Cliff the Custodian

 Waterman Street School. Here are two memories I recalled this morning:

In the Boy’s Bathroom in the basement was where we boys, outside of the teacher’s jurisdiction we did things we could not do in classroom, such as pissing contests. When you first walked into the bathroom was a long cement latrine. It was probably about 12 feet long with a 3 or 4 inch deep ditch. It was designed to serve several boys at the same time. By just being there in the form it was in, it encouraged pissing competition. Boys, standing side by side, facing the plain wall, did not piss downward, they pissed upward. The higher the wall, the better. The winner most days was Archie Richardson. His stream at times got to where the wall met the ceiling.

One time Archie lived behind my aunt on Forrest Avenue and he found a certain spot in the back of his yard was easy to dig up authentic arrowheads. Archie also introduced me to MAD comicbook, issue #4 to be exact. Since that MAD inspired me I collected all the issues and haven’t been the same since.

To get to the Boy’s Restroom, one go down a long stairway. The girls’ is also down a stairway, on the opposite side of the building. But back to stairs to the boy’s bathroom. When you get to the bottom of the stairs there are two doors. One to the bathroom and one to the furnace room. One time the late Van Callaway and I, feeling adventurous, went into the furnace room. There we found a little “Man-Cave” for Cliff, the custodian. He had a chair, a table and a couple of boxes. The boxes were full of comcbooks. Comicbooks of all kinds! Super heroes, war, teenage such as Archie, romance, and so on. I think Cliff he custodian somehow got his hands on the comic books he found loose in the school building. They were so different tastes I don’t think he pursued a definite type, he grabbed whatever was available.