thinking, would you like to go with me today?”
She put her fork down and selected another piece of bacon and crunched it her mouth. She chewed slowly, thinking about the offer. Gary took another piece of bacon as well but held it in his hand waiting for her to respond. Julie finally answered him.
“I’d love to go to a football game again.”
The drive to the school seemed faster that what Gary remembered. He drove, with his mother beside him, up Trampe Road to Bellefontaine Road turning right, following it to its end at Jamestown Road. They turned left there to its end at Highway 67, turned right onto it. They left the highway at the first exit onto Lindbergh Boulevard and travelled for eight miles to New Halls Ferry Road. He turned right on that road and drove it for six miles and there it was, Hazelwood Senior High School, now Hazelwood Central, appearing on the left. It was a long way from home and Gary remembered it as a long bus ride to school. He turned into the parking lot, slowed down pausing for just a few seconds to gaze at the front of the school.
When Gary attended, the school’s forefront featured a quarter mile two-story building but currently, an addition was in front of its immediate right. He understood that an indoor swimming pool was positioned there beneath a golden dome and he was anxious to see it for the first time. He turned right and then an immediate left into the parking lot in front of the domed portion of the building.
“It looks different than when you went to school,” Julie observed.
“A little bit. Let’s go see the inside, shall we?” Gary turned the ignition of the Grand Am to the off position and then both of them exited the vehicle.
Together they passed to the left of the domed portion of the building and they looked inside its windows. The ripples of the water in the pool could be seen through them. It is an Olympic size pool and a smaller one beside it. Gary wondered why there were two pools. They entered the main doors where a table was set up and a young adult sat at it. They walked to it.
“Good morning,” she said. “My name is Jerry. How can I help you?”
“Well, hello,” Gary responded. “My name is Gary Jackson, and this is my Mom, Julie. I am from the class of ’73 and was told that the school is open for us to walk around.”
“It is but we just would like you to put your name on these name tags so everyone knows you are okay to be in here.”
“Thanks,” Gary said as he bent down and filled out the two tags that were offered to him. He handed one to his mother and he peeled the back of the other one and placed it on his chest. They left Jerry at the table and started the tour. After a few steps they were in the main hallway in the very center of it. There, they looked down to see the bronze seal of Hazelwood High School is embedded. It is a three-foot circle with a ring the states Hazelwood High School presented by Class of 1965 and in the center of a Hawk, in flight, flew over a banner that says Hazelwood HS. It is the school’s emblem. It is untouchable and a school sin to walk on it.
“It’s beautiful, Gary,” Julie stated as she stared down at it.
“I didn’t know it then, but I do now,” he agrees. He looks to his left and then to the right down the quarter mile hallway known as hallway A. He looked at the hallway before him, which was known as B, and knew the ones at the end of hallway A, the one on the left is B and the one on the right is D. Each hallway’s junction with hallway A is an office that represented each school, B, C and D. Now they are the offices for each grade level, Sophomore at hallway A, Junior at B and Senior at C.
“When it rained and we couldn’t go outside for gym, particularly when we were on any of the teams, we ran this hallway, over and over,” Gary told his Mom. “It seemed a long way then and it still looks like a long way.”
“It does,” she replied and the asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“Classrooms are classrooms, but I got to see that art room,” he turned to face her. “It’s on the second floor.”
“Let’s go,” she watched her son as looked straight ahead down hallway C and then back to the left and then to the right.
“I think we will go to my locker first,” he said as he started down hallway C. “There’s a stairway opposite it.”
“Finally,” she laughed as she hurried to catch up to him.
Gary meandered back and forth along the hall that was lined with lockers and interrupted by doorways into various classrooms. Hallway C, and the matching hallways B and D, were not nearly as long as the main one but they all emptied into the cafeteria. Gary’s locker was one classroom from the entrance of that huge lunchroom.
“Are we there yet?” Julie whined to her son. “How often did you get to your locker when you went to school?”
“Here is my locker,” he paused in front of the brown colored door of locker numbered 144. “And I came here in the morning when I arrived, came back right before lunch, and finally, before my last hour. I also used Janet’s locker upstairs for the classes closer to any classes up there.”
“How long did you get in between classes?” Julie asked as they stood in the hallway staring at the metal door.
“Five minutes,” he answered her.
“That’s why he used my locker upstairs,” a voice behind them interrupted their conversation.
“Janet?” Gary asked as he turned around. “I was just telling my Mom that I used your locker, too. Oh my, you look good.”
There, standing before Gary, a petite brunette, green eyed, with a dimpled smile grinning at him, was Janet Saunders. Janet and Gary were good friends, best of friends from the neighborhood. The second neighborhood. They met at the bus stop waiting to get on the bus to Kirby Junior High School for seventh grade. She had the same smile and the same green eyes, but her hair was longer than the length she wore it as she stands before him now.
