Autobiography - The High School Years 1964 - 1969

Scrolling back in time I will share what few memories I have of high school. My five years at Hull High School were for the most part unremarkable. Grades 8 - 12 were at the high school. My uncle Dick (Dirty Dick) Willis was the head custodian. He earned his nickname because he always had a joke to tell. Almost always off color. The high school was located on Point Allerton which is some the most prime water front real estate on the South Shore of Boston. The school had a view of Hingham Bay, the City of Boston and Boston Harbor. I was an average student that studied just enough to get passing grades. I was on the track team for four years. I was in two school plays Bye, Bye Birdie and other one. I joined the football team in my senior year. That lasted two weeks but was fun. I was one of 10 students that joined the football in our senior year having never played football. The coach had to be scratching his head. After two weeks I realized I was 10 years too late and quit the team. I was working at the gas station late one afternoon when the football team bus drove by taking the team to an away game in Abington. I waved and wished them well.

I had another job while I was in high school. My neighbor across the street, Carl Ross, was a Town of Hull selectman. Carl was the arch enemy of my grandfather Lloyd. The Town of Hull hired a dredging company to dredge the channel leading to the Hull Yacht Club and Salt Water Club. Along the way Miller’s marina was scheduled to be dredged at public expense. The owner of the marina near my house, Gerry Giogrando, appealed to the Board of Selectmen to stop the dredging. They did and Lloyd never forgave Carl. Carl was the grandfather of my best friend at the time Larry Ross. Carl gave me two pieces of advice. The first bit of advice was never get into politics. The second was buy State Street mutual funds. I never got into politics and I bought a State Street mutual funds that went no where for 10 years. But Carl came through by getting me a job on the Hull Highway Department. Each selectman was allowed to sponsor one person each year. Carl told me to go the highway department and introduce myself to the superintendent Mattie Muncie. This was a real learning experience. When I drove to the highway department garage to meet Mr. Muncie, it was during a shift change and several of the staff were hanging around. I asked if Mr. Muncie was available. A tall goofy looking guy, Leon Galliano, that I later learned was called the Gull asked me what I wanted. He earned his nickname the Gull because when he gets upset he would flap his arms up and down like a seagull. I told him Carl Ross had sponsored me for a job. Mattie was standing there. He stepped forward and ranted that the selectman had no jurisdiction to send him workers and told me to leave. I shared my experience with Mr. Ross. A day later Mr. Ross told me to report to work at the highway department garage on Monday morning at 7:00 am. I showed up 15 minutes early and was almost the only one there. At the crack of 7:00 am 20 more staff and Mattie appear. Mattie assigns all tasks for the day. He very clearly says to his supervisors to take these men and these “boys” and go fix something. At the end of the day Mattie pulled me aside and told me that tomorrow I would be picked up my house at 5:00 am and I would be emptying the trash cans throughout the town. At 4:59 am I heard a vehicle coming down A street with a pop, pop sound from the engine. Very distinctive. The vehicle was a pick up truck called Mariah. The pop, pop sound was due to the fact one the cylinders in Mariah did not fire so it was a five cylinder engine. The driver, Donald Nickerson, was a distant cousin related to me through my Aunt Erma Olsen. Erma’s maiden name was Erma Nickerson. When my uncle Ollie passed away she inherited everything. When she passed away she left everything to the Nickerson side of the family. The Olsens/Millers did not even get a dusty knick knack. None of that made any difference to Donny or me. Donny was four years older than me and had graduated high school two years earlier. He was a full time employee. Donny was married and had a child. I climbed in and he drove to the far end of town. We picked up and emptied the trash cans into the back of Mariah and raked up all the trash on the sidewalks. Once the truck bed was full of trash we drove to the Hull town dump. It was 7:00 am and the dump did not open until 8:00 am. We waited in the truck for an hour for the dump manager to open the gate. I was starting to learn how things work in the public works sector. After unloading the trash it was time for breakfast. One good thing about starting work at 5:00 am is quitting time was 2:00 pm, so I had most of the afternoon to do other stuff. Due to the menial nature of picking up trash, Donny and I became known as the dummy squad. Little did they know there was a science to quickly filing the truck bed with trash so we could get to the dump earlier and earlier to do nothing. After a month on the dummy squad I was promoted to the beach crew. This was an elite group that emptied trash cans and raked the trash on Nantasket Beach and the small beaches on the bay side. It was the same work as the dummy squad but since we were paid to walk on the beach it was considered a step up. The beach crew started at 6:00 am and ended at 3:00 pm. The following year my friend and neighbor Larry Ross was hired to work on the beach crew. I am guessing he did not suffer the same humiliation I did when he reported for work. It was a much more fun year with Larry on the crew. We would stand up in the back of the dump truck as they drove down Nantasket Ave and play air guitar on our rakes while singing Beach Boy songs. Yes, the boys of the beach crew singing Beach Boys.

