The Basketball Game that Wasn’t Fun

My last year as principal at Saybrook-Arrowmsmith was full of excitement. The basketball team was very talented and the community was all caught up in the victories. Several of the players would play basketball beyond high school, a rare thing for the community.  Before they were done, they had won eighteen games in a row including the McLean County championship.

In McLean County, the boys’ basketball tournament is steeped in tradition. Having begun in 1910, the tournament is one of the oldest in the state, if not the country. Winning the county is the goal of every small high school. It is more important than any portion of the state tournament, which was generally out of reach of the local schools. The schools in Bloomington and Normal, including U-high and Central Catholic, are not included. It is truly a contest of small town local rivals and attendance has always been high. This was before the three(3) point shot so all the scoring was two (2) point field goals or free throws.

That January was to see near record snowfall. The road from Bloomington to Saybrook (Rt.9) was buried in drifts. Plows struggled to keep one lane open for traffic. A school bus barely fit between the drifts. In spite of the weather, the tournament, held at Illinois Wesleyan in Bloomington, went on as planned.

In 1983, SA entered the tournament as the 2^nd seed, having just begun the winning streak. Gridley was favored to repeat as champions. In a close game the S-A Comanches won by two points over the defending champions, Gridley. The community went wild. 

Part of the tradition is the name of the winning school is engraved on the trophy. Each tournament winner was also allowed to attach a banner in school colors to the trophy. There is another tradition which I considered a stupid.

 Most of the schools in the tournament played in the same conference. This meant they played each other twice outside of the tournament. One game was before and the second game was after the tournament.The “stupid” tradition was that the tournament trophy was on the line anytime a county rival played the champion.

A short while after the tournament, S-A played  a regular season game against arch rival and neighboring community, Octavia. The S-A Comanches were at home, and made a point of parading the trophy out during pre-game warm-ups. It was apparent to me the activities were as much taunting Octavia as celebrating their tournament win.

The gym was packed with people from both communities. I had asked for police support to manage the crowd, but received no response. It was up to me to keep the place under control. During the game I did see our lone police officer briefly standing in the doorway. He left before the game ended.

The scorekeeper sat on the stage, across the floor from the spectator bleachers. Our scorekeeper lived on the border between the two towns, and he was outspoken about everything. That is, he was not really liked in either community. He and his wife had given me a lot of grief as well. I supervised the crowd from the stage, behind the scorekeeper. I was joined by the principal from Octavia.

The game was extremely close. As the score went back and forth, the crowd got more excited. The noise was so loud, no one could hear the horn or the officials’ whistles. Predictably, the game came down to the final seconds with Octavia leading by one point.

S-A sank two free throws with less than three (3) seconds on the clock. This gave S-A a one point lead. Octavia brought the ball down as the Comanches pressured the ball. Octavia finally shot and made a basket.

The scoreboard red lights went off when time expired.The official under the basket, could not see the clock or the scoreboard lights and indicated the basket was good.  The outside official, who could see the clock and scoreboard lights, signaled no basket. With differing calls, the officials turned to the scorekeeper. He signaled not good.

The fans from Octavia went crazy. In the opinion of many, the scorekeeper many disliked, had screwed them. They started out of the stands toward the stage. I jumped onto the floor to stop them. The Octavia principal stayed on the stage.

As I got to the floor, I told the officials to leave and stood while they did. The players also were quickly herded into the locker rooms. I stood in the middle, alone and reconsidered my career choice. Fortunately no one crossed the floor past me.

Thirty five (35) years later, all of the schools in this story are gone. Octavia and Saybrook-Arrrowsmith, merged into a new district, as did Gridley and almost every school in the county. With few schools, the definition of a county school has changed to include schools which are actually located in larger communities outside of the county, but include some farmland inside the county. It is still the major sporting event in the winter in McLean County.

Last summer I was having a conversation with a friend of my neighbor. She told me she attended Octavia. As I started to describe that night she said, “I was at that game. I was a cheerleader. We all thought the shot was good”  I guess we can all see the game in our head, and see what we wanted. There was no video to replay.

