indi on the group W bench, in the rambling style of guthrie
I've probably told this story before, but I like telling it.
Way back when I was but a little spawnling I went to a weird-ass religious dayschool that I was full-scholarshipped into on account of being real smart and everything, when normally you had to pay out the nose and also vote for the right people to get your kid in there. But some strings were pulled for me, by my mother's weirdo shrink who thoroughly rubbed out all of those Patient and Doctor Separation lines, I mean we house-sat for him a few times and he sold my mom a car, and he pulled the strings and I got into this school. They had a good reading program, or that's what my mother was told, and I suppose they did, because I've been devouring books like a starving woman my whole damn life. Though I probably woulda done that anyway, but maybe not so fast.
This school had everything it could possibly have to pretend that it was really a repressive British boarding school circa 1951 or so. We had a headmaster and not a principal, and we had to stand up whenever he entered a room (and the teachers too I think; I can't remember anymore) and we had fussy little uniforms with skirts and blazers, and there was a big-ass church attached to the place where we had to go to 'chapel' every morning. It also had corporal punishment, which is why I stopped going in the middle of third grade.
When classes ended for the day everyone gathered up in the front of the building and waited for their parents to pick them up, which could take a while because nobody had thought things through and the school itself was in the middle of a pretty quiet neighborhood full of houses and teeny tiny cross streets that only fit one point five station wagons (this being the time before the advent of the almighty SUV, ya dig) and so when we got done at the end of the day it took a while to get out and go home. There were teachers and staff and people standing around herding the kids this way and that way and making sure nobody got hit by an idling station wagon or that the Polar Cup guy who made a killing around there didn't get anything more than dollars from the kids.
Now, the front of the building had these two big wrought-iron gates that were closed and locked during the school day. I don't know how people came and went when they were shut, and for that matter I don't know if they were locked, but that's what we were told, I suppose to keep us from trying to go outside. When we did have outside play time it was up on top of the building, up on the second or third floor, all ringed around with something like 8 feet of cyclone fence to keep us from toppling over the edge. We got a good view of things like the garbage trucks going by and the alleys in the neighborhood and peoples' back yards, and if the air was clear then sometimes maybe you could see down to the bay, and sometimes there were dolphins.
But, downstairs at the front of the place, next to the two big heavy wrought-iron gates that may or may not have been locked, someone had brought out an old battered church pew from the chapel. If all the crowd of parents picking up kids had come and gone, and everyone had cleared out, and you were still there because your ride was late, then that's where you'd go. You'd sit down on the pew and the teachers would close but not lock the gates, and then you'd have to wait until a parent or other ride-giving person came up to claim you.
This pew didn't have a name, not officially, but my mom gave it one. She called it the Group W Bench, and back then I didn't really know why. I asked her, and she said it was from an old story, where people had to go sit and wait on a special bench when nobody else knew what to do with them. That made sense to me, and while I don't remember for sure, I know me well enough to know that probably at some point or other I piped up about "Do you want me to go sit on the Group W Bench?" one afternoon when my mother was running late in that Nova that twice caught on fire. I'm not sure if I ever said that, like I say, but I know what kind of kid I was, and it's entirely likely I mentioned it, somehow.
I don't remember my mom being late too much.
But that's not the point here, really, although whenever I hear about the Group W Bench I always think of that church pew and the big heavy wrought-iron gates locking us away from the sunshine and the trees, and five or six nervous kids waiting for someone to take them home.
The point is that this, being Thanksgiving, is a special day for us counter-culture hippie spawn, because we alone have a special Thanksgiving holiday song, and while I was heating up the roasted chicken that I ordered from the grocery store the day before (because me plus turkey would probably equal fire) and we were cracking open cans of cranberry sauce and those numtious Hawaiian rolls, I kept singing and my mom kept joining in. It's an easy little song, and it's fun to have traditions like this, with the church and the war and the marches and the benches.
You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant!
Way back when I was but a little spawnling I went to a weird-ass religious dayschool that I was full-scholarshipped into on account of being real smart and everything, when normally you had to pay out the nose and also vote for the right people to get your kid in there. But some strings were pulled for me, by my mother's weirdo shrink who thoroughly rubbed out all of those Patient and Doctor Separation lines, I mean we house-sat for him a few times and he sold my mom a car, and he pulled the strings and I got into this school. They had a good reading program, or that's what my mother was told, and I suppose they did, because I've been devouring books like a starving woman my whole damn life. Though I probably woulda done that anyway, but maybe not so fast.
This school had everything it could possibly have to pretend that it was really a repressive British boarding school circa 1951 or so. We had a headmaster and not a principal, and we had to stand up whenever he entered a room (and the teachers too I think; I can't remember anymore) and we had fussy little uniforms with skirts and blazers, and there was a big-ass church attached to the place where we had to go to 'chapel' every morning. It also had corporal punishment, which is why I stopped going in the middle of third grade.
When classes ended for the day everyone gathered up in the front of the building and waited for their parents to pick them up, which could take a while because nobody had thought things through and the school itself was in the middle of a pretty quiet neighborhood full of houses and teeny tiny cross streets that only fit one point five station wagons (this being the time before the advent of the almighty SUV, ya dig) and so when we got done at the end of the day it took a while to get out and go home. There were teachers and staff and people standing around herding the kids this way and that way and making sure nobody got hit by an idling station wagon or that the Polar Cup guy who made a killing around there didn't get anything more than dollars from the kids.
Now, the front of the building had these two big wrought-iron gates that were closed and locked during the school day. I don't know how people came and went when they were shut, and for that matter I don't know if they were locked, but that's what we were told, I suppose to keep us from trying to go outside. When we did have outside play time it was up on top of the building, up on the second or third floor, all ringed around with something like 8 feet of cyclone fence to keep us from toppling over the edge. We got a good view of things like the garbage trucks going by and the alleys in the neighborhood and peoples' back yards, and if the air was clear then sometimes maybe you could see down to the bay, and sometimes there were dolphins.
But, downstairs at the front of the place, next to the two big heavy wrought-iron gates that may or may not have been locked, someone had brought out an old battered church pew from the chapel. If all the crowd of parents picking up kids had come and gone, and everyone had cleared out, and you were still there because your ride was late, then that's where you'd go. You'd sit down on the pew and the teachers would close but not lock the gates, and then you'd have to wait until a parent or other ride-giving person came up to claim you.
This pew didn't have a name, not officially, but my mom gave it one. She called it the Group W Bench, and back then I didn't really know why. I asked her, and she said it was from an old story, where people had to go sit and wait on a special bench when nobody else knew what to do with them. That made sense to me, and while I don't remember for sure, I know me well enough to know that probably at some point or other I piped up about "Do you want me to go sit on the Group W Bench?" one afternoon when my mother was running late in that Nova that twice caught on fire. I'm not sure if I ever said that, like I say, but I know what kind of kid I was, and it's entirely likely I mentioned it, somehow.
I don't remember my mom being late too much.
But that's not the point here, really, although whenever I hear about the Group W Bench I always think of that church pew and the big heavy wrought-iron gates locking us away from the sunshine and the trees, and five or six nervous kids waiting for someone to take them home.
The point is that this, being Thanksgiving, is a special day for us counter-culture hippie spawn, because we alone have a special Thanksgiving holiday song, and while I was heating up the roasted chicken that I ordered from the grocery store the day before (because me plus turkey would probably equal fire) and we were cracking open cans of cranberry sauce and those numtious Hawaiian rolls, I kept singing and my mom kept joining in. It's an easy little song, and it's fun to have traditions like this, with the church and the war and the marches and the benches.
You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant!