“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…..” begins Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities. So also seemed the times of late 1963 in the town of Cisco, Texas, specifically in Cisco High School, home of the Loboes. The fun-driven lifestyle and friendships of certain students in the Senior […]
Whatever posture those associated with Cisco and Cisco High School during the 1960’s took concerning the M-4, many were traditionally critical about our timing the chair/desk escapade, as we executed the prank just in time to put our status as King Lobo candidates in jeopardy; as these critics logically point out, had we waited a […]
To this day it is not clear that the Cisco schools had an accurate idea with whom they were dealing when it came to the CHS Class of 1964. I have observed in my teaching career almost 40 high school graduating classes both in Waxahachie, TX, and in DeSoto, TX, and only three of them compare […]
By the time the Cisco High School class of 1964 was entering their senior year in the summer of 1963, the town of Cisco had lived at least a year torn into roughly two camps. Not that these two groups were fighting each other or feuding with each other; rather, they were entrenched into two […]
Why should a high school prank from 1964, from so many pranks that occur each and every school year, linger in memories beyond those who witnessed it? Why does that particular prank example not only mark the graduation class of the pranksters, but also serves as a benchmark of reference for issues well beyond those […]
Hey, man! Guess what we did with a couple of flags while Burzenski was still here!” This is probably a fair paraphrase of what Cole (Ode to Robert W. Cole [May, 2012) and I told Adling (Ode to William L. (Bill) Adling [May, 2012]) as soon as we knew that both flags had definitely disappeared (The […]
Emotions run the breadth and depth of human possibilities when eighteen-year-olds graduate from high school — from elation of finally being “free” (before reality sets in) to tear-filled farewells to classmates never again to be seen (again, before reality sets in). Because things were “a little different” for a certain few of us in the […]
All the horrific images from the Vietnam War (the last war they allowed what was actually going on to be photographed and published) stick with us “baby boomers” born just after WWII in varying degrees, but one image, wherein a Buddhist monk sitting in the middle of a public thoroughfare (probably in Saigon, now Ho […]
Among the many things that make my life-long friendships from Cisco High School extraordinary and remarkable by so many standards is the fact their unpredictable development and uncommon youthful exuberance continued well after high school into the college years, into the years over which we all married. The interval between high school and the marking […]
When May 4 rolled around for another year this past time, the anniversary of the Kent State Massacre of 1970, I was jolted into the realization that, curiously, something is missing from the discussion on guns, gun control, and school massacres: you don’t hear about the National Guard in the discussion. This seems strange to […]