When a Photo Says More than it Should

My first principal’s job was at Saybrook-Arrowsmith Junior-Senior High School.  Saybrook was a small community of about 800 and its population was going down. Arrowsmith was even smaller with about 300 people and its population was also shrinking. The towns were located at the far eastern part of McLean County among some of the richest most productive farmland in the world. A Saybrook farmer annually won the world’s highest corn production per acre.

With shrinking populations came shrinking schools and school programs. The rich farmland financed the schools with enough money to keep going regardless of size.  The designation Jr-Sr high school was pretty common in that part of the country because there were not enough students to house in two buildings. Well before I arrived both communities had high schools. At one time, there were football teams in these small schools. When I arrived, the high school had eighty-four (84) students and forty (40) students grades 7-8. Even with eighty-four students in the high school, we were not the smallest high school in the county.

The small size, and relative isolation (30 miles from Bloomington and off a main road), led to some “small town” thinking. Some of this was a feeling that kids needed to enjoy high school, and that was the end of education. There were fine families that valued education and wanted college for their kids, but they were a small minority.

Enjoying high school meant basketball, hanging with friends, and parties on the week-ends. Everyone turned out for basketball games. With such a small population, a student had to partake in the parties or be restricted to an even more limited social life.

As a rookie administrator, I had a lot to learn about student discipline. Albany was a great place to teach, and school discipline was handled by the teachers. The principal at Albany could rely on them to control the students without his involvement. At S-A, like many high schools, the teachers would send discipline issues to the principal.

I made a concerted effort to organize the school discipline as well as an out of control curriculum. There were over 60 courses in the curriculum. I was not authoritarian, but I was a big change from the previous principal. I set down some basic rules in the handbook folder seen above. I included some recognition for students who were good citizens and not necessarily athletes. I formed a student advisory group that purposely included some students who were disciplinary issues. Some parents resisted, but many appreciated the structure.

The clash of cultures materialized when the senior class yearbook photo was taken. The students’ silent protest was not recognized until the day before the photo and final mock-up was to be mailed to the publishing company.

Saybrook is home to some of the most beautiful Norway and Sugar maple trees. The fall colors are striking in their brilliance. The photo was taken in a grove of these trees. All of the high school seniors were in the photo, sitting on student owned pick-up trucks. To keep down cost, this was to be the only color photo in the yearbook.

On a signal from one of the seniors, several people reached into the truck beds and sat and held liquor bottles on the truck box. The smiles from the group in one truck, were in part, because they had silently made the point that partying was very important to them.

The yearbook sponsor did not notice the bottles until making the final paste up of the yearbook. Missing the deadline would result in a large additional cost of publication, but the photo could not be used. The yearbook was not mailed.

Fortunately the photographer was a faculty member. Using some blackout liquid, he was able to color over the liquor bottles. Allowing for this to dry, pushed us to the day before the due date. Our only recourse was overnight delivery of the large package.

The photo is beautiful and is a nice beginning to the yearbook. Every student touching a liquor bottle got a bill for her share of the cost of overnight delivery. A close look at the photo will reveal the blacked out triangles where the bottles were located. All of them eventually paid the fine rather than disclose who was behind the plot.

My Brief Engineering Career and I create a holiday.

As written earlier, my bachelor’s degree was not in education. Desperate to graduate I changed majors to Agriculture Engineering-Mechanization. Unfortunately the university would not actually develop an engineering program for another 40 years.

I had previously worked at Ralston Purina Corporation in the summers doing physical labor in the warehouse. While working there during the 3^rd shift, I was able to go to graduate school during the day, and obtained my Master’s Degree in Elementary Science Education. My teaching certificate course requirements were met, but I still had credit on the GI Bill, so I took a few courses in education administration.

With a strong science and mathematics background, I was considered an engineering candidate due to a severe shortage of engineers. I obtained a summer job in the engineering department of Ralston Purina Corporation. This was, in no small part, due to my brother’s employment there as the Plant Controller and head of accounting.

Burned out of education with all of the conflicts over contract negotiations, I considered working at RPC full time. The Engineering Dept. Manager was also considering me, and the summer job was basically a try-out. By mid-June, I had decided I would quit teaching and he agreed to put me on full time. I had business cards that said “Rick Laleman Staff Engineer”

My first project was to be “a piece of cake”, according to my boss. The project was completely designed, bid, construction contracts signed, and all permits had been obtained. According to my boss, all I had to do was watch out that the contractors didn’t “screw us”. (That’s an engineering term).

