early years 2

When my father died last year, I realized that I knew very little about him, his early life, so to speak. So for Tom's sake, I plan to write up a number of vignettes, memories etc. of my younger self. Accuracy is not guaranteed, for recollections necessarily emerge through the prism of former recollections, and so on. Who is to say where the truth lies, or even what the truth is.

Since Alan Myers loomed large in my teenage years, it is with him I will start. On his capacity for kindness I have already commented. It was his capacity for inspiring terror that remains the central abiding memory, for Mr Myers, the founding Principal of Killarney Heights High School, was tough, conservative and uncompromising. Not for him the changing social norms of the 1970's, the longer hair, the more casual dress. Nor the more relaxed ettiquette. Students wore blazers and ties and the ladies had hats and gloves to boot. In summer as well.

Mr Myers conducted regular hair inspections for the boys and authorized inspections of the girls underwear (blue, not black!) by means, as I recall, of a skateboard covered in mirrors. The latter was conducted by a female teacher, though I'm guessing that 600 boys would have volunteered for the mission if they had been asked.

The Principal's office had one-way glass so that he could inspect his charges as they arrived in the morning. He was known to intercept buses on their way home in order to do a uniform check. Most alarmingly, Mr Myers would review the entire school as we marched in formation, en masse, around the adjacent oval. General-like, he would be positioned high on a hill so as to review the troops to better vantage. It must have been a remarkable sight to passers-by!

His appearance on morning assembly would almost always presage some withering critique of student behaviour, often prefaced with the introductory, "I am concerned about..." It was quite clear that staff feared him as well. Our PE teacher, the redoubtable muscle-bound former Mr Canada, Vince Basille, once remarked, "I fear no man - except Alan Myers!" And my Year 9 history teacher, in sheer frustration at the levels of repression in the school, once incited us to mass insurrection. Wisely, we opted for bemused compliance. Though we didn't know it at the time, regime change was only just around the corner.