My Life [2]

High School Days

By Jim Rix

“After being graduated from TUHS.” I know that Chapter 1 said the next chapter would begin that way, but let’s pause a bit before we proceed to pick up with the autobiography I sent to the teacher who is writing her own biography of her days in Tulare. Maybe I shouldn’t have given high school such short shrift in what I sent to her.
    The teacher in question is pretty well known on Moristotle & Co., for she is none other than Shirley Skufca Hickman, of whose numerous works several excerpts have appeared here. Ms. Skufca taught Speech and Drama and directed our senior & junior class plays, Anastasia, the 1952 play by Marcelle Maurette, and Room for One More, by William F. Davidson.

Anastasia. Our classmate Don Richert doesn’t think that he took Speech or Drama at TUHS, but he remembers seeing our production of Anastasia and seeing me and Mo in it (Mo is Morris, as I’ve almost always called him). Don scanned a couple of pages from our 1960 Argus yearbook. Below is the pages’ lead article on the play. Note Nancy Morris’ signature across the photo:

    I played the role of General Bounine, as did Yul Brynner in the 1956 film, a version of the same play. Mo played Boris Adreivich Chernov (played by Akim Tamiroff in the film).
    The play is about the daughter of the last Russian tzar, who was presumed to have been murdered along with her family, but then someone shows up claiming to be her. Don, who lives in the New York area, tells me that a musical currently on Broadway was based on the 1997 animated film of the same name, which shares its plot with the 1956 film.^*

Room for One More brought together the cast identified in the faded program shown here. Let’s observe a moment of silence in remembrance of those long lost days, and some of their people.
    Playacting was a big part of our lives in high school. P. 33 of an autograph book I have from high school is entirely taken up by a statement from Mo, who wrote:

I and everybody else know that you are the most active boy in school. You act, dance, play, politic, play, act, dance, play, act, politic, and a little bit of study, reading, and writing...Do you think we’ll ever meet on Broadway? I want to do Hamlet. What about you? You can be Horatio. Or let’s do Lear. You can be Shakespeare.

As Mo and Don and many other graduates of TUHS know, an unforgettable character there was the language teacher Morris Knudsen. So many memorable aspects of Mo K – where to start? From him, I took two years of Latin, two years of French, and, if I remember correctly, my junior year of English. He was a very entertaining teacher (one of the two best teachers I’ve had). What I liked most was that he would start each class with some interesting fact unrelated to the subject he was teaching. The fact that sticks with me today is “You know, humans are the only animal that drinks milk after they’ve been weaned.” It was after this enlightenment that I stopped drinking milk by the glass, which, up till then, I had done at each meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Of course, I still consumed dairy via milk shakes, ice cream, pizza, etc., and it wasn't until the early 1990s that I learned another obvious fact – that cow’s milk is designed by nature for cows, not for humans, and has many adverse health consequences for us humans, not the least of which is obesity. Since then, I avoid all forms of dairy as much as possible. I’ve even mastered the phrase no cheese when ordering out. “I’ll have a veggie pizza no cheese” is not as bad a thing to eat as you might think....Ah, Mo K, it all started with you.

Mo Knudsen was not only a great teacher; he also became a personal friend. It started when Mo took me on a backpacking trip. He was an avid backpacker and would hike the High Sierras each August. The August between my sophomore and junior years (1958), he invited me and my older brother, Dan, to accompany him on his 10-day backpacking trip into the John Muir Wilderness. We drove east from Fresno to Florence Lake, in the Sierra National Forest (elevation 7,323 ft), and ferried across the lake to begin our hike.

Summer 1975,
James Knudsen & Leland Rix

    The following summer Mo invited me again, this time with my younger brother, Ken. We hiked to Mo’s favorite spot, Ferguson Meadow, deep in Sequoia National Park, east of Visalia. Uphill all the way, it took us two days of hiking (15 miles) to get there. Ferguson Creek was teeming with rainbow trout, and each of us caught his legal limit (10 fish) every day.

The best thing about hiking with Mo was the endless conversations. We talked about anything and everything. His knowledge was wide-ranging, and he frequently employed the Socratic Method – answering my questions with questions, greatly influencing my way of thinking. I learned much on these trips.

Mo & Morissa, perhaps the best
photo I ever took

    Indeed, Mo Knudsen became a father figure for me. In later years, we would return to Ferguson Meadow two more times, in 1975 with my son Leland and Mo’s son, James, and the next summer with his daughter, Morissa, and my daughter, Vanita.

I leave this chapter here, with memories rich in life and longing.

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* Those interested in Anastasia stories might enjoy an inventive dramatic series on Prime Video titled The Romanoffs, also based on the presumption that not all of the tsar’s family were killed. The story continues, and we tell the stories of our own lives around it.

Copyright © 2020 by Jim Rix