The project was a grease trap, basically a large underground concrete holding tank located along the plant sewer line. It was to hold the sewer water to allow the grease to float off before the discharge entered the city sewer main. We needed it because we had continuously sent animal fat (which is used to coat dry pet food) down the line and had plugged up the city sewer system many times. This was our last chance to avoid building our own sewage treatment plant.

As this project was proceeding, I was given several others requested by the production managers. All of my work involved environmental projects that were to improve the air quality at the plant. In total I had about $250,000 in five (5) projects to complete by the end of the fiscal year. All of these had to be done from scratch.

The date beginning construction on my “piece of cake” project was to become famous at the RPC plant. My first day of construction started with an attempt by the other engineers to rattle me. They started asking me all kinds of questions. They knew I was nervous and took advantage of that to kid me. 

The one question I couldn’t answer was about the underground utilities, specifically the electric power line.  The manager of the engineering department asked me if the power line had been located, and I didn’t know. I immediately went to the construction foreman and asked. He had not had the line located. The foreman’s rationale was he could see where the line entered the building and it was a straight line from there back to the electric substation on the edge of the parking lot. The dig area was nowhere near the line of sight from substation to building. I told him he could not dig until the power company located the power line. He was not happy, but he stopped the excavator from digging.

About two hours later, the power company arrived and their employee spray painted the path of the underground power line on the parking lot. The line marked on the parking lot was not near the area to be dug. I told the foreman he could proceed. It was approaching noon, and we were behind schedule.

I returned to the office and did more paperwork. I was the only one in engineering. About 15 minutes later, the lights went out in the office. Figuring this was a prank from the other engineers, I sat at my desk and waited for them to emerge laughing.

After about 5 minutes, I realized I could hear people in accounting talking about their typewriters not working. I grabbed my hardhat and walked out. All of the lights in the office were out. I quickly ran out toward the construction site.

Sitting on the parking lot was the excavator with a huge electric cable stuck in the bucket. The operator was sitting inside eating a sandwich. To my left, hundreds of plant employees were coming out of the dark building entrance looking around.

My boss quickly arrived and asked what happened. I explained about the power line locator. He told me to get a camera and get on the roof to photograph where the power line had been marked.

The result of that day was as follows: 400 RPC employees were sent home because of no power. The surge into the sub station due to lost load on the broken 13,500 volt line had knocked out the substation. The loss of the  substation had knocked out the power on the south end of Clinton as well the power to two neighboring communities. Fortunately the excavator operator was not harmed in any way.

The power company employee who had “located” the power line, had found an abandoned underground line. He stopped looking when he found it. The main power line was right in the path of my “piece of cake” project.

The locator employee was given the task of repairing the broken line. Because it contained many smaller strands, he had to carefully spice each one, while sitting in the hot sun. He also happened to be a basketball referee who had given Gerry technical fouls for criticizing his poor refereeing. I thought there was some justice.

We then had to meet with the power company and the construction company to decide how to complete the project and route the power line, and who would pay for it. Eventually the power company agreed to pay for a section of pipe that pieced the top of the grease trap and contained the repaired power line.

I finished my other projects in the course of the next year. I was the only engineer who actually completed everything he started. However, the work was not satisfying to me. I missed kids. I decided to return to graduate school to complete my coursework to be a principal. By the following August I was back in the classroom.

The day of the power outage was marked on the calendar by the engineering department. It was henceforth to be named a “Laleday” (Lol a day) in honor of the unexpected holiday everyone was given. I was given a cake when I left RPC with the image of an excavator and the words “Thanks for the Laleday”

The Last Straw and I Quit

Bad Relationship Explodes

Over the years, I continued to drive for special events like basketball games and field trips. Since these never involved driving country roads, and were always with students I taught or coached, I became less concerned about driving.

Basketball season ended, and except for an occasional field trip, so did my bus driving. This went on for several years until the day of near disaster

The principal had allowed one of our two drivers to take a week of vacation in the spring. With Gerry driving her route, it meant the only available backup drivers were in Fulton. Well, there was me, but I had said for the beginning, no bus routes.

