Section 2. The Great Wars of 1967
My very first class at Los Gatos High was Algebra I, during summer school in 1967. I think I was the only incoming freshmen (class of 1971) in the class – the other students were all from the classes of 1969 and 1970. The class was held in one of the “temporary buildings” (basically converted trailers, now replaced by a permanent structure) in the northeast portion of the school grounds, east of the Boy’s gym and adjacent to the main parking lot.
The class was taught by Mrs. Anderson (assisted by Miss Vaughn). I don’t think Mrs. Anderson was a regular teacher at LGHS, since she didn’t appear in any of the faculty photos in my yearbooks. All I remember about Miss Vaughn was that she was friendly and quite pretty. Of key note, Mrs. Anderson had a unique method of lecturing. Instead of standing in front of the blackboard at the front of the class, she sat on a chair facing the class, with an overhead projector by her side. She wrote on acetate sheets on the projector, which then displayed the information to the entire class on a screen behind her with a minimum of fuss. This was certainly an efficient and easy way of presenting lessons.
But there was one important drawback with this method: her attention was always focused down, and she almost never looked up at the class. Hence, anyone who was more, um, rambunctious, could USUALLY get away with messing around a bit. I sat towards the back of the room, on the far left (facing the front of the room). Immediately ahead of me were Don Kennedy (class of ’69, and one of the few students with a car), Bob Black (‘70), and Bill Unruh (’70). To my right were (from back to front) Gary Tressel (’70), Wally Crow (’69, who was into photography) and Scott Downs (’69, and future assistant principal of LGHS). In the upcoming hostilities I’m about to relate, Unruh and Tressel played absolutely no active roles, while Downs’ contributions were minimal – the major players were Kennedy, Crow, myself, and at least initially, Black.
I no longer remember what prompted it, but I was flicking some “spit wads” (actually, no spit was involved – the ammo was simply small pieces of paper rolled up into little balls) at Wally Crow, prompting him to pass me this note: “MR. ZUPARCO, PLEASE STOP THROWING SPIT WADS IN MY EAR! (IF THIS ACTION IS NOT STOPPED I WILL BE FORCE [sic] TO TAKE STEPS TO PREVENT IT.). Well, after an exchange of two more notes between Wally and myself, Don Kennedy entered the fray, passing a note that read “TO Whoever it may concern: As representative of the United Federated Republic I hearby declare strict neutrality during this crisis. Cordially yours, Don Kennedy, UFR ambassador”.
So now we not only had hostilities, but countries as well: Wally styled his the Republic of Crow (ROC), and I named mine the Republic of Cardigan (after Lord Cardigan, who led the Light Brigade during the Crimean War that was later celebrated by Tennyson’s poem). Later on I abbreviated it to ROC as well. Wally took umbrage at my usurping his initials, but then altered the name of his country to the “People’s Republic of Old Crow”, thus leading to PROC as his new acronym. Bob Black’s country was “B.L.A.H.”, Gary’s was the Republic of Tressel (ROT), Bill’s was “U.N.R.U.H.”, and Scott’s was Mellow Yellow Kidland (MYK) (remember we were all just kids then). The major power in the area was, of course, A.N.D.E.R.S.O.N., with its satellite country of V.A.U.G.H.N.
So in between taking notes (“W + 2 = 9 and 3W – 2 = 15, then 4W = 24, and W = 6”), over the space of the next days and weeks, our countries became engaged in an almost continual state of armed conflict, resulting in the Five Great Wars. We alternated between acting as ambassadors, versus generals, versus the country leaders, of our respective countries. Alliances were made, broken, and remade. Most often two alliances squared off against each other, but sometimes three ganged up against one (“The People’s Republic of Old Crow wishes to maintain peace between PROC and UFR, but we would like to bring Cardigan into this peace and to unite us all against B.L.A.H., our mutual enemy”), and in at least one instance everyone had declared war against everyone else.
For an initial map, I prepared a simple diagram noting the locations of our respective desks with arrows indicating who was at odds with whom. In an early write-up, Wally characterized us as several South American countries, but I rejected that in favor as treating our nations as part of the fictional continent of North Hobbit, and developed a detailed map outlining provinces, with mountain ranges, rivers, islands and cities (Fig. 3.2.1). I asked Don and Wally to send me names they’d like to see for their cities, while I chose most names based on my own interests, including J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” (Gondor, Bree), the Crimean War (Balaclava, Inkerman), British geography (Kent, Rousay), and various places in the SF Bay Area (Rheem, Vasona). At this time, Jesse Unruh was a well known Californian politician – I have no idea if he was related to our Bill Unruh or not, but this coincidence led to my naming two U.N.R.U.H. cities as “Jesseville” and “Senator City”, while cities like “Banana City”, “Chiquita” and “Peelsville” seemed natural choices for Mellow Yellow Kidland.
Although some spit wads (and rubber bands) were employed, the primary action was conducted through communiqués, passed as notes during class. Inevitably, each player claimed victory for their forces (e.g.: “ … 100,000 troops smash into ROC … Wallisville captured … Kartum taken by storm … meeting heavy resistance … villages deserted … U.F.R. air force bombing capital Monte Casino under siege by our own troops … advance still continues Gen. D.R. Kennedy”), but more often than not, claims were sidestepped or refuted by the adversary, so deciding who won any given war was tricky.
EXCEPT, there were two instances when there was no doubt as to the outcome. During the 2nd Great War, Mrs. Anderson finally glanced up and noticed something going on. She focused her wrath on Bob Black, and had him move to a desk on the opposite side of the classroom. This took B.L.A.H. out of things and quieted us for a bit, but it didn’t stop us for long (we treated this as an attack by A.N.D.E.R.S.O.N. that caused B.L.A.H.’s government to skedaddle and make it’s escape to the east, where it reestablished itself on an island in the “Great Ocean of Wastes”, while the UFR, PROC and ROC carved up Black’s original territory). Another war soon followed, and it too was brought to an abrupt end when Wally caught Mrs. Anderson’s attention. This time, Wally had to shift his desk one row to the right. Thus the 3rd Great War ended, and we treated this move as Wally’s government being forced to cross the Lesser Zulu Sea where it became reestablished as “PROC Lesser”.
After that, we either got more discreet in our note-passing, or Mrs. Anderson no longer cared. There were two more Great Wars, with the final one finding UFR (allied with B.L.A.H.) against all the other countries on the continent. Since each side produced self-serving communiqués charting the course of military actions, it was decided that the final victor of the 5th Great War would be determined by … mathematics. That is, the victory would be awarded to the alliance whose members had the higher mean GPA at the end of the term. And thus PROC/ROC/MYK/ROT proved victorious over UFR/BLAH in the end.
One final comment, I wrote lyrics to three songs (based on popular songs of the time), referring to these hostilities – they may be found in Appendix III.