Boarding School (2 page)

On the weekends, when my dad had time to help us, we worked to pack up our house. The whole reason for me getting to go away to school had to do with the transfer my dad was taking from his company which was requiring him to go to Europe for two years. He was going to be setting up new facilities for his employer in France and Switzerland, and my mom was going along to handle the entertaining duties which went with my dad’s new position. During the two years they were to be away, my parents had arranged to rent our house to another family. They had wanted to take me with them and have me attend American schools in each country, but I didn’t want to leave the United States. At that time, during the early 1970s, there were too many things going on in the country that I was just becoming aware of. I was worried that if I went off to Europe for two years, I’d end up missing everything, and then I’d be forever out of step with my friends. So the plan became for me to attend school in the east during the school year, and then I would visit my folks in Europe on Christmas and summer breaks. And as far as I was concerned, this was a great plan.

The idea of going off on my own to a boarding school which was nestled in the countryside of picturesque New England appealed to me. I was always independently minded and I saw my time to come at the Academy as a great adventure. Also the photos in the Academy catalog were amazing. Besides a swimming pool and tennis courts on the grounds, the Academy was located on the shores of the largest lake in Massachusetts, and it had its own dock and sandy beach. And in the water there was swimming, canoeing, water skiing, fishing, crew and endless possibilities when girls schools came to visit. Plus in the winter when the lake froze, there was ice skating and hockey. The place looked like a paradise of athletic activity. I truly couldn’t wait to get there.

“Now are you sure that going to Ulster Academy is what you want to do, Clint?” my dad asked me this question one day when he was at his desk and preparing the deposit check to hold my spot in the fall term.

“Yeah, Dad. I’m sure.”

“You know you can’t take everything you own when you go. You’ll have to keep some of your belongings in storage with our stuff.”

“I know, Dad.” The box I had been carrying at this moment was heavy, so I set it down for a moment on the couch which was nearby.

Because I tended to be a pack rat with my possessions, my dad wasn’t sure yet if I had fully digested the point he was trying to make with me. “So? Have you given any thought to what you’re taking and what you’re leaving behind?” My dad always wanted me to consider issues from every possible angle. “Like your guitars. Have you figured out which one of your guitars you’re going to take with you? I don’t imagine a dormitory room can hold all four of them, you know.”

“I know,” I assured him. “I’m taking my twelve-string and leaving the others here with your stuff.”

“Oh, I see. Well, that sounds like a smart decision. A folk guitar won’t need an amplifier.” Then my dad thought for a moment longer. “Say, isn’t your twelve-string the one you use to lead the singing around the nightly campfires up at camp every summer?”

“Well, others do that too, but yeah it is,” I confirmed. “In fact, did you know that another kid who plays guitar up there once liked my twelve-string so much, he offered to buy it from me?”

“No I didn’t. But it’s a wonderful piece of workmanship, so I’m not surprised.”

“Yeah.” Then a question popped into my mind about something I hadn’t considered earlier. “Dad?”

“Yes, Clint.” As he answered me, my dad licked the stamp he had just torn off from his roll and placed it on the envelope he had just addressed.

“Do you think I’ll be able to keep up with my karate lessons at the Academy?” I had been studying the Mattial art now for about two years and had just won my red belt. My goal was to make black belt before I was out of high school.

My dad then turned in his chair and looked directly at me. “Actually, I checked into that already. The Academy doesn’t offer karate. But I spoke with the headmaster and…”

“You called the headmaster?” For some reason I was alarmed by this news.

“Yes.” My dad waited a moment for me to calm down.

“Well, how did he sound… what did he say?” I suppose I believed at that moment that I should have been the first one from our family to have spoken to the man.

My dad smiled at me. “He sounded fine, and if you’ll give me a chance, I’ll
tell
you what he said.”

Now I felt silly. “Sorry.” I decided that I must have been starting to feel nervous about the upcoming life change I was about to embark upon.

My dad’s smile then broadened. “He told me that if it is possible, they will make an effort to find you lessons in town somewhere.”

