From Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night -The 'Real' Scoop on "Tri-Hi-Y"- An Investigatory Report- "Inside Edition" Move On Over

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the modern doings of one school's Tri-Hi-Y Club. Hey, don't shoot the messenger on this one. I just like to provide a ‘relevant’ link with my posts

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, comment:

Today I have my investigative reporter's hat on. An unusual occurrence for me because my usual course is to just grab a thought, bear down on it, blast away and see what falls out, and then merrily walk away. Who, in the modern age, meaning here the age of the Internet and ‘instant’ thoughts, has the time, or wherewithal, to painstakingly separate fact, half-fact, quarter fact, mere whim, and simple caprice from fictions, lies, half-lies and your average off-hand utter duplicity. Just posing the question makes me dizzy, and provides the correct answer as well.

Of course, as we live in a litigious society, a society moreover still peopled with obsessively thin-skinned old time North Adamsville corner boys, their honeys, their wanna-be honeys, and assorted other characters best described in Runyonesque terms ready to pounce on every misspoken word, every ill-formed characterization, every far from pristine sentence, and, frankly, any published but perhaps only vaguely remembered episode then thorough investigation would seem warranted. And the beginning of wisdom.

I am still smarting, smarting more than somewhat, from the grilling, no, the raking over the coals, I got from Frankie Riley, the king hell king of the North Adamsville corner boy night in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor up in Norfolk Downs, now big-time Boston lawyer Francis X. Riley for those three people in the universe who have not seen one of his silly ads touting how he, or really some lowly subaltern in his office, will get you some justice in this wicked old world if you just call (or text)his law office. Of course, you may get your day in court, although always corner boy Frankie will take a big cut of the dough for you.

But forget the now Frankie because that is not what he was hot under the collar about. Frankie was upset, litigiously upset if I hadn’t been quick thinking and undercut him, because in one of my tales, tall tales if you like, I mentioned that he was not always tried and true to his high school sweetheart (really from junior high school), Joanna Moriarty. In other words he was a lady-killer, a ladies’ man. Now most guys fifty, yes, fifty years later, would take that as a compliment and a characterization that he was a fast ball hitter, or at least just let it pass. Not Frankie, in his now quasi-paranoiac state about offending anyone under any circumstances who might be a potential client he challenged me, me, The Scribe (and no one else better use that old-timey nickname, I warn you), on my statement. Fortunately one Professor Joanna Moriarty, now teaching at one of the local universities, read the post, and confirmed my accusation in great detail, adding in a couple of ‘misunderstandings' that even I was not aware of and I thought that I had heard them all. We, the three of us, had dueling e-mails over it for a couple of days. Then Joanna lowered the boom with a definitive blow, a blow that need not detain us here, and Frankie crumbled. In the end Frankie Riley, oops, Attorney Francis X. Riley, sheepishly walked away like a beaten cur.

Now this post is intended to be a light-hearted look at an old school organization, Tri-Hi-Y, if you remember that so-called service organization. I went to great lengths to give the big-time lawyer Frankie Riley example as a cautionary tale for those who still have some thin-skinned notions that you are exempt from my pen (well, keyboard). I have still not unraveled all the details about this club but that has not stopped me from pushing on. The facts, frankly, seem to get in the way on this one. But just in case I have a lawyer in the wings. Frankie Riley? Hell no, one of those subaltern lawyers who do all the real work in his office anyway.
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Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. That was good, if unheeded, advice a few thousand years ago. Apparently it is advice that we should have also heeded back in our school days. Those half-formed, take everything as gospel unless otherwise told, or else, North Adamsville High school days hid all sorts of things that, perhaps, couldn’t bear the light of day. Or those involved, or who knew what was really going on, were too frightened to “spill the beans.” Or were in so far in that public acknowledgement would have ruined them, their reputations, and even their lives. Sure, today there are plenty of brave whistle-blowers, from those working inside the government and corporations to military guys like Iraq whistle-blower, Private Bradley Manning, and Vietnam whistle-blower, Daniel Ellsberg. But back then just wimps, yes, let’s just say wimps and leave at that although I could bring up stronger language than that.

