When I tell these stories, there will be times when I will not name all the names or tell all the details. I'm sorry if this offends. My objective is to illuminate a time, cause a smile, sometimes a tear, not to stretch the reputation of anyone who was probably too young to be held responsible for what they did anyway. If you know the names of any of the people in this story who are not named, please keep it to yourself.
I love my old school. My experience there didn't end the way anyone thought it would, but I loved my time there and the people who travailed and matriculated with me and especially the poor souls who taught us, fed us, coached us, and sat with us while we waited to see the principal.
St. Andrews aimed to provide small-classroom instruction on a classical liberal arts method, offering advanced education as far as the student could stretch. Early on, they provided special attention to students with communication and reading issues like mine, long before the public or other private schools did. For an example of how advanced, in our ninth-grade literature class, we were taught Beowulf (both translated and untranslated) and Candide (translated) and the historical placement and environment of each. We were one of the first high schools in the state to offer Advance Placement courses, although my learning disability meant I wasn't ever a candidate for them.
Trying to do all these things in the 1970s in Jackson, Mississippi, wasn't without challenges. There were cultural sea changes happening in every area of life, in many ways equal to those after the Civil War. Some have called the years between 1960 and 1980 our Second Civil War.
At its heart, St. Andrews was a parochial school, and as such, its board generally appointed Episcopal Priests as our headmasters. There was a steady stream of fathers such and such leading us, and nobody ever really thought much of it until one day, a student in our newly created high school was arrested for selling drugs, to wit, marijuana. Not enough to get him sent to Parchman or the Raymond School for Boys, but enough to cause a tailspin in the adult community guiding St. Andrews. Our priestly headmaster was replaced by a layperson who himself was almost immediately released two years later, and the school's dean, also a layperson, was assigned as Acting Headmaster while the board searched for a permanent headmaster.
There were adventures in those years waiting for a new headmaster that I've written about before. At the time, I thought we were fairly well-behaved and normal kids until one day, the board was to present us with a gentleman who we understood was seriously being considered as our new headmaster. In his address to us in the courtyard of the second upper school building, this new man said to us something I'll never forget.
"It's my understanding that you have a problem with drunken degenerates."
Others would, in time, call me both drunken and degenerate, but at fifteen, nobody ever had before. We all thought there was no way this guy would get the job after being so rude to us upon our first meeting. He didn't even know our names yet. We were wrong. Come the next fall, David Hicks was our new headmaster. Apparently, there were members of the board who agreed with his assessment of us and thought he was the perfect solution to changing our wanton and degenerate ways.
Before school even began, several boys were expelled. They were expelled before they even met the new headmaster. I'm not even sure how this process happened. Were they given a hearing? Was there testimony brought against them? I really don't know. What I do know is that if he was seeking to cut off the source of the drug and alcohol problems at St. Andrews, he picked the wrong guys. The boys he expelled were no saints, but they also weren't the source of the problem. He also hadn't yet proven (to me, at least) that we had a drug and alcohol problem that was different from any other private or public school in Jackson.
Once Hicks was installed as our headmaster, several boys were given the choice to either be expelled summarily or attend an experimental drug rehabilitation program in Atlanta. This was not too many years after Betty Ford had made international news for receiving rehabilitation for her alcoholism; dependency programs were still pretty rare. Again, if Hicks was trying to attack the problem at its source, he was picking the wrong boys. These boys were troubled, for sure, but they were hardly the cause of the problem that I wasn't even entirely sure we had.
At sixteen, I decided it was up to me to try and talk Hicks out of this course of action for the good of the school. I began regularly meeting with him to discuss these matters. While he never refused my meetings, he was clearly getting irritated by them. Our relationship began to become adversarial. The more his actions troubled my classmates, the more I was compelled to confront him about it, and the more irritated he became with me. By Christmas, we were clearly adversaries. I've written before about how that didn't end well for me.
Small and large acts of protest began to spring up. A newspaper was formed. We were allowed one printing before getting shut down. Whispers, coughs, and dress code violations became common. The teacher's lounge mysteriously burst into flames one night. The war between David Hicks and the students continued. It became clear that there was an income threshold beyond which Hicks would not question any of your actions, but should your parents not earn enough--boy, were you in trouble.
One morning, we came to school, and the greatest act of protest I'd ever witnessed was revealed. I won't say who did it, but I know it was two people, and the fact that two people had done all this in the middle of the night, by themselves, without getting caught, amazes me even today.
Every flat surface on the upper school held some level of spray paint. I've used Krylon spray paints many times. I know how far a single can will spread. The culprits must have purchased a case
Most of the school's faculty, staff, and administration were much loved by us all and were spared any comment by our midnight sign painters. But, those few who were considered traitors to the cause found themselves immortalized and pilloried by teenage wit, presented in letters large enough to be painted by a spray can, all over the upper school walls along with David Hicks. Every upper school wall.
During this year of our discontent, a phrase had sprung up. Every student from the fifth grade on up knew it. It was scribbled on desks and book covers and shouted from cars. Someone even wrote it in ballpoint pen on the back of my blue jean jacket while I piddled in my sketchbook on the bleachers one sunny afternoon. Hix Sux. It became our war cry. The heroes of our story, on their midnight run of protest and spray paint saved the large brick wall to the right of the gated entrance into the upper school building for the last. There, in letters several inches thick and seven feet tall, they painted:
HIX
SUX
I'm not even sure how they did it. Maybe they brought a ladder with them. Somehow they painted what we were all thinking as a two-story protest sign on unsealed bricks for us all to see when we came to school the next morning.
By the time I got to school, Jessie and the other janitorial staff were already at work trying to wipe away the graffiti that was literally everywhere. By the end of the school day, our three janitors and one coach had either scrubbed away or painted over all the evidence of our midnight revolutionaries, all but one. Remember the unsealed bricks I mentioned before? Attempts to scrub the paint away from the surface of the bricks just drove the paint deeper into the grain of the brick. HIX SUX was slightly dimmer now but wider and still very, very visible from the lower school playground. Several chemicals were tried, and none worked. St. Andrews closed out my tenth-grade year, my last year, with HIX SUX still quite visible on the upper school wall in two-story letters.
Over the summer, the decision was made to paint over the offending remark with the same paint used on the metal gates. Now we had a giant, windowless wall painted flat gray. Hicks entertained suggestions, which included painting a large mural. The students were consulted about what the subject of the mural should be and given several suggestions. I wasn't there, but it's my understanding that Erasmus, who I had never heard of, was chosen democratically to be the subject of the mural. The school's art teacher, Mrs. Mitchell, suggested Lawrence Jones, a former professor at Jackson State, to head the project, which he completed using students from her class.
Forty years later, the painting of Erasmus still presents on the wall of the now primary school building, but its history was seemingly lost in time. Underneath the philosopher's intractable visage remains evidence of a sixteen-year-old revolutionary fighting for the honor of his friends who were called degenerate.
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