Mr. EK Salls, German teacher

When I first met Mr. Salls in my Freshman year at Saint John's, he scared me to death.  He had the gruffest voice.  And he had such a stern face!  

Mr. Salls was a very intimidating man.  He was also a disciplinarian.  You did not fool around in his class.  You paid attention.

I promise you I paid attention.  Let me amend that.  I never took my eye off the man!

Mr. Salls quickly got my attention the first year I had him for German.  Some student was daydreaming and looking out the window.  Mr. Salls called on the boy, but he didn't respond.  So Mr. Salls picked up an eraser and threw it at the kid's desk.  He didn't lob it either.  Mr. Salls chunked that eraser in there with steam!  The eraser hit the top of the desk and bounced in the air.  White chalk dust flew everywhere!  I think the boy nearly had a heart attack.  Now that I think of it, I almost had one too. 

From that point on, I was petrified of the man.  I never wanted to make him mad at me!  I paid absolute attention.  Whatever I did, it worked.  Mr. Salls fussed at a lot of people to keep up, but he never once rebuked me in the three years I was his student.

One of the things I secretly admired Mr. Salls for was he threw erasers at the girls too.  He may not have thrown the erasers quite as hard, but he didn't need to.  The shock did the trick.  I will never forget their screams of terror. 

Over time, I learned I could predict the eraser gambit.  Even though it only happened about once a month, I could see it coming.  Some kid would be lost in his or her own world.  Mr. Salls would call on them once.  I would see the irritation cross his face when they didn't answer.  He would then call on them by name.  If they didn't respond to their own name, they were toast.  One day a girl was the victim.  She was really out of it.  Mr. Salls even gave her a third warning, but she wasn't just lost to the world, she was in outer space.

Mr. Salls reached for the eraser and hurled it with more vigor than usual.  Normally he aimed for the student's desk, but this time he missed.  The eraser hit the girl flush on the side of her upper arm, then glanced off her head.  Instantly her entire red uniform turned white in a snowstorm of chalk dust.  The girl was scared out of her mind.  She screamed "Oh, dear Jesus, please save me!" at the very top of her voice.  Then she looked around wild-eyed as she suddenly realized where she was.  The poor girl turned crimson red with embarrassment.  Then she began crying profusely.  It was quite a scene.

Poor Mr. Salls.  He melted as he witnessed the extent of the damage.  He instantly rushed to the girl's side and escorted her out into the hallway.  He talked to her for a couple moments, then excused her for the rest of class.  When he came back in, he directed one of the girl's friends to take her books to her after class. 

Amazingly, Mr. Salls didn't say another word about it.  It was as if nothing happened.  In a totally composed voice, he simply said, "Now, where were we?"   With that, we got right back to work.  I searched his face for any sign of guilt.  None. 

The man simply did not cut anyone any slack.  You paid attention or you paid the price.

Who would have guessed German would become my favorite subject?  In my Freshman year, I wasn't very happy when I showed up for Mr. Salls' first class.  Who cares about German?  This is Houston, Texas.   What am I doing learning German?  Weren't the Germans the bad guys in the war?  And how exactly do I intend to use my German skills?  The thought of actually visiting Germany someday was far-fetched to a poor kid who thought Galveston was a far off place.  What an enormous waste of time.  Why not offer an auto mechanics course or something useful like typing?

Let's face it, I took German for one reason - they made us take a language. 

Fortunately Mr. Salls turned out to be a brilliant teacher.  I was mesmerized by the man.  I began to love German because I respected Mr. Salls so much.  I took to his training like a duck takes to water.  I willingly worked hard in his class because I wanted his approval. 

Did I become the teacher's pet?  Oh, heavens no.  Far from it.  Mr. Salls wasn't like that.  He kept everyone at arm's length.  I will say one thing.  Although Mr. Salls was very formal with me, he did give me a lot of compliments on my effort.  I really came to like him.  I lived for those compliments. 