The subject today is the mysterious, seemingly nefarious, doings of Tri Kappa Phi, colloquially known as Tri-Hi-Y. I have, as yet, been unable to untangle the relationship between these two names but I suspect the latter is merely a classic front name. For those who do not know what a front group is I will give an example that might shed a little light on this mix and match name thing. The American Communist Party, Uncle Joe’s boys and girls, in their heyday didn’t always want to show their colors openly (or wanted to hide how few adherents they had when the deal went down). So, say they wanted to do something with nuclear disarmament or war, instead of saying sponsored by the Communist Party they would think up a name like- Citizen For A Peaceful World. And then get everybody and their brother (or sister) to sign up because who doesn’t want a peaceful world. Neat trick, right? I have a gut instinct that is what was going on here.

Ostensibly this was a girls' club devoted to public service. Innocent enough, no question. Hell, even a good idea if nothing else for your resume, if you were a girl, and as it turns out a certain kind of girl, and if you were going to college or maybe looking for some kind of governmental job where such service might be a boost to your chances. Yes, if I were a girl back then (or now, if you can believe that this group is still going strong as the link that I have provided in the headline indicates) and didn’t know the ‘truth' I would have given the organizations serious consideration. But see that is the hellish thing about front groups. There is a yawning gap between what they say they stand for and what they do really stand for. The old shell game that we should have been wise to since about second grade, or whenever it was we were taken for our dough at some hokey carnival chance game. A glance at page 17 of the 1964 (or, maybe, any year if that was not the reader’s graduation year) Magnet, the North Adamsville High School yearbook belies that story.

According to their own words as etched for all eternity on page 17, and I gladly, gleefully quote from that source, this organization was committed to furthering "pure thoughts, pure words, and pure actions" among the members. And we all know what the three pures they are referring to related to in 1960s America, hell in 1860s America, or double-hell in 2000s America. Sex. This, my friends, reads, to these old eyes at least, more like the program for the vestal virgins in the temples of pagan Greece than a program for a society then on the edge of a sexual revolution. That should have been the tip-off. I sincerely wish that I had paid more attention then, I really do. Now we live in a more skeptical age and would have had our antennae out when confronted with such shameless hyperbole. Then, naive as we were, we bought the story hook, line and sinker.

Look, I am a fair person, or try to be. In order to get a hook into this unfolding scandalous story and learn more about the group I, innocently, e-mailed the president of the organization in 1964, Millie Callahan. (There was not mystery, or “magic” to my getting that e-mail address, not in the hard-boiled information-heavy Internet age. I had previously been in touch with the savagely relentless head of our class committee who sent it along posthaste although she is not responsible for any uses that I might put the information to. Unless I need a “fall girl.”)

Now I knew Millie Callahan back in the day. Not the way I wanted to know her of course but I used to sit a couple of rows in back of her at 8:00 AM Mass at Sacred Heart Church in ninth grade and stare at her ass. Yes, she was a fox then, and probably still is now. That’s not the end of my knowing her though. She was also, long story short, the girlfriend all through high school, damn, of “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin, one of my Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys. And Phil, foul-mouthed or not, was not squiring around any three pures girls, no way. They were “doing it,” just like two high school kids were suppose to, if that is what they wanted to do. Enough of that though because on the e-mail front I got nothing. Nada, a resounding no reply.

I then pursued another avenue that I thought might be more fruitful. I e-mailed the woman, Lucy Platt, who was the chaplain of the group in her junior and senior year. (said e-mail address also delivered from my previously mentioned “confidential” source). I will not now even get into why a so-called girls’ service organization needed a chaplain, an un-ordained chaplain, I assume, if all they were doing was selling candy door to door or having bake sales and stuff like that but it does give one pause. Might she not have been a conduit for other matters? Certainly another avenue for investigation, maybe on the licensing question. (Don’t chaplains, men and women of the clothe, those who, as my saintly Irish grandmother used to say, “have the calling,” have to have licenses, or certification or something to show they are authorized, in this case, to “take confessions” from wayward girls. Non-observant three pures girls.) An additional reason I wanted to get her take on these allegations was that she was not just any fellow classmate but was then currently the secretary to the headmaster at North Adamsville High. Dear readers, she had access to the records! (If she hadn’t carelessly, or carefully, ‘disposed’ of them long ago).

