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Page A3 The Joan De Arc Crusader / Saturday, July 4, 2015 Front Page A1 / Editorials A2 / Sports A4 / Crossword A5
My one and only trip to the principal’s office By J. Bueker In general, I was a well-behaved youngster at Sahuaro School for all 8 years of my tenure there. My mother recounts the tale of an early parent-teacher conference she and my father attended with my 1st grade teacher Mrs. Palczak, in which the topic of my behavioral patterns arose. My parents were rather astounded to learn that my classroom conduct was quite exemplary, which seemed odd to them since my behavior at home was not nearly so stellar. The wise Mrs. Palczak shrugged and suggested that I probably needed the outlet of acting out at home a bit so that I could behave myself properly while interacting with the outside world.
The fact is, I loved being at Sahuaro. I enjoyed the academic environment, my teachers and schoolmates, lunch time in the cafeteria, recess time on the playground, the sports and games we played. I missed very few school days during those 8 years and was perennially rewarded with a “perfect attendance” certificate at the close of each school year. I think it’s safe to say that the students who acted out the most badly at school were the kids who didn’t much want to be there in the first place. Well I liked school and pretty much did as I was asked. More importantly, my father expected his children to both excel academically and behave respectfully at school, and any deviation from these expectations meant we had to answer to Carl Bueker. This of course was to be avoided at all costs. So all things considered, the idea that I could ever wind up in the principal’s office for misbehavior seemed pretty far-fetched to say the least. And yet, it happened. ‘Twas the spring of 1972, just a month or two before I would graduate and leave Sahuaro forever. I was therefore about 98% of the way through my passage at the school, and not once had I ever come remotely close to being dispatched to the principal’s office for being bad. It was here that fate intervened in the person of Ricky Rose. Rick and I of course were neighbors on Joan De Arc and had been pretty good pals for a few years at this point. Unlike myself, Rick was well familiar with the disciplinary consequences of poor behavior at Sahuaro School. He was not a good influence, to be truthful, but we got along well. He was certainly a lot of fun. Well on that sunny spring day in 8th grade, we found ourselves bored and out on the playground at lunch recess with very little to do. Rick therefore took the initiative to spice things up a bit. The first few rocks whizzed past me harmlessly. They were pebbles really, and neither Rick nor I regarded them as dangerous projectiles. The small rocks are scattered all throughout the grounds at Sahuaro and are quite easy to locate. I quickly took up the mantle and began to gather a few of the things and return fire. This went on for a few minutes with both of us laughing too hard to throw accurately and neither one of us actually hitting anything. Unfortunately, our exuberant little rock-throwing duel caught the eye of the band teacher Mr. Jorgenson, who happened to be exiting his classroom at this precise moment. He seemed extremely distressed by what he saw and without hesitation marched the two of us down to Mr. Boyer’s office for our comeuppance. Needless to say, I was quite aghast at this turn of events. The principal’s office! And yet I couldn’t help feeling a perverse fascination with finally being on the receiving end of the ultimate school disciplinary action. What would happen now? As it turned out, Mr. Boyer was out of the office that afternoon and so we were handed over to the assistant principal Mr. Smith for our final disposition. We stood silently in the principal’s office while Mr. Jorgenson somberly recounted our egregious conduct and then revealed his reasons for being so upset by the incident. It seems that in his youth, the poor man had witnessed a young friend lose an eye or something in a rock-throwing fight. At least that’s what he said. Having discharged his sad duty, the band teacher turned and disappeared into the outer office. Mr. Smith regarded us grimly and at first said nothing. However the look on his face was exceedingly unpleasant and it quickly became clear that he was very well acquainted indeed with Mr. Ricky Rose. In fact, Rick had been in this very office with Mr. Smith just the previous week for some other infraction of the school rules. The man made it clear that the Rose boy was now in some deep shinola. Smith then turned to me and expressed bewilderment. He knew me as a member of the Sahuaro School championship basketball team and a top student academically. He was now surprised and disappointed to see me involved in such a disgraceful and reckless incident on the school grounds. I was appropriately shamed by his censure and I’m pretty sure he perceived that my regret was genuine. Glancing back over at Rick, Mr. Smith noticed the boy now grinning his trademark smiling smirk. Well this was a little more than the vice-principal was prepared to tolerate. The man strode over to the office wall and retrieved the principal’s personal paddle from its designated perch. He ordered Rick to grab his ankles and then proceeded to deliver several formidable swats upon the lad’s hind end. Rick attempted a smile after it was over, but I could tell his butt was stinging like nobody’s business. Horrified after witnessing this unexpected demonstration of corporal punishment, I was released on my own recognizance after promising to never again fling a rock at Sahuaro School. Rick however was detained a little longer and no doubt read every syllable of the riot act. He was a bit subdued for the next couple days, but of course it didn’t last long.
At long last Pluto By J. Bueker
The planet Pluto’s true appearance is a mystery that has intrigued me from the earliest years of my infatuation with astronomy, which commenced in the 4th grade and has persisted to this day. I was always deeply captivated by artist's conceptions of how the surface of this unimaginably distant world might appear, particularly since it was almost entirely guesswork given the fact that Pluto presented as nothing more than a bright point of light in even the most powerful telescopes of the day. Even now, the mighty Hubble reveals it only as a small, non-descript sphere with a handful of pixelated moons hovering nearby. Scientists theorize that the extreme cold on Pluto long ago caused its atmosphere of methane and nitrogen to liquefy and freeze on the planet’s surface. This probably explains why our limited glimpses of the surface suggest a bright, smooth, and reflective terrain. But what does this look like up close? It’s still anybody’s guess. One of my favorite books in the Sahuaro School library was Mars and Beyond, a marvelous Disney publication that speculates on human space travel and features delightfully fanciful depictions of how the various planets might appear at close range. Of course, Walt Disney was sufficiently inspired by the discovery of Pluto to attach its name to his cartoon mouse’s canine companion. The rendition of Pluto’s surface in Mars and Beyond is astonishing: it’s essentially a boundless, profoundly layered chunk of ice, eerily evocative of the frosty interior of the tall Revco stand-alone freezer that stood in our garage at 3219. In the planet’s pitch black sky flickers the waning sun, merely a weirdly bright star at this monumental distance. Through the years, this imagined image of Pluto has endured vividly in my memory. Although some scientists no longer consider Pluto to be a bona fide planet (the twits), interest in the remote orb has never been greater. Later this month, we will at long last get to see the planet close up, thanks to a probe called New Horizons. Launched in 2006 and the fastest spacecraft ever devised at 16.5 kilometers per second, New Horizons has nevertheless required almost a full decade to reach Pluto’s neighborhood. That’s how far away this thing is. Planet fly-by is scheduled for July 14. It’s nice to recall that Pluto was discovered in Arizona and in the same year my father was born. I’ll be mindful of both these facts as the images start rolling in 10 days from now. I’ll probably also be thinking a little about Sahuaro School and Walt Disney. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ JDA
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