My principal was in charge of both of the buildings that housed students who would attend Albany for grades 5-8. The students from the Garden Plain building were all country students, and they were in grades 1-3.

The driver for Garden Plain was a farmer. In the spring, he would farm when the weather allowed, but was able to schedule farming around his bus routes. Except this year was a wet spring, and he was late planting. He called in and said he would not be driving his after school route.

My principal decided he didn’t want to use the back-up drivers in Fulton. He came to me before dismissal and told me I had to drive the Garden Plain route. I told him I did not want to drive a route, and that I had consistently told him this. He insisted that this was an emergency and he needed me to drive.

I agreed to drive the route, but told him to get someone else if this happened again. I don’t recall him saying much after that, but I wanted him to know I would not continue to drive.

The next day, the same thing happened. The principal came to me to drive the Garden Plain route. I said I had told him to get someone else. I said I didn’t want to drive, but I drove the route.

The following day he again came to my classroom. This time I was adamant, I would not drive.  He just walked away.

At dismissal time, I decided I needed to check on the status of the Garden Plain bus. I went to the office, and the principal was gone. I asked the secretary who he had gotten to drive the GP bus. She said he had said “You (meaning me) are going to drive it”. I went ballistic and told her I had repeatedly told him “No” .She said, “If that’s what you told him, then don’t drive it”

I was livid and paced back and forth. All I could think about was the little kids waiting at school for their bus to take them home. It was already late and the school had dismissed. I decided I couldn’t leave those kids, so I got in my truck and drove out to Garden Plain.

One of the teachers was waiting with the students, and I apologized for being late. I loaded the bus and headed out. It was a warm sunny, but windy, spring day. I was still upset, but drove carefully. The route had a couple a tricky turn arounds and I had to watch to not back into a ditch.

One of the stops had a two families that lived on the left side of the road. Students left the bus from the right side. For some reason I counted the 5 students who were getting off the bus. The students crossed in front of the bus out of my view. As I started to release the clutch, I happened to count the students across the road. There were only 4. I immediately put my foot on the brake. A second later, a first grade girl emerged from the front. She was carrying papers that had blown out of her hands. She had stopped in front of the bus to pick them up.

 I was so upset I started to shake. One second more and I would have killed her. I finished the route in a cloud of fear and anger. I was able park the bus and leave, but I was still shaking and couldn’t stop thinking about that little girl.

I went to back to school to get my things. I was determined to never drive a bus again. I had a key to the front office, so I went in. I took out my bus driver’s permit and ripped it apart. I took tape from the secretary’s desk and taped it to the principal’s office door.

When I got home, I told Connie that I would likely be fired in the morning. Still upset, I explained what I had done and why. She never questioned my judgement even though it meant losing my job.

The next day, nothing was said. A few days later, the principal came down and said “I don’t suppose you will drive bus”. I said, “I think I made that clear.”

We never discussed it. He never told me to drive a route again.

Post script

Later that year, fed up with 5 years of negotiations and bickering and not really teaching very well, I quit teaching. I  became an engineer that summer for Ralston Purina Corporation in Clinton, IA. I quickly found that I missed education, but that I could function well as an administrator. I had started coursework for administration before I quit teaching. I started back to night school to get my endorsement to become a principal. I completed this and decided I needed to return to education if I was to be considered for a principal position. Fortunately the teaching position at Albany re-opened. I applied, but had to go through a special interview with the superintendent.

The superintendent said he didn’t want to hire me because of my attitude. He said the principal wanted me back, in spite of my past behavior. I told the superintendent I was done with that, realized I wanted to be a principal, and planned to leave as soon as I had a principal’s job. Fortunately I got the Albany job. I have to give credit to the principal for his willingness to put my past insubordination behind him for what he perceived to be the good for the students. I am not sure I would have hired me back.

Returning to teaching meant returning to coaching. Returning to coaching meant returning to bus driving. Because I was no longer certified to drive, I had to repeat multiple hours of bus driver training.

The following summer I took my first principal’s job and reluctantly left Albany. Although I remained a certified bus driver, I never drove a bus again and told no one of my certification.