"Plaintive Questions at Rock Bottom"

By Barry Fiegel

     This book, "Plaintive Questions at Rock Bottom," is a short novel.

     The time-setting of the story is July, 1968.

     Richard Porndip is a sixteen-year-old boy and a resident of an unspecified, generic American city/town/location called Pinecrest Village. He is the narrator of this story, but, unbeknownst to himself, he is a de facto chronicler of a certain American era, circa 1968.

     A lot of "Baby Boomers"—a "baby boomer" being defined as an American who was born between about 1946 and about 1964—now, as fiftysomethings or sixtysomethings or seventysomethings, naturally see the past, e.g., the Sixties, in a certain way, i.e., "through rose-colored glasses," but Richard Porndip is just a real kid telling a real story in real time—right now, the month of July, 1968. As a result he is, at times, unintentionally, very "politically incorrect" to our contemporary sensibilities.

     Probably the most common adjective or noun ascribed to this story is the word "hilarious."

     This story should appeal to adults and to teenagers, equally, because of its no-bullshit quality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Fiegel
• Release date: Jun 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386675518

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All Content Copyright © 2019, by Barry Fiegel

To Sharon

The Month of July, 1968

1

When I arrived home from school one day last year, I was surprised to discover that my dad and our next door neighbor, Mr. Sheffield, were waiting for me. When I asked them what was up, my dad told me he felt I had been getting into a rut of late, and he and Mr. Sheffield had been discussing the possibility of my going to a military school.

It wasn’t all their fault I ended up going to a military school, though. In fact, I was even enthusiastic about it after I’d read some of the brochures. I kept thinking about how all the girls would be crazy about me in a sharp uniform with a silver sword at my side. It turned out that no new cadets got to have swords, though.

I thought about how life at Catholic High School had been becoming the same old stuff day after day, and about how the military school could turn out to be a lot of fun—I’d heard about wild, out-of-control parties taking place at some of the military schools.

      After weighing the pros and cons, I eventually decided What the hell?, and walked in and told my dad and Mr. Sheffield that I was willing to go.

      So, shortly thereafter, just before the beginning of the second semester, my mom and I got on a bus headed for Tostada, New Mexico, home of Rockhurst Military Academy.

      The bus ride was fun for two reasons. The first was that there was spectacular scenery along the way—giant mountains and hills and plateaus. I was thinking about what a blast it would be to get my motorcycle out there and try to ride it to the top of some of those hills.

The second reason the bus ride was fun was that there were two girls about my age sitting in the seat behind ours. One of the girls was black-haired and the other one was red-haired. I think the black-haired girl liked me a little, but I was more attracted to the red-haired girl. She didn’t seem to be very attracted to me, though, so that was a pretty typical situation.

      After we arrived at Rockhurst, I started looking around at the school. I must admit I was very apprehensive—it looked like a giant prison.

      Parting company with my mom was harder than I’d anticipated. We both played it pretty cool, though—neither one of us cried.

    My first surprise while at Rockhurst happened when my appointed overseer, Captain Buttons, himself a cadet, led me to the barber shop. The barber started his electric razor and placed it at the top of my forehead and made a quick sweep straight back along my scalp to the nape of my neck. That completely surprised me. I’d assumed that everything was going to be pretty much normal at Rockhurst. After the barber went over my head with the first razor, he got out a second electric razor and went over my head again to make sure my hair was cut as close as humanly possible to the scalp. When the barber finished, he held up a mirror in front of my face. That was the second surprise I had at Rockhurst. Everywhere on my head, my hair had been cut to within one-quarter millimeter of my scalp. I looked like a baldheaded sixteen-year-old.

      Very shortly afterward came my third surprise. When Captain Buttons had been showing my mom and me around, he was really friendly toward me, and I was sort of basking in my new-found friendship. And even after my mom had left and my hair had been cut, when he was walking with me to show me my new room, he was still my new-found friend, in a big brother sort of way. But when we were just ready to enter my new room, he suddenly pushed me against the sidewalk railing and started screaming, with a vicious insanity in his eyes, that I was worthless scum, etc. My first impulse was to think that he was kidding, but when I saw that he was serious, it came as such a shock to me that I thought I was imagining things, that something was the matter with me.