I, good-heartedly, offered this ex-chaplain, (or maybe she still is, if she hasn’t been defrocked by now) the opportunity to place our correspondence under a confidential attorney-client blanket. (No, one thousand times no, not Frankie Riley, but a real lawyer, a hungry young lawyer in his office. Besides, Frankie probably has a “conflict of interest” problem here since, if I recall, Lucy Platt was one of his paramours when he was being tried and true to Joanna. I’ll have to ask her, Joanna that is.) I further suggested that she might fall under the priest- penitent immunity provisions concerning her testimony. Result - Stonewalled, no reply. Apparently, this is one secretary that went to the Rosemary Woods Secretarial School. Moreover, another closer look at the Magnet told the tale. The winsome smile and twinkle in her eye of her class picture on page 137, obviously a posed put-up job, did not jibe with her Cotton Mather-like visage on page 17 when she was doing her so-called chaplain thing. I then determined that I needed to investigate this matter all-out.

Right now, I admit, there are more questions than answers. Little did this pair, Minnie and Lucy, and their accomplices know that some forty -plus years later an intrepid, truth-seeking, justice-pursuing alumnus with some time on his hands was going to fall onto their little threadbare operation. Maybe even in the school administration after all the thing was a school activity so somebody in there had to know what was going on. Maybe it went higher up. Who knows? Isn’t it so very convenient though that Lucy wound up as school secretary right next to the records that any future investigator would, of necessity, need to have access to. I will continue to try to unravel this tangled story to the bitter end.

Here are some questions that I have right now though that you, my friends, can help me with. Why did a so-called "public service" group in a democratic, secular institution need a chaplain? What deep, dark secrets were being kept from us when those probably naively innocent girls confessed, well confessed what was just normal teen sexual activity, to the chaplain? Who knows, maybe blackmail, and maybe some of them, the real naïve ones, are still paying out.
Moreover, apparently, from the lack of response to my inquiries, members are sworn to secrecy unto the grave. Some kind of awful blood oath with horrendous consequences I am sure. Why? And here is another little tidbit to feast on. Why was the turnover rate in the organization so high, especially in senior year? (Here I did, painfully, record how many years each member participated. There were plenty of 1s and 2s (sophomore and junior years)in the activities section under their yearbook photos, and then a dramatic drop-off of 3s senior year. Was it impossible to keep to the public "three purities" slogan mentioned above with a straight face or did a number of members fall afoul of the cabal at the top when they threatened to go public? I suspect some cult operation but such things are tricky to pin down as we know from later experience. Are there any whistle-blowers out there? More, later. Tri-Hi-Y, indeed!

A Day In The Life Of A Member Of The Generation Of '68-For Mary, Class Of 1964 Somewhere

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia entry for the "Summer Of Love", 1967.

"In that time, 'twas bliss to be alive, to be young was very heaven"- a line from a poem by William Wordsworth in praise of the early stages of the French Revolution.

He was scared, Billy was scared, Billy Bradley well known member of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 was scared, as he entered the foyer of the North Adamsville Holiday Inn for what was to be his class’ 5th reunion on this 1969 November weekend, this Thanksgiving Saturday night. Yes, he reflected, those had been his glory days, those days from 1961 to 1964 when he had been the captain of the billiards team three years running. A time then when he could have had every good-looking, every interesting girl that he wanted, and, well, whatever else he wanted from the girls who hung around Joe’s Billiard Parlor after school during the season, and some of them after the season as well.

Of course in those glory days when everyone in town, and other places too, bled raider red the football players, even the dinks, had first dibs on the girls. But after that, well after that, it was open season and the girls, the interesting girls, found their way to Joe’s Billiard Parlor. Billy had to chuckle even now as he thought about it, about those basketball bozos, those hockey hoboes, those tennis touts, those golf goofs, and those soccer scum who were clueless about why the girls didn’t flock, all a-flutter, to them and their dink sports. And in their flailing, their anger, and their clueless-ness these pseudo-jocks, en masse, in those days started spreading vicious slanders around about how Joe’s was nothing but a rat-infested, hoodlum hang-out of a pool hall. Run by a “connected” bookie, Joe, on top of all that. Like those girls, those interesting girls, knew or cared a fig, hell half a fig, about the finer distinctions, as important as they are to aficionados, between pool and billiards as they draped themselves languidly around the empty billiard tables and filled the place almost to the rafters at Joe’s. Or that Joe made book right in front of them. Ya, those geek guys were, no question, clueless.