Was Mr. Salls a father figure to me?  Yes and no.  Mr. Salls was the most powerful, impressive man I had ever met.  In some ways, he was a father archetype to me in the exact same way that Mrs. Ballantyne was a mother archetype. 

Yet Mr. Salls was much too remote to reach me on the same level that Mrs. Ballantyne did.  Because Mr. Salls was so guarded, I only saw him as my instructor and as the leader of the school.  Mr. Salls was approachable and extremely attentive to any question I might have, but at the same time he maintained a very firm teacher-student relationship with me just like he did with everyone else.  He was not the kind of teacher to tease or kid with the students like other instructors.  Mr. Salls was simply not the type to fool around.  Mr. Salls was all business.

If Mr. Salls wasn't a father figure, then he was definitely a role model.  When I became a dance teacher later in life, I drew on Mr. Salls for inspiration.  If he could make a dry subject like German interesting, then surely I could make something fun like learning to dance interesting. 

I have never seen anyone have control of a class like Mr. Salls did. I got a kick out of watching his tremendous bearing and self-control.  He was so intense!  And he never missed a thing.  In the beginning, I paid attention out of fear.  However, it wasn't fear that made me continue to behave.  Mr. Salls kept my attention because he made his subject fascinating.  It was like a game to stay up with him.  I still can't totally understand how he kept me so interested in what should have been a boring subject, but he did. 

At this point, it should be obvious that I studied Mr. Salls like a hawk in much the same way that I studied Mrs. Ballantyne.

I liked Mr. Salls, but more than that I admired him.  Mr. Salls was quite a teacher.  Mr. Salls bordered on being stern, but I always suspected it was an act.  I believed he felt his position at the school required him to act with dignity at all times, so to the world he deliberately projected this stern demeanor. 

I would see Mr. Salls smile from time to time, but it didn't happen very often.  I can only remember one time that Mr. Salls smiled directly at me.

In my Junior year, one of our assignments was to trace out a giant map of Germany like the one pictured onto poster board.  One day we all turned in our maps. 

My eyes bulged when I compared my own pitiful job to the map turned in by one of the girls in the class.  Her map was a tour de force.  I had worked for days on this project and thought I had done a great job.  Wrong.  The moment I saw her map, I gasped in disbelief.  How could anyone draw something so beautiful? My own map consisted of two colors: black and white.  Not this girl.  Her map was a veritable rainbow!  My gosh, the girl had drawn out the green forests of Bavaria and had colored the Baltic Sea blue.  She had artistically drawn the major rivers complete with Lorelei mermaids along the banks of the Rhine.  She shaded all the German borders in black and red trim, the colors of Germany.  She had drawn in the great mountains of the Alps in southern Germany. She had used special German lettering to label the regions.  She drew a German flag in one empty corner and a German opera singer in another corner. The third corner had a miniature drawing of the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, and the fourth corner had a drawing of Munich's famous Oktoberfest.  Her map was so pretty!  I decided it wasn't a map, it was a work of art. A professional could not have done a better job.  This girl had considerable talent in design.  I could not stop shaking my head in amazement. Mr. Salls and I were alone in the room.  He saw me staring at the map in awe.  He laughed.  His words, "Girls.  Aren't they amazing?"  And then he flashed me the biggest grin!

 

Mr. Salls, the New Headmaster

Early in my Senior year, I was given a message that said Mr. Salls wanted to see me about my college admissions process.

By chance, my Senior year in 1967-68 was also Mr. Salls' first year as the new Headmaster at Saint John's. 

I was looking forward to this meeting.  I missed seeing Mr. Salls.  Mr. Salls had been my German teacher for the previous three years (Grades 9, 10, 11).  During this time, Mr. Salls had held the dual role as Assistant Headmaster.

Now following Mr. Chidsey's retirement, over the summer Mr. Salls had assumed the reins as Headmaster. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Salls had reluctantly handed off the responsibility of teaching my Senior year German to another instructor.  Although I liked my new teacher, I missed Mr. Salls.  He had been the subject of my intense fascination for the past three years.

I knew that one of Mr. Salls' roles as the Assistant Headmaster had been overseeing college admissions. Mr. Salls was the person a student went to see for help on where to apply for college. 