“Oh. Well that sounds ok.” Even if it couldn’t be worked out, I figured that
some
sacrifices were going to have to be made. I decided that, worst case, I could practice my techniques on my own during the school year and then resume my lessons in Europe during my summer breaks.

Finally, a few weeks later, the day came for us to leave Denver. Maria had been given a generous severance and had been released from her responsibilities with our family. I remember standing in our empty living room and taking one last look at the home I had grown up in. Our house had always seemed so warm and inviting to me but on this morning, as the harsh light from the early sun made the empty room look like a photograph which had been overexposed, the house now seemed sterile and no longer a place where we belonged. Since my parents had put their cars into storage, my dad’s company sent around a car and driver to take us to the airport. So as we were chauffeured past the stately old homes and the beautiful old trees which made up our neighborhood, I couldn’t help but think as we pulled out onto Colorado Boulevard and headed toward Stapleton Field, that I would not be the same person the next time I saw this city.

* * *

I don’t remember anything of the flight we took that day. I imagine we changed planes at O’Hare, and by the afternoon we had arrived in Boston. Once we had our luggage, my dad rented a car and we then set out to find the town of Ulster which our map showed as being located just beyond the town of Worcester and near the Connecticut state line.

“Dad?” I was so excited, I would have gotten out of the car and tried to run to the Academy if I had thought that my feet could have gotten me there sooner.

“What is it, Clint?”

“Maybe you ought to let Mom drive. She doesn’t get lost as much as you do in new places.”

It was an old family joke. My dad was always getting himself lost when he was in unfamiliar territory. “Don’t worry, Son. The instructions I got from your headmaster seem pretty simple. We’ll be there in no time.”

An hour and a quarter later, I was finding it agonizing to wait for my dad as he took four extra minutes out of our schedule to drive from one end of main street in Ulster to the other. I was unimpressed when he read a sign to us which said that this quaint little New England village had been founded in the year

1737. And I must have seemed borderline suicidal when my father offered next to drive us around the seventeen miles of shoreline which encircled Ulster Lake before going on to find the Academy.

It was nice of him to show me the lay of the land, as it were, but I figured there would be plenty of time later on for me to explore the area. The priority in my mind at this moment was for us to reach the Academy as quickly as we could so I could become acquainted with and settled into the place which was going to be my home now for perhaps the next five years.

According to the Academy catalog, which I had brought along with me, the school was located within a pine forest on an elevated area which looked out over the southern section of the lake and which, at one time, had been the home of the Nipmuck Indian tribe. “Come on, Dad. The town is at the north end of the lake. I really wanna get there.” I couldn’t stand it any longer. I felt as if I had to get to the campus as quickly as I could.

“All right, Son, we won’t spend any more time in town. We’ll go straight on to the Academy now.” Finally my dad was convinced to end the sightseeing and conclude our trip.

“It says that the Connecticut state line lies fifteen feet outside the Academy’s front gate,” I was still reading from the catalog.

“Ok, Clint, we get the idea. We’re going there now,” my dad actually seemed a bit disappointed that we weren’t going to spend any more time investigating the quiet village. “Oh, look over at the lake,” he pointed with his finger as he began to head us along the highway which led south out of town. “That looks like a nice place to stay the next time we come through here. ‘The Friendly Inn.’ And look, guys, it even has a dock with boats you can rent. I’ll bet there’s a pool there too, Clint.”

“Maybe,” I answered with little enthusiasm. The only amenities I was interested in seeing at that moment were the wonderful ones I was expecting to discover at the Academy.

After that, it didn’t take too long before it seemed to me as if a feeling of anticipation had also come over my parents. At a spot seven miles south of town, we turned off of Highway 193 and continued our journey along a winding back country road toward a huge gathering of lodgepole pine trees.

“Here it is!” my dad called out a few minutes later after we had wound our way through the woods. “Ulster Academy!” he announced with pride. After all, he had gotten us to our destination without getting us lost.