But that was then and tonight was a whole different ballgame. See Billy, after deciding to come back and tweak a few noses at this reunion thing, started to get cold feet. Of course he blew off the tradition Thanksgiving Thursday football game between North and cross-town arch-rival Adamsville High in order not to send his classmates a telegram about his new world. Although he had not been back in those five years since graduation, he knew, knew in his heart, that the blue-collar working class ethos that had practically buried him alive back in those so-called days would still be in play, still be in play in the "us" against "them" world, and the them was the “monster” government that was intent on wreaking havoc with its giant footprint every place it could, including right this minute in Vietnam, to the cheers of the North Adamsville thems.

And they, the thems, certainly the father and mother thems would definitely not understand that Billy Bradley, a son of the blue-collar working class, a kid who started out like them, and their kids, who thankfully never went to college but straight to work, saving, mercifully saving, the old man’s wallet from extinction, went over to the other side, the “us”, and helped caused eruptions in places like New York City ( jesus, even New York City, is nothing sacred, he could hear them say snickering in the background chatter of this ill-starred reunion dinner), in Washington, D.C. and points west, Yes, he knew that story, knew it first-hand, chapter and verse, from those occasional calls back home to mother. Hell, she had led the chorus, at least the chorus about what was he going to do with his life and how was he going to use his hard fought for, and ever harped on desperately paid for, education. He would not even mention her tirades about marriage, family, and producing kids, grand kids. And, as he thought of it occasionally, maybe she led the snickers too. Yes indeed, he knew the story chapter and verse, and as well from the odd-hour telephone calls sent homeward to mother’s house threatening the usual “if-I ever-see-that-s.o.b.,” and that was just the mildly curious expression of bad vibes ready to pounce on him this night, or so he feared.

See, if you didn’t realize it before, Billy was now a vision of heaven’s own angel choir. As he looked at himself in the hotel lobby mirror he sensed that he was out of place here, and not just in the family-friendly, take a vacation to historic North Adamsville, land of late presidents, and earlier revolutionary brethren long gone and best forgotten, forgotten for what they were trying to do with that fragile democratic experiment idea they had on their minds as they civilized this green-grassed new continent, Holiday Inn scene gathered around him. Yes, unquestionably he was out of synch here with his symbol of “youth nation” faded blue jeans, his battle-scarred (Chicago 1968) World War II Army olive drab jacket, Army-Navy surplus store-purchased, his soft, velvety well-worn (and slightly smelly, sorry) moccasins that had many hitchhike miles on them, and his longish pony-tailed hair with matching unkempt beard. No his act would not play in Peoria, Adamsville’s kindred.

This is a mistake, my mistake, he said to himself and he was ready to turn around just then. But just as had made the pivot he heard a voice, “Hey, Captain Billy you old pool hall hoodlum.” And then, “Come on now don’t turn the other way on me.” Finally he recognized the voice if not the person yelling it out. “Wait a minute that’s “Thundering” Tommy Riley, ace football player, captain of the vaunted 1964 team, class president, and, in earlier times, his bosom buddy,” Billy blurred out to no one in particular. Now envision Buffalo Bill Cody although Billy was not sure if Cody was as big as Tommy, with fringed-deerskin jacket, the obligatory “youth nations” faded blue denims, some exotic roman sandals, and long straight hair, longer than Billy’s, with matched beard tooped off by a well-worn (and stained) Stenson hat. Another vision of heaven’s own, well, own something, not angels, not angels, no way. And standing right next to him, right next to him and very like heaven’s own angelic, or maybe Botticelli's versions of the angelic, or Joni Mitchell if you don’t know Botticelli’s work, was Chrissie, Chrissie McNamara, a secret long ago Billy flame, very secret, although maybe not so long ago at that.

