One Response to Newburyport High School

1. Newburyport High from 1969-1973, what a “gas”… Some very memorable “educators” from that era. How about Mr. Lyons, AKA “Big Jim”. And who could forget Mrs. Shapiro with that impossible “Bee’s Nest” doo??? The thing had to have towered over 2 feet from top to bottom… Mr. Randall, who we tormented in any of those overcrowded study halls in the auditorium. Boy did he hate it when we tore a “spitball” hatch in a newspaper and let one fly through the tried and true “Bic” pen tube… Brian Sullivan, nice guy, but to those who will never forget, he was and always will be “Pheep”… Not a teacher, Rita the “boy’s side” lunch line cashier was immortalized the day Abbott Rowley passed her a hand drawn one dollar bill. A work of art, really. No smoking allowed by students anywhere on school grounds. But open the door to any one of the “teacher” lounges in the “New Wing” and you’d think you were walking into a lung cancer experiment… Omar “Cracker” Cloutier was one of those bigger than life characters. His war stories were not to be missed, ( or believed for that matter…). There were the “names” we never will forget, like “Gully”, “Z”, “Moe Hair Sam”, “Hairy Legs”, “Marty”, “Lefty”, “Mrs. Chevrolet”,”Burt the Bomb”,”Mr. Stalin”, ” Hot Pants”, and just plain old Mrs. Laganas the crazed art teacher. I must “cleanse ” my guilty soul after some forty plus years and own up to having returned early from “D” period lunch to room 308. I made a habit of snapping a pencil off in the door locks on more than one occasion. Poor Mr. Lyons would return from lunch and try to un-lock the doors to let us back in. The custodial staff usually intervened and drilled the pencil out of the locks. Some of the conventional weapons we employed in our four year long battle with the teachers were; The spit ball, the rubber band launched paper clip, the penny, the paper plane, (some were very creative and for the time, cutting edge in their technologicl design…), any food smuggled back to class during “D” or “G” periods, and of course, any wierd and creative “Noise” that was found to be disruptive to the teacer and more importantly, amusing to our peers. Yes, we tortured and tormented our teachers, some of us more than others. I ran into Bob “Cuddles” Sprague at a wake this past summer. God it was good yo see him after all these years. One of my all time genuine favorite teachers from NHS. I used to see Bill Pettingill at Canepa’s Liquor store wher he clerked for a number of years too. I remember that for a couple of years after I returned to Newburyport and the old neighborhood, taking an Autumn evening walk along the seawall on Water st. I would walk back along Harrison St.. I remember passing by the house where Mr. Lyons lived. I could see him through the window as I passed, his big form illuminated by the flickering light of his television. I’m certain he was retired at the time. I always felt a little bit sad seeing him sitting there, no longer a teacher…Maybe he felt relieved that it was over, no more of us little bastards to suck the life out of him… The story was that in his younger days at Holy Cross, he was one of the big football players there. Someone people looked up to and respected. Then he got older and we got ahold of him. We made him into “Big Jim”… Rest in peace Mr. Lyons…

   

   p. j. nichypor October 15, 2009 at 9:44 pm Reply