      Those were the first among many surprises I experienced during the ensuing one hundred and twenty-two days I spent at Rockhurst.

2

During the time I was at Rockhurst, whenever I spoke with an adult who was able to discern how miserable I was there, it seems as if he would always say something like, Well, when you get older you’ll look back on this and realize that your time here was a good experience. And they meant ‘good experience’ in a positive sense, instead of in a negative sense. I heard that sentiment stated so much that I almost would’ve started believing it myself, if I hadn’t been certain they were wrong.

      I already know that my time spent at Rockhurst was a good experience in a negative sense, because now I know how great it is to be away from there—to have freedom. Because of that, I know that when I go back to Catholic this fall I’m going to really enjoy myself, because I won’t be preoccupied with all the stupid little things that made me sad that I was preoccupied with before when I went there, like trying to be popular.

      One of the best aspects of being home now is that I’m back with my motorcycle, a Suzuki Trailbuster. I missed it desperately when I was at Rockhurst.

      Another great thing is that I can see Connie O’Flanagan, my girlfriend, practically any time I want to. I’ve had a few girlfriends in the past, and I had strong feelings for them, but nothing like the way I feel about Connie.

On the morning of my first day as a freshman at Catholic, I was hurrying so as not to be late for my first class of the day. I was the last person to enter the classroom, and I was almost running, but between the time I went through the door and the time I sat down in one of the first-row seats, I glimpsed Connie out of the corner of my eye at the back of the class in a corner desk, and that was it. I knew I was in love with her. The change in my mind was instantaneous and decisive, but when I was sitting down and thinking about it, I didn’t feel like the change was even remarkable. It just happened.

3

At Prince of Peace, the grade school I attended, there were two nuns who pretty much ran the show: Sister Edwina and Sister Stanislaus. Sister Edwina was the principal, and Stan was the eighth grade teacher. Incidentally, Prince of Peace was another place I ended up hating.

      Sister Edwina was a completely serious person. Strictly business. Ordinarily, that would’ve been fine with me—I like serious people—but Edwina was totally humorless and cold in her seriousness. I hated her guts.

      One afternoon, the other eighth grade guys and I were playing football. After a while, we all agreed to start playing basketball instead, so I ran into the school building to get the basketball out of the sports closet. As I was running down the hall with the basketball, and just as I was getting ready to run out the front door, Edwina rounded the corner at the end of the hall and spotted me and said, Richard! And I said, Yes? And she beckoned me toward her with her finger.

      She led me into the boys’ restroom and stopped at the toilet partition and held out her hand to a word that was scrawled there. The word was Fuck.

      She said, What does that say? And I said, It says ‘Duck.’ It sounded silly, but I didn’t want to say that word in front of a nun. She said, "It does not say ‘Duck.’ Now, what does it say? So I said, It says ‘Fuck.’ And she said, You wrote that there, didn’t you? And I said, No. And she said, I think you’re lying. Go to the broom closet and get some cleanser and scrub it off." So I put down the basketball and went and got the cleanser and scrubbed off the word.

      For Edwina to think, even for a moment, that I’d written that word on the partition, shows how little she really knew me. I would never write anything like that. That’s not even in context.

      Even though I really hated Edwina when I was in the eighth grade, I become sad whenever I think about her now. Because, maybe, when she was a young girl, she experienced a religious revelation where everything was beautiful and clear, and because of that she decided to become a nun. But now she’s just a hateful middle-aged woman.

If you’d had to pick the two most influential guys in our eighth grade class at Prince of Peace, it would probably have been Jack Matthews and me. Jack was the class bad-ass.

      He and I got along all right together; in fact, as often as not, we were friends. He did get on my nerves occasionally, though. One of the things that sometimes bugged