Mark Beckman:
CLASS OF 1969
Placer High SchoolClass of 1969
Auburn, CA
Colfax High SchoolClass of 1972
Colfax, CA
Hoopa Valley High SchoolClass of 1969
Hoopa, CA
Winship Junior High SchoolClass of 1966
Eureka, CA
Jacob's Junior High SchoolClass of 1966
Eureka, CA
Mark's Story
Life ... a Work in Progress ...
From Eureka to Hoopa to Auburn.
My Hoopa High School adventure began in the usual way. I got on a school bus at the Little Twig bus stop. Little Twig was the name of the area where I lived, just south east of Willow Creek. Soon the bus was headed to the Hoopa Indian Reservation. Much to my bewilderment we approached a sign. The sign looked to be four feet by eight feet, with ten inch lettering that stated "No Trespassing".
I truly did not want to participate in breaking the law by trespassing. I was beside myself with confusion. However, I took comfort in knowing I, along with fifty students and one bus driver were trespassing together.
I had just settled down from knowing I was a trespasser, when I looked out
the window of the bus, I noticed a lack of road beneath my view from the bus. There was a fifty foot cliff that ended at the edge of the trinity river. This is when I began to pray. We arrived at Hoopa High safe and happy. I would begin attending school at the beginning of the spring semester. It took a few weeks to settle in and soon things started to resemble normalcy.
I met Jim West. He walked into the bathroom locked the door and pulled out his pocket knife. I soon noticed we were alone in a bathroom with Jim between me and a locked door.
Seems old Jimmy was a joker. However my next encounter with Jim was just a bizarre.
He started talking trash while we were standing in the lunch line. One thing lead to another and someone loudly announced "fight". I soon learned I was to be a participant and Jim would be joining in on the festivities. Some kind hearted person forcibly ripped the books from my hands. I thought I was going to get my butt kicked so I raised my trembling fist and prepared for the worst. Jim took off for the nearest classroom and disappeared. Seems like Jim was always making my life interesting. I hope and pray he is doing well and life has been kind to him.
Spring turned to summer and I enjoyed a summer full of fishing and swimming in the Trinity River, which flowed four or six blocks from our rented home.
The next fall my dad went back to work in Eureka and my brother Chris went back to Eureka High School. The start of my sophomore year was uneventful. I would finish my 10th grade year at another new School.
By August of 1966 mom and dad started talking about going back home to Auburn.
Before I left Hoopa High a kid by the last name of Moon felt he was the 'chosen one' to beat me up. However we just could not fine the right place or time for this all important event to take place and soon I was off to my third school in as many years. Chris graduated from Placer High in 1967 and I would follow this time honored rite of passage in two years.
I arrived at Placer Union High in the winter of 1967, from Hoopa High School. That fall was so rainy we could have used boats to get to class.
As a junior high student in Eureka I was in trouble most of the time due to bad company. As the new school year started at Hoopa High I made sure to stay away from people to avoid a continuation of hard times. This technique of staying out of trouble stayed with me during the years at Placer. Avoiding trouble along with being socially immature helped to reduce the number of people who would claim any kind of friendship.
Moving to Auburn was a move back home for my mom and dad. My dad graduated from Placer High in 1940 and mom in 1944. We were home in a way, each of us kids had been born in Highlands Hospital. I would attend my parents' high school and would learn of their perspective on Placer High during the next few years.
It was 1997 before I looked at my parents' year books and took interest in the high school we had in common. I spent time looking at each Potpourri and noticed the chilling reality that dad's class was about thirty percent Japanese and mom's Potpourri had one Japanese girl in it. The history of the Japanese American Internment Camps had ...Expand for more
been introduced in our civics class by Mr. Jarvis. Today we would refer to our reaction to such news as cognitive dissonance. I was somewhat overwhelmed by the concept of locking up Japanese Americans. From my perspective in 1969, what I knew is my dad worked for the Japanese in their orchards while he was a student at Placer High. Last time I was at the Minidoka Internment Center museum the pictures of the frighten children brought tears to my eyes.
As the school year of 1967 moved forward, Boy Scouts and DeMolay would be considered and explored. Boy Scouts ended at a brick wall at the rank of Life. So it was off to DeMolay, where my friends could and would be willing to put up with me. I would in the future lose contact with many folks from Placer High. Last night as I read the notes left in my 1968 Potpourri I found myself hoping and praying that the kind folks who I knew are well and life have treated them fair and with kindness.
I would always try to avoid competition with others as history demonstrated there would always be someone better. A repeated year in second grade, plus six years of speech therapy during elementary school, a semester of remedial reading as a junior at Placer High and all the bonehead English, math and reading at Sierra Junior College were enough to convince even the most stubborn German that intelligence, maturity, and success were meant for others.
If anyone is still reading this, there is a high probability you are thinking this guy has read one too many Joyce Carol Oates or Wally Lamb novels.
Stubbornness however drove me to finish my B.A. and teaching credential at California State University at Chico. There are many children who are happy that this credential was not put to use and the owner is very grateful too. I just wanted a good high school education.
It should be noted that folks who lack confidence and self esteem should not be teachers or hold positions of command. This concept of not holding a position of command would become a nightmare some time during 1991 or 1992. To paraphrase Stephen Covey, I awoke to find myself not only climbing up the wrong ladder, but my ladder was leaning against the wrong building. Fortunately these events are a repressed memory therefore the year doesn't matter.
Many thanks must be expressed to Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, for they helped this misfit home owner to become a landlord. Although I benefited financially from proposition 13 the negative outcomes of the proposition are still adversely effecting California today. This taxpayer revolt created the two thirds majority vote to increase taxes. The wonderfully greedy Wall Street folks helped to insure that my rental could relocate to a very nice neighborhood in West Boise and would be paid for long before my anticipated retirement date of 2012.
My IRA accounts seemed like legalized gambling, so when they were high I would sell. Then they just kept growing and growing so I kept selling and paying down the mortgage on the rental, until everything crashed around the end of 2007.
The 1980's were filled with adventure as we traveled, and I ended up with a Masters degree in Rehabilitation Administration. God blessed us with an opportunity to adopt a child. We became parents and our lives were changed forever. The emotion of curiosity was a driving force back then, which partially explains the Masters degree, serving as Master of Provident Lodge and as Patron of my Eastern Star chapter.
The years between 1992 and 1996 were the kick me while I am up and kick me while I am down years. My parents and daughter got me through those years.
In 1997 I met the quintessential flower child at a Methodist Church.
She had long light brown hair, a PhD and an IQ of 131 or as she claims 129.
She, like me, uses her left hand to write with. Bobbie is a Speech Pathologist. We were married August second of 1997. Within a year or two of our marriage, my daughter's grade point average went from 2.5 to 3.5.
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