On either side of the school’s entrance stood square white cement pillars— five feet high with old-style gas lanterns mounted on their tops. On the outside of the pillar on the right there hung a colonial-looking sign which plainly proclaimed the name “Ulster Academy” and warned that we were entering a private drive.

“There’re the tennis courts,” my mother called out.

Immediately to our right once we had gone through the entrance, perhaps fifty feet away across the lawn, was a tall chain-link fence which surrounded one lonely tennis court. It looked to me as if it hadn’t been used in years. Leaves were piled up all around the base of the fence, weeds were growing through cracks in the surface, and there was no sign of a net. “Looks sort of grim,” I offered.

As we continued along the main drive of the school, we all noticed that the grounds in general looked unkempt. The outsides of the drive itself were badly in need of edging and the small soccer field to our right showed no signs of ever having been limed. Except for a small gymnasium which had been to our immediate left once we had gone through the entrance, that entire north side of the drive was dense with pine trees. To the south beyond the soccer field were two small buildings. The first was a two-story house with an odd-looking one-story add-on sticking out to its west (toward the tennis court) and having three sliding glass doors which faced us. The other building was a smaller one-story structure which I suspected was a dormitory. Everywhere there was lawn, it looked to us as if a good mowing was long overdue.

“Oh,” was all my mother would allow herself to say. She didn’t want to let on that she was suddenly worried that we had made a terrible mistake in choosing this place.

At the eastern end of the drive, perhaps one hundred and twenty yards from the front entrance, the cement looped around to form a circle. Within the circle grew grass and four or five tall spruce trees which stood alongside a flag pole which looked sort of denuded to me since there was no flag flying from it. Also placed within this circle was a large tacky-looking rectangular sign which faced back toward the entrance and also read “Ulster Academy” in case the smaller more tasteful sign hanging beyond the gate would happen to go unnoticed.

“I don’t know, Clint,” my mother couldn’t hold herself back any longer as my dad pulled our rented car around to the other side of the circle and then parked in front of the largest building on the campus—Ulster Hall.

The catalog said that Ulster Hall was the school’s main building and was “situated on a prominence which offered a scenic and commanding view of Ulster Lake.” The frame structure measured one hundred and sixty feet across and sixty feet deep and boasted a total of fifty rooms within its two stories. And as my dad turned off the engine, we tried not to notice the paint which was peeling everywhere from the siding.

The imperfections which were now so clearly causing my parents concern, didn’t bother me in the slightest. To me, it was exciting to finally be on the grounds of the school where I was about to begin a life of my own. In my mind, Ulster Hall looked to have been built originally as a lakeside inn. I remember imagining as I got out of the car and followed my parents under the front foyer—located dead center on the building—and up the cement steps which led to the double doors of wood, glass and brass, an earlier, more rarified time when perhaps horse-drawn coaches pulled beneath this same foyer to disgorge their well-heeled patrons who would have come to the inn to indulge themselves in a fine dinner or maybe to dance next to a scenic and commanding view of the lake. And as I entered this majestic old inn behind my folks, I had to throw my hands out quickly to prevent the front door from snapping back and striking me in my face.

“Sorry, Clint,” my dad said as he looked back at me to make sure I was all right. “That door’s got quite a kick.”

Once we were inside and standing in the small lobby area, I supposed my dad had expected someone to appear suddenly to greet us. Instead, nothing happened. After thirty seconds or so of waiting, we began to look in the library straight ahead, and to walk down the south and north halls, which extended through the middle of the building, to search for someone we could report to.

“Here’s someone,” my dad called out when he spotted a small round-faced man with mutton chops wearing glasses, a tie and a nondescript sport coat while he sat behind his desk in one of the offices along the south hallway.

But the man didn’t jump up and rush over to shake our hands and offer us a hearty greeting upon our arrival. In fact, he barely looked up at us at all when he spoke. “Yes ah, just go over and wait in the library. Someone will be along in a few minutes to assist you.”