She unashamedly hugged him and softly said, “Hi, Gary.” When she released him, she looked at him for moment then turned her attention to his mother. She hugged her, too.
“Hello, Mrs. Jackson. It is good to see you.
“Hello Janet,” she said, smiling “Call me Julie, please. We are all grown up here. It is good to see you, too.”
“Yes, we are grown up but that will be hard to call you Julie, Mrs. Jackson,” Janet laughed in response as two boys bounded down the stairway behind her. They came to a stop next to her looking from Gary to Julie.
“Oh, these are my boys, Michael and John. Mike and John, this is my friend Gary and his mother, Mrs. Jackson.”
The two of them mumbled hello and the two adults responded the same to them causing all three adults to laugh. The boys huddled closer to their mother.
“Sorry boys for laughing,” Janet told the two them then looked back at Gary. “Are you going to the reunion tonight?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said to her.
“Well, the boys wanted to see where I went to high school, but they are ready to go. Can we catch up tonight, Gary?”
“Absolutely,” he bowed toward her.
She laughed at him, bowed in return. She took her children, one in each hand, and slowly walked away. Gary watched her go as she paced away from him. She still bounced as she did when they walked in the hall many years ago. The boys dropped their hands from her, and she turned to look back at him. He waved. She waved back as she started walking backwards and slowly turned away from him.
“You still like her, don’t you?” Julie asked her son.
“You don’t know the half of it, Mom,” he said as he turned toward her. “Yeah, I still like her. Let’s go upstairs and see that art room, huh?”
After the tour of the art room, the location of several classrooms where Gary reminisced about teachers and classmates, they headed toward the gym. They were back on the first floor after exiting a stairway in hallway D which is the closest to the gym. As they walked to the end of the main hallway, they turned right and strode down a short hallway through a door and they entered the atrium to the gym. Trophy cases lined the wall on the right and pictures of the current season’s sports teams are on the it. The boys’ teams were on the left and the girls’ teams on the right, just like it was done when Gary went to school there. They turned left, the entrance to the building is on their right and the entrance to the gym was on their left. Gary turned toward the gym and on the wall on either side of the two, two-door doorways were more photos on the wall of the championship teams. Below these pictures were the trophy cases for those teams. Julie walked toward the pictures on the right side and slowly stopped before one of them. Gary walked to stand beside her knowing why she stopped.
“There you are,” she said as she pointed at the picture of him sitting in the second row, fourth from the left.
“Yep, that’s me,” Gary responded as he stepped toward the trophy case and saw the one that belonged to him and the team his mother was pointing out to him. It was really a plaque on a stand. It was made of wood and it was in the shape of the state of Missouri. Printed on a bronze plate, centered on the state, were words that said, “State of Missouri, Class 4A Football Co-Champions – 1972.” It was Hazelwood School District’s first state championship in their history. A small smile grew on Gary’s face. His mother caught it.
“What is it?” she quizzed him.
“Nothing, Mom,” he replied and walked back to the doors to the gym. He stared through the door’s window to an all-to-familiar room. It held two basketball courts that during games the court on the right would be covered with large roll away bleachers. They would become the visiting team’s side of the main court. Permanent bleachers lined the court on the left for the home team and above it in huge block letters was painted the words “Home of the Hawks”. Also painted high on the wall across from the doorway Gary stared through, was a huge hawk. In his day, it looked more like the Kansas Jayhawk logo but today it looked more natural, a huge hawk in flight. A scoreboard was mounted below the hawk. Banners representing each of the Suburban North Conference school mascots hung from the ceiling outlining the courts. A stage was located at the far-right end of the room because the gym was also used as the school’s theatre and band, musical and vocal, concerts.
The gym was mainly used for basketball and wrestling. The basketball nets were mounted on huge trestles that extended from the ceiling and all eight of them were in the down position. There was a set of two nets on each basketball court and two additional hoops hung down along the outside edges of both of them. Gary also knew that hidden on the other side of the hawk decorated wall were the locker rooms. He remembered the games, the matches, the pep rallies, and the gym classes that he experienced in that room. He couldn’t believe he was getting so melancholy about his high school days.
“Are we going inside?” his mother asked him.
“We don’t have to, Mom.”
“I’d like to step inside, if you don’t mind,” she said.
Gary smiled at her and pulled open the door to allow his mother to walk in front of him. He followed her and they stopped just inside the door. Together, they looked around the room, drawing in the sight and the smell of it. The gym had a distinct smell, a mix of floor polish and sweat. He definitely knew he was in a gym. They stood together but each of them was remembering different memories.
“Are you ready to go to the game?” Julie finally asked him.
“Nah, I have seen what I wanted to see today,” Gary answered her. “What do you want to do?”
“I came for the game,” she reminded him and laughed.
“That’s right,” he laughed back and pushed open the door. “Let’s go to a football game.”
To be continued…
My First Stories 