The fire escape & Mr. Taylor

The Fire Escape and Mr. Taylor
by: Lenzy (Bud) Reynolds (1955)

Here is something we all can remember. The playground type fire escape at our old high school. It was a blast to go spiraling down it to the ground below. If you were the first one to go, you had to have your feet up to knock the door open at the end of the ride. It was fun. I can't recall sliding down it during a fire drill, but I had certainly ridden it before to the ground below more than once.

The fire escape.

I remember once in the early part of the school year it was time to sign up for clubs. As I recall, we had shortened classes in the morning on Fridays and the last morning class would be to attend a club of your choice. Now I wasn't smart enough to figure this out, but some of my cronies had surmised if we could skip signing up for a club, it would mean free time every week to do as we pleased. Like go over town, eat early and play a pinball machine at one of the local restaurants or anything else we wanted to do. A whole hour and forty five minutes to goof off! What a plan! No one would ever miss us. No grade was given on our report cards for clubs, so going to a club was nothing but a waste of time, or so we thought. We were already a lot smarter than the average bear anyway. Well, Friday came around and everyone had decided what club they were going to join except the cronies and me. Finally the bell rang to end the last class of the morning. Everyone was rushing around heading to meet up with their club counterparts, except us cool dudes. We knew exactly what we were going to do. One sweet short ride to freedom! Now I wasn't the first dummy to go down the chute, as there were several of us. But when we emerged from the fire escape, there stood our principal, Mr. Taylor, in his brown tweed suit and necktie, with a note pad writing down our names as we came out one by one. He stood there with a stern look on his face (all of you have seen it) and never uttered a word, but we knew he was not pleased at all. He always had the look of authority, and he knew it. Busted! Our only choice was to go around to the front door, go in and sign up for a club.

I was on pins and needles for the next few days, but I never heard a word about this from Mr. Taylor. Being way ahead of us, he must have known sweating it out was punishment enough. However, I would bet my last dollar he knew exactly what clubs we had all joined. He wasn't one to waste his time taking names for nothing. As I look back, he was a great principal and what a responsibility that had to have been, knowing fools like myself needed every ounce of education they could give us. I especially enjoyed him substituting for a teacher. He was a fantastic orator and would have us hanging on every word as he told a story. I honestly believe each and every one of us that had him for a principal is a little better person today. If you thought he leaned on us to be a better student, imagine the heat the teachers that worked for him received. He sure set the example....

Bud