Although Mr. Salls had given up his German class after his promotion to Headmaster, he decided to keep his role as the school's college counselor.  I was told Mr. Salls was very good at this.  Knowing how thorough Mr. Salls was in German class, I had no trouble believing the rumor.

Early in the fall, each senior was given a 20-30 minute interview with Mr. Salls to discuss college choices.  Now it was my turn.  So I dutifully made my appointment to go see him.  I didn't know why this was necessary.  After all, I had already decided to go to Georgetown University.  But I didn't mind.  This was my chance to see Mr. Salls again.  Besides, I was very curious to hear what he would say. 

During my visit, I learned that Mr. Salls' basic advice was to apply to at least three schools - your fondest dream, your best match, and a school you were certain to get into.  A practical man, yes?

Mr. Salls asked me what my thoughts were. I told him my strategy was to go as far west or as far east as I possibly could.  I had already chosen Pomona in California and Georgetown in D.C. 

To my surprise, Mr. Salls asked if he could make a suggestion.  Why not consider Johns Hopkins in Baltimore? 

Mr. Salls said that Hopkins was not only on par academically with Rice University, it was considered just one notch below the Ivy League Schools.  In his opinion, Hopkins was THE school that matched my academic performance perfectly. 

Johns Hopkins? 

The Looming Crisis

Mr. Salls had no way of knowing this, but as we talked about colleges, I was facing a serious crisis at home.  My problems would cause me to spiral out of control throughout my Senior year.

I believe the magnitude of my problems stayed off the school's radar because I already had a long history of anger-related problems.  All my instructors knew I could be very moody, so that made it hard to realize things had taken a turn for the worse in my life.  Since I kept my problems bottled up, my dangerous descent into depression and self-destructive anger stayed off their radar. 

I had never been much of an angel.  I was born to break rules. Throughout my nine years at the school, I was a fixture at the Saturday morning Detention Hall.   My infractions varied from being late to school, back-talking to faculty who were not my teachers and being out of uniform.  And let us not forget my ever-present long hair.  As this caricature of me from the Senior yearbook illustrates, long hair was always my favorite form of disobedience. 

Fortunately, my antics were more or less tolerated because I performed well in class.  People like Mr. Salls had observed first hand that I was a dedicated, conscientious student who poured his heart into academics.  Since discipline was never an issue inside the classroom and since everyone pretty much left me alone outside the classroom, my emotional problems stayed largely undetected.

Against my strenuous objections, we moved out of our Montrose area apartment to this rundown house in the picture.  

We left a comfortable middle-class neighborhood near my school to a Mexican barrio.  This spot near the corner of North Main and Quitman was one mile north of downtown Houston.

There were liquor stores on every corner, alcoholic bums passed out on sidewalk benches, charity stores like Good Will just a few blocks away, and homeless shelters within walking distance.

I was very grim.  If only my classmates could see me now. 

Someone had convinced Mom that this area was going to be the next West University.  Property values were sure to rise. If she bought now (1967), someday this house would be worth a lot of money.  I took one look at the neighborhood and told Mom this prediction was absolute nonsense.   I remember Mom's exact words: "20 years from now, we will see who's right about that!"

I took this picture 40 years later.  The house looks exactly as it did 40 years ago and so does the neighborhood.  It doesn't take much imagination to see the real estate prediction never came to pass.  It was a barrio then.  It is a barrio now.

Mom's new home was right across the street from a Pentecostal holy-roller church.  The church was built like a fort.  The windows allowed no onlookers.  As a result, I had no idea what the place looked like inside nor did I dare to go over and look.

Every night as I tried to do my homework in my bedroom, I would be distracted by organ music played at a very high volume.  The noise drove me nuts.

Here I was trying to compete with gifted students at the toughest high school in Houston.  First I had to work four hours after school at the grocery store.  Then I had to come home tired and hungry and try to study to this racket. 

