A Wonderful Man

 

I ran the 1,000 yard run on the John Quincy Adams Middle School track team for Coach Lloyd Dillon. I’ll never forget the patience and kindness Coach Dillon showed towards me. When my dad refused to buy track shoes for me, Coach Dillon got me a pair. I practiced and practiced to show my appreciation, and won two second place red ribbons in the Jefferson Parish Middle School meets. Coach Dillon grinned from ear to ear. He was a wonderful motivator and I was pleased to make him proud.

In the spring of seventh grade, I went with my friend Skip Montgomery to the Bissonet Maned Downs country club, where I noticed a lot of the parents were drinking and having fun at this neighborhood club. I also witnessed the principal of my school who, in my opinion, appeared to have been over poured, and I thought it to be humorous. I shared my story at school on Monday, and was called into his office by Monday afternoon. My dad was in the principal’s office when I arrived. Apparently, I had broken some rule about being disrespectful and was suspended for three days. My dad was livid and we started to get into it right there in the principal’s office. Lucky for me, Coach Dillon happened to be nearby and came in to see the commotion. He quickly calmed my father down and totally defended me. As my father drove me home he said “Coach Dillon won’t always be there.” I remember asking my dad why he never came to any of my school sporting events, ever. He replied “Because I have six kids and it’s my job to feed all of you. Besides, let Coach Dillon watch you!” Well, he had a good point, but it still hurt. I just wanted him to be proud of me.

I read recently that Coach Dillon passed away on September 23, 2020 at the age of 85. Rest In Peace, Coach Dillon.  You were indeed a great man to so many…

My parents let me take the eighth grade entrance exam to De La Salle that spring. I was accepted on my test score alone, but with the condition that I had to get my grades up to As and Bs, and a recommendation letter from my principal. I couldn’t accomplish either condition.

The summer between seventh and eighth grade was a time of uncertainty for me, on so many levels. It was 1972 and I felt really depressed. I had aged out of Sam Barthe camp and wasn’t really interested in going back to Girard Gym. I remember one incident when I was with some of my neighborhood buddies and we were sitting on my back patio when my dad came out the back door. I remember that he was mad at me about something and he was yelling at me in front of my friends when he said to them, “You all shouldn’t hang out with Jeff because he’s bad and he’s only going to get you in trouble.” I remember seeing the shocked look on their faces and just feeling so crushed that my dad would say something like that about me. I remember feeling embarrassed and totally speechless. I just wanted to escape from myself, someway, somehow.

The one good thing about that summer was that I had a group of friends who were also looking for something to do to occupy our time, and the things we all had in common at our age were riding bikes, fishing and, of course, girls. It

seems like we rode our bikes all over town. We thoroughly enjoyed the freedom to just ride and ride and ride. We worked on our bikes and we built ramps to jump over, copycatting our hero Evil Knievel. We also liked to fish and our favorite thing to do was to sneak out at night and head up to Lake Pontchartrain to hang out and fish on Padua’s Pier. After our parents would go to sleep, we would all sneak out and ride our bikes up to the pier to hang out. Most of the guys would fish and I would just watch and tell stories because I didn’t have a fishing pole. As the evening wore on we would inevitably decide that some of us would have to ride our bikes over to the Time Saver store on West Esplanade to buy cigarettes and beer or wine. We would draw straws to see who would go and then we would pool whatever change we had for the order, which usually consisted of non-filtered Camel cigarettes, for the buzz, and Boones Farm Strawberry Hill, because it was cheaper than beer. One of us would wait outside of Time Saver until an older brother or someone over 18 would agree to go in and buy the order for us. It was always quite the adventure and a lot of fun. We also worked constantly to maintain the structural integrity of the pier because we would constantly abuse it at the same time. Our building supplies would generally come from the neighborhood home building construction sites. We could easily rationalize the stealing by telling ourselves we didn’t want new homes being built in the area that would take away from our green space. Our nightly fishing trips would end around 4:30 or 5:00AM in order for us to get home before our parents woke up. Sometimes, on our bike rides back home, we would follow the neighborhood milkman and grab a bottle of milk to drink on the way home. We would rarely, if ever, catch any fish.

I think it’s important to point out that later on in life I learned that my maturity level and emotional growth probably started slowing down tremendously when I first started drinking on a regular basis. My drinking continued over the next five or six years, until it would eventually become nightly, but it certainly started at the age of eleven or twelves years old. This was also the same time my interest in girls was developing at a parallel pace, almost to a point of obsession. It made me feel really positive about myself to simply know that there was a girl or two who really liked me. I realize, in hindsight, that the drinking made me much more comfortable to talk to girls, and having girls like me made me feel better about myself. And there were girls everywhere I looked. I learned a lot about myself that summer, or at least I thought I did.

© 2022 Jeffrey Pipes Guice

My Wonder Years: A Book