Imagine A School Where ....

Actually, I had found my way onto the edges of Williams College perhaps even before Sandy.  Back in the summer of 1964, a young Telegraph boulevardier who was attending John Woolman School (a Quaker school in the hills of Northern California) carried me up on his motorcycle on a tour of the Berkeley Hills.  Sometimes because of Claremont and all the private college prep schools dotting the foothills in near vicinity, it seemed to me a lot of the kids I knew had gone to private schools, when in fact at that moment in time, I only personally knew three.  Two were schools located in California.  First was a friend who was sent off to a boarding school called  Midland in Los Olivos near Santa Barbara because he was a handful and there was something to be said for that form of education, the English boarding school approach to child rearing.  And now Jot, who did not seem to be of a bookish nature, told me something of John Woolman School and their founding tenets.  (And simultaneously this is about the time that Montessori Schools were blossoming everywhere, Waldens were growing like lily-pads in every pond, and across that bigger pond in England was Summerhill.)

The last, Peter, who was sitting at the table at the coffee house with me (and Jot and Nick) went to the weirdest school I had ever heard described, where it wasn't the kids who acted up, though those in authority seemed to think so, almost a concentration camp in the jungle where children were forced to build roads through mountains..   So Jot, Peter, and I must have been talking about new kinds of schools at the coffee house on Telegraph.  I'm there at a summer session at UC Berkeley to see if I can get along with the place.  People were reading books about all kinds of alternatives to public education (and theory of education), so I had just finished A.S. Neill's "Summerhill" where the frontspiece invited me "to imagine a school where children could be free to be themselves."  Wow!  Imagine THAT!  (as long as it isn't like something out of "Lord of the Flies.") I likely said I had never even seen a weird private school, all the ones I was familiar with were respected boy's academies (like Webb School in Claremont or Los Olivos somewhere near Santa Barbara) and so on geared to carry people into the private schools like Claremont colleges, or maybe Berkeley.  But I didn't want to see any detention center schools in far away countries, or even closer than that!  So Jot decided to take me to see one.

He knew all the places to go on a motorcycle, the Lake, all the winding roundabouts Grizzly Peak and Fish Ranch Road eventually, all that wound about and lead on to somewhere even more interesting and we were free, free, free, free, FREE as the wind.  There were still large urns along the road then as you went even higher into Arlington.  I was pretty sure he lived in a fancy place in the Berkeley hills because he went to a private school and had a motorcycle and such.  So he carried us up.  We zipped past the wall that fronted Arlington, and took a sudden turn to the right, pushed into a small grove of eucalyptus and parked.  We walked down the road to a large mansion, and I broke into a little monologue, talking to him, like this was HIS home and he was talking me home to meet his parents.  And it was right at the point that I raised my arms wide under the portico and exclaimed, "Such a wondrous place!  But it's a miracle we found our way here" that a couple of older gentlemen stepped outside the door, and who I came eventually to know as Charles was standing in the doorjam as who I came to eventually know as Dr. Hopkins came out to see who we were and what was going on.  Charles stepped out, and who was at the door now but a much older gentleman.  All watching us and waiting for us to announce the reason for our arrival.  So I asked Mr. Hopkins in lofty language for permission to walk about the estate a bit and he granted that.  Jot and I moved to the great patio which had a view albeit somewhat obscured by tree tops of the Bay as well.  I think the wisteria was in bloom, too, and he loved plants as much as I did. And when we were done, after sitting on a stone bench staring out at the southern vista, the young man and I returned up towards the motorcycle to go home.  Mr. Hopkins was waiting for us, and I thanked him for letting us walk about, and talked of my friend, who loved plants, and I was trying to get him a job because he'd told me his mom was nagging him about that, so I did say something like, "If you ever need a gardener, let me know.  I know the right guy. The absolute right guy."  But I really wasn't expecting that Jot would be to hired on the spot.. So we left.

In thinking about it now, actually I knew another person at the time who had gone to a private boarding academy, because when they didn't have time to deal with her during her troubled teens (she was dating Raquel Welch's brother at the time, and Raquel will come into the story later, so reader take note!), her parents had sent her away to a lycee in Switzerland that was run by an actual Nazi.  So I had probably mentioned her, and that's how Peter brought up his story about "Shimber Berris", you see.  She was the one who had inherited use of the cottage at Williams Cottage in 1966 from the Sandy and Ronnie of the Mime Troupe.