While my classmates studied in their quiet, comfortable homes, I would be constantly distracted by organ music, loud singing and the screaming shouts of "Hallelujah, Praise Jesus!"  

I heard thumping too.  I assumed they were rolling in the aisles.

As I tried to shut the noise out of my mind, the disconnect between my impoverished home life and my rich kid's school seemed to take a bigger toll on me than it had in the past.

For the past eight years I had always envied my classmates, yet  I had also managed to keep my envy under control.  However, this time it was different.  At least my previous homes had been quiet.  I could barely contain my frustration at all the noise.

One night I fell apart.  I was trying to study for a Chemistry exam.  Chemistry was not my favorite subject.  I had to force myself to do the work.  In other words, I always had trouble absorbing the material to begin with but tonight it was impossible to get going.  With the organ music blaring in my ears, my bitterness grew to intense new levels. 

How was I supposed to do my homework or study for a test with all that racket?  I couldn't seem to keep my resentment at the good luck of my classmates and my own rotten luck under wraps any more.  When I compared their stunning mansions in River Oaks to my run-down shack in the slums, it just wasn't fair. 

Every day I went to school at Saint John's and looked around.  Each student drove themselves to school in a brand new Mustang or GTO.  Each student had on a clean, freshly ironed uniform.  They had a safe, secure, quiet home to do their homework in.  They had their meals prepared for them.  They had their parents to encourage them and counsel them. 

Now look at me. I was forced to work at a grocery job after school, forced to live in a shack with a mother who couldn't keep a job, and now I was forced to study for a test with these maniacal screams driving me crazy.

The pressure was unusually high tonight due to my total and utter despair about college.   College meant the world to me. 

This was now my ninth and final year at SJS.  For eight solid years, my instructors had extolled the virtues of achievement and the value of a college education.  Every fiber of my being was attuned to reaching college and giving myself a new beginning.

Saint John's was a "College Preparatory school".  The entire focus of SJS was to prepare its students for college.  In the history of St. John's dating back to 1946, only 4 students had ever failed to go straight to college upon graduation. 

I was worried sick I was about to be the fifth. 

Yesterday I had just finished applying to three colleges.  I wasn't worried about being accepted.  My grades were good and so were my college SAT scores.  That wasn't the problem.  The problem was how on earth would I ever pay for these colleges?

As I sat here at my desk with the organ music grinding away, I had been worrying about money all day long. This morning a classmate said he had applied to ten colleges.  I looked at him like he was crazy.  Why ten colleges? 

"Why not?" he replied. "Dad's paying for it. What difference does it make?"

To me, it made a lot of difference. I was paying the college application fee for each school out of my own pocket.  I had deliberately skipped applying to Rice because it charged $75 instead of $50 like the other schools. The $150 I had spent in application fees was equal to three weeks of work at the store. It crushed me to spend that money.

Meanwhile I stared glumly at the cost of tuition for each school.  Georgetown University, the place I wanted to go, was $5,000 a year.  This was the first time in my life I had realized just how expensive college was.  All my dreams were woven around using college to escape this broken shack and my crazy Rich Man Poor Man existence at the school. Now I was crestfallen to realize what a fool I had been.

All this time I thought I was saving up for college by working at the grocery store, but this $1,000 sitting in my checking account was no more than a drop in the bucket.  It shattered me to think I had been working for nearly two years now and I didn't even have enough money to pay for one semester of college. 

Besides my fears about college finances, there was something else bothering me too.  I felt lonelier now than at any previous time in my life.

Being a Senior allowed us all to congregate in the Senior Room.  The Senior Room was basically a clubhouse where we could all spend our free time together.  I assumed I was going to enjoy this privilege like everyone else, but it backfired on me.  Every time I entered the Senior Room, I would see something that made me feel terribly alone.

It killed me to watch the boys in my class interact with the girls so effortlessly.  Several of my classmates were going steady.  Every day I noticed their laughter and how they held hands.  Still other boys waited till there weren't any girls around and bragged about how they were playing the field and dating girls from different high schools. 

