Now in High School we, of course, moved from class to class throughout the day. Six classes a day called periods.
Like, "Who do you have for third period?"
"I've got Brown for English."
"Shit, I had him last year, he's an asshole."
In the tenth grade, just after lunch, I had Mr. Jenkins for math, fourth period. Mr. Jenkins was a very smart man, not street smart but very book smart. In his defense he was not pretentious nor ego driven and his authority as teacher was not something he even thought of. Mr. Jenkins was probably about twenty five or so.
In the classroom environment, filled with hormone driven teenagers, he was putty in our hands. He interacted with us as if we were adults, just not as math proficient as he was.
Truth be known we could have cared less about math. Most hated it (even the girls hated it) the rest, like me were totally indifferent to it.
Mr. Jenkins had one glaring fault, he looked almost exactly like Captain Jet.
In the early fifties there was an morning television show called Space Funnies / Caption Jet. I guess it was one of the first Los Angeles kids shows on TV.
Captain Jet was dressed up in the then idea of what a space suit would look like. He would have little kids on the show and they would pretend to go on space trips. He had a spaceship like cockpit with lights and levers and buttons and between space trips he would show Little Rascals (Our Gang) and Laurel and Hardy short films.
He would have his little kid fans send in to be a member of Captain Jet's Space Rangers. When ever Captain Jet would talk to his Space Rangers he would give the Captain Jet Salute. He would form a circle with his thumb and forefinger with the last three fingers sticking up. It was like the A-Ok hand signal. Then he would bring the circled thumb and finger up to his right eye then straighten out his arm at the same time saying, "Zoom!"
If you received this salute you were supposed to make the circle with your arm extended and move it back to your eye saying, "Mooz."
Incredibly lame, I know but we were little kids and this was television and television for kids.
Rumor had it that the ol'e captain was a bit rough on the little darlings when the commercial or the film was showing. It was said that after the end of one show he thought that the mike was turned off (it wasn't) he yelled at the kids to shut up then said to the crew, "That ought to fix the little bastards." Unfortunately several thousand little bastards AND their parents heard him. Good bye Captain Jet. I had assumed that he went into permanent orbit around Uranus searching for klingons, but no, a little research has shown that he made a decent Hollywood living doing bit parts and voiceovers. VoiceoversÖ mainly for Disney cartoons and motion pictures. That ought to fix the little bastards.
But while he was on I'll bet every kid in LA with a TV watched Captain Jet.
The minute I walked into the room at the start of the term I couldn't believe I was looking at Captain Jet. The resemblance was uncanny. So of course I said in a loud voice, "Captain Jet!"
the rest of the class knew immediately what I was talking about.
So then the fun began. When those of us in on it walked in to his room we would give the Space Ranger salute saying, "Zoom!"
Mr. Jenkins trying to be hip (as a nerd could be with a bunch of teenage delinquents) Would smile and salute back saying, "Zoom!" he had no clue the joke was on him.
We were about to have our first test in math class and Mr. Jenkins, as required by the faculty, had to give a speech about how Samohi operated upon the honor system as far as cheating was concerned. He took it a bit further by saying that...
"We shouldn't write the answers on our clothing or wrists or legs. No using one of those things with secret compartments in themÖ what are they called?"
I said aloud, "Space Rings?" The class went nuts with laughter.
"Yes!," he said, "That's it, thank you, Space rings!"
He smiled a big smile thinking, no doubt, that he had made the class crack up.
Spring was here and all us surfers were looking forward to the South Swells that hit every summer bringing big surf and warm water up from the lower latitudes.
Spring was a tough time in Santa Monica high School, the weather is nice and school is grinding on. Everyone was dying for Easter Week. (wasn't called spring break then)
It was fourth period and we were all reading our math homework, the class was quiet. I was sitting in the last seat in the first row by the door. I used to periodically change seats just to confuse Mr. Jenkins, I don't know if it did or not, like I said he was a smart man.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around there with his long haired head in the door was my friend Gilbert Morales. "Man!," He said, "South SwellÖ Malibu is four to five foot and nobody outÖ NOBODY!"
I said, "Give me a sec." and he backed out into the hall.
I raised my hand and told Mr. Jenkins I needed to go to the bathroom.
He said, "Fine."
And I went out the door.
Gil and I raced down the stairs to the parking lot jumped into my car and headed up the coast to Bu. Surfboards ALWAYS in the car.
Sure enough, a strong south four to five feet wrapping around the point with nobody out. We knew the lack of crowd wouldn't last long. Best we could do was snag a few empty waves before the crowd hit. Malibu was crowded even back then. We waxed up our boards and paddled out to the first point.
Ridding Malibu point to gully on un-crowded wave is such a treat. South swell waves wrap around the point and shape up like they are spit out of a machine. Truly one of the most perfect waves on this planet.
After my second wave I reached the line up and saw the cars start to arrive. I knew it would soon be over, time for maybe two more before the mob made it out.
On closer inspection these guys were all from Mr. Jenkins math class at Samo. I guess they heard Gilbert tell me. So the crowd was not only small but friendly, that in itself was a rarity at Malibu.
Of course it didn't take too long for the rest of the world to figure it out and it was over. But for a few hours we all had Malibu to ourselves, totally awesome.
I talked to one of the girls from math class the next day, she said that when Mr. Jenkins finally looked up there were only girls in the classroom.
Shortly Easter week came and went. When we came back to math class Mr. Jenkins was not there another teacher in his place. She said that Mr. Jenkins had had some health problems and would not be returning this semester.
One of the girls in class tapped into the school grapevine, some how girls could do that, and it turned out that Mr. Jenkins had suffered a brain tumor of some sort and had had emergency surgery over the break. His outcome was not known.
We all felt pretty bad about how we had treated him. After all he was a nice guy and really cared if we learned math. And most of all he wasn't a dick.
I guess that fixed us little bastards.