Student Teacher, Part 1

We were just kids when we married in the spring of 1970, I being 21 and Alice, only 20. My parents had suggested that we wait until I finished college, but we were too anxious and impulsive to listen to reason.

After our one-night honeymoon at the Pittsburgh Hilton, we moved into an apartment on East Wheeling Street, and on Monday morning, Alice returned to her job as a fashion artist at Horne's department store, and I to my part-time work as a salesman at Reichart's Furniture Warehouse. Our combined weekly gross income was not even $100, and so our housekeeping was based on frugality. Our meals were designed not with taste or nutrition in mind but rather cost. We ate Tater Tots and Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks a lot, as well as hot dogs and baked beans, tomato soup and crackers, and the very cheapest cuts of meat – fatty pork and "breakfast steaks."

Shortly after classes resumed in September, the angst began to set in. What was I to do come graduation? The Vietnam War raged and the military draft loomed, following me around like a dark cloud above my head. What would I do come May if not the Army? I had some interest in art and the theater, neither of which would pay the grocery bills. Graduate school was a consideration, but my grades through college had been atrocious, and I was sure no decent school would accept me.

Christmas, our first away from our families, was bittersweet; finding a tree and decorating it in our own style, establishing tradition for our own future family, was romantic and energizing; being away from our parents, brothers and sisters on Christmas morning for the first time ended our childhood completely and forever. We roasted what turned out to be a pathetic excuse for a turkey. The money for the turkey the tree and some gifts came from selling my guitar.

When the diversion of Christmastime had passed, it was time again to consider the future. Maybe the war would end, we hoped. Maybe I should think of a career, I gulped.
So in January, I visited the office of one of my professors, who had suggested the benefits of teaching in the public schools. Confronting every day a classroom full of surly, disinterested children was a scary thought, but not nearly as scary as the Viet Cong.