I assumed I was the only person in the entire room who had never had a date in his life.  I was already intimidated enough by the vast economic gulf between me and the young ladies at the school. Then acne ordeal early in my Freshman year had robbed me of all hope.  With no confidence, no social skills and a ravaged face out of a gangster movie, I just gave up. When I was in college I would try again.

As a result of my monk-like status, my high school career at Saint John's had been the loneliest, unhappiest four years of my life.  Just because I wasn't confident around girls my age didn't stop me from wanting their approval and their company. 

Lately I had gotten smiles from girls my age at the grocery store, so I knew there was hope.  Those smiles were driving me crazy.  I wanted so much to respond.  But I refused to take my eye off the ball.  Get into college first, then worry about girls.  

A part of me knew very well that my inexperience with girls could lead to confusion and heartache.  As shaky as I was already,  I could not afford to take that kind of risk.  For the record, those self-protective instincts were completely accurate.  I ran into all sorts of heartache during my Freshman year in college.  But that's another story.

Nevertheless, my decision to delay my dating career tormented me no end in my Senior year.  Thanks to the Senior Room, this was the closest I had ever been to the pretty girls of my Senior class.  Watching them laugh and joke around made me realize what I had been missing all these years.  So close and yet so far...

The ability to delay gratification depends on patience, self-control and willpower.  But all those years of being a loner seemed to have caught up with me.  All my problems at home had weakened me.  I had absolutely no patience left.  Tonight with the organ music grinding away, I felt so damn lonely it hurt!  This was my dark night of the soul.

My world felt like it was crashing around me. 

I slumped my head on top of my Chemistry book and buried my head.  How was I ever going to get a girlfriend if I couldn't find a way to pay for college and get the hell out of this place? 

At this moment there were more screams and shouts from the Holy Rollers across the street.  This new round of shouting snapped me back to reality.  Next came the sounds of those mysterious thumps followed by more shrieks.  I shook my head in disbelief.  What on earth are those people doing over there?  

I had a Chemistry test tomorrow that I wasn't prepared for.  I had always studied for my tests on the night before.  But how was I supposed to study with screaming and organ music blasting away? 

With all that racket, I simply could not focus.  Turning on the radio wouldn't help either.  That would simply replace one type of racket with another.  Most people learn to study with the radio or the TV on as a way to drown out noise.  Not me.  I was never forced to learn how to do that.  As an only child, I had spent the past eight years doing my homework in complete silence at home.  With no brothers and sisters to disturb me, I never had a reason to learn how to cope with noise.

However, here in this new house, I found myself helpless to find a solution to the racket.  I had no filters whatsoever.

I couldn't take it any more.  I felt beaten.  In all my years at Saint John's, I had never before hated the privileged lives of my classmates as much as I did tonight.  How was I supposed to pass this test and compete with them if I couldn't even study?

In the past, my will power had always kicked in and I had been able to do the work whether I wanted to or not.  But lately my vaunted self-discipline was failing more frequently.  I was nowhere near the "study machine" I had been back in my Junior year when things were relatively calm.  Tonight was the worst ever.  My discipline was a total washout.  I was so distraught from my pity party that I could not force myself back to my Chemistry book.  I shook my head in despair. 

Finally I gave up.  I decided I was too tired to even give it a try.  Now what? 

I decided to try a unique solution to the noise problem.  I was so weary from all this despair, I could barely keep my eyes open.  I decided to go to bed early.  I could at least use the radio to drown out the sounds while I fell asleep.  I set my alarm for 6 am the next day.  I would get up early and study then.

The next morning I suppose I could have just studied in my room, but there was a stigma to this house I couldn't shake.  I just wanted to get out of this place as fast as I possibly could.

Instead, I got into my VW Bug and drove to St. John's at 6:30 am in complete darkness.  I got to school just as dawn broke.  Then I began my search for some place to begin my emergency one-hour cram session.

Since my test was first period in Chemistry class, I tried the Chemistry building first.  I found I could get into the long hallways, but after that I had no luck.  The library door was locked.  Then I found the classroom doors were locked too.  Uh oh.  I was worried.  I had not anticipated these locked doors.

