Special to The Windham Eagle
From 1961 to 1963, when I attended Field-Allen Junior High in Windham Center, the winter always brought some mornings of drama. That was when we woke up in the midst of a snowstorm or just afterward. My sisters and brother and I gathered in the kitchen, all bundled up and ready for school, ears fine-tuned to the radio, eagerly awaiting the magic words.
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| The cover of the 1962 yearbook at Field -Allen School is shown. The U.S. flag was raised and lowered at the school every day, usually by Stephen 'King Turk' Turkington. SUBMITTED PHOTO |
Yay! We cheered and laughed as if we'd just won the lottery, then went back to bed for a few more hours. I didn't learn until years later that for every day missed in winter, we got an extra day of school in June.
We loved the snow, especially when it was as fresh and soft as cotton candy. We dug tunnels big enough to crawl in, just under the surface of the snow so that a faint blue light would seep through, and we could keep digging. When the snow was especially thick, we'd go up on the roof of the house and jump off. Sometimes we'd be buried up to our necks, but we never got hurt.
My best friend in the neighborhood was Lloyd Bennett, who lived just up the road. One of his tricks was to bury himself in the snow so that only his face was exposed. Then other boys copied him, so he brought a straw to school and had himself buried completely and breathed through the straw.
Just beyond Lloyd's house was a sharp cliff next to the road which we called the ledge. To get on top, you had to walk way around it, so it was the ideal spot for Lloyd and me to throw snowballs at cars. Even if the driver stopped and chased after us, we could escape in the woods.
Our favorite target was the Windham school bus. We had ridden it for years, so we knew the schedule. We'd stockpile a lot of snowballs in advance, and as soon as the bus approached, we'd pelt it with several direct hits.
The driver was an old man named Arthur Tyler, who was not known for his patience. After a heavy bombardment, he sometimes got so mad that he'd stop the bus and shake his fist at our hiding place. We never threw directly at him because he could have called the police. So, we let him stand there heroically to impress the kids, and he never reported us.
Windham then had fewer than 5000 people, and for most of the year, it had only two places of entertainment – a drive-in movie theater and a bowling alley. In the winter the drive-in was replaced by the high school and junior high basketball teams, which played other schools in the area.
Basketball was by far the most popular sport in Windham. Boys practiced at every recess during the school year. The school furnished the balls, and sometimes a boy would throw one up on the roof, claiming it was an accident. No one was allowed on the roof. But Field-Allen was a squat one-story building, and by standing on another boy's shoulders and shimmying up a pole, a wiry boy could get up there at night and keep the ball.
Our basketball team was captained by my classmate Steve Turkington, the big man on campus. Everyone called him Turk. Once a week, he'd come to school wearing his Boy Scout uniform, which displayed so many merit badges that he resembled a Christmas tree.
The school raised the American flag every morning and pulled it down every afternoon. Turk often was chosen for flag duty because he knew exactly how to fold it. When a teacher showed a movie in class, Turk got to run the projector. He and his girlfriend, Cheryl Gagnon, served on the student council, and were the unquestioned king and queen of the class.
King Turk, as some kids called him, was the absolute master on the basketball court. The school bleachers were always filled with cheering fans. and he was practically a god to them. Turk was so lithe and quick that he could cut through the defenders as if they were frozen in place. Then there was the jubilant and energetic cheerleading squad featuring Cheryl. The girls were all pompoms and short skirts, dancing up a storm and chanting:
“Sitting in a grandstand, beating on a tin can.
Who can? We can, nobody else can.
Fight! Fight! Fight team fight!”
Turk and I were never buddies. In our yearbook, he signed his photo: “To Mike, the big lip.” But like most of my classmates, I was a bit in awe of him for his popularity, his leadership and his self-confidence.
The last time I saw Turk was at the Windham High School's 10-year reunion in 1977. He was still looking trim and vigorous. I asked him, “How's your basketball?” He responded, “I still have the moves, but I don't have the speed.”
Turk died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 46. I was shocked by the news, because he always seemed to be indestructible.
Nowadays, living far from Windham, I sometimes pass by a pickup basketball game of adolescent boys, in which one player is clearly outshining the rest. And it takes me back to watching King Turk when he was on top of the world, putting on a show and bringing much-needed entertainment to those cold Maine winters so long ago. <
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