For Thursday, May 29, 1997, Drummer Column, Gibbs, 707 words
New live crew
So much is going on right now, I don't know where to begin.
Last night the high school seniors were awarded countless thousands of dollars in scholarship money at our annual awards ceremony.
Parents, if you ever wanted your children to learn the monetary value of their grade school education, you would take them to watch an awards presentation. When little Billie and little Mary go up on that stage over and over again to receive a thousand dollars, then two thousand, then five hundred, and so on, you realize how many hours of flipping burgers, bussing tables, or making change it would take to earn that kind of dough while in college.
The big winners earn full-ride scholarships and enough cash to pay room and board for up to four years. The big winners will spend their evenings at the universities in easy chairs reading Plato and J. K. Galbraith, while their roommates who thought high school grades and participation didn't count for much are out after classes scooping fries.
I scooped my share of fries.
Graduation is coming up. It's always a bittersweet time for me because I teach journalism. If I taught only regular English classes, I'd have the same students for only a year and the bonding wouldn't become so intense. Instead, I teach English and a repeatable elective so I end up with a handful of the same students for three, sometimes four years. Eventually we reach a point where I've taught them all I know, and then we become peers, working and learning together. Just as we get used to each other's habits, they graduate and leave me behind. It sad. I'm happy for them.
That reminds me very little of a couple of rafting stories. Last week Jim Marx and our POD team took 50 people whitewater rafting. They were mostly teen-agers. They were mostly freshmen. They're my new family. We had nine boats, a regular flotilla. We had a ball.
My six-woman crew took our bucket boat into some of the craziest, and wettest, parts of the river. Marvin Deal's gray bus, a huge 16-foot bucket boat, carried nine people most of the time. Ron West captained our 14-foot self-bailer with nary a hitch. Wild Bill at 68 manned the oar frame and carried supplies. Steve Cabrol manned our slick, new 10-foot self-bailer that can go anywhere. Jim brought three boats and several experienced captains - Gary Plaskett, Gary Jeffcoat, Chuck Scandlyn, Mike Miller, and Joe Bateman. We also had teachers Tom Clark and Dan Foote, plus freshman parents Reg Page, Jeff Wood, Shoshana Nurik, Allen Huber, and Susan Gibbs all lending a hand to make this trip a success.
Quick POD history: After being pixilated by Wild Bill Gallagher's river nymphs a few years back, I joined up with three other parents of Benicia High School Backpacking Club members and formed the POD team (Paddle or Die!). We bought a few boats and started taking kids down the South Fork of the American.
We tried to get South Fork rafting accepted as a school-sanctioned Backpacking Club activity, but whitewater and phrases like "Paddle or Die!" made our insurance carrier nervous. It turned us down.
So, we just do it on our own. Club members raft at their own risk. When we invite teen-agers, we invite their parents to raft as well. It's a come-all club. Wanna go? Three of the original parents have long since seen their kids graduate and move away.
On a drier note: School is not out yet. It is not summer yet. There is still homework to be done. Finals are ahead of us. Dog-gone it.
Some teachers and students are dragging through these final weeks, while others are chomping at the bit. Either way, we're all looking forward to summer break.
This year I'm a chomper. I can't wait for school to be out because I am so very eager to tinker. That's all I want to do for about a month - tinker.
I want to tinker with my decks and fences. I want to tinker with my computer. I want to tinker around in the garage, sorting things, building things. I want to tinker with my books and photographs and records and WIFE.
Read all about it.