Now Tommy and Chrissie were an “item” back in ’64, a big item. Chrissie was, among other things, other things like being an actress, a school newspaper writer, and a high-scoring ten pin bowler, head cheerleader (mainly to be around Tommy more, from what Billy had heard). But Tommy’s girl or not , head cheerleader or not, Chrissie was a fox. A fox though who had no time for billiard parlor romances, or even to step into the rat-infested, hoodlum hang-out joint where the guy who ran it “made book.” No, not pristine Chrissie. Tonight though Billy understood why he had that crush on her for she had on a shapely sarong thing and wore her hair, more blondish hair long now, very long as was now the fashion amount hipper women. The only word he could think of, newer world or not, brothers and sisters in struggle now or not, was fetching.

Tommy motioned Billy to come over and the trio greeted each other heartily. Tommy, never at a lost for words, started telling his epic saga from his football career-ending injury freshman year at State U. to his getting “religion” about the nature of the American state, the need to transform that state to a more socially useful one, and the need have people be better, much better toward each other. Yes, here was a kindred, no weekend hippie tourista. Chrissie was another matter; she seemed less sure of her place in the sun, questioned whether any change, especially disruptive change, mattered and whether maybe it was better just to try to do the best you could within the system. "Yes, Chrissie I see your point, for you anyway," Billy found himself thinking. Hell, he had “crushed” such arguments, from male or female, like so much tissue many times before but not tonight, not this Chrissie in front of him night. Ya, Billy thought it was still like that with Chrissie. Tommy and Chrissie also made it very clear as well, reflecting the new “religious” sensibilities of youth nation that they were just friends. And Billy did notice Chrissie giving him several side-glance peeks while they were talking, and he was insistently peeking right back.

After than confab ended the trio prepared themselves, or rather fortified themselves, to make the rounds together of the other classmates milling around the now somewhat crowded lobby waiting for dinner to start. This tour, this death-march tour, caught Billy feeling like he had a pit in his stomach, especially after a couple of guys started to bait them with the “hippie-dippie” taunt that was standard fare among the squares, and that he would normally shrug his shoulders at except it was here at North. Then a couple of guys from the billiards team came rushing up to him, a couple of alternates, at best, who began a play by play of the North Adamsville-Adamsville contest. No, not the recent Thanksgiving football game, as one might expect, but the 1964 senior year billiards match against the old arch-rival. Billy thought they will probably go to their graves reciting the excruciating details of that one. Move on with your lives, boys, please.

Moreover, with one exception, Janie Thompson, well two, if you count Chrissie, none of the good-looking billiard hall hanging-off-the-rafters girls, or any others that had caught his eye back then, gave him a tumble. They were there but they either didn’t recognize him, or didn’t want to. Many of them had the look, the married look that dictated eyes straight ahead, or the pregnant look (now or in the recent past) that spoke of greater concerns than giving some bearded hippie boy a tumble. Most, whether they had caught his youthful eye in the past or not, had that secure job hubby, little white picket fenced house in the real suburbs, preparing for parenthood look. Chrissie though, mercifully just then, was still giving her peeks, and Billy was right back at her.

Right then though he began talking to Janie, Janie Thompson. Now Janie had certainly blossomed out some because back in the day she was just a wallflower hanging around with a couple of beauties whom Billy had taught how to play billiards, and a couple of other things. Janie told him that she had just graduated from Radcliffe (which he had vaguely remembered she was heading to) but more importantly she had followed, followed closely, his various anti-war activities while in and around Cambridge. Well, things are looking up, or so he thought. But a closer look around, and a conference with Tommy, convinced him that this was neither his place, nor his time and that they (Billy and Janie, Tommy and Chrissie in no particular combination) better go out back and have a joint, and then blow this place. Janie, although she had never smoked before, was game, Billy was certainly game. And off they went, blowing the dust of the place off them in the process. Who was it, oh yes, Thomas Wolfe, who wrote the book You Can’t Go Home Again. Billy thought he should have read that novel long before he actually did and then he would have known, known for sure, that the generation of ’68, his generation of ’68, was fated to be a remnant.