One day in May of 1970,

Photo by Jim McCalmont

sometime right after the revelations about U.S. bombing missions in Cambodia and the amidst the resulting wave of protests across the country, including the infamous one at Kent State, we organized an impromptu walkout at our high school. About thirty students all walked out of their classrooms at the same time and reconvened on the steps of the Administration Building, which was just north of the high school.

And we there sat, effectively blocking entrance or exit from the building. In retrospect, I'm not sure what we imagined we'd accomplish, beyond frightening the women working inside as secretaries.

I'm pretty sure none of them had the command codes to recall the bombers. But we were doing something. As opposed to nothing.

As comparatively small and sleepy as Ardsley, NY had always been, a bunch of us had succeeded in getting a lot of people worked up over the course of those last couple of years. By May of 1970, I myself had had my life threatened a couple of times - mostly by people I'd known since childhood - and I'd had some pretty tense encounters with various school administrators who seemed to take my very presence at Ardsley High as a personal affront. A walking insult.

And there was one family in particular who seemed to be on a holy mission against all things UnAmerican. Since just about everyone we knew and everything we did fell into that category, we had already had lots of contentious contact with them by this point. And they lived directly adjacent to the school grounds, so it seemed like they were there every time we turned around, day or night. Let's call them the Dimdens - if they're still alive, they're probably not above trolling the internet for their name.

Well, when Mrs. Dimden got word of the walk-out/sit-down, she charged out of her house and over to the Admin Building to confront us - us - COMMUNISTS - us - ANARCHISTS - us - you get the picture. She was a Fury in polyester and sensible heels, she was. But a Fury with poor balance, I'm afraid. She was halfway up the stairs, screaming and swinging her hideous handbag to try to get us to scatter, when she lost her footing and fell. On me.

Her face turned purple and I was honestly afraid she might have a stroke right there on top of me, but her indignant rage brought her around rapidly. "You'll go to jail for this!!" was all I can recall of her rant.

Unfortunately, her ridiculous threat frightened me, since I was on probation at the time for possession of dangerous drugs and grand larceny (a story for another day). Which meant that if she followed through on pressing charges, which given her aforementioned Holy Mission, she was bound to do, all it would take would be a zealous prosecutor and unsympathetic judge and I could be in prison by fall.

But all worked out. My parents, bless their souls, had my back, and got me a good lawyer; Mrs. Dimden had no witnesses to my alleged assault on her, and we had plenty to state that she had just plain fallen; and perhaps best of all, the prosecutor was a pompous, red-faced blowhard - in white shoes, no less - that the judge plainly loathed.

And perhaps the most touching part of the whole comic drama was that, as my parents drove me home after the charges were dismissed and I told them how extremely grateful I was that I wasn't going to prison, they turned to me and said, you were never going to prison - if the verdict had gone the other way, we would have just driven you to Canada.

How about that. The old folks could still surprise me.