Just when I was about to give up and try another part of the school, I discovered a small restroom on the second floor at the very back of the Chemistry building.  I had never once noticed this restroom was here before. Although the sign clearly read "Faculty Only", I tried the door anyway.  It was unlocked.  At first I assumed it was ridiculous to use a public restroom as a private study hall. Then it occurred to me that probably no one else besides Mr. MacKeith, my Chemistry teacher, knew this room was here either.  This obscure restroom was my best chance.

The floor was covered with blue ceramic tile.  The best adjectives to describe the floor would be "cold" and "hard".  There was nowhere to sit other than the toilet.  No thanks.  That left the floor. It was either the floor or the toilet.  Neither appealed to me. I wanted to renew my search, but I was running out of time. 

Well, at least I would have privacy.  So I slumped down on the cold, hard floor and began to study for my test.  There with a full night's rest and the total silence I needed, I began a solid hour of last-minute cramming.  I was worried sick that Mr. MacKeith or someone else would come in here at any moment, but fortunately no one ever disturbed me.  To my relief, this gamble did the trick. I was able to catch up.  My trick paid off.  I made a 90 on the test. 

It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was adequate to my needs.  I would end up doing this same thing a dozen more times during my final year of high school whenever the situation at home called for it. 

On a darkly funny note, Mr. MacKeith actually did come into the restroom once.  Caught completely off guard, I screamed in surprise as the door opened and then he screamed because I screamed. 

I was frightened, of course, but my fear was nothing compared to his. I had just scared the poor man to death.  Imagine the shock of opening the door to his private restroom at 7:30 in the morning only to find some sort of giant monster at his feet screaming in terror. 

Once Mr. MacKeith was able to regain his composure, naturally he wanted an explanation.  After all, the sign did say 'Faculty Only'. 

So I told him the truth, holy rollers and all.  Mr. MacKeith stared at me in wide-eyed disbelief.  I think he believed me.  How could he not?  Who could possibly come up with a story as bizarre as mine on the spot like that?

At any rate, Mr. MacKeith said the coolest thing.  "Mr. Archer, you are welcome to continue to use my restroom to study for the remainder of the school year."  With that he left to go find another restroom.  I just stood there in amazement.  How wonderful was that?  Like I said, my teachers were pretty wonderful human beings. 

However, Mr. MacKeith's kindness notwithstanding, I resented being forced to stoop to such depths to keep pace with my privileged peers.  Throughout the first six months of my Senior year, the resentment kept building.  By the time the crazy stuff began in February, I was ready to explode with bitterness at my own pathetic, crummy home and hostility at my classmates' good fortune. 

In the past my previous homes were certainly no castles, but they were always comfortable and they were quiet.  Consequently I didn't care that my classmates had superior homes.  As long as my own home did the trick, I was okay.

But now that I was saddled with a home that was a complete handicap, the contrast between their situation and mine drove me to despair.  I felt like I was running a race against tough opponents with leg weights attached.  This just wasn't fair!!

I am well aware that the reader will note that no matter how sorry I felt for myself, I still had things much better than billions of other kids in the world.  Try explaining that to a confused, miserable teenager like me.  I was lost in a sea of self-pity.

I had only one point of view - me, myself and I.  All I could focus on was Rich Man Poor Man.  They were rich and I was poor.  They had beautiful homes and I lived in squalor.  They had close friends, I had a dog.  They had parents who loved them and took care of them, I had no one.  Their fathers had millions to send them to college while I sacked groceries for quarters and dimes. 

And I was sick of it!   Sick and tired.  And that sickness kept growing inside of me, filling me with rage and poison.

Every day as I sat in class trying to concentrate, these demons haunted me.  Every morning while I lay on the cold restroom floor studying for tests, I thought of my classmates in their warm homes.  I knew it wasn't the fault of my classmates that they had been given these advantages, but my resentment just kept building anyway.

I grew incredibly tense with bitterness.  In this impaired state, I became self-destructive.  In my Senior year, I did some very stupid things.