Thomas Guzman:
CLASS OF 1965
Calumet High SchoolClass of 1965
Gary, IN
Thomas's Story
I live in Naperville, Illinois. i have been married to my lovely and patient wife, Carol forever. ( I would have been out of jail my now if I would have been sent to jail on a murder conviction.)
We have two grown up daughters.
I went to Calumet High School,, class of 65, where I learned to survive without getting beat up. I had a lousy love life in high school but I made up for it later. I received an Associate and Bachelor of Science degrees in Electronics Engineering from Purdue University. I worked at Inland Steel, NIPSCO, Youngstown Steel, and M&M Mars. I liked working at Mars more than the steel mills because at M&M Mars, I could eat the scrap.
Ah, high school memories!
I remember facing 9th grade with anxiety, and fear of seniors and yet I was energized to be out of Jr. high.
I didn't have many friends of my age, so I had to try and make new friends; a daunting undertaking for a shy skinny 98 pound Mexican kid with glasses.
I may have had more friends if I had been able to ride the bus, but that option was not available because I lived too close to Calumet. So, I walked with my younger brother, who was still in Jr High. We walked every day despite the heat, rain or snow. It would have been nice to have had sidewalks or wider roads. We became very attuned to cars approaching from behind and instinctively jumped across the ditches that lined the street before the cars got too near.
The size of the kids and other demographics of the high school led me to believe that my best chance of surviving was not to stand out too much. It wasn't very hard. I was too small for football and too slow for most track events, although, I once out ran the other kids in a mile-run in gym class.
For a while, I toyed with the idea of trying out for track until I ran the low hurdles and mowed several of them down in front of the guys. That dream died quickly. Had I shown more talent at track, it would have been conflicted with my lay-low-and-don't-get-beat-up policy.
I survived 9th grade without a lot of blood loss.
Things changed during my sophomore year. Puberty hit me hard. My voice changed, I was slightly taller. I had to learn how to shave without nicking my earlobes.
I bought my first double edged Gillette razor, Old Spice Deodorant and hair gel. I was ready to impress the girls. That was the first year, I considered impressing girls. Why? I had no idea.
Pop music became more important as well. I imagined being the subject/singer in most of the songs I heard. I was quite schizophrenic.
I daydreamed of a girl in a teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, had a dragon named Puff, owned and raced a GTO, then I imagined to be the guy the Chiffons sang about in He's So Fine. I soared as the macho man in Jimmy Dean's song, Big Bad John and down again with Ray Orbison's Only the Lonely.
I ...Expand for more
sang along, by myself, when I knew I was alone, with what I thought the lyrics were at the time. I was crushed many years later when I discovered the real lyrics. The songs made more sense, but my memories of the songs were forever tarnished. I blame those small Japanese transistor radio speakers.
One song in particular was of supreme importance to me and my friends; what were dirty lyrics in Louie Louie. Ever time we heard the song, we strained our ears to try and make out anything close to the many swear words we knew. I finally gave up sometime in my junior year.
Pep rally's were fun, school spirit was quite high as I remember. I went to all the football games.
I was cutting across the field at half-time during one football game, to the concession stand to buy some hot chocolate, when I had found a good sized hole in the grass just outside of the actual field of play. I had guessed some construction job was underway and dutifully reported it to the first teacher I found, Mrs Yatsco. She thanked me and asked if I would watch the hole to make sure no one would step in it and possibly break their legs. "I'll make sure you get paid for it Tom," she said. I agreed and watched the rest of the game guarding the hole and that the highlight of my career on the football field. On the positive side, I got paid and used the money to buy my lunch for a week!
Chemistry class was fun. I was pretty good at it until I messed up at the end. We were each given a mysterious mix of chemicals. We were supposed to run a battery of tests to determine the exact components. It was going well when I accidentally contaminated my solution with sulfur! Oh hell! After my hissy fit I realized that I knew one chemical that was in my mystery solution for sure; sulfur. So, I listed it along with the others I found. The chemistry teacher checked my answers and said I didn't have sulfur. I told her it tested out as sulfur. She gave me one of those looks teachers gave, you know, with her head bent down and looking at me over her glasses. She tested for sulfur and sure as the sun rises, it was there. She still gave me a B because she thought it was pretty suspicious. I guessed that little incident was going on, my permanent record for sure.
Driver's license
Drivers Ed was a milestone for me. I passed my tests and the state of Indiana gave me the responsibility to drive my family's 2 ton mass of Chevy steel on the roads among many other tons of steel on wheels. I was so intimidated at first that I would find ways to avoid making left turns because they held up traffic behind me. I remember the angry looks, the threatening gestures but I mostly ignored my passengers complaints and drove to the next light and turned around so I would take a right not my destination. Tada!
Next: Girls, bras, and Ridge road drive in.
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