Just like the dummy squad the beach crew also tried to do as little work as possible in eight hours. We would clean the main beach as quickly as we could and then hide out on the bay side and do nothing for a couple hours. For me, doing nothing was the hardest job in the world. One day the beach crew was hiding out near World’s End and someone decided to play a funny trick on me. We had a giant front loader that we used to dump trash into the dump trucks. I noticed the front end loader was going deep into the water to fill up the bucket. As the front end loader came towards me, a few fellow beach boys grabbed me and held me down. The diabolical plan was to dump the water from the bucket on the rookie. I tried to get up as the bucket approached. My adversaries let go and ran at the last second. I tried to get up as the water from the bucket knocked me down. It was a lot of water. Out of instinct I rolled to the side as the front end loader kept rolling past the spot where I had been. The brakes were wet from going in the water and the driver couldn’t stop. It was all in a days fun.

Another memorable thing about the highway department was Mattie hated stopping work due to excessive heat. There was a rule that said work should end when the temperature was 95°f or higher. It did not matter if it was 95°f at noon. Mattie would drive around and find each group. He would tell them to stop work five minutes before the end of their shift. That way he felt had complied with the rule.

Working on the beach crew was good exercise. We walked the beach for miles and miles five days a week. I wore out two pairs of work boots each summer.

This part of my story leads into the most important series of events in my life. The Miller family were members of the Masons and Knights Templar. When some of my friends joined the Hingham DeMolay I decided to join. The DeMolay is the entry level youth group ages 12 - 21 to the Masons. The motto is “No DeMolay shall fail as a citizen, as a leader and as a man.” Masons and DeMolay are secret societies. I took a pledge to not reveal their secrets. This allowed Protestants and Jews to belong but not Catholics. Catholics require all members to reveal everything to the priest during confession. This probably goes back to the Spanish Inquisition. One of the advantages of DeMolay was Rainbow Girls. Rainbow Girls were the female version of DeMolay. There was a DeMolay and Rainbow Girl ball that I attended. My date was a girl from my Methodist church Debby Parsons. Most of the members of the DeMolay/Rainbow Girls were from the next town Hingham. After the ball someone had a party and invited the DeMolay boys and Rainbow Girls and other friends. I attended with a few of my Hull friends and was smitten the moment I set eyes on Priscilla Smith. She was Catholic so the odds of meeting her were small. But there she was. I found out she worked at the Brighams ice cream store in Hingham and I went there to see her. One of my friends Dwight Tyarks was dating Priscilla’s older sister Roberta. I gave Dwight a Valentine’s card for Priscilla. He gave it to her and she invited me to go to a Valentine’s Day party. I drove to her families mansion on the top the hill at 243 Main Street in my mother’s Volkswagen Beetle. I met her father who was a lawyer and a bit officious but very likable. He chatted me up for 10 seconds and Priscilla made her entry down the staircase and off we went. After a few seconds Priscilla told me were picking up four of her friends along the way. The backseat of a Beetle barely fits two people let alone four. We picked them up and stacked them in. The party was in a dark basement with great music. I must have not been too much of a jerk because Priscilla agreed to go on another date. We went to our Junior and Senior High School proms and dated throughout college. We dated for 7 years and married in 1974 and have been married for 46 years so far and counting. Priscilla was from a family of 8 children. She had five sisters and two brothers. They were Alison, Roberta and Priscilla (Irish Twins), Donald, Rebecca and Laura (twins), David and Sarah. Priscilla was the third oldest. Her family home was very impressive. It was on top of the hill on Main Street in Hingham. The home was built in the mid 1700’s. It had a fireplace in every room and one bathroom for 10 people. The insulation was seaweed and 200 year old newspaper. In her basement you could read what ships were coming into Boston Harbor in 1780.

Priscilla and I spent a lot of time together. We skied in Vermont at Killington, went white water rafting and sailed. Often my friends Larry and Kenny would tag along when I would pick up Priscilla to get a soft serve ice cream at JJ’s in Cohassett. One bit of trivia is we both took guitar lessons at the Nelson’s music studio in Cohessett at the same time but on different nights.

The Smith girls - Alison, Roberta and Priscilla

The Smith Family - the twins Laura and Rebecca, Donald, Priscilla, Alison and Roberta

Priscilla in France on vacation with her mother.

John and Priscilla - Hull High School Junior Prom 1968

John and Priscilla - Hull High School senior prom 1969

Priscilla’s Hingham High School photo - 1969