A Greaser Among Frats

In the summer of 1965, I was between Grades 11 and 12 when my family moved from our pre-depression-era house on a busy one-way street downtown to a brand new modern home on a quiet crescent in the suburbs. Both homes were in the city of Windsor, but it was like moving to a different country. Everything in South Windsor was different: the shape of the streets, the lack of alleys, the big attached garages, the rec rooms in basements, the open parks with no shade trees, the stores all bunched in plazas. Nothing seemed the same as it was downtown.

I did not realize how very different the suburbs would be until I got to my new school. I had started high school at Patterson Collegiate Institute (PCI), the oldest high school in Windsor, just a couple of blocks from the Detroit – Windsor Tunnel.

After school on Thursdays and Fridays and from 10 to 6 on Saturdays, I had worked at Clark’s Market, a little neighbourhood grocer on Grove Street. Mr. Clark paid me $5 a week. Because I had this job, I got no allowance at home. If I wanted something for myself, it had to come from that $5.

So, when I went to Patterson, pretty much all my clothes were hand-me-downs, or Christmas or birthday presents from grandparents, or bought by my Mom at some sale. Nothing I wore was cool. I almost had something cool to wear in the Fall of Grade 11 when I had heard that Hudson’s, the 14-storey department store in downtown Detroit, had wide-striped shirts like the Beach Boys wore on American Bandstand. I went by tunnel bus after school over to Hudson’s, but they were sold out. That was the first time I really tried to buy something trendy to wear until that summer of 1965. 

That summer, I worked four weeks as a counsellor at the Kiwanis summer camp on Lake Erie. At the end of that summer of 1965, for the first time in my life I had enough money to buy clothes to make me cool at school. I had $100. 

My friend Randy’s mother took us to Miracle Mart in Detroit to buy our clothes. I bought clothes that would be super cool at Patterson: six pairs of white socks; a pair of high-top shoes with long pointed toes and faux-alligator patterned into the leather; and two pairs of black pants. These pants stopped high on my ankle to show the white socks, and they were so tight I could hardly squeeze my foot through the legs. I also bought two bleeding madras shirts with tab collars. You did up the top button then buttoned the little tabs that stuck out from each side of the collar so it was snug on your neck. Coolest of all, I bought one grey shark-skin shirt. Shark-skin was a shimmery flecked material that Motown singers like Smokey Robinson wore. My shark-skin shirt had snaps for buttons and a snap-down collar. I thought I had bought the coolest stuff!

Because of that move to the suburbs, I had to transfer from Patterson to Vincent Massey Secondary School. First day at my new school, I got ready in my black pants and shiny shark-skin shirt, white socks and pointed fake-alligator shoes. In those days, I combed my hair with two dabs of Brylcreem, one all over, and the other to sculpt the wave on the front. My wave went up from the part, then swooped down in the middle of my forehead, then high again and back on the other side. It was a real work of art.

So, in my coolest outfit and sculpted hair, I walked into my class of Grade 12 at Massey, not knowing a soul, and saw the guys were in grey flannel dress pants with cuffs. Their shoes were brogues and penny loafers. They wore coloured sweat socks and pin-striped shirts. Their shirts had button-down collars worn loose and open at the neck. The colour of the stripes in their shirts matched their socks and their hair was dry and fluffy, not slicked.

I was a greaser in a school of frats.

It was pretty depressing. No one made friends with me. Everyone at school seemed to believe I was some tough greaser from Patterson. That idea was confirmed for my classmates when our English teacher had us bring a record to school that contained poetry in the lyrics. I brought the Bob Dylan album, Bringing It All Back Home and played She Belongs to Me. I was surprised when the cool kids in the classed laughed at it. Then, after class, a kid bigger than me, Ian Craigmile, grabbed my album from me and was going to toss it down the hall like a Frisbee. His friends were enjoying watching. I grabbed Craigmile by his burgundy sweater [thinking to myself, wow, what a nice sweater] and I slammed him against the lockers.

I knew he was going to punch me out. At Patterson, if you did not stick up for yourself you became the guy that always got pushed around. But, if you did stand up for yourself, you just get whupped once and then made friends. But this guy in the expensive sweater handed me my Dylan album like he was afraid of me. That was the worst possible thing that could happen. It made me look like a tough guy and left me still without any new friends.

I finally broke the ice when our class had to do speeches. I wrote a speech that today would be called a stand-up. I made fun of myself, buying greaser clothes because I came from downtown. I confessed that my pointed shoes were uncomfortable and I had no money to buy new ones. I explained that I got a job so I could buy a car so I could go downtown to be with my old friends, but I can’t go see my friends because I have to work all weekend to pay off the loan for my car. Then I made fun of how dull Massey was compared to my old school. For instance, Massey had no lunchtime entertainment, but the guys at Patterson could watch girls fight in the basement halls. The whole class laughed and laughed and the greaser – frat barrier was broken.

Not that it mattered for long. A short time later, all the greasers and frats had move on to flower-patterns in their shirts, bell bottom pants, and longer hair.

The real upshot came when our English teacher, Mrs. Grossutti, took me aside. She said to me that if I liked to write, maybe I should consider being a writer, like for newspapers or magazines. I had never given any thought to a career. But when she said this, I thought to myself, “Write stories for